by Amin Maalouf
At his words she calmed herself immediately and listened to me without a trace of mockery or sarcasm.
‘When shall I be examined?’
‘Very soon. Be always ready.’
‘I am still healthy. They will not find the smallest mark.’
‘I have no doubt. All will be well!’
As we were leaving that accursed place, I looked at Harun beseechingly:
‘Do you think she will ever leave?’
Instead of replying, he walked on, gazing at the ground with a pensive air for several minutes. Suddenly, he stood still, pressed his hands to his face and then spread them out, his eyes still closed.
‘Hasan, I have made my decision. I want Mariam to be my wife, the mother of my children.’
The Year of the Maristan
913 A.H.
13 May 1507 – 1 May 1508
In the hospice of Fez there are six nurses, a maintenance man, twelve attendants, two cooks, five refuse collectors, a porter, a gardener, a director, an assistant and three secretaries, all decently paid, as well as a large number of sick people. But, as God is my witness, there is not a single doctor. When a sick person arrives, he is put into a room, with someone to look after him, but without receiving any treatment at all, until he either dies or is cured.
None of the sick there is from Fez itself, since the people of Fez prefer to take care of themselves at home. The only people from the city in the hospice are madmen, for whom several rooms are set aside. Their feet are always kept in chains, for fear that they might otherwise do some damage. Their ward is at the end of a corridor whose walls are strengthened with thick joists, and only the more experienced attendants dare to go near them. The one who gives them their meals is armed with a stout stick, and if he sees that one of them is excited, he gives him a good beating which either calms him down or knocks him out.
When I began working at the maristan I was warned very strongly about these unfortunates. I was supposed never to speak to them, or even to show that I acknowledged their presence. However, some of them made me feel very sorry for them, especially one old man, who was thin and half bald, who passed his time in prayer and chanting, and used to embrace his children tenderly when they came to see him.
One evening I had stayed late at my office to recopy the pages of a register over which I had unintentionally spilt a cup of syrup. As I was leaving I cast my eyes in this man’s direction. He was weeping, leaning on his elbows at the narrow window of his room. When he saw me he hid his eyes. I took a step towards him. He began to tell me, quite calmly, that he was a God-fearing businessman who had been confined to the hospital because a jealous rival had denounced him, and that his family were unable to free him because his enemy was powerful and well received at the palace.
His story could not fail to move me. I came closer to him, murmuring some words of comfort and promising to make enquiries of the director the very next morning. When I was quite close to him he suddenly leapt at me, grabbed hold of my clothes with one hand and smeared dirt on my face with the other, shrieking with demented laughter. The attendants who rushed to my aid reproached me vigorously for my folly.
Very fortunately the hammam near the maristan was still open for men at that hour. I spent an hour there scrubbing my face and my body, and then went to Harun’s house. I was still extremely perturbed.
‘It has taken a madman to make me understand at last!’
My words were jerky and confused.
‘I understand why all our efforts end in failure, and why the chancellor has such a suave voice and such an affected smile when he receives me, and why he always makes promises he does not keep.’
My friend remained impassive. I took another breath.
‘There are thousands of people in this city interceding on behalf of a relative who they claim is innocent but who is often a savage murderer, or who they claim is sane but who is often just like the madman who deceived me, or who they claim is cured of leprosy when he is almost eaten away by the disease. How is it possible to distinguish between them?’
I was waiting for the Ferret to contradict me, as he usually did. But he did not. He remained silent, deep in thought, his brow furrowed, and his reply was also a question.
‘What you say is true. What should we do next?’
