The Holy Sail

by Abdulaziz Al-Mahmoud

  The rabbi was a treasure trove of information. He became very forthcoming once they told him they were Jewish Moroccan merchants who were solely interested in making profit before travelling back home. But the rabbi also started complaining about financial hardship, and asked Covilhã and Paiva to donate to the ageing synagogue, which he said was on the verge of collapsing from disrepair.

  Like all other people, Jews, the rabbi explained, left for other countries when they became better off, and many Jewish merchants ended up in India, Egypt and Palestine. ‘It’s also the weather. It’s too hot here, most people can’t bear it.’

  Covilhã was curious about how Jews lived in this part of the world. ‘Does anyone harass you here, Rabbi?’

  Feeling warm, the rabbi removed his prayer shawl and folded it in a ritualistic, neat manner, and put it on a shelf next to a pile of scrolls. ‘No, not at all,’ he replied. ‘No one harasses us. As you can see, we are part of the people here. We dress the same and eat the same. Some Jews work at the palace. The emir trusts us thanks to our good education and connections.’

  The rabbi sighed and then continued, ‘But the problem we have is that our people are emigrating. The climate here is unbearable in the summer. Around a month ago, a Jewish family left to India for good. If things carry on like this, we might disappear from Yemen altogether, and only elderly people like me will be left, merely because they can’t leave.’

  The rabbi explained to Covilhã the Jewish community’s role in commerce in Yemen, and told him about some Jewish tribes that lived in isolation in the highlands, which he had not been able to visit as frequently as he had done before. To Covilhã’s surprise, the rabbi said he was working hard to prevent marriages between Jews and Muslims.

  ‘But why would you stop them marrying, Rabbi?’ Covilhã asked, with his usual pragmatism.

  The rabbi waved his hand in front of Covilhã’s face, as if throwing something at him to get his attention. ‘We have beautiful young women that many young Muslims would like nothing better than to wed. But if we let those women marry outside their community, the Jewish faith would be lost! I am trying my best to prevent this intermixing, which will be harmful in the long run. But believe me, it’s very difficult. Love stories in this country are too many; it’s as if the Yemenites were born to love!’

  Covilhã stood up and gestured to Paiva. The two men then bade the rabbi farewell and left.

  Several days passed. By now, they had gathered a mountain of information. Covilhã and Paiva stood at the port of Aden, saying goodbye to one another. Paiva had to board a ship manned by an African captain and crew to take him to his destination on the African coast. Then, a few days later, Covilhã would be going to board an Arab ship, which would take him to Muscat.

  Covilhã embraced his friend tightly. He said, ‘We will meet in Alexandria in August a year from now. If anything happens, you must write a letter to our friend in Alexandria informing him of your situation, and I will do the same. Now go, my friend!’

  Paiva reluctantly boarded the ship, and turned to wave silently to his friend who was still on the pier. Moments later, noises echoed from inside the ship. Ropes dropped from the top of the mast, and the sail filled with wind. The ship began to move westward.

  Covilhã sat down and watched the ship carrying his friend as it sailed further away. He wiped the sweat from his face with the tail of his turban.

  He thought back to the mountain village near the Spanish border where he had been born and his tireless efforts to recover his family fortune, which had consisted of a farm located at the foot of a hill overlooking a secluded green valley. His elderly father had sobbed as he told Covilhã that the farm had been confiscated by order of the king because Jews and Muslims no longer had the right to own property. Covilhã had not understood why the farm was taken from them, and how worshipping the Lord in a different way could cause such pain. Why would the king intervene between people and the god they worshipped? Covilhã had decided afterwards to get close to the centre of power; if power was the cause of the disaster that befell him and his family, then why should he not be close to it and benefit from it? He had put a cross around his neck and made for Lisbon.

  He ultimately became an interpreter at the court of the Portuguese king, and used his language skills to get closer and closer to the king himself, learning Arabic and Latin and French, in addition to the Portuguese and Castilian that he already knew. He once served as representative of the king of Portugal on a mission to rescue Prince Fernando, the king’s brother who had been captured at the Battle of Tangier. Not long after that, he worked as a spy for the king in the court of the king of Castile to identify his opponents. The king staged a bloodbath after Covilhã sent him a list of people conspiring against him. This was a pivotal moment in his career, following which he became close to the king and part of his retinue.

