by Tariq Ali
‘But Great-Aunt ...’ began Hind.
The old woman silenced her with a gesture. ‘Listen to me carefully, Hind bint Zubayda. I never wanted to know. The details were of no interest. Asma, whom I loved like a sister, could not be brought back to life. Nor could Ibn Zaydun’s mother. Perhaps everything they say did take place, but the actual circumstances were known to only three people. Two of them are dead and I do not think that anyone has ever asked Meekal. Perhaps when he converted, he told the whole truth in the confessional, in which case a third person was taken into confidence. What difference does it make to anything now? When you grow up you will, no doubt, hear of similar tragedies which have befallen other families. Or other branches of our family. Do you remember that cousin of your mother from Ishbiliya?’
Hind’s face revealed her consternation.
‘You must remember! The very religious cousin from Ishbiliya who was shocked by your knowledge of the hadith?’
‘Him?’ said Hind with a grin. ‘Ibn Hanif. Kulthum’s future father-in-law! What about him?’
‘If ever they raise the business of poor Asma to try and humiliate our Kulthum, you can ask them the name of Ibn Hanif’s true father. It was certainly not Hanif.’
Every mischievous fibre in Hind’s body was now alert. This unexpected revelation had even relegated Ibn Daud for a few minutes.
‘Tell me please, Aunt! Please!’
‘I will, but you must never tell Kulthum, unless you feel she needs the information. Do you promise?’
Hind nodded eagerly.
‘Ibn Hanif’s father was also his mother’s father. Nobody in that family felt it necessary to take their own life. I do not think that Ibn Hanif is even aware of the fact. How could he be? His mother and father took the secret with them when they died. But the old servants in the house knew. Servants know everything. That is how the story travelled to this house.’
Hind was shaken by this information. In Asma’s case death had, at least, wiped the slate clean, but in Ishbiliya ...
‘I am tired, child, and you need to sleep,’ said Zahra, signalling her dismissal from the room.
Hind, realizing that it was useless to pursue this matter, rose from the bed, bent down and kissed Zahra’s withered cheeks.
‘Peace be upon you, Great-Aunt. I hope you sleep well.’
After the girl had left, Zahra was assailed by the memories of her own youth. Hardly a day passed now without the magnification of some episode from the past in her thoughts. In the eerie calm of the maristan in Gharnata she had concentrated on the three or four good years in her life—these she would relive and even put down on paper. But three days before her return to the village of the Banu Hudayl, she had destroyed everything on a tiny replica of the bonfire lit by Ximenes in the market. She had done so in the belief that her life was not of any great interest to anyone except herself and she was about to die. It did not occur to her that in erasing what she regarded as the mummified memories of her own history she was also condemning a unique chronicle of a whole way of life to the obscurity of the flames.
She had been truly happy to return to her old home and find it inhabited by Umar and his family. For decades she had controlled her own emotions, deliberately depriving herself of contacts with the whole family, so that now she found herself overcome by a surfeit of affection. It was when she was on her own that she was haunted by the painful aspects of her life.
Take, for instance, the meeting with Ibn Zaydun at dinner tonight. Despite herself she had felt her heart flutter like a caged bird, just as when she first set eyes on him all those years ago. When the family had tactfully left them alone to sip their mint-flavoured tea, she had felt unable to communicate with him. Even when he had told her in that selfsame voice, which she had never stopped hearing and which had not changed, that he had written her a long letter every week since they had been parted, she had felt strangely unmoved. Was this the man for whom she had destroyed her whole life?
He had felt the emotion disappearing in her and had gone on his knees to declare that he had never stopped loving her, that he had never looked at another woman again, that every single day he had experienced an hour of pain. Zahra had been unaffected. She realized that her bitterness, her anger at his cowardice all those years ago when he had bowed to his status as the son of a house-slave and abandoned her to her class, had never left her. This resentment, displaced during her confinement by more pleasing images from the days of their turbulent and clandestine courtship, had nonetheless continued to grow and grow, so that now she felt nothing for him. This realization pleased her. Enslaved for so many years by the poison of love, she was free again. ‘I wonder,’ she thought to herself, ‘what might have happened if we had met again twenty years ago. Would I have got rid of him so easily?’
