On one of its sides
is a nasty brown hole
in the shape of a heart.
I can’t leave this!
Perhaps I’ll drop it
in some pit I pass,
or the Guadalquivir.
The sooner the better.
The tooth seems to bite through my satchel,
saying, “Watch out, Amir!”
The Return
It seemed likely I’d find
a new boy—a new slave—
asleep in my bed. No, Amir,
don’t be bitter. You must never forget
Papa’s kindness to you.
Second father, I know.
But no less true for that fact.
How can I leave him?
I can’t, my heart says.
Yet how can I stay? Though I am
a free man, Ramon can’t grasp it.
Nor can the rest of Castile.
I wait long at our door, listening.
At first, I hear nothing.
Then, finally—there.
The snotty, moist rattle I’d know anywhere.
Ramon sleeps.
And it’s there, by my pillow, just as before.
Tell me, Hafiz, what should I do?
Come, for our hopes are no more than a broken-down house.
Bring wine. Life’s foundations are rooted in wind.
Well, there’s no wine around
and no money to buy it.
But I know I’ll take you.
A Broken Mouthful
I think of leaving
the knife for Ramon.
But after what’s happened,
it feels like a curse.
I don’t truly wish
any evil on him.
And, once again,
I play with the thought
of a note. I hate to imagine what
Mama and Papa are thinking.
That I’ve hated it here, so I’ve run away.
That I’ve found them cruel.
That I didn’t believe
they loved me like a son.
There’s not enough ink
in Castile to convey
the armies of thoughts
that clash in my brain.
I would like to make peace
with Ramon.
But there are times
when peace just becomes
a broken mouthful.
A word that no tongue in the world
can pronounce.
Whip
I head South.
My only companion, the sun.
By mid-morning, it’s no longer welcome.
I have always loved its kiss on my back.
But today it’s the bite of a whip that won’t quit.
I daydream of water.
When the caliphs ruled here in al-Andalus
they tapped rivers’ gifts the way Orpheus
could draw songs from a reed.
Wells and fountains bordered every path.
The Christians believe that bathing
too much is immoral. What’s more,
so they say, it makes a man lesser.
Weakened in combat, unlikely to win.
What a stink those battlefields will be!
I almost laugh as I think it.
My mirth is short-lived.
A young wraith on a sweating horse
comes charging at me from out of nowhere.
He yanks the cantina from my sagging neck.
Its buckle catches the cloth on my head;
he wrenches it free and is gone.
That vessel was empty. The joke is on him.
But what will I fill when I find the next stream?
If ever I do?
Shades of Brown
I am walking so weary
I can’t lift my head.
I play at analogies,
as I often did with Papa.
He loved to compare
two different things, to find
their shared ground.
So: a likeness for each separate shade—
there are many—of brown.
There’s the brown of my feet peeking out
from their sandals, as brown, you might say,
as two sun-baked bricks.
There’s the brown of a grouse in the thicket
just there, lighter, like oven-warmed bread.
And then there’s the heartbreaking brown
of a bare riverbed, rusty red like dried blood.
There’s the golden-hued brown of these endless wheat fields
—a sunset, maybe, that has fallen to Earth.
There is–—
I just about trip
right over the men.
A roar of laughter goes up, a lion of mirth.
They must have been watching me walk
for an age.
“What’s the matter, young thinker?
Have we not enough gear to merit your gaze?”
What parched breath I have
dies quick in my throat.
I have never seen so much steel in one place.
Five—no, six—cartfuls of weapons.
Crossbows and maces and long, glinting swords.
Behind those, two pipes much the size of large bears,
things I’ve seen only in pictures, in books.
But I know full well what they are.
They spit fire.
Numbers
This whole grisly stockpile for a handful of men?
What kind of army is this?
Or do their companions
lie crouched in ambush, expecting
a thousand more versions of me
to stumble among them?
I brace myself, ready to flee.
Nothing happens. I’m exhausted.
The men see it, laugh once again.
“Go ahead—run. We won’t chase you!” says one.
“But how about something to eat?
You look like a twig that’s ready to snap.”
Ours
The men explain it: they’re Jews.
From Toledo, where Jews, years ago,
were not all expelled.
