by Amin Maalouf
Not far from this intimidating place, it was said, were the secret wells where the Romans had buried their treasure before leaving Africa. Had the shepherd accidentally stumbled on one of these hiding places while pasturing his flocks? That was what I had heard at Fez long before the Zarwali burst upon my life. Whatever the truth was, having discovered his treasure, instead of squandering it at once as happens to so many who become rich unexpectedly, he slowly worked out a long-term strategy. Having sold off part of the treasure bit by bit, he appeared one day, richly accoutred, at the public audience of the Sultan of Fez.
‘How many gold dinars do you obtain from the Bani Zarwal each year?’ he asked the monarch.
‘Three thousand,’ replied the sovereign.
‘I will give you six thousand in advance if you will farm the taxes to me.’
And our Zarwali got what he wanted, including a body of soldiers to help him collect the taxes, extracting all the savings of the local population by threats or torture. At the end of the year he went back to the monarch:
‘I was mistaken. I managed to get twelve thousand, not six thousand.’
Deeply impressed, the master of Fez farmed the whole of the Rif to the Zarwali, and assigned him a hundred bowmen, three hundred cavalrymen and four hundred foot soldiers to assist him to fleece the population.
For five years the amount of tax extracted was higher than it had ever been, but the people of the Rif gradually became impoverished. Many fled to other provinces of the kingdom; some of the coastal cities even considered handing themselves over to the Castilians. Sensing that things might begin to change for the worse, the Zarwali resigned his office, left the Rif and set himself up at Fez with the money he had extorted. Having retained the trust of the monarch he set about building a palace and began to devote himself to all manner of business. Greedy, pitiless but exceedingly clever, he was always on the lookout for new schemes.
My father had got to know him through a rich Andalusian émigré, and had told him about his plan to raise silkworms. Showing great interest, the Zarwali had plied him with questions about the caterpillars, the cocoons, the slime and the spinning, and asked one of his advisers to make a note of all the details. He declared that he was delighted to work with a man as capable as Muhammad.
‘Well,’ he said with a laugh, ‘it’s a partnership of money and brains.’
When my father replied that all Fez knew how astute and intelligent the Zarwali was, the latter replied:
‘Don’t you know, you who have read so many books, what the mother of one of the sultans of long ago said when her son was born? “I do not want you to be endowed with intelligence, because you will have to put your intelligence at the service of the powerful. I want you to have good fortune, so that intelligent people may serve you.” That’s probably the same thing as my mother wanted for me when I was born,’ laughed the Zarwali, showing all his teeth.
My father was encouraged by the meeting, although the Zarwali asked for some time to think it over. He wanted to inform the monarch about the project, obtain his consent, and consult various weavers and exporters. However, as an earnest of his genuine interest in the matter, he advanced Muhammad four hundred pieces of gold and also held out to him the dazzling prospect of a marriage alliance between the two families.
After several months, I think in Sha‘ban of that year, the Zarwali summoned my father. He told him that his project was accepted and that he should begin the preparations, choosing various fields of white mulberries, planting others, recruiting skilled workers and building the first cocooneries. The king himself was full of enthusiasm for the project. He wanted to flood Europe and the Muslim lands with silks, to discourage the merchants from going as far as China to import the precious material.
My father was ecstatic with joy. His dream would come to fruition, on a scale which went far beyond his wildest hopes. He already saw himself rich, lying on immense silken cushions in a palace covered with majolica; he would be the first among the notables of Fez, the pride of the Granadans, a confidant of the sultan, a benefactor of schools and mosques . . .
‘To seal our agreement,’ pursued the Zarwali, ‘what better than a blood alliance? Don’t you have a daughter to marry?’
Muhammad immediately promised his backer Mariam’s hand in marriage.
It was quite by chance that, several days later, I came to hear about this conversation, which was to change many things in my life. Gaudy Sarah had been to the harem of the Zarwali to sell her perfumes and trinkets, just as she had done in the houses and palaces of Granada. All through her visit, the women had spoken of nothing else than of their master’s new marriage, making jokes about his inexhaustible vigour, and discussing the consequences of this latest acquisition for the favourites of the moment. The man already had four wives, the most that the Law would allow him to take at the same time; he must therefore repudiate one of them, but he was used to doing so, and his wives were used to it as well. The divorcee would get a house nearby, sometimes even staying within the walls, and it was whispered that some of them even became pregnant after the separation without the Zarwali showing the least surprise or taking offence.
Naturally, Sarah hastened to my mother’s house the same afternoon to tell her the gossip. I had just come back from school, and was munching some dates, listening to the women’s chatter with only half an ear. Suddenly I heard a name. I came closer:
‘They’ve even had time to give Mariam a nickname: the silkworm.’
I made Gaudy Sarah repeat her story word for word, and then asked her anxiously:
‘Do you think my sister will be happy with this man?’
‘Happy? Women only seek to avoid the worst.’
The reply seemed too vague and evasive.
‘Tell me about this Zarwali!’