Ibn Zaydun knew that their phantom relationship was over and, as he wished her well and took his leave, he saw the coldness in her eyes, which made him feel empty and worse. ‘In this cursed house,’ he thought, ‘I am once again nothing but the son of my mother who worked for them and was killed for her pains.’ It was the first time that this sensation had overpowered him in her presence.
Zahra undid the clasps which held her snow-white hair. It unfolded like a python and reached halfway down her back. She had made a real effort to dress well tonight and the effect had stunned them all. She chuckled at the memory and undid the diamond brooch which held her shawl together. The diamond had been a gift from Asma. She had been told by some fool that worn close to the skin it cured every madness.
Lovely, ill-fated Asma. Zahra remembered the day her father’s party had returned from Qurtuba. She and Abdallah had not known what to expect as they had stood near the entrance to the house from the outer courtyard, holding tight to the hands of their mother’s sister, the replacement wife they believed had been grievously injured by Ibn Farid’s acquisition of a Christian concubine. Their first impression of Asma had been one of stunned astonishment. She looked so young and innocent. She was of medium height, but well built and generously proportioned. A virtuous face presided over a voluptuous body. Her skin was as smooth as milk but the colour of peaches, and her mouth looked as if it had been carefully painted with the juice of pomegranates. Underneath a mass of raven-black hair was a pair of shy, almost frightened brown eyes. They could all see how Ibn Farid had been bewitched by her.
‘How could you possibly love my father?’ Zahra had asked her some years later, just before Meekal was born and after they had become close friends. The old woman smiled as she remembered the peals of tinkling laughter which had greeted this question. Asma’s face, creased with dimples, had finally returned to its normal flawless posture. ‘Do you want to know how it was?’ she had asked. ‘Yes! Yes!’ Zahra had shouted, imagining some fantastically erotic description. ‘It was the way he farted. It reminded me of the kitchen where my mother worked. I felt I was at home again and loved him for that reason.’ Zahra’s shock had given way to incredulous laughter. Without realizing it, Asma had humanized the huge and brooding figure of Ibn Farid.
Zahra pulled the quilt, stuffed with sheep’s wool and covered with her favourite silk, over herself. Sleep would not come. It was as if the final act of expelling Ibn Zaydun from her memory had cleared some space for everyone else. Her father appeared before her now. Not in the guise of the haughty lord with a despotic temperament, ordering her to bend to his will and abandon her lover or suffer his punishment, but as a friendly giant, full of fun, teaching her to ride a horse so that she could race against Abdallah. How patient he had been and how she had worshipped him. In the same week he had taught her to shoot at a mark. Her shoulders had ached for a whole week after that, which had made him laugh. Then Miguel had come and Ibn Farid, delighted with the child of his love, had left Abdallah and Zahra to their own devices. Who knows, she thought, if he had not ignored us so completely, I might not have fallen under the spell of Ibn Zaydun and Abdallah might not have become so obsessed with racing horses.
Suddenly her mind pictures a young woman. Zahra does not remember her at all, but she is very familiar. She has Abdallah’s forehead and her own eyes. It must be their mother. Zahra screams to Death: ‘I have been waiting for you a long time. You’re going to come soon. Why not now? I can’t bear the agony of waiting much longer.’
‘Aunt Zahra! Aunt Zahra!’
She opened her eyes and saw Zubayda’s worried face.
‘Can I get you something?’
Zahra smiled weakly and shook her head. Then recalling something, she lifted her diamond brooch and handed it to Zubayda.
‘I am dying. This is for your daughter Hind. Make sure that boy from al-Qahira loves her. Then let them be wed. Tell Umar it was his dying aunt’s last wish.’
‘Should I fetch Uncle Miguel?’ asked Zubayda, wiping the tears off her face.
‘Let him sleep in peace. He would only try and give me the last rites, and I insist on dying a Muslim. Tell Amira to bathe me properly as she used to do in the old days.’
Zubayda was pressing Zahra’s legs and feet.
