The Father of Locks

by Andrew Killeen

  Abu Nuwas stood up, asking him to repeat what he said, demanding the loan of a horse to take him to the Blue Masjid, saying he had to stop them. However I was not really listening. I had been gazing round at the dull faces of the onlookers, wondering what pleasure they took from the grim scene in front of them. Then I saw that one pair of eyes was not staring at the grotesque cadaver, but directly at me. And they were not empty and bored, but frightened and fascinated and hateful.

  The eyes were set in the face of a boy, his face marred with a birthmark splattered across his cheek. I remembered laughter on a rooftop, ribald mockery of an unveiled girl, a stone flying at my head. Then the face was gone.

  Seventeen

  The Tