Leo Africanus

by Amin Maalouf

  Gaudy Sarah. I still often heard her speak of the Jewess, but her features no longer said anything to me.

  ‘God Himself has sent you to this country,’ gasped Salma as she caught up with her.

  Sarah gave her an amused pout.

  ‘That is what our rabbi says every day. As for me, I’m not so sure.’

  Everything about her seemed bizarre to me: her pealing laughter, her many-coloured clothes, her gold-filled teeth, her voluminous earrings and above all the overpowering perfume which hit me full in the nostrils when she clasped me to her bosom. While I stared shamelessly at her she began to tell the tale, with a thousand gestures and a thousand exclamations, of what had befallen her since she had left the quarter of al-Baisin, a little before our own departure.

  ‘Every day I thank the Creator for having pointed me towards exile, because those who chose baptism are now victims of the most dreadful persecutions. Seven of my cousins are in prison and one of my nieces was burnt alive with her husband, both accused of having remained Jews in secret.’

  She put me down on the ground before continuing in a lowered tone:

  ‘All the converts are suspected of continuing to be Jews; no Spaniard can escape the Inquisition unless he can prove that he is of “pure blood”, that is, that he can count no Jew and no Moor among his ancestors, as far back as his family goes. Even so, their King Ferdinand himself has Jewish blood, as has Torquemada the Inquisitor. May the flames of Hell pursue them until the end of time!’

  Thus Sarah did not regret having fled to Portugal with her family, although she soon realized that only rich Jews could take up residence there, and then only on the further condition that they showered gold upon the king and his advisers. As for the poorer members of the community, they were soon to have to choose, as in Castile, between conversion and flight.

  ‘So I hastened to take ship for Tetuan, where I stayed several months. Then I came to Fez with my eldest daughter and my son-in-law, who had decided to set himself up here with an uncle who is a jeweller. My second daughter and her husband went, like most of our people, to the land of the Grand Turk, our protector. May the Most High prolong his life and grant him victory over our enemies!’

  ‘That is what we all devoutly hope,’ said my mother approvingly. ‘If God has the goodness to give us back our country one day, the Grand Turk will be His instrument.’

  Revenge upon the Castilians was certainly one of Salma’s most cherished desires. But at that moment her thoughts were less concerned with the fate of Granada than with that of her own family circle. If she was showing so much joy at having found Sarah again it was because she remembered how successfully she had assisted her to get Muhammad back when he had nearly eluded her shortly before my birth. This time a magic potion would not suffice; Salma wanted to consult soothsayers, and as her mother was seriously ill and could not accompany her, she was counting on the reassuring presence of Gaudy Sarah.

  ‘How is your cousin?’ asked Sarah.

  ‘As God disposes him to conduct himself!’

  The ambiguity of this formulation was evidently not lost on the Jewess. She put her hand on my mother’s arm. Glancing at me at the same time out of the corners of their eyes, they took a step aside and spoke to each other in low tones, so that I could hear only occasional snatches of the conversation. The words ‘Rumiyya’ and ‘sorcery’, perhaps also ‘drug’ kept appearing on Salma’s lips; the Jewess was attentive and reassuring.

  The two women agreed to meet again in the same place two days later to go the rounds of the soothsayers. I knew about it that day because my mother had decided that I should accompany her. Perhaps she did not want to leave me with Warda; perhaps she judged it more fitting, in the eyes of my father and the neighbours, to take a child with her, as living proof of the honesty of her comings and goings. At all events, for a seven-year-old boy it was an experience as wonderful as it was unexpected, and, I must admit, sometimes agonizing as well.

  Our first visit was to a clairvoyant named Umm Bassar. It was said that the sultan of Fez would consult her at each new moon, and that she had put a spell upon an amir who had threatened him, striking him blind. In spite of her renown, she lived in a house as modest as our own, situated in the perfume suq, at the end of a narrow arcaded gallery. We had only to push past a hanging to make our way inside. A black maidservant made us sit down in a small chamber before leading us down a dark corridor to a room which was only a little larger. Umm Bassar was seated on an enormous green cushion, her hair covered with a scarf of the same colour, fringed with golden threads. Behind her back was a tapestry with a picture of the twenty-eight tabernacles of the moon; in front of her was a low table on which there was a glazed earthenware vessel.

  My mother sat opposite the clairvoyant and explained her business to her in a low voice. Sarah and I stayed behind, standing up. Umm Bassar poured some water into the vessel, added a drop of oil, and then blew on it three times. She recited several incomprehensible formulae, and then thrust her face towards the vessel, saying, in a cavernous voice:

  ‘The jinns are there; some come by land, others by sea.’

  Suddenly she turned towards me and beckoned me:

  ‘Come closer!’

  Suspicious, I did not move.

  ‘Come, don’t be frightened.’

  My mother gave me a reassuring look. I came up to the table timidly.

  ‘Lean over the table!’

  The sight was, I swear, astonishing enough. The dancing reflections of the droplets of oil on the polished surface of the amphora gave the impression of ceaseless movement. Looking at it for several seconds, and allowing one’s imagination free rein, one could make out all manner of beings and objects.

  ‘Did you see the jinns moving about?’

  Of course I said ‘Yes’.

  I would have said yes whatever the question had been, but my mother was all ears. For the objective she had in mind, and for the price she was paying, she did not want to be disappointed. At Umm Bassar’s command I returned to my place. The clairvoyant remained for several minutes without moving.

  ‘We must wait until the jinns become calmer; they are too troubled,’ she explained in a confident voice.

  There was a long period of silence, and then she began to talk to her jinns. She murmured questions to them and then leant over the vessel to observe the gestures they made with their hands and eyes.

  ‘Your cousin will return to you after three periods of time,’ she declared, without specifying whether it would be three days, three weeks, three months, or three years.

  My mother took out a gold piece and left, pensive and bewildered. On the way back she asked me not to tell anyone about the visit, not even my father, for fear of seeing the jinns climbing on top of me in my sleep.

  A week later we met Gaudy Sarah again on the square close to our house. This time our visit led us to an imposing residence situated not far from the sultan’s palace. We were received in an immense lofty room, with a ceiling painted azure and gold. There were several women there, all fat and unveiled, who seemed not at all pleased to see me. They talked about me for several minutes, and then one of them got up heavily, took me by the hand and led me to a far corner of the room, promising to bring me some toys. I did not see a single one, but I had no time to be bored, because after a few minutes Salma and Sarah came back to fetch me.

  I must say immediately that I had to wait several years before I learned the truth about what happened that day; I only remember my mother and Gaudy Sarah grumbling incessantly as they left, but also that between outbursts of anger they joked with each other and laughed out loud. I also remember having heard mention, in the salon, of al-Amira, the princess.

  She was a strange person. The widow of one of the sultan’s cousins, deeply versed in all the occult sciences, she had founded a peculiar circle, formed only of women, some chosen for their gifts of clairvoyance, others for their beauty. People with great experience of life call these women sahasat,
because they are accustomed to use one another, and I know no more appropriate term to express it. When a woman comes to see them, they make her believe that they have friendly relations with certain demons, whom they divide into several species: red demons, white demons, black demons. They themselves alter their voices to make it seem as if the demons are speaking through their mouths, as I have set forth in my Description of Africa. These demons often order their fair visitors, if they are of comely appearance, to take off all their clothes and to exchange loving kisses with themselves, meaning, of course, with the princess and her acolytes. If the woman is prepared to go along with this game, whether out of stupidity or inclination, she is invited to become a member of the sisterhood, and a sumptuous banquet is organized in her honour, at which all the women dance together to a negro orchestra.

  It was at the age of sixteen or seventeen that I learned the story of the princess and the demons. It was only then that I guessed what it was that had made my mother and Sarah take flight so quickly.

  In spite of this misadventure, Salma had no wish to interrupt her quest. But for her next visit she showed greater circumspection in her choice of soothsayer. Hence, some weeks later, the three of us found ourselves at the house of a highly respected man of the city, an astrologer and bookseller who kept a shop near the Great Mosque of the Qarawiyyin. He received us on the first floor, in a room which was furnished only with books along the walls and a mat on the floor. He was at pains to point out as soon as we arrived that he was neither a magician nor an alchemist, and that he sought only to decipher the signs sent by God to His creatures. In support of his words he cited these verses from the Qur’an:

  There are signs on earth for those whose faith is solid.

  There are signs in yourselves, do you not see them?

  There are also good things in Heaven which are destined for you.

  And also those by which you are threatened.

  Having thus reassured us of his faith and his honesty, he asked us to withdraw to the far corner of the room, rolled up the mat and traced several concentric circles on the floor with a piece of chalk. He drew a cross in the first one, and indicated the four cardinal points on the extremities of the cross, writing the names of the four elements on the inside. He then divided the second circle into four quadrants, and each quadrant into seven parts, making twenty-eight altogether, in which he wrote the twenty-eight letters of the Arabic alphabet. In the other circles he put the seven plants, the twelve months of the Latin year and various other signs. This procedure, known as zairaja, is long and complicated, and I would not have remembered the slightest detail if I had not seen it done three times in front of me. I only regret that I did not learn to do it myself, for of all the occult sciences it is the only one where the results are not open to discussion, even in the eyes of certain ulama.

  After having finished his drawing, the astrologer asked my mother what she was seeking. He took the letters of her question one by one, translated them into numerical values, and after a very complicated calculation, found the natural element to which the letter corresponded. After an hour’s scribbling, his reply came in the form of a verse:

  Death will come, and then the waves of the sea,

  Then the woman and her fruit will return.

  My mother was so upset that her words choked, and the man tried to calm her:

  ‘If one seeks to know the future, one must expect sometimes to encounter death. Is death not at the end of every destiny?’

  Salma found the strength to reply, trembling, almost beseeching him:

  ‘At the end, probably, but here it appears at the very beginning of the prediction.’

  The man’s only reply was to turn his eyes and his palms towards heaven. No more words passed his lips, and when my mother attempted to pay him he refused with a gesture which brooked no argument.

  The fourth visit was to be Salma’s undoing. This time it was to one of those people known as mu‘azzimin, famous for their ability to cast out demons. My grandmother, may God take pity upon her! had praised this man exceedingly; according to her, he had solved a thousand problems far more complicated than our own. In fact, he was so sought after that we had to wait two hours in his antechamber while he dealt with six other clients.

  As soon as Salma explained her situation to him a condescending smile came over his face, and he swore that within seven days her problem would be forgotten.

  ‘Your cousin has a tiny demon in his head which must be cast out. If he were here I would cure him immediately. But I shall pass to you the power to exorcize him yourself. I will teach you a spell which you should recite over his head while he sleeps tonight, tomorrow and the next night; I will also give you this phial of perfume. You must pour out a drop when you pronounce the spell.’

  The first evening, my father slept in Salma’s room, and she had no difficulty in reciting the words and pouring out a drop of the elixir. On the second evening, however, there came to pass what any intelligent being might have foreseen. Muhammad was with Warda, and my mother slipped trembling into their bedroom. She was about to pour out the liquid when the concubine let out a piercing cry, at which my father awoke, and with an instinctive movement seized his frail aggressor by the ankle. Salma fell sobbing to the ground.

  Seeing the phial in her hand, Muhammad accused his wife of sorcery, of madness, and of attempting to poison him. Without waiting for dawn he at once cried out to her three times in succession: ‘Anti taliqa, anti taliqa, anti taliqa’, declaring thus that she was henceforth free of him and divorced.

  The Year of the Mourners

  902 A.H.

  9 September 1496 – 29 August 1497

  That year, Boabdil himself came to our house for the condolence ceremonies. I should say to Khali’s house, because I went to live with him after my father had repudiated Salma. The deposed sultan entered the room, followed by a chamberlain, a secretary, and six guards dressed in the style of the Alhambra. He murmured various appropriate words to my uncle, who shook his hand for a long time before giving him his high divan, the only one in the house. His retainers remained standing.

  My grandmother had died in the night, and the Granadans resident in Fez had begun to gather since the morning. Boabdil had arrived unannounced, well before the midday prayer. None of those present had a particularly high opinion of him, but his titles, however hollow, continued to make a certain impression upon his former subjects. Furthermore, the occasion was not a suitable one either for recriminations or for the settlement of accounts. Except, that is, for Astaghfirullah, who came into the room shortly after the sultan, but did not favour him even with a glance. He sat down on the first empty cushion, and began to recite aloud in his rasping voice the Qur’anic verses appropriate to the occasion.

  Several lips followed the prayers, while others seemed set in a dreamy pout, amused at times, while still others chattered incessantly. In the men’s reception room, only Khali was weeping. I can see him still, as if he was taking shape before my eyes. I can see myself too, sitting on the floor, not happy, certainly, but not particularly sad either, my dry and carefree eyes roaming avidly around the company. From Boabdil, who had become immensely fat, to the shaikh, whom exile and the years had rendered skeletal and angular. His turban appeared more immense than ever, out of all proportion. Every time he became silent the raucous screams of the women mourners rang out, their faces damp with sweat, their hair dishevelled, their faces scratched until the blood came, while in a corner of the courtyard the male mourners dressed in women’s clothes, clean-shaven and made up, were feverishly shaking their square tambourines. To make them keep quiet, Astaghfirullah began to chant again, more loudly, more off key, with greater fervour. From time to time a street poet would get up and recite in a triumphal tone an elegy which had already been used for a hundred other departed souls. Outside, there was the clanging of cooking pots; the women of the neighbourhood were bringing in food, since nothing is cooked in a house where someone has died.
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br />   Death is a celebration. A spectacle.

  My father did not arrive until midday, explaining rather confusedly that he had just learned of the sad news. Everyone eyed him curiously, thinking themselves obliged to greet him coldly or even to ignore him. I felt mortified; I would have wished that he had not been there, that he were not my father. Ashamed of my thoughts, I went towards him, leant my head against his shoulder and stood there without moving. But while he slowly caressed the nape of my neck I began to remember, I do not know why, the astrologer-bookseller and his prediction.

  So the death had taken place. Without really admitting it to myself, I was somewhat relieved that the victim had been neither my mother nor my father. Salma told me later that she was afraid that it would be me. That which she could not voice, even in the very depths of her heart, only old Astaghfirullah dared to put into words, in the form of a parable.

  Raising himself up to pronounce an elegy for the departed, he addressed himself first to my uncle:

  ‘The story is told that one of the caliphs of long ago had lost his mother, whom he cherished as you used to cherish your mother, and he began to weep without restraint. A wise man came up to him. “Prince of the Believers,” he said, “you should give thanks to the Most High, since he has favoured your mother by making you weep over her mortal remains instead of humiliating her by making her weep over yours.” We must thank God when death follows the natural order of things, and trust in His Wisdom when, alas, it is otherwise.’