Amin Maalouf - Leo Africanus

‘Death,’ says the poet, ‘holds our life by two extremities: Old age is no closer to death than infancy.’

It was always said at Granada that the most dangerous time in the life of a nursing baby is the period immediately after its weaning, towards the end of the first year. Deprived of their mother’s milk, so many children did not manage to survive for long, and it was customary to sew into their clothes amulets made of jet, and charms, wrapped up in leather sachets, sometimes containing mysterious writings which were thought to protect the bearer against the evil eye and various illnesses; one particular charm, called ‘wolfstone’, was even supposed to tame wild animals if placed upon their heads. At a time when it was not uncommon to encounter wild lions in the region of Fez, I often regretted not having been able to lay my hands on such a stone, although I do not believe that I would have dared to get sufficiently close to these creatures to place the charm on their manes.

The pious considered these beliefs and practices contrary to religion, although their own children often carried amulets, because such men rarely managed to persuade their wives or mothers to listen to reason.

I cannot deny this in my own case. I have never been parted from the piece of jet which Sarah sold to Salma on the eve of my first birthday, which has cabbalistic signs traced upon it which I have never been able to decipher. I do not believe that this amulet really has magical powers, but man is so vulnerable in the face of Destiny that he cannot help himself being attracted to objects which are shrouded in mystery.

Will God, Who has created me so weak, one day reprove me for my weakness?

896 A.H.

14 November 1490 — 3 November 1491

Shaikh Astaghfirullah had a wide turban, narrow shoulders and the grating voice of the preachers of the Great Mosque, and, that year, his dense reddish beard turned grey, giving his bony face the appearance of perpetual anger, which was the entire extent of the baggage which he carried with him into exile. He would never again colour his hair with henna; he had decided on this in a moment of lassitude, and woe to anyone who asked him why: ‘When your Creator asks you what you were doing during the siege of Granada, will you dare to tell Him that you were prettifying yourself?’

Every morning, at the time of the call to prayer, he climbed to the roof of his house, one of the highest in the city, not to call the believers to prayer, as he had done for several years, but to inspect, from afar, the object of his righteous anger.

‘Don’t you see,’ he cried out to his sleeping neighbours, ‘that it’s your own tomb that is being built down there, on the road to Loja, and you go on sleeping here waiting for someone to come along and bury you! Come and see, if it is God’s will that your eyes be opened. Come and see the walls which have been raised up in a single day by the might of Iblis the Evil One!’

With his hand stretched westwards, he pointed with his tapered fingers to the citadel of Santa Fé which the Catholic kings had begun to build in the spring and which had already taken on the appearance of a city.

In this country, where men had long adopted the odious practice of going into the street with their heads bare, or just covering themselves with a simple scarf thrown carelessly over their hair, which slid slowly on to their shoulders in the course of the day, everyone could distinguish the mushroom-shaped silhouette of Shaikh Astaghfirullah from far away. But few of the men of Granada knew his real name. It was said that his own mother had been the first to bestow this soubriquet upon him, because of the horrified cries which he used to utter from earliest childhood whenever anyone mentioned in front of him an object or an action which he considered improper: ‘ Astaghfirullah! Astaghfirullah! I implore the pardon of God!’ he would cry at the mere mention of wine, murder, or women’s clothing.

There was a time when people teased him, gently or savagely. My father confessed to me that long before I was born he would often gather together with a group of friends on Fridays, just before the solemn midday prayer, in a little bookshop not far from the Great Mosque, to take bets; how many times would the shaikh utter his favourite phrase in the course of his sermon? The figure ranged between fifteen and seventy-five, and throughout the ceremony one of the young conspirators would carefully keep count, exchanging amused winks with the others.

‘But, at the time of the siege of Granada no one poked fun at Astaghfirullah,’ continued my father, thoughtful and disturbed at the memory of his former pranks. ‘In the eyes of the great mass of the people, the shaikh came to be regarded as a respected personality. Age had not caused him to abandon the words and the bearing for which he was famous; rather, on the contrary, the characteristics we used to laugh at had become accentuated. But the soul of our city had altered.

‘You must understand, Hasan my son, that this man had spent his life warning people that if they continued to live as they did, the Most High would punish them both in this world and in the next; he had used misfortune to arouse them as a beater arouses game. I still remember one of his sermons which began along these lines:

‘ “On my way to the mosque this morning, through the Sand Gate and the suq of the clothes dealers, I passed four taverns, Astaghfirullah! , where Malaga wine is sold with only the merest pretence at concealment, Astaghfirullah! and other forbidden beverages whose names I do not wish to know.” ’

In a grating and heavily affected voice, my father began to imitate the preacher, embroidering his sentences with countless Astaghfirullah! , mostly pronounced so quickly as to be almost incomprehensible, apart from a few which were probably the only authentic ones. This exaggeration apart the words seemed to me as if they were fairly close to the original.

‘ “Have not those who patronize these infamous haunts learned, from their earliest childhood, that God has cursed those who sell wine and those who buy it? That He has cursed the drinker and he who gives him to drink? They know, but they have forgotten, or otherwise they prefer drink which turns man into a rampaging animal to the Word which promises him Paradise. One of these taverns is owned by a Jewess, but the three others are owned, Astaghfirullah! by Muslims. And in addition, their clients are not Jews or Christians, as I know full well! Some of them are perhaps among us this Friday, humbly inclining their heads before their Creator, while only last night they were prostrate in their cups, slumped in the arms of a prostitute, or, even, when their brains were clouded and their tongues unbridled, cursing Him Who has forbidden wine, Him Who has said, ‘Do not come to the prayer in a state of drunkenness!’ Astaghfirullah! ” ’

My father Muhammad cleared his throat, which was irritated by the shrill tone he had put on, before continuing:

‘ “Yes, my brother believers, these things have come to pass in your city, before your eyes, and you do not react, as if God was not awaiting you on the Day of Judgement to call you to account. As if God will continue to support you against your enemies when you scoff at His Word and that of His Messenger, may God grant him his prayers and his salvation! When, in the swarming streets of your city, your women wander abroad unveiled, offering their faces and their hair to the lustful gaze of hundreds of men who are not all, I dare say, their husbands, fathers, sons or brothers. Why should God preserve Granada from the dangers which threaten it, when the inhabitants of the city have brought back the practices of the age of ignorance, the customs of pre-Islamic times, such as wailing at funerals, pride in one’s race, the practice of divination, belief in omens and the efficacy of relics, and the use of epithets and soubriquets against which the Most High has most clearly given warning.” ’