“Anyway, there remain many Jews in al-Andalus,”
one tells me. He frowns. “Why shouldn’t there be?
We’ve been here since the Romans.
A thousand long years.”
I grope for my voice. “I don’t wish to fight, friend.
We’re all of us worthy wanderers here.”
He nods. My answer was good.
“We’re off to the city of Malaga.
The King is conducting a siege
on the Muslims who rule it.
It is we, Jews of the realm, who must
carry the arms.”
Will they fight?
They will not. They support neither side.
Then they’re free? (I must ask.)
“As free,” says this man, “as can be
when a King and a Queen call you ours.”
The Captive
“Enough questions for us, little thinker. You’re the
mystery here.
Let me see. Escaped slave? Your master’s a prick?
You slept with the lady of the house?
Or the daughter? Or both?”
I smile. I’m too weak for banter.
But my eyes are drawn
to a man in their midst.
He’s chained to the wheel
of a cart by the ankle.
“Oh, him?
He’s a Christian. You’d think him
fortunate, yes? And yet
he’s an unfortunate Christian indeed.
He’s wanted by them. The Inquisition.
So we’ve been asked to bring him along.
Can you guess what he’s done?”
I can’t begin to, but that
does not seem to be called for.
He goes on, barely stopping
&n
bsp; for breath.
“He tried, the poor man, to convert to our faith.
Strange, in these times, is it not?
But he said that the Church, which roasts
men like meat, is no place for him.
So he went to a synagogue in Toledo
and asked for instruction.
The rabbi he talked to was no braver
than we who carry these arms.
Fearing for his life, he reported our friend
to the Office.
“Now it is Jews who must jail him,
adding stranger to strange.
We daren’t say no.
And besides, what other work
is there left for Jews in this land?
“But he’s just passing through us.
A ghost passing through
a wall of more ghosts.
“Though fit enough food
for the Holiest fires.”
Pockets
I’m astonished.
They bother with autos-da-fé
in the midst of their war?
“Of course! And why not?
The Queen sees the stake and the sword
as tools with one purpose—
a pure Christian Spain.
And the King says the Inquisition is fire—
if you’ll pardon the expression—
for his men’s morale.”
“Not to mention the means
to buy all these toys!” A man
with a button-round nose has piped up.
“No one’s buried with full pockets, my friend!
As long as backsliders are burned at the stake,
there’ll be money to grease the costly machine
of this war with the Moors.”
My head reels.
It all seems an endless circle.
I recall Ramon’s words.
This bloodthirsty place.
At this rate, we’ll all have to wait
till we die to escape it.
Trade
The captive won’t tear his gaze
from the ground.
I can’t seem
to stop staring at him.
His clothes are those of any Christian.
He wears no sanbenito. Not yet.
“Trade up,” the men urge me.
They eye my red Mudejar badge, my turban,
my ankle-length robes.
“You can’t pass the armies
of the King wearing those!”
“Aren’t you forgetting,” I ask them,
“one little thing? Shall I say
my dark skin is a sunburn?”
The men laugh.
“There is many a Christianized Moor on the side of the King.
They are prized, in plain fact.
They can talk to the traitors who sneak
from inside to sell news of the city.
Though no one’s suggesting that you
would do that.”
Still, I refuse. How much worse for this
man if he’s seen in my clothes.
A Judaizing Christian in Mudejar robes!
That night, there’s a party.
The men drink sweet Juarez wine
from the cask.
The wretch runs. I see him, and pretend
I’m asleep. But he trips. Someone wakes.
An arrow pierces his back
before he can get to his feet.
“Now will you take his clothes?”
Allah forgive me.
Yes.
Gift
It’s the last thing I do
with his body.
I’ve already dressed him
in my turban and robe.
But before I depart
I give one final gift.
Bea’s square of white linen
—and her little tooth.
I feel sorry for leaving
this legacy.
I just want it gone.
Praying
After two weeks of wheat fields,
they’ve finally vanished!
Lush vineyards spice the moist air.
Olive trees speckle
the rolling green hills.
These are the banks
of the River Xenil.
We’re making progress:
the Axarquian Mountains
spike the distance.
As much as we can,
we camp near a stream.
These have extra value for me,
for my prayers.
I plunge hands and feet
in the cool water.
At last, I am clean for my God.
I bring my sack with me, the money I earned.
Some of the men in our party
have little to lose.
But one day while praying
I pay for my doubts.
I turn round as a bandit—not one of the Jews—
streaks off.
With him, my satchel.
All I have in the world.
Not
So
I still have Hafiz!
He is inside the blanket I use as a pillow,
just where I stowed him last night.
His worn cover mocks me.
This is the sum of your worldly goods now!
I open the pages.
Here’s what he says:
The lily and rose always rise once again
in the spring, but to what purpose?
Nothing is permanent.
Including Ramon’s knife—my sole weapon—
and the few coins I’d saved, so it seems.
Much help you are, only friend.
Blank Pages
On the sixth day each week, we stop.
Jews must not work on their Sabbath.
And they certainly can’t
carry cartloads of weapons!
“What if those bandits come back on your Sabbath?” I ask them.
“May you defend yourselves if attacked?”
This starts a debate that lasts through the night.
I soon give up trying to follow its turns.
I dig out the quill from my new leather satchel.
Both are gifts from the Jews, who pitied my loss.
I open Hafiz.
There are pages left blank at the back of the book.
Perhaps, Allah willing, I’ll write.
Rooster
Allah, there’s so much that’s odd going on in your world.
If I could get you to come for a talk,
it would be a long one.
But I’d have to start somewhere.
So here’s what is on my mind now.
Why are the nights so terribly long?
The men say it’s foolish to travel in darkness.
We’re too easy prey for the bandits who hide
in the mountains nearby.
So we camp, and we sleep. Or we try.
Though the days now grow longer with summer’s advent
the nights, too, seem to stretch.
The men grow bored, and then restless.
They drink and they fight.
I also do battle,
but my jousts are with words.
The men call me “rooster” for my scratching quill.
Nothing I try turns out right.
The book’s few blank pages are taking a beating.
The parchment is thin as gossamer now
from the scraping and changing I’ve done.
In all these cartloads of equipment, not one pumice stone!
I’ve only the rocks that I find on the ground
with which to erase.
They’re no match for my scores of misrhymes
and mistakes.
Hafiz, there’s one thing, in all your complaints,
you’ve forgotten to say.
Poetry is hard!
Friend (3)
Sol—the button-nosed one—
must want to be friends.
He boasts of his sons. He has sons?
He doesn’t seem all that much older than me.
Sol asks no questions, but it’s more than clear.
He hopes that I’ll crack.
A pomegranate, withholding my seeds.
All that it takes is the tap of the spoon
on the skin.
I’m touched by his kindness.
But I don’t open up.
I’ve lost the talent for friendship, I think.
And maybe the taste.
Friend (4)
One time we played
a great game of tag,
just like boys half our age.
Ramon and I ran and we ran
through our quarter.
Down blind alleys and skinny lanes.
Across every bridge that we saw.
We wound up in places we’d only heard of—
and some that we hadn’t.
Cordoba’s streets wind and turn
like knots in the hair of Medusa.
It was fun.
Ramon won.
(I half let him, knowing his pride.
Nothing is too small
to irk it.)
“That, my friend,
was an excellent game,”
Ramon said.
My friend.
Is such a word real
when one man is free
and the other is not?
Chains
Some of these Jews
can read very well.
A few, even bits
of Arabic. Under the caliphs,
Jews spoke that language
nearly as well as the Muslims.
Words here and there were passed on.
One of these men asks to borrow Hafiz.
I’m ashamed at how loath to share him I am.
For help, I remember
how quick Papa was to loan out his books.
The first man who bought me, Señor Barico,
was decent enough. He neither flogged me
nor kept my legs chained. Not like some.
But he did chain his books.
He must have owned hundreds.
I never touched one.
He slept with his favorites
as though they were pillows.
Señor Barico struck me only once.
I had set down his cup
too close to a book.
“Dimwit!” he boomed.
“Never put water where it could be spilled
and run the ink!”
After, he was sorry.
“I know you can’t love
books as I do.”
Señor didn’t know
that his slave could read.
The Apprentice's Masterpiece Page 9