‘You’re not dying, Aunt Zahra. Your feet are as warm as burning embers. Whoever heard of anyone dying with warm feet?’
‘What a child you are, Zubayda,’ replied her aunt in a weak voice. ‘Have you never heard of the poor innocents who are being burnt at the stake?’
The shock on Zubayda’s face made Zahra laugh. The mirth was infectious and Zubayda joined her. Without warning the laughter disappeared and the life ebbed away from her. Zubayda clutched the old lady to her bosom and hugged her.
‘Not yet, Aunt Zahra. Do not leave us so soon.’
There was no reply.
NINE
ZAHRA WAS BURIED THE very next day. Her body had been carefully and lovingly bathed by Ama long before the sun rose. As the early morning breezes danced to welcome the first rays of the sun, the job was finished.
‘Why did you want me to do this, Zahra? My last punishment? Or was it a final gesture of friendship? If it hadn’t been for you, my lady, I would have married that man on the mountain who now gives himself airs and calls himself al-Zindiq. Borne him three children. Perhaps four! Made him happy. I’m talking like an old fool. Forgive me. I suppose God meant us to live apart. There! You’re all ready now for the last journey. I’m so glad you came back here. In Gharnata they would have put you in a wooden box and stuck a cross over your grave. What would Ibn Farid have said when you met him in the first heaven? Eh?’
Dressed in a pure white shroud, Zahra’s body lay on the bed, waiting for burial. News of her demise had travelled to the village and, such had been her reputation amongst the weavers and peasants, who saw in her a noblewoman prepared to marry one of them for love, that they had rushed to the house, before they began their day’s work, to pay their last respects and help lay the old woman’s body to rest.
Slowly four pairs of hands lifted the bed and placed it gently on four sets of sturdy shoulders. Umar and Zuhayr lifted the head, while Ibn Daud and the Dwarf’s strapping twenty-year-old son brought up the rear. Al-Zindiq and Miguel were in the centre, too old to offer their shoulders, but too close to the dead woman to leave her exclusively to a younger generation. Yazid followed closely behind his father. He had liked the old woman, but since he barely knew her, he could not grieve like Hind.
The women had mourned earlier. Early that morning Ama’s wails as she sang the praises of Zahra had woken every section of the household. Streams of sorrow had poured out of Hind’s eyes as she sought the comfort of Zubayda’s lap. They had all spoken about her human qualities. How she had been as a child, a young woman, and then there had been silence. Nobody wished to discuss what had befallen her in Qurtuba, or to mention that the bulk of her life had been lived in the maristan in Gharnata.
The funeral procession was moving very slowly on purpose. The family cemetery was situated just outside the perimeter of the high stone walls which guarded the house. Zahra would be buried with her family. A space had been reserved for her next to her mother, Lady Najma, who had died sixty-nine years ago, a few days after Zahra’s birth. She lay buried underneath a palm-tree. On the other side of her was Ibn Farid, the father she had loved and hated so much. The hadiths had insisted that followers of the Prophet should be buried simply and, in strict accordance with this tradition, none of the graves were marked. The Banu Hudayl claimed descent from one of the Companions of the Prophet and, regardless of whether this was true or pure invention, even the most irreligious members of the clan had insisted on the tradition of a simple mound of mud over their graves. Nothing more. The tiny, hand-made hillocks were covered with carefully tended grass and a dazzling array of wild flowers.
Zahra was lifted from the bed and laid in the freshly dug grave. Then Miguel, thinking he was Meekal, scooped up a handful of mud and threw it on his sister’s corpse and cupped his hands together to offer prayers to Allah. Everyone followed suit. Then each of the mourners embraced Umar bin Abdallah in turn and departed. It was only when Miguel saw Juan the carpenter crossing himself that he was reminded of his own ecclesiastical identity. He dutifully fell on his knees and prayed.
The Bishop of Qurtuba must have been in that posture for several minutes, for when he opened his eyes he found himself alone by the freshly built mound. It was at this moment that his powers of self-control seemed to desert him. He broke down and wept. A pain, long suppressed, had welled up inside him. Two little waterfalls poured down his cheeks and sought refuge in his beard. Miguel knew perfectly well that whoever is born must die. Zahra had reached her sixty-ninth year. All complaints to the Almighty were out of order.
