Amin Maalouf - Leo Africanus

‘Within a few hours, at least ten people joyfully told me the same story, at the hammam, at the mosque, and in the corridors of the Alhambra; each time, I pretended not to have heard the story before so as not to offend the speaker, to give him the pleasure of adding his own embellishment. I smiled too, but a little less each time, because anxiety gnawed at my breast. I kept asking myself why Yahya had allowed Ferdinand’s envoys to enter the besieged city, and above all how he could have hoped to conceal from them the penury which gripped the city, if everyone in Granada, and probably elsewhere, knew the truth and was laughing at the deception.

‘My worst fears,’ my uncle continued, ‘were realized on New Year’s Day, in the course of my conversations with visitors to the Alhambra. I then learned that Yahya, Fighter for the Faith, Sword of Islam, had not only decided to hand Basta over to the infidels, but even to join the Castilian troops to open the way to the other towns of the kingdom, especially Guadix and Almeria, and finally Granada. The particular skill of this prince had been to distract the Muslims by means of his pretended stratagem, to conceal the real purpose of his negotiations with Ferdinand. He had taken his decision, some said, in exchange for a substantial sum of money, and the promise that his soldiers and the citizens of the town would be spared. But he had obtained even more than this; converting to Christianity himself, this amir of the royal family, this grandson of the sultan, was to become a high-ranking notable of Castile. I shall speak of him to you again.

‘At the beginning of the year 895, it was clear that no one suspected that such a metamorphosis would be possible. But, from the first days of the month of Muharram, the most alarming news reached us. Basta fell, followed by Purcena, and then Guadix. All the eastern part of the kingdom, where the war party was strongest, fell into the hands of the Castilians without a blow being exchanged.

‘The war party had lost its hero, and Boabdil had got rid of an inconvenient rival; however, the Castilians’ victories had reduced his kingdom to very little, to Granada and its immediate surroundings, and this area was also subject to regular attacks. Was this a matter for rejoicing for the sultan, or lamentation?

‘It is on such occasions,’ said my uncle, ‘that great-heartedness or small-mindedness reveals itself. And it was the latter that I perceived so clearly on the face of Boabdil on the first day of the year, in the Hall of the Ambassadors. I had just heard the cruel truth about Basta from a young Berber officer of the guard who had relatives in the besieged city. He often came to see me in the state secretariat, and he came to me because he did not dare to address the sultan directly, especially as the bearer of evil tidings. I led him straight to Boabdil, who commanded him to make his report to him in a low voice. Bending over towards the monarch’s ear he stammered out the news he had received.

‘But, while the officer was speaking, the sultan’s face swelled into a broad, indecent and hideous smile. I can still see those fleshy lips opening in front of me, those hairy cheeks which seemed to stretch to his ears, those teeth, spaced wide apart to crunch up the victory, those eyes which closed slowly as if he was expecting the warm kiss of a lover, and that head which nodded with delight, backwards and forwards and forwards and backwards, as if he was listening to the most languorous of songs. As long as I live, I shall have the image of that smile before me, that terrible smile of pettiness and small-mindedness.’

Khali stopped. The night hid his face from me, but I heard him breathe deeply, sigh, and then murmur a number of prayers which I repeated after him. The yappings of the jackals seemed closer.

‘Boabdil’s attitude did not surprise me,’ continued Khali, his equanimity restored. ‘I was not unaware of the fickleness of the master of the Alhambra, nor of the feebleness of his character, nor even of his ambiguous relations with the Castilians. I knew that our princes were corrupt, that they were not concerned to defend the kingdom, and that exile would soon be the fate of our people. But I had to see with my own eyes the bared soul of the last sultan of Andalus in order to feel myself forced to react. God shows to whom He will the right path, and to others the way to perdition.’

My uncle stayed only another three months in Granada, time to turn various goods and property discreetly into gold, which would be easy to carry. Then, one moonless night, he left with his mother, his wife, his four daughters and a servant, accompanied by a horse and several mules, for Almeria, where he obtained permission from the Castilians to sail to Tlemcen with other refugees. But he intended to set himself up at Fez, and it was there that my parents and I met him again, after the fall of Granada.

If my mother mourned Khali’s departure unceasingly all that year, my father Muhammad, may God keep his memory fragrant, did not think of following the example of his brother-in-law. There was no sense of despair in the city. Throughout the year there were particularly encouraging tales in circulation, frequently spread about, my mother told me, by the ineffable Sarah. ‘Each time Gaudy Sarah visited me, I knew that I would be able to tell your father tales which would make him happy and self-assured for a whole week. In the end it was he who asked me impatiently whether the juljul had tinkled in our house in his absence.’

One day, Sarah arrived, her eyes full of news. Even before she could sit down, she began to tell her stories with a thousand gestures. She had just heard, from a cousin in Seville, that King Ferdinand had received two messengers from the sultan of Egypt, monks from Jerusalem, in circumstances of the greatest secrecy, who, it was said, had been charged with conveying a solemn warning to him from the master of Cairo: if the attacks against Granada did not cease, the anger of the Mamluke sultan would be terrible indeed!

In a few hours the news went the rounds of the city, being enlarged out of all proportion and being constantly embellished with fresh details, so much so that the next day, from the Alhambra to Mauror and from al-Baisin to the suburb of the Potters, anyone who dared to cast doubt on the imminent arrival of a massive body of Egyptian troops was regarded with great distrust and profound suspicion. Some were even declaring that a huge Muslim fleet had appeared off al-Rabita, south of Granada, and that the Turks and Maghribis had joined forces with the Egyptians. If this news was not true, people said to the remaining sceptics, how else could they explain that the Castilians had suddenly ceased their attacks against the kingdom some weeks ago, while Boabdil, so fearful only a short time ago, now launched raid after raid on the territory controlled by the Christians without incurring any reprisals? A curious intoxication seemed to have taken possession of the dying city.

I was at that stage a child at the breast, privy neither to the wisdom, nor to the folly of men, which meant that I did not participate in the general credulity. Very much later, when I was a man and proud to carry the name ‘of Granada’ to remind everyone of the noble and prestigious city from which I had been exiled, I found it difficult to stop myself reflecting on this blindness on the part of the people of my country, including my own parents, who had been able to persuade themselves of the imminent arrival of an army of salvation when only death, defeat and shame awaited them.

That year was also one of the most dangerous of all those that I would pass through. Not only because of the dangers hanging over my city and those nearest to me, but also because for all the sons of Adam the first year is the one in which illnesses are most deadly, in which so many disappear without leaving a trace of what they might have been or might have done. How many great kings, or inspired poets, or intrepid travellers have never been able to attain the destiny which seemed promised to them, because they were not able to come through his first difficult journey, so simple and yet so deadly! How many mothers do not dare to become attached to their children because they fear that one day they might find themselves embracing a shadow.