Amin Maalouf - Leo Africanus

‘But even so we can’t leave Mariam with the lepers for ever! Since all our efforts have been to no avail, what do you think we should do next?’

I had no idea, and this made me reply even more angrily:

‘Every time I think of her, the victim of blackguardly injustice for four years, I want to seize the Zarwali by the throat and strangle him, as well as his accomplice the shaikh of the lepers.’

I suited the action to my words. Harun seemed not the slightest impressed:

‘Your stone is too big!’

I did not understand. He repeated with a tone of impatience:

‘I tell you that your stone is too big, far too big. When I am in the street with the other porters I often see people shouting, insulting each other and attracting a crowd around themselves. Sometimes one of them picks up a stone. If it is the size of a plum or a pear, someone must hold his hand back, because he risks giving his adversary a bloody wound. But, on the other hand, if he takes hold of a stone the size of a water-melon you can go away in peace, because he has no intention of throwing it; he just wants to feel a weight in his bare hands. Threatening to strangle the Zarwali and the shaikh of the lepers is a stone the size of a minaret, and if I was in the street I should go off shrugging my shoulders.’

Without seeming to notice that I was blushing with embarrassment, Harun continued, spacing out his words as if passing each one of them through a filter:

‘There must be a way of helping Mariam to escape without risking her recapture and without her family being worried. Of course she will not be able to live in Fez for several years at least, and since I intend to marry her, I must run away with her.’

I had know him long enough over the years to realize that a plan was bubbling away in his head and that he would not unfold it to me prematurely. However, I was unable to understand what motivated him to act in this way. In the name of our friendship I had to speak to him about it.

‘How can you forsake your city, your family, your guild of your own free will, to go and live in exile, like a criminal, fleeing from one mountain to another for fear of being clapped in irons, all this for a girl to whom you’ve only ever once said a word in your life?’

The Ferret put the palm of his right hand on the top of my head, as he used to do when we were younger before telling me a secret.

‘There is something which I could not tell you before, and even today I want you to swear that you will not be offended by it.’

I swore, fearing the worst, some sort of dishonour for my family. We were sitting on the ground in the patio of his house. The Ferret was leaning his back against the little stone fountain in which the water was not running that day.

‘Do you remember the time that I went secretly into the women’s hammam?’

Seven or eight years had gone by, I think, but I still remembered the merest wink, the slightest heartbeat. I assented with a smile.

‘Then you will also remember that at the time, in spite of your pestering, I had obstinately refused to tell you what I had seen. I went in, draped in a veil, with a scarf tied round my head. I had wooden sandals on my feet and I was wrapped in a towel. I was eleven years old then, and there was no hair on my body to betray my sex. I walked around inside until I came across Warda and Mariam. Mariam’s eyes met mine, and I knew immediately that she had recognized me. She had often seen us together, so she could not be mistaken. I was paralysed, waiting to hear a scream, to be roughly handled, and have blows rained upon me. But your sister did not cry out. She took up her towel, nimbly wrapped it round her body, while a conspiratorial smile formed on her lips. Then, on some pretext or other, she led her mother into another room. I hastened to leave, still not quite able to believe that I was safe. That day, I regretted that Mariam was not my sister; it was only three years later that I rejoiced that I was only the friend of her brother, and could dream of her as a man dreams of a woman. It was then that misfortunes began to rain down upon the head of the girl with the silent eyes.’

Until that point the Ferret’s face was radiant with happiness, but it darkened at the last sentence. Before it lit up once more.

‘Even if the whole world had betrayed her, the memory of the hammam would have prevented me from abandoning her. Today, she is my wife, I shall save her as she saved me, and we shall make verdant the land that makes us welcome.’

Harun came round to see me again a week later to say farewell. His entire luggage consisted of two woollen purses, the larger one containing the gold of the dowry, the other his modest savings.

‘The smaller one is for the guard of the quarter, so that he will close his eyes while Mariam escapes; the other is for us, enough to live on for more than a year, with the protection of the Most High.’

They would go to the Rif, hoping to stay for some time in the mountains of the Bani Walid, the most valiant and most generous men in the kingdom. They were also very rich, since although their lands were fertile, they refused to pay a single dirham in taxes. Anyone unjustly banished from Fez knew that he could always find refuge and hospitality among them, even that some of his expenses would be defrayed, and that if his enemies sought to pursue him, the inhabitants of the mountain would attack them.

I held Harun tightly to me, but he quickly tore himself away, eager to discover what Destiny had in store for him.

914 A.H.

2 May 1508 — 20 April 1509

In that year the first of my marriages was celebrated, desired by my uncle as he lay dying as well as by my mother, anxious to separate me from Hiba, who always had the most tender of my caresses although she had given me neither son nor daughter in three years of love. So, as custom demanded, I had to place my foot solemnly upon the foot of Fatima, my cousin, at the moment when she entered the bridal chamber, while a woman of the neighbourhood waited at the door for the linen stained with blood, which she would then brandish, laughing and triumphant, under the noses of the guests, proof of the virginity of the bride and the virility of the husband, the sign that the festivities could begin.

The ritual seemed to last for ever. Since early morning, dressmakers, hairdressers and depilators, including the irreplaceable Sarah, had been bustling around Fatima, painting her cheeks red, her hands and her feet black, with one pretty triangular design between her eyebrows and another beneath her lower lip, elongated like the leaf of an olive tree. Made up in this fashion she was seated on a platform, so that all could admire her, while those who had dressed and prepared her were given a meal. Since the end of the afternoon, friends and relations had gathered outside Khali’s house. Finally the bride departed, more troubled than troubling, almost stumbling in her dress at each step, and then got into a kind of octagonal wooden coffer covered with silks and brocades which four young porters, friends of Harun, lifted on their shoulders. The procession then set off, preceded by flutes, trumpets and tambourines as well as a great number of burning torches brandished by the employees of the maristan and my old friends from the college. The latter walked along at my side in front of the coffer on which the bride was sitting, while behind her were the husbands of her four sisters.

We had first paraded noisily through the suqs — the shops were already shut and the streets were emptying — before halting in front of the Great Mosque, where a few friends had sprinkled us with rose water. At this stage my oldest brother-in-law, who was taking my uncle’s place for the ceremony, had whispered to me that the time had come for me to leave. I had embraced him before running off towards my father’s house where a room had been decorated for the night. It was there that I had to wait.