It was the suddenness of his sister’s departure that had shaken him, just like the time, all those years ago, when she had left the house without saying goodbye to him. He had wanted so much to tell her all that had happened to him after that fateful day of shame; to describe the explosion of passions which had propelled him into an unknown space to defy the time-honoured taboo, and the horrendous aftermath; to discuss for the first time the death of Asma, a death which had deprived him of someone to blame for his own inner torment and unhappiness; the layers of guilt which still lay congealed somewhere in his mind; the disintegration of the old household and the birth of its successor. For the last three days he had been thinking of nothing else. Miguel now realized that he himself would die without one last conversation with the only member of the family who had belonged to the same vanished world. It was an unbearable thought.
‘All of it happened after you had left us in disgrace, Zahra,’ Miguel moaned in a soft voice. ‘If you had stayed everything might have been different. You took truth and generosity with you. We were left with fear and sorrow and malice. Your absence disfigured us all. I think our father really died of grief. He missed you more than he would ever admit. Almost half a century has now passed and I have not been able to talk about any of this with even a single human being. This failing heart of mine was preparing to unburden itself to you. On the day I was ready to talk, you, my sister, went and died. Peace be upon you.’
As he rose and looked one more time at the piece of earth that covered his dead sister, a familiar voice disturbed his solitude and startled him.
‘I did talk to her, Your Excellency!’
‘Ibn Zaydun!’
‘I was weeping on the other side of the grave. You did not see me.’
The two men embraced. Al-Zindiq told Miguel of how he had finally been rejected by Zahra; how the pride of the Hudayl clan had at long last reclaimed its prodigal daughter; how the real kernel had been thoroughly camouflaged; how, in the weeks before her death, she had actually suffered at the memory of their love; how she had come to feel that the worst of her injuries had been self-inflicted, and how she had begun to regret the break with Ibn Farid and her family, for which she accepted sole responsibility.
‘I always knew,’ Miguel commented, ‘that our father was the most important thing in her life.’
The happiness Migu
el felt on hearing this news was as great as the sadness it had caused al-Zindiq. Bishop and sceptic, for a moment they remained motionless, facing each other. They had once belonged to the same sunken civilization, but the universe which each inhabited had been separated by an invisible sea. The woman who had tried to bridge the gap between their two worlds, and had been punished for her pains, lay buried a few yards from where they stood.
The fact that, during her last days on this earth, she had, in her heart, returned to the family, consoled her brother. For al-Zindiq, sad, embittered al-Zindiq, it was but another example of the deep-rooted divisions in al-Andalus, which had torn the children of the Prophet asunder. They had failed to build a lasting monument to their early achievements.
‘All that is left,’ al-Zindiq whispered to himself, ‘is for us to be inquisitioned. Yes! And to the very marrow of our sorry bones!’
Miguel heard, but kept silent.
As the two men returned to the house, one to join his family, the other to have breakfast in the kitchen, Zuhayr was on his way to Gharnata. He was riding at a fair pace, but his thoughts were on those whom he had left behind. The parting with his young brother had upset him the most. Yazid, as if guided by a mysterious instinct, had felt that he would not see his older brother ever again. He had hugged Zuhayr tight and wept, pleading with him not to go to Gharnata and certain death. The sight, witnessed by the entire household, had brought tears to the eyes of all, including the Dwarf, which had surprised Yazid and helped to distract him from the principal cause of his distress.
‘I will remember this red soil forever,’ thought Zuhayr, stroking Khalid’s mane as he rode away from the village. When he reached the top of a hill, he reined in the horse and turned round to look at al-Hudayl. The whitewashed houses were glistening in the light, and beyond them were the thick stone walls of the house where he had been born.
‘I will remember you forever: in the winter sun like today, in the spring when the fragrance of the blossoms makes our sap rise to the surface, and in the heat of the summer when the gentle sound of a single drop of water soothes the mind and cools the senses. Then, a few drops of rain to settle the dust, followed by the scent of jasmine.