by Amin Maalouf
Would the coalition have got the better of the redoubtable Salim? It will never be known: four months after his arrival ‘Ala al-Din was carried away by the plague. He was still not twenty-five years old, and had just married a beautiful Circassian with whom he had fallen in love, the daughter of an officer assigned to his guard. The Sultan of Egypt, apparently saddened by the prince’s death, presided himself over the prayer for the dead man. The funeral ceremonies were imposing, the more noteworthy because they took place according to the Ottoman custom, which was hardly known in Cairo: ‘Ala al-Din’s horses walked in front, their tails cut and their saddles turned round; on the bier above the body were his turban and his bows, which had been broken.
Nevertheless, the master of Cairo took back the palace of ‘Ala al-Din two months later, a decision for which he was rebuked by the population. The widow of the Ottoman was granted a modest house and such a derisory pension that she was obliged to auction the few objects of value that her husband had left her.
All these matters had been reported to me at the time, but they had not assumed any particular significance for me. While I was going over them in my mind, Nur’s voice came to me, heart-rending but dignified:
‘The prince draws up plans in his palace, without knowing that at the same moment, in a cottage, an artisan’s fingers are already weaving his shroud.’
She had spoken these words in Arabic, but with that Circassian accent which no Cairene could fail to recognize, since it was that of the sultan and the Mameluke officers. Before I could reply, the merchant came back, with his offer of a price:
‘Seventy-five dinars.’
She turned pale:
‘This piece has no equal in the world!’
It was a wall tapestry worked in needlework of rare precision, surrounded by a frame in carved wood. It showed a pack of wolves running towards the summit of a snowy mountain.
Akbar called me to witness:
‘What Her Highness says is the absolute truth, but my shop is full of valuable objects which I am forced to sell cheaply. Buyers are rare.’
Out of politeness I inclined my head slightly. Feeling that he had gained my trust, he went further:
‘This year is the worst since I began working thirty years ago. People do not dare to show the merest hint of their dinars, for fear that they will be accused of hiding their riches and that someone will come and extort it from them. Last week, a singer was arrested merely on the strength of a denunciation. The sultan himself submitted her to questioning while the guards crushed her feet. They got a hundred and fifty pieces of gold out of her.’
He continued:
‘Please note that I understand perfectly well why our sovereign, may God protect him, is forced to act in this manner. He no longer receives the revenues from the ports. Jidda has not had a boat for a year because of the Portuguese corsairs. The situation is not much better at Damietta. As for Alexandria, it has been deserted by the Italian merchants who can no longer find any business to transact there. And to think that this city had, in the past, six hundred thousand inhabitants, twelve thousand grocers open until night and forty thousand Jews paying the canonical jizya! Today, it’s a fact that Alexandria gives the treasury less than it costs it. We see the results of this every day: the army has not had meat for seven months; the regiments are in ferment, and the sultan looks for gold wherever he thinks he can find it.’
The entrance of a client interrupted him. Seeing that the new arrival was not carrying anything in his hands, Akbar must have thought that he was a customer and asked us to excuse him for a moment. The princess prepared to leave, but I held her back:
‘How much did you hope to get for it?’
‘Three hundred dinars, no less.’
I asked her to let me see the tapestry. I had already made up my mind, but I could not take it without looking at it, for fear that the purchase might appear to be an act of charity. But I also did not want to examine it too closely, for fear of being thought to be bargaining. I gave it a hasty glance before saying, in a neutral tone:
‘Three hundred, that seems a fair price to me. I’ll buy it.’
She was not mistaken:
‘A woman does not accept a present from a man to whom she cannot show her gratitude.’
The words were firm, but the tone was less so. I replied, with false indignation:
‘It is not a gift. I am buying this because I want it!’
‘And why should you want it?’
‘It’s a souvenir.’
‘But it’s the first time you’ve seen it!’
‘Sometimes one glance is enough for an object to be irreplaceable.’
She blushed. Our looks met. Our lips parted. We were already friends. The servant woman, more cheerful than ever, walked between us, trying to overhear our whisperings. We had arranged to meet: Friday, at midday, Azbakiyya Square, in front of the donkey showman.
Since my arrival in Egypt, I had never missed the solemn Friday prayer. But, that day, I did so without much remorse; after all, it was the Creator who had made this woman so beautiful, and it was He who had put her in my path.
Azbakiyya Square was filling up slowly as the mosques emptied, because it was the custom of all the Cairenes to gather there after the ceremony to play dice, listen to the patter of the story-tellers, and sometimes lose themselves in the neighbouring alleys where certain taverns were offering a short cut to Eden.
I did not yet catch sight of my Circassian, but the donkey showman was there, already surrounded by a swelling cluster of idlers. I joined them, glancing frequently at the faces which surrounded me and at the sun in the hope that it had moved a few degrees.
The clown was dancing with his beast, without anyone knowing which was following the steps of the other. Then he began to talk to his donkey. He told him that the sultan had decided to undertake a great construction work, and that he was going to requisition all the donkeys in Cairo to transport lime and stones. At that very moment the animal fell to the ground, turned round on to his back, his legs in the air, puffed out its stomach and shut its eyes. The man began to lament in front of the audience, saying that his donkey was dead, and he took a collection to buy himself another one. Having collected several dozen coins, he said:
‘Don’t believe that my donkey has given up the ghost. He is a glutton who, aware of my poverty, acts a part so that I can earn some money and buy him something to eat.’
Taking a big stick he gave the beast a good beating.
‘Come on, get up now!’
But the donkey did not move. The clown continued:
‘People of Cairo, the sultan has just issued an edict: the whole population is to go out tomorrow to be present at his triumphal entry into the city. The donkeys have been requisitioned to carry the women of high society.’
Thereupon the donkey leaped to its feet, began to preen himself, showing great happiness. His master burst out laughing as did the crowd.
‘So,’ he said, ‘you like pretty women! But there are several here! Which one would you like to carry?’
The beast went round the audience, seemed to hesitate and then made for a rather tall lady spectator who was standing a few paces away from me. She was wearing veils so thick that her face was invisible. But I recognized her bearing immediately. She herself, frightened by the laughter and the looks, came up to me and clutched my arm. I hastened to say to the donkey in a jocular voice: ‘No, you won’t be carrying my wife!’, before going off with her in a dignified fashion.
‘I didn’t expect to see you veiled. Had it not been for the donkey, I wouldn’t have recognized you.’
‘It is precisely in order not to be recognized that I am veiled. We are together in the street, in the middle of an inquisitive gossiping crowd, and no one is aware that I am not your wife.’
And she nodded teasingly:
‘I take off the veil if I want to please all men; I wear it if I only want to please a single one.’
‘Henceforth,
I should hate it if your face were to be uncovered.’
‘Will you never want to look at it?’
It is true that we could not be alone in a house, neither hers nor mine, and that we had to be satisfied with walking in the city side by side. The day of our first meeting Nur insisted that we visit the forbidden garden.
‘It has been given this name,’ she explained to me, ‘because it is surrounded by high walls and the sultan has prohibited access to it in order to protect a wonder of nature; the only tree in the world to produce real balsam.’
A piece of silver in the hand of the guard enabled us to go inside. Leaning over the balsam tree, Nur drew aside her veil and stayed still for a long time, fascinated, as if in a dream. She repeated, as if to herself:
‘In the whole world there is only this one root. It is so slender, so fragile, but so precious!’
As far as I could see, the tree seemed quite ordinary. Its leaves were like those of a vine, perhaps a little smaller. It was planted right in the middle of a spring.
‘It is said that if it was watered with different water it would dry up immediately.’
She seemed moved by this visit, although I did not understand why. But the next day we were together again, and she seemed happy and considerate. Henceforth our walks were daily, or almost so, because in the middle of the week, Mondays and Tuesdays, she was never free. When, at the end of a month, I pointed this out to her, her reaction was sharp:
‘You might never have seen me, or only once a month. Now I am with you two, three, five days a week, you complain about my absences.’
‘I don’t count the days that I see you. It is the others than seem interminable to me.’
It was a Sunday, and we were close to the mosque of Ibn Tulun, in front of the women’s hammam where Nur was preparing to enter. She seemed to hesitate:
‘Would you be ready to come with me, without asking the slightest question?’
‘As far as China, if I must!’
‘Then meet me tomorrow morning, with two camels and full waterskins, in front of the Great Mosque of Giza.’
Intent on keeping my promise, I did not ask her about our destination, so much so that at the end of two hours on the road we had only exchanged a few words. However I did not think that it would be against the spirit of our agreement to say:
‘The pyramids can’t be far from here.’
‘Exactly.’
Encouraged by this information I continued:
‘Is that where we’re going?’
‘Exactly.’
‘Do you come here each week to see those round buildings?’
She was overcome by a frank and devastating laugh at which I could only feel offended. To show my disapproval, I got down to the ground and hobbled my camel. She hastened to come back towards me.
‘I’m sorry that I laughed. It was because you said that they were round.’
‘I didn’t invent it. Ibn Batuta, the great traveller, says exactly that they have a “circular shape”.’
‘That was because he never saw them. Or perhaps from very far off, or at night, may God forgive him! But do not blame him. When a traveller tells of his exploits, he becomes a prisoner of the admiring chuckles of those who listen to him. He no longer dares to say “I don’t know”, or “I haven’t seen” for fear of losing face. There are lies of which the ears are more guilty than the mouth.’
We had recommenced our progress. She went on:
‘And what else did he say about the pyramids, this Ibn Batuta?’
‘That they were built by a sage who was well acquainted with the movements of the stars, and who had foreseen the Flood; that was why he built the pyramids, on which he depicted all the arts and sciences, to preserve them from destruction and oblivion.’
Fearing further sarcasms, I hastened to add:
‘In any case Ibn Batuta stated that these were only suppositions, and that no one really knows what these strange structures were built for.’
‘For me, the pyramids have been built only to be beautiful and imposing, to be the first of the wonders of the world. They must certainly have had some function, but that was only a pretext provided by the prince of the time.’
We were just reaching the summit of a hill, and the pyramids stood out clearly on the horizon. She held back her camel and stretched out her hand to the east, in a gesture which was so touched with emotion that it became solemn.
‘Long after our houses, our palaces and ourselves have disappeared, these pyramids will still be there. Does that not mean, in the eyes of the Eternal One, that they are the most useful?’
I put my hand on hers.
‘For the time being, we are alive. And together. And alone with each other.’
Casting a look around her, she suddenly adopted a mischievous tone:
‘It’s true that we are alone!’
She pushed her mount up against mine, and, lifting her veil, kissed me on the lips. God, I could have stayed thus until the Day of Judgement!
It was not I who left her lips; nor was it she who separated herself from me. It was the fault of our camels who went away from each other too soon, threatening to overbalance us.
‘It’s getting late. What if we were to have a rest?’
‘On the pyramids?’
‘No, a little further on. A few miles from here there is a little village where the nurse who brought me up lives. She waits for me every Monday evening.’
A little to the side of the village there was a fellah cottage, covered in mud, at the end of a little raised path which Nur took, begging me not to follow her. She disappeared into the house. I waited for her, leaning against a palm tree. It was almost dark when she returned, accompanied by a stout easygoing old peasant woman.
‘Khadra, this is my new husband.’
I jumped. My staring eyes encountered a frown on Nur’s face, while the nurse was beseeching Heaven:
‘Widowed at eighteen! I hope that my princess will have better luck this time.’
‘I hope so too!’ I cried spontaneously.