His reaction was strange. When Mariam was merely the sister of his friend he did not hesitate to take initiatives, regardless of my misgivings, appealing to Astaghfirullah, for instance, and deliberately causing a scandal. Now he seemed less sure of himself, although he was now the one of us most directly concerned about the fate of the fair prisoner. Indeed, after having intimated to me that he intended to marry my sister, Harun had not wasted any time. He had sought out my father since his return from the countryside in order to pay him a visit, wearing his Friday clothes, and ask him formally for Mariam’s hand in marriage. In other circumstances Muhammad the weigh-master would have considered that a porter with no other fortune than the good name of his guild would have been a very poor match. But Mariam was already in her nineteenth year, an age at which of all the women of Fez only a few slaves or prostitutes would not yet have celebrated their marriages. Harun was an unhoped-for saviour, and were it not for the loss of dignity it might entail, my father would have kissed the hands of this heroic fiancé. Several days later the marriage contract was drawn up by two lawyers; it stipulated that the bride’s father was to hand over one hundred dinars to his future son-in-law. The very next day Warda went to bring the news to Mariam, who started to hope again and smile once more for the first time since her confinement.
But it was Harun who lost all his jollity, cheerfulness and sparkle, from one day to the next. His face always wore a worried look. That evening I finally understood the thoughts which were running through my friend’s head. He insisted on having my opinion.
‘But even so we can’t leave Mariam with the lepers for ever! Since all our efforts have been to no avail, what do you think we should do next?’
I had no idea, and this made me reply even more angrily:
‘Every time I think of her, the victim of blackguardly injustice for four years, I want to seize the Zarwali by the throat and strangle him, as well as his accomplice the shaikh of the lepers.’
I suited the action to my words. Harun seemed not the slightest impressed:
‘Your stone is too big!’
I did not understand. He repeated with a tone of impatience:
‘I tell you that your stone is too big, far too big. When I am in the street with the other porters I often see people shouting, insulting each other and attracting a crowd around themselves. Sometimes one of them picks up a stone. If it is the size of a plum or a pear, someone must hold his hand back, because he risks giving his adversary a bloody wound. But, on the other hand, if he takes hold of a stone the size of a water-melon you can go away in peace, because he has no intention of throwing it; he just wants to feel a weight in his bare hands. Threatening to strangle the Zarwali and the shaikh of the lepers is a stone the size of a minaret, and if I was in the street I should go off shrugging my shoulders.’
Without seeming to notice that I was blushing with embarrassment, Harun continued, spacing out his words as if passing each one of them through a filter:
‘There must be a way of helping Mariam to escape without risking her recapture and without her family being worried. Of course she will not be able to live in Fez for several years at least, and since I intend to marry her, I must run away with her.’
I had know him long enough over the years to realize that a plan was bubbling away in his head and that he would not unfold it to me prematurely. However, I was unable to understand what motivated him to act in this way. In the name of our friendship I had to speak to him about it.
‘How can you forsake your city, your family, your guild of your own free will, to go and live in exile, like a criminal, fleeing from one mountain to another for fear of being clapped in irons, all this for a girl
to whom you’ve only ever once said a word in your life?’
The Ferret put the palm of his right hand on the top of my head, as he used to do when we were younger before telling me a secret.
‘There is something which I could not tell you before, and even today I want you to swear that you will not be offended by it.’
I swore, fearing the worst, some sort of dishonour for my family. We were sitting on the ground in the patio of his house. The Ferret was leaning his back against the little stone fountain in which the water was not running that day.
‘Do you remember the time that I went secretly into the women’s hammam?’
Seven or eight years had gone by, I think, but I still remembered the merest wink, the slightest heartbeat. I assented with a smile.
‘Then you will also remember that at the time, in spite of your pestering, I had obstinately refused to tell you what I had seen. I went in, draped in a veil, with a scarf tied round my head. I had wooden sandals on my feet and I was wrapped in a towel. I was eleven years old then, and there was no hair on my body to betray my sex. I walked around inside until I came across Warda and Mariam. Mariam’s eyes met mine, and I knew immediately that she had recognized me. She had often seen us together, so she could not be mistaken. I was paralysed, waiting to hear a scream, to be roughly handled, and have blows rained upon me. But your sister did not cry out. She took up her towel, nimbly wrapped it round her body, while a conspiratorial smile formed on her lips. Then, on some pretext or other, she led her mother into another room. I hastened to leave, still not quite able to believe that I was safe. That day, I regretted that Mariam was not my sister; it was only three years later that I rejoiced that I was only the friend of her brother, and could dream of her as a man dreams of a woman. It was then that misfortunes began to rain down upon the head of the girl with the silent eyes.’