  Aden’s intense heat brought him back to the present. He glanced toward Paiva’s ship, now barely visible in the distance, and leaving a broad wake in its trail.

  – 5 –

  Alexandria, Egypt

  Hussein Al-Kurdi lay on his bed in the fort. His gaze was fixed on the ceiling. A light breeze blew in from the window. As was his wont, his mind was crowded with too many thoughts: the endless battles between the Mamluks and the Ottomans; the collapse of trade in Alexandria; the rampant poverty, corruption and violent crime. The road between Cairo and Alexandria was no longer safe, conflict was raging between top Mamluk leaders, and people fleeing from the countryside were now pouring into the cities – all because of bad decisions made by the sultan or his entourage to raise money and buy loyalties by any means.

  Hussein shuffled out of bed and looked out the window. He spotted an empty nest a dove had started building several days ago. He stuck out his hand and pushed it into the ground below; he hated it when birds built their nests near his window.

  Hussein was torn. He abhorred corruption, weakness and bad governance, which he saw as the main causes of the sultanate’s sins, failures and divisions. These matters preoccupied him almost constantly, but he was unsure of how they should best be dealt with or resolved. He felt the rise of a strong leader to power would change all this, but he began to despair about seeing this happen in his lifetime.

  For Hussein, weakness equated to death, which was why he reacted harshly towards the weak in general. That included the doves that came to his window, which to him were pathetically fragile creatures that did not deserve to live.

  Hussein did not have many friends. Not many people could tolerate him and his non-stop grumbling over the dismal situation. Only Suleiman knew how to deal with him and accommodate him. Without Suleiman, he felt lost and lonely, and sometimes angry and incomprehensibly violent. He scanned the road in front of the fort. Not long ago, it would have been crawling with caravans travelling from Suez, and carrying goods from India and China. Where were they now? How did the road become so deserted and miserable? Who was responsible for all this? Where was the sultanate headed?

  Disorganised ideas shifted in his head in rapid succession. There were so many things that needed fixing, but he was ultimately only a junior officer in the Mamluk army. All he could do was follow orders without thinking twice. ‘Curse these ranks we hold,’ he muttered to himself. ‘They are just meant to tell us our place in the pecking order, and what proportion of our brains we must not use.’

  Suleiman had sailed away with a large campaign to fight pirates near Rhodes; Hussein missed him terribly. His mind was teeming with worries and concerns that he wanted to tell Suleiman about, the only person in the world who would listen to him and his complaints.

  Suleiman had not changed much since they were teenagers. He had always been witty and sarcastic, laughing at everyone and everything, and finding a joke in every situtaion. Everyone loved him for his big heart and good nature.

  ‘Oh Suleiman, where are you?’ Hussein sighed.

  As adolescents living in the Mamluk barracks, the older boys u
sed to humiliate and beat them for no reason. In those days, he wished he were older and bigger so he could fight back; he hated being weak. He remembered the time the older boys beat Suleiman so severely and left him crying for hours. He could not bear to see his friend sobbing. He took a small knife from his pocket and put it in Suleiman’s hand, and told him to stab one of the older children who attacked them as a matter of habit. When Suleiman refused, Hussein took the knife back and stabbed the boy in his thigh. It was the first time he had stood up for himself. Afterwards, the other boys understood that Hussein’s anger was fierce and his wrath cruel, and they avoided him, fearing his reaction. Since that time, Hussein glorified might and loathed weakness.

  He could no longer bear to stay in that depressing room. He put his clothes on and left, taking the stairs down to the courtyard of the fort where new slave soldiers were training. He felt sorry for them; they must have endured much pain and anguish on their way here. He did not want to remember his own story again, and cried out to the groom to bring his horse.

  Hussein heard someone calling his name. It was the chief of the guards at the fort who was running towards him. ‘The amir demands your urgent presence,’ he shouted out to Hussein, panting.

  ‘Why? What happened?’

  ‘His Highness is going to Cairo and wants you to be with him. Something seems to have happened at the palace there. Clearly it is serious, because the amir ordered preparations to be made for a long sojourn, and wants all commanders to be with him without exception, including you.’

  The road from Alexandria to Cairo straddled picturesque stretches of farmland. Over the years, palm trees had been planted on both sides, and now served travellers, providing them with shade and dates. There were many inns along the way, built by Mamluk amirs and the sheikhs of Sufi orders, offering food and lodging for their guests. The entire roadside was almost a charitable endowment to travellers, with the inns, kitchens and planted trees serving all those passing by, free of charge for those in need.

  The convoy of Qansouh al-Ghawri, the amir, included twenty camels laden with baggage. Fifty fully armed and armoured horsemen escorted it and mules carrying sundry cooking wares followed closely behind. A company of penurious Sufis trailed the caravan as well; they usually followed Mamluk amirs when they travelled, to take advantage of their magnanimity.

  Ghawri rode at the front of his horsemen, his most trusted officers, including Hussein, riding behind him. Hussein turned to Amir al-Ghawri, and was able to see part of his face. The amir had a distinctive long white beard. Though life’s trials and ordeals had left their mark on his face, and age – he was well into his sixties – had bent his back, he still retained a commanding presence. He had served as a commander of a military detachment in Syria and a Mamluk chamberlain in Aleppo, before he returned to Alexandria, retiring from politics.

  The amir was not a talkative man. He kept his eyes fixed on the road ahead, issuing orders from time to time to his officers and aides in a quiet, confident voice. There was something about him that made Hussein gravitate towards him, but he was not quite sure what it was. Had a solid sense of loyalty to his master been ingrained in him during his training? Was it the paternal way Ghawri always treated him? Or was it the charity he showed the poor often and generously? Hussein held him in a higher regard than the sultan himself, who was squandering the realm’s resources, abusing the populace and stealing from the funds of public endowments.

  Hussein desperately wished that his master would decide to contend for the throne to set everything right. But Ghawri seemed content with merely watching the power struggle from a distance without taking part. That had been his decision since he returned from Aleppo, and he had not changed his mind.

  When the cavalcade reached Cairo, it was received by a band of flautists and musicians beating on cymbals and drums, announcing the amir’s arrival. Ghawri and his party cut their way through the crowds into the sultan’s castle, which then closed its gates in the face of the interlopers following the convoy. At the main courtyard in the castle, the travel-weary riders dismounted and adjusted their garments before entering the sultan’s court.

  Hussein was not pleased with what was happening. He did not know why the amir and his entourage had come to Cairo, and did not dare to ask. Coming to the capital with the amir was no reason to celebrate; Hussein preferred Alexandria, and the noise the waves made, the smell of the sea, and the sight of the sailboats there. Cairo would deprive him of all that.

  The band was still playing outside, as though declaring that glad tidings were to be expected shortly. Amir al-Ghawri entered the sultan’s hall followed by his delegation. Sultan Qaitbay and the senior members of his court stood for Ghawri. Even the khasiki* slaves stood up in the back; the amir commanded great respect in the palace, thanks to the services he had done for the sultanate and also because he was disinterested in the official titles and positions that had been offered to him.

  By the end of the meeting, the sultan had appointed Amir al-Ghawri as his dawadar*, the Bearer of the Sultan’s Inkstand, the sovereign’s vizier and spokesperson. From that moment, Hussein realised that life as he knew it in Alexandria would never be the same again. His master had become an executive of the sultan’s court in Cairo, and Hussein was now expected to be at his side there. He realised that he quickly had to get used to this bustling metropolis, which he had disliked ever since he was a boy.

  Time in the Cairene court passed quickly. Not long after their arrival, Sultan Qaitbay fell gravely ill and soon passed away. He was succeeded by his son, al-Nasser Mohammed. The new sultan tried his best to improve relations with the Ottomans and put an end to the armed conflict that had raged with them under his father’s rule, though sporadic scuffles continued between their armies along the borders.

  At first, Hussein thought things would improve with the accession of Qaitbay’s son. The new sultan launched several campaigns to supress rebellions by the Bedouins in the countryside and to crack down on bandits. However, things – as Hussein saw them – became more and more complicated after that, especially with reports coming from merchants saying that the Portuguese had reached India. The Egyptians did not understand how the Portuguese had pulled off that feat, and rumours spread that they had found a secret route and would soon appear in the Nile coming from the south.

  People wavered between outrage and disbelief. Then after a period of time, fear of a Portuguese invasion gave way to jokes told first by the hashish-fiends in Cairo. They were a common sight in the alleyways, smoking and laughing so loudly that everyone in the vicinity could hear them. At night, those roars of laughter were all too familiar – and irksome – for the somnolent residents of the city as they tried to sleep.

  Hussein was pining for his friend Suleiman. Pirates in Rhodes had captured Suleiman after he was wounded in battle. The Ottomans paid a ransom to get him and other prisoners released, and took him to Turkey. But Hussein did not know his exact whereabouts, and had no way to get to him or find out what had happened to him since; all he could do was wait. He would let out a frustrated sigh before muttering his usual refrain to himself, ‘Where are you, Suleiman?’

  As time passed, the convoys of the Karimi Guild stopped coming to Suez and Alexandria. Revenues dwindled, the state’s coffers emptied and social unrest spiralled gradually out of control. Bedouin uprisings returned to the countryside with a vengeance, and bandits were now so brazen that they were raiding Cairo markets in broad daylight. The Hajj pilgrimage had stopped too as highwaymen now did not spare even the women and children travelling with the Hajj convoys.

  People revolted and there were many disturbances. Discord grew between Mamluk amirs and there was little security to be found outside the sultan’s palace. Hussein felt things were fast approaching total disaster if nothing was done to alter the current trajectory of events. He had despaired of any attempts for reform by now and, again, all he could say to himself when such thoughts overwhelmed him was, ‘Where are you, Suleiman?’<
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  On one sleepless night – now a frequent occurrence – Hussein’s train of doomed thoughts was once again debilitating him. He punched his pillow with his fist, trying to adjust its form, as though blaming it for his insomnia. He struck it again, having no other way to vent his anger and frustration. He threw his head on the pillow, trying to close his eyes and clear his mind, in the hope of getting some sleep. But he kept tossing and turning in his bed, without managing to drift off.

  At midnight, he was roused from his haunted slumber by voices and loud sounds coming from the courtyard of the palace. He could make out horses whinnying and the clanging of swords. He was now wide awake, anxious that a conspiracy was – yet again – unfolding at the palace and wondering who the victim was this time.

  A servant knocked on his door. ‘The amir wants you in the sultan’s hall, now and without delay!’

  He splashed water on his face quickly, put on his turban and made himself as presentable as possible under the circumstances. He hung his sword over his shoulder and scurried to the sultan’s hall. When he got there, he saw that all the soldiers, bodyguards, amirs and the atabeg had gathered, and spotted Amir al-Ghawri sitting on the right side of the hall. At the centre of the hall sat the Abbasid Caliph al-Mustamsik and the four chief judges in their large ceremonial turbans.

  Hussein walked quietly towards Ghawri. He nodded to Ghawri and then took up his place behind his master. One of the amirs stood in the middle of the hall, addressing those present.

  ‘What should we do then? The country is in turmoil and the treasury is empty. Our armies fighting the Ottomans in Syria have not received their wages for months. Uprisings in the countryside have forced peasants to flee to the city, only for them to be ambushed by bandits on the way. Our servants are being lynched in the streets of Cairo, because people see us in them.’

  Another amir suddenly stood up and interrupted him. ‘Who is the cause of all this? Isn’t it the sultan, who has fled and left the throne without warning?’ He pointed to the empty chair at the top of the hall and continued. ‘This throne has become vacant. No one wants to shoulder the responsibility. This tedious debating will lead us nowhere. Let us decide who should assume the throne right here and right now.’