Nur smiled and Khadra mumbled an invocation, before leading us towards an earthen building near her own, and even more cramped.
‘It isn’t a palace here, but you will be dry and no one will disturb you. If you need me, call me through the window.’
There was only one rectangular room, lit by a flickering candle. A faint smell of incense floated around us. Through the unshuttered window came a long lowing of buffaloes. My Circassian put the door on the latch and leaned against it.
Her tousled hair fell first, then her dress. Around her bare neck lay a ruby necklace, the central stone hanging proudly between her breasts. Around her bare waist, a slender belt in plaited golden thread. My eyes had never looked upon a woman so richly undressed. She came up and whispered in my ear:
‘Other women would have sold off their intimate jewellery first. But I keep them. Houses and furniture can be sold, but not the body, not its ornaments.’
I held her to me:
‘Since this morning I have resigned myself to one surprise after another. The pyramids, your kiss, this village, the announcement of our marriage, and now this room, this night, your jewels, your body, your lips . . .’
I kissed her passionately. Which dispensed her from confessing that as far as surprises went I had only heard the ‘Bismillah’ and the rest of the prayer was to follow.
But that did not come to pass before the end of the night, which was deliciously endless. We were lying down beside one another, so close that my lips trembled at her whisperings. Her legs formed a pyramid; her knees were the summit, each pressed close to the other. I touched them, they separated, as if they had just been quarrelling.
My Circassian! My hands sometimes still sculpt the shape of her body. And my lips have forgotten nothing.
When I awoke, Nur was standing up, leaning against the door as she had been at the beginning of the night. But her arms were heavy and her eyes had a false smil
e.
‘Here is my son Bayazid whom I conceal as though he were a child of shame!’
She came forward and placed him, like an offering, on my hands which were open in resignation.
The Year of the Rebels
921 A.H.
15 February 1515 – 4 February 1516
This son was not of my blood, but he had appeared to bless or to punish the deeds of my flesh. He was thus mine, and I would have needed the courage of Abraham to have sacrificed him in the name of the Faith. Is it not in the blade of a knife brandished by the Friend of God above a pyre that the revealed religions meet? I did not dare to commit this sacred crime, which I praise each year in the feast of al-Adha. However, that year, duty called me to do so straight away, because a Muslim empire was in the process of being born before my eyes, and this child was threatening it.
‘One day, Bayazid, son of ‘Ala al-Din, will make the throne of the Ottomans tremble. Only he, the last survivor of the princes of his line, will be able to raise the tribes of Anatolia. Only he will be able to reunite the Circassian Mamelukes and the Safavids of Persia around him and cut down the Grand Turk. Only he. Unless the agents of Sultan Salim strangle him.’
Nur was leaning above her son’s cradle, without knowing what torture her words were inflicting upon me. This empire whose destruction she was thus predicting was the one which my prayers had been invoking even before I knew how to pray, since it was the instrument which I had always expected would bring about the deliverance of Granada.
Now this empire was there, in the process of moulding itself before my eyes. It had already conquered Constantinople, Serbia and Anatolia, it was preparing to invade Syria, Iraq, Arabia Deserta, Arabia Felix, Arabia Petraea as well as Egypt. Tomorrow it would be master of Barbary, Andalusia, perhaps Sicily. All the Muslims would be reunited again, as in the time of the Umayyads, within a single caliphate, flourishing and formidable, which would impose its law on the nations of the unbelievers. Was I going to put myself at the service of this empire, dream of my dreams, hope of my hopes? Was I going to contribute to its emergence? Not at all. I was condemned to fight it or to flee. Facing Salim the Conqueror, who had just sacrificed, without the hand of God restraining him, his father, his brothers with their descendants, and who would soon sacrifice three of his own sons, facing this sword of the divine wrath, there was a child whom I was determined to protect, to nourish at my breast, until he became man, amir, destroyer of empire, and would kill according to the law of his race. Of all this I had chosen nothing; life had chosen for me, as well as my temperament.