Until that point the Ferret’s face was radiant with happiness, but it darkened at the last sentence. Before it lit up once more.
‘Even if the whole world had betrayed her, the memory of the hammam would have prevented me from abandoning her. Today, she is my wife, I shall save her as she saved me, and we shall make verdant the land that makes us welcome.’
Harun came round to see me again a week later to say farewell. His entire luggage consisted of two woollen purses, the larger one containing the gold of the dowry, the other his modest savings.
‘The smaller one is for the guard of the quarter, so that he will close his eyes while Mariam escapes; the other is for us, enough to live on for more than a year, with the protection of the Most High.’
They would go to the Rif, hoping to stay for some time in the mountains of the Bani Walid, the most valiant and most generous men in the kingdom. They were also very rich, since although their lands were fertile, they refused to pay a single dirham in taxes. Anyone unjustly banished from Fez knew that he could always find refuge and hospitality among them, even that some of his expenses would be defrayed, and that if his enemies sought to pursue him, the inhabitants of the mountain would attack them.
I held Harun tightly to me, but he quickly tore himself away, eager to discover what Destiny had in store for him.
The Year of the Bride
914 A.H.
2 May 1508 – 20 April 1509
In that year the first of my marriages was celebrated, desired by my uncle as he lay dying as well as by my mother, anxious to separate me from Hiba, who always had the most tender of my caresses although she had given me neither son nor daughter in three years of love. So, as custom demanded, I had to place my foot solemnly upon the foot of Fatima, my cousin, at the moment when she entered the bridal chamber, while a woman of the neighbourhood waited at the door for the linen stained with blood, which she would then brandish, laughing and triumphant, under the noses of the guests, proof of the virginity of the bride and the virility of the husband, the sign that the festivities could begin.
The ritual seemed to last for ever. Since early morning, dressmakers, hairdressers and depilators, including the irreplaceable Sarah, had been bustling around Fatima, painting her cheeks red, her hands and her feet black, with one pretty triangular design between her eyebrows and another beneath her lower lip, elongated like the leaf of an olive tree. Made up in this fashion she was seated on a platform, so that all could admire her, while those who had dressed and prepared her were given a meal. Since the end of the afternoon, friends and relations had gathered outside Khali’s house. Finally the bride departed, more troubled than troubling, almost stumbling in her dress at each step, and then got into a kind of octagonal wooden coffer covered with silks and brocades which four young porters, friends of Harun, lifted on their shoulders. The procession then set off, preceded by flutes, trumpets and tambourines as well as a great number of burning torches brandished by the employees of the maristan and my old friends from the college. The latter walked along at my side in front of the coffer on which the bride was sitting, while behind her were the husbands of her four sisters.
We had first paraded noisily through the suqs – the shops were already shut and the streets were emptying – before halting in front of the Great Mosque, where a few friends had sprinkled us with rose water. At this stage my oldest brother-in-law, who was taking my uncle’s place for the ceremony, had whispered to me that the time had come for me to leave. I had embraced him before running off towards my father’s house where a room had been decorated for the night. It was there that I had to wait.
The procession caught up with me an hour later. Fatima had been entrusted to my mother, and it was she who led her by the hand to the threshold of the room, where, before leaving us, Salma reminded me with a wink what I was supposed to do first of all if I wished immediately to assert my authority as a man. So I stepped heavily on the foot of my wife, which was admittedly protected by her wooden shoe, and then the door closed. Outside there were shouts and laughter, some quite close by, as well as the clattering of saucepans, as the first marriage feast should be prepared while the marriage was being consummated.
