Amin Maalouf - Leo Africanus

‘The previous epidemics have all come to an end before the beginning of Mesori.’

I asked him to repeat the last word, because I thought I had misheard it. He smiled benevolently.

‘In the Coptic year Mesori is the month when the Nile floods reach their peak.’

I murmured:

‘Egypt has much merit to be Muslim when the Nile and the plague still follow the calendar of the Pharaohs.’

From the way he lowered his eyes and from his confused smile I understood that he himself was not a Muslim. He busied himself immediately:

‘It’s getting late. I think we must hoist up the sails.’

Addressing one of his children, who was running incessantly around a palm tree, he called out:

‘Sesostris, get back into the boat, we’re leaving!’

He shook my hand for the last time, adding in an embarrassed voice:

‘There is a cross and an icon in the house. If they offend you, you can take them down and put them in a coffer until my return.’

I promised him that on the contrary nothing would be moved and thanked him for his extreme thoughtfulness.

While I was talking to the Copt, the boatmen were standing in the background, gesticulating animatedly. When my benefactor had gone away, they came to tell me, in solemn tones, that they had decided to leave the next day for the capital. Although they were all Muslims, they knew that the plague would not go away before Mesori. But other reasons impelled them:

‘The man said that the price of food has risen suddenly. Now is the time to go to the old port, sell the cargo and return to our homes.’

I did not think of protesting. I myself was like a lover weary of sleeping night after night a few strides away from the object of his desires.

Cairo at last!

In no other city does one forget so quickly that one is a foreigner. The traveller has scarcely arrived before he is caught up in a whirlwind of rumours, trivialities, gossips. A hundred strangers accost him, whisper in his ear, call him to witness, jostle his shoulder the better to provoke him to the curses or the laughter which they await. From then on he is let into the secret. He has got hold of one end of a fantastic story, he has to know the sequel even if it means staying until the next caravan, until the next feast day, until the next flood. But, already, another story has begun.

That year, when I disembarked, worn out and haggard a mile from my new home, the whole town, although scarred by the plague, was poking fun without restraint at the ‘noble eye’, meaning that of the monarch. The first syrup seller, guessing my ignorance and delighting in it, took it upon himself to tell me about it forthwith, pushing away his thirsty clients with a disdainful air. The account which merchants and notables gave me later on was no different from that of this man.

‘It all began,’ he told me, ‘with a stormy interview between Sultan Qansuh and the caliph.’

The caliph was a blameless old man who lived peacefully in his harem. The sultan had treated him harshly and insisted that he should abdicate, on the pretext that his sight was failing, that he was already almost blind in his left eye and that his signature on the decrees was just a scrawl. Apparently Qansuh wanted to frighten the Commander of the Faithful in order to extort a few tens of thousands of dinars from him in exchange for keeping him in office. But the old man did not go along with this game. He took a piece of glazed paper and without trembling wrote out a deed of abdication in favour of his son.

The whole matter would have gone no further, merely another act of injustice that would have been soon forgotten, had the sultan himself one morning not felt pain in his left eye. This had happened two months before my arrival, when the plague was at its most deadly. But the sovereign was losing interest in the plague. His eyelid kept closing. Soon it would close so firmly that he had to hold it open with his finger to be able to see at all. His doctor diagnosed ptosis and recommended an incision.

My informant offered me a goblet of rose syrup and suggested that I should sit down on a wooden box, which I did. There was no longer a crowd around us.

‘When the monarch refused categorically, his doctor brought before him a senior officer, the commander of a thousand, who had the same disease, and operated on him forthwith. The man returned a week later with his eye completely restored.’

It was useless. The sultan, said my narrator, preferred to have recourse to a female Turkish healer, who promised to cure him without surgery, only applying an ointment based on powdered steel. After three days of treatment the disease spread to the right eye. The old sultan no longer went out, no longer dealt with any business, did not even manage to carry his noria on his head, the heavy long horned headdress which had been adopted by the last Mameluke rulers of Egypt. To such an extent that his own officers, convinced that he was going to lose his sight, began to look around for a successor.

The very evening before my arrival in Cairo, rumours of a plot were spreading through the city. They had naturally reached the ears of the sultan, who decreed a curfew from dusk to dawn.

‘Which is why,’ finished the syrup vendor, pointing out the position of the sun on the horizon, ‘if your house is far off, you really ought to run, because in seven degrees anyone caught in the streets will be flogged in public until the blood runs.’

Seven degrees was less than half an hour. I looked around me; there was no one there except soldiers, on every street corner, peering nervously at the setting sun. Not daring either to run or to ask the way for fear of being suspected, I merely walked along the river bank, quickening my pace and hoping that the house would be easily recognizable.

Two soldiers were coming towards me, with enquiring steps and looks, when I saw a path on my right. I turned into it without hesitation, with the strange impression of having done so every day of my life.

I was at home. The gardener was sitting on the ground in front of the door, his face immobile. I greeted him with a wave and made a great show of taking out my keys. Without a word, he drew aside to let me in, not appearing at all surprised to see a stranger going into his master’s house. My self-assurance reassured him. However, feeling obliged to explain the reason for my presence, I took out of my pocket the deed signed by the Copt. The man did not look at it. He could not read, but trusted me, resumed his place and did not move.

The next day, when I went out, he was still there, so that I did not know whether he had spent the night there or whether he had resumed his post at dawn. I walked about in my street, which seemed extremely busy. But all the passers-by looked at me. Although I was used to this annoyance which afflicts all travellers, I felt the sensation particularly strongly, and put it down to my Maghribi clothing. But it was not that. A greengrocer stepped out of his shop to come over and give me advice:

‘People are astonished to see a man of your rank walking about humbly on foot in the dust.’

Without waiting for my reply, he hailed a donkey-driver, who offered me a sumptuous beast, equipped with a fine blanket, and left me a young boy as an orderly.

So mounted, I made a tour of the old city, stopping especially at the famous mosque of Amr and at the textile market, before pushing on towards New Cairo, from which I returned with my head full of murmurings. Henceforth this excursion would take place every day, taking a longer or shorter time according to my mood and what there was for me to do, but always fruitful. I used to meet various notables, officers, palace officials and do business. Already in the first month I arranged to have a load of Indian crepe and spices for the benefit of a Jewish merchant in Tlemcen conveyed in a camel caravan chartered by some Maghribi traders. At my request, he sent back a casket of amber from Massa.