It was the command of a man. She gave a rather sardonic grin, but replied:
‘He hasn’t a good reputation. Crafty, unscrupulous. Immensely rich . . .’
‘It’s said that he plundered the Rif.’
‘Princes have always plundered provinces, but that has never been a reason for anyone to refuse them the hand of his daughter or his sister.’
‘And how does he treat women?’
She looked me up and down from head to toe, looking intently at the light down on my face.
‘What do you know about women?’
‘I know what I ought to know.’
She began to laugh, but my determined look interrupted her. She turned towards my mother, as if to ask her whether it was all right to continue a conversation about such matters with me. When my mother nodded, Sarah took a deep breath and laid her hand heavily on my shoulder.
‘The Zarwali’s women live shut up in their harem; young or old, free or slaves, white or black; there are no less than a hundred of them, each intriguing ceaselessly to spend a night with the master, or gain some privilege for their sons, a carpet for their bedroom, a jewel, perfume, an elixir. Those who expect the affection of a husband will never have it, those who look for affairs end up strangled, but those who simply want to live in peace, protected from all want, without having to make any effort, without cooking or chores, without a husband asking them for a water-cooler or a hot water bottle, such women might be happy. What category does your sister belong to?’
I was fuming with rage:
‘Don’t you think it’s scandalous that a little girl of thirteen should be given away to an old merchant as a goodwill gesture to seal a business arrangement?’
‘At my age, only naïveté still manages to scandalize me sometimes.’
I turned towards my mother aggressively:
‘Do you also think that this man has the right to filch the money of the Muslims, to take a hundred women instead of four, to hold the Law of God in such contempt?’
She took refuge behind one of the verses of the Qur’an:
‘Man is rebellious as soon as he sees himself well off.’
Without even saying goodby
e to either of them, I got up and went out. Straight to Harun’s house. I needed someone around me to show indignation, someone who would tell me that the world had not been created so that women and the joys of life should be handed over to the Zarwali and people like him. The frown which came over my friend’s face at the mere mention of the name reconciled me with life again. What he had heard about Mariam’s fiancé differed little from that which I had heard myself. The Ferret gave a solemn undertaking to make enquiries among the porters of the guild to find out more about him.
To be friends at thirteen, with just the suggestion of a beard, and to declare war against injustice; from the distance of twenty years it looks like the picture of bliss. But at the time, what frustration, what suffering! It was true that I had two sound reasons for throwing myself into the fray. The first was the subtle appeal for help which Mariam had made to me on the way to Meknes, whose suppressed anguish I could now fully measure. The second was the Great Recitation, an occasion to inspire my adolescence with the pride of knowing the precepts of the Faith and the determination that they should not be ridiculed.
To understand the significance of the Great Recitation in the life of a believer, one must have lived at Fez, a city of learning which seems to have been constructed around the schools, the madrasas, just as some villages are built around a fountain or a saint’s tomb. When, after several years of patient memorization, one reaches the point of knowing by heart each sura and each verse of the Qur’an, when one is pronounced ready for the Great Recitation by the schoolmaster, one immediately passes from childhood to man’s estate, from anonymity to fame. It is the time when some start work, and others are admitted to the college, the fount of knowledge and authority.
The ceremony organized on this occasion gave the young Fassi the sense of having entered the world of the might. That was in any case what I felt on that day. Dressed in silk like the son of an amir, mounted on the back of a thoroughbred, followed by a slave carrying a large umbrella, I passed through the streets surrounded by the pupils in my class singing in unison. At the side of the road, several passers-by waved at me, and I waved at them in turn. From time to time a familiar face: Khali, my mother, two girl cousins, some neighbours, Hamza the barber and the boys from the hammam, and, a little to one side under a porch, Warda and Mariam.
My father was waiting for me in the reception room, where a banquet was to be held in my honour. He was carrying under his arm the new robe which I was to present to the schoolmaster as a token of gratitude. He gazed at me with disarming emotion.
I looked back at him. All at once, so many images of him clustered in my head: moving, when he told me the story of Granada; affectionate, when he caressed my neck; terrifying, when he repudiated my mother; hateful, when he sacrificed my sister; pitiable, slumped at the table in a tavern. How many truths did I want to shout down at him from the back of my horse! But I knew that my tongue would be tied once more when my feet touched the ground, when I would have to return the horse and silks to the person who lent them, when I would cease to be the short-lived hero of the Great Recitation.
The Year of the Stratagem
908 A.H.
7 July 1502 – 25 June 1503
‘The Zarwali was never the poor shepherd that he claims. And he never discovered any treasure. The truth is that for many years he was a bandit, a highway robber and a murderer, and the fortune he started off with was simply the result of a quarter of a century of plunder. But there is worse to come.’
Harun had ferreted wonderfully week after week, but, in spite of my frequent entreaties he had refused to give me the slightest inkling until he had completed his investigation.
That day he had come to wait for me in front of the Qarawiyyin Mosque. I had a lecture from three until five in the morning given by a learned Syrian who was visiting Fez. Harun had given up his studies and was already wearing the short grubby habit of the porters; he was just about to begin his day’s work.
‘The worst thing,’ pursued the Ferret, ‘is that this character is insanely jealous, always convinced that his wives are trying to betray him, particularly the youngest and most beautiful ones. A denunciation, a slander, an insinuation on the part of one of her rivals is enough for the poor unfortunate to be strangled. The Zarwali’s eunuchs then make the crime look like an accident, a drowning, a fatal fall, an acute tonsilitis. At least three women have died in circumstances which are suspicious to say the least.’
We paced up and down under the arcades of the mosque, which were bright with the light from countless oil lamps. Harun remained silent, awaiting my reaction. I was too overcome to make the slightest sound. Admittedly, I knew that the man whom my sister was going to marry was capable of many misdeeds, and it was for that reason that I sought to prevent the marriage. But it was now no longer a question of sparing an adolescent girl from a dull and dreary existence; it had become a matter of saving her from the grip of an assassin, a bloodthirsty monster. The Ferret was no less worried than I, but he was not the kind to waste time in lamentation.
‘When is the ceremony to take place?’
‘In two months at the most. The contract is signed, the preparations are already under way, my father is collecting the dowry, he has ordered the sheets for the bed and the ceremonial mattresses, and Mariam’s dress is already made.’
‘You must talk to your father, to him alone, for if anyone else becomes involved he will become obstinate and nothing will prevent this evil coming to pass.’
I followed his advice, except in one small detail: I asked my mother for confirmation from Sarah that Harun’s information was correct. Gaudy Sarah indeed confirmed it in its entirety a week later, after having made me swear on the Qur’an that I would never mention her name in any connection with the matter. I needed this additional evidence to be able to confront my father without the least shred of doubt lurking in my mind.
In spite of this I spent the whole night turning in my head how I could best first bring up the subject, then withstand the attacks which it would provoke, and finally, if the Most High showed Himself understanding towards me, somehow carry the day. A thousand arguments and counter-arguments went backwards and forwards in my head, from the cleverest to the tritest, but none remained convincing until morning, so that I had to face my father the next day without the slightest idea, without even the beginnings of a case.
‘I want to say something to you which may displease you.’
He was in the middle of eating, as was his custom every morning, his bowl of wheat gruel, sitting on a leather cushion in a corner of the yard.
‘Have you done something stupid?’
‘It has nothing to do with me.’
I took my courage in both hands:
‘Ever since people have become aware that my sister is going to marry the Zarwali, I have been told the most disturbing things about him.’
The bowl at his lips, he inhaled loudly.
‘By whom? There’s no lack of jealousy in this town!’
I turned a deaf ear.
‘It’s said that several of his wives have been strangled!’
‘If anyone says anything like that to you again, you can teli him that if those women were punished, they deserved it, and that in our family the girls have always been beyond reproach.’
‘Are you sure that Mariam will be happy with –’
‘Mind your own business.’
He wiped his mouth with the back of his sleeve and got up to go. I clung to him miserably:
‘Don’t go like that! Let me speak to you!’
‘I have promised your sister to this man, and I am a man of my word. Furthermore, we have signed the contract, and the marriage will take place in a few weeks’ time. Instead of staying here listening to these lies, make yourself useful! Go to the mattress-makers and see if they are getting on with the job.’
‘I refuse to have any part in anything to do with this marr –’
A slap. So violent that my head went round
and round for several long seconds. Behind me I heard the muffled cries of Warda and Mariam who had heard the entire conversation, hidden behind a door. My father held my jaw in his hand, gripping it tightly and shaking it feverishly.
‘Never say “I refuse” to me again! Never speak to me again in this tone!’
I do not know what came over me that moment. I was as if another person was speaking through my mouth:
‘I would never have spoken to you like that if I had not seen you seated in a tavern!’
Seconds later I regretted what I had said. To the end of my days I shall regret having pronounced those words. I would rather he had slapped me again, that he had beaten me all over, than see him collapsing on his cushion with a dazed air, his head in his hands. What good would it have done to try to apologize? I went out of his house, chasing myself away; I walked straight on for hours, not greeting anyone, not seeing anyone, my head empty and aching. That night I slept neither at my father’s nor at my uncle’s. I arrived at Harun’s house in the evening, lay down on a mat, and did not get up again.
Until morning. It was Friday. Opening my eyes, I saw my friend staring at me. I had the impression he had been in the same place for hours.
‘A little longer and you would have missed the midday prayer.’
He was scarcely exaggerating as the sun was high in the sky.
‘When you arrived last night you looked as if you had just killed your father, as we say.’
I could manage only a twisted grimace. I told him what had happened.
‘You were wrong to say that to him. But he is at fault as well, and more so than you, because he is handing over his daughter to a murderer. Are you going to let him commit a crime against your sister to make up for your own offence?’
That was precisely what I was about to do. But put like that it seemed despicable.
‘I could go to Khali, he will find ways of convincing my father.’
‘Open your eyes, it’s not your father who has to be convinced.’