Draped in red and gold, Fatima stood before me, deathly pale in spite of the make up, without moving, petrified, suffocating, doing her best to smile, her eyes so pitiful that I drew her towards me with a spontaneous movement, which was less of an embrace than an attempt to reassure her. She buried her head against my breast and burst into tears. I shook her to keep her quiet, fearing that she could be heard. She collapsed against me, gradually choking back her tears, but her body was trembling, and she sank slowly to the ground. Soon she was no more than a bundle of sticks awkwardly held up by my arms.
My friends had warned me that on the wedding night many girls did their utmost to appear more ignorant, surprised or alarmed than they really were, but no one had ever mentioned fainting. Moreover, I had often heard it said at the maristan that widows or women who had long been deserted suffered from fainting fits which some people put down to hysteria, but never girls of fifteen, and never in the arms of their husbands. I shook Fatima and tried to help her up again; her head fell back, her eyes closed, her lips half open. I began to tremble in my turn, less, I must confess, from concern for my cousin than out of the fear of the ridicule which would cling to me indelibly until the end of my days, if I were suddenly to open the door and shout: ‘Help! The bride has fainted!’
I had no other recourse than to carry my cousin to the bed, lay her on her back, take off her shoes, and slacken the scarf tied under her chin. She looked as if she had merely fallen asleep, and her breathing, which had previously been spasmodic, became regular. I sat down beside her, thinking up ways to extricate myself from the situation. I could cut my finger with a pin, and smear the linen with blood, and forget about the marriage night until the next day. But did I know how to soak the white material in the way it ought to be done, without the woman at the door, who had witnessed countless deflorations, discovering the trick? I cast desperate, beseeching, woeful glances at Fatima. Her glowing red hair was spread out on
the bolster. I passed my hand over her hair, seizing a clump in my hand, then let go with a sigh, before slapping her cheeks, faster and faster, harder and harder. A smile hovered on her lips, but she did not emerge from her slumber. I shook her shoulder, vigorously, until she began to toss about. She seemed not to be aware of it; the smile did not even leave her face.
Exhausted, I lay down, stretched out, my fingers brushing against the candlestick. For a brief moment I thought of snuffing it out, and going to sleep as well, come what may. But, a minute later, a scratching at the door, impatient, fortuitous, or perhaps merely imagined, recalled me to my duties. The noises outside suddenly seemed more urgent, more insistent. I did not know how long I had already spent in this nightmarish room. I put my hand to Fatima again, feeling for her heartbeats, and shut my eyes. A faint smell of ambergris brought back the negro music of Timbuktu to my ears. Hiba was before me in the moonlight; her dance ended, her arms opened, her skin sleek and smooth. And perfumed with the ambergris of the sea. My lips trembled at the b of her name, my arms repeated the same embraces, my body found once more the same distractions, the same landmarks, the same hiding places.
Fatima became a woman in her absence. I opened the door, the woman from next door seized the precious linen and began her ululations, the guests bustled about, the music began to rise, and the ground began to vibrate beneath the feet of the dancers. It was not long before someone came to call me to come quickly and join in the feast. I had to; I had all the time in the world to see my wife, since, according to tradition, I should not leave the house for seven days.
When I awoke, my bride was standing in the courtyard, leaning against the fountain, nonchalantly watching my mother, crouching on the ground two paces away from her, who was busily polishing an immense copper dish in preparation for the second feast of the wedding, which would take place that evening, to which, according to the custom, only women were invited, and at which only servant girls sang and danced. Salma was speaking in a low voice, with a worried air. When I came nearer, she stopped speaking abruptly and began to shine the dish a little more energetically. Then Fatima turned round and saw me. She was smiling blissfully, as if we had spent the most marvellous of nights of love together. Her feet were bare, she was wearing the same dress as the previous day, slightly crumpled, with the same make up, a little less obvious. I made an obviously disenchanted face before going to sit in the salon next to my father, who embraced me proudly and called in a loud voice for a basket of fruit. My mother brought it to us, and as she put it down said quietly into my ear in a reproachful tone: