Amin Maalouf - Leo Africanus

‘In the face of adversity, women bend and men break. Your father was prisoner of his self-esteem. I had been taught to submit.’

‘And Warda?’

‘She left us after the death of Muhammad. Without her husband, without her daughter, she no longer had anyone in this country. I believe that she has returned to her village in Castile, to end her life among her own people.’

Then she added in a low voice:

‘We should never have left Granada!’

‘Perhaps we are going to go back there.’

She did not deign to reply. Her hand brushed at the wind before her eyes, as if chasing a persistent fly.

‘Ask me instead about your daughter.’

Her face lit up. And mine too.

‘I was waiting for you to speak of her. I did not dare to ask you. I left her when she was so young!’

‘She is chubby and cheeky. At the moment she is with Sarah, who takes her sometimes to play with her grandchildren.’

They both arrived an hour later. Contrary to my expectations, it was Gaudy Sarah who flung herself around my neck, while my daughter stood at a respectful distance. We had to be introduced. My mother was too moved, so Sarah took care of it:

‘Sarwat, this is your father.’

The little girl took a step towards me and then stopped.

‘You were in Timb—’

‘No, not in Timbuktu, but in Egypt, and I’ve brought you back a little brother.’

I took her on my knees, covering her with kisses, breathing in deeply the smell of her smooth black hair, dreamily caressing her neck. I had the impression of repeating in the most minute detail a scene which I had seen a hundred times: my father seated on his cushion, with my sister.

‘Is there any news of Mariam?’

It was Sarah who replied:

‘It’s said that she’s been seen with a sword in her hand, at her husband’s side. But there are so many stories about them…’

‘And do you think that Harun is a bandit?’

‘There are rebels in every community. One curses them in public and prays for them when one is alone. Even among the Jews. There are Jews in this country who do not pay the tribute, who ride horses and bear arms. We call them the Karayim. You probably know that.’

I agreed:

‘There are hundreds of them, organized like an army, who live in the mountains of Damansara and Hintata near Marrakesh.’

But I wanted to go back to my first concern.

‘Do you really think that there are people in Fez who pray secretly for Harun and Mariam?’

This time it was Salma who exploded:

‘If Harun was only a simple bandit, he would not be pursued so relentlessly in proclamation after proclamation. When he attacked the Zarwali, he almost became a hero. But they wanted to make him out to be a thief. In the eyes of the common people, gold soils more easily than blood.’

Then, speaking more slowly, as if another person was speaking from within her:

‘It is useless to try to clear your brother-in-law. If you try to defend him you will be treated as his accomplice once again.’

My mother was afraid that my desire to defend Harun and Mariam would impel me to commit new follies. She was probably right, but I had to try. The very way in which my banishment had been decided led me to think that the Sultan of Fez would listen to me now.

The sultan was then on campaign against the Portuguese, beside Bula wan. For months I went up and down the country following the royal army, sometimes bearing arms and taking part in some skirmishes. I was ready to do anything to wring out a pardon. Between two battles I spoke to the monarch, his brothers and a number of his advisers. But why go into details when the results were so disappointing? An intimate of the sultan finally agreed with me that many crimes had been attributed unjustly to Harun, adding, in a tone of disarming sincerity:

‘Even if we could pardon your brother-in-law for what he has done, how could we pardon him for the things we accuse him of having done?’

One day I suddenly decided to abandon my efforts. I had indeed not managed to get what I wanted, but through chance conversations I had gleaned a piece of information that I wanted to confirm. I returned to Fez, took Salma, Nur, Sarwat and Bayazid, and set off, without disclosing my purposes to them, having decided no longer to look back. At Fez I possessed nothing more than a half-completed building, a ruin inhabited by regrets and empty of memories.

Our journey lasted for weeks without me revealing our destination, which was not a place but a man: ‘Aruj the corsair, called Barbarossa. I had actually heard that Harun was with him. So I made straight for Tlemcen, then followed the coast road towards the east, avoiding the cities held by the Castilians, such as Oran or Mars al-Kabir, stopping in places where I could meet Granadans, at Algiers for example, and particularly at Cherchell, where the population consisted almost entirely of refugees from Andalus.

Barbarossa had taken as his base the little port town of Jijil, which he had wrested from the Genoese the previous year. However, before reaching there, I heard that he was besieging the Castilian garrison at Bougie. As this town lay on my way, I decided to go there, leaving my family several miles away in the charge of the imam of a small village mosque, promising myself to come back and collect them after having inspected the battlefield.

It was at Bougie that I met Barbarossa, as I have written in my Description of Africa . He did indeed have a very red beard, of its own natural colour but also reddened with henna, because the man was past fifty but looked older and seemed only to be kept standing upright by the lust for conquest. He limped badly, and his left arm was made of silver. He had lost his arm at Bougie itself, in the course of a previous siege which had ended in disaster. This time the battle seemed better joined. He had already occupied the old citadel of the town and was undertaking the investment of another fortress near the beach where the Castilians were continuing to resist.

The day of my arrival there was some respite in the battle. Guards were standing in front of the commander’s tent, one of whom came originally from Malaga. It was he who ran to call Harun, with a deference which made me realize that the Ferret was a lieutenant of Barbarossa. In fact he arrived accompanied by two Turks, whom he dismissed with a confident gesture before throwing himself upon me. We stayed joined together for a long moment, exchanging vigorous slaps which conveyed all our friendship, our surprise and the sadness of estrangement. Harun first made me enter the tent and presented me to ‘Aruj as a poet and diplomat of renown, for which I only understood the reason later. The corsair spoke like a king, in short and measured sentences whose apparent meaning was trite but whose hidden meaning was difficult to define. Thus he recalled the victories of Salim the Ottoman and the increasing arrogance of the Castilians, remarking sadly that it was in the East that the sun of Islam was rising while it was setting in the West.

When we had taken our leave, Harun brought me to his own tent, less imposing and less embellished, but which could nevertheless accommodate about ten people and was very well supplied with fruit and drinks. It was not necessary for me to ask any questions for the Ferret to begin to answer them.

‘I have killed only murderers, I have robbed only thieves. I have not ceased to fear God for a moment. I have ceased only to fear the rich and the powerful. Here I am fighting the unbelievers to whom our princes are paying court, I defend the towns which they abandon. My companions in arms are the exiles, outlaws and lawbreakers from all lands. But does not ambergris issue forth from the entrails of the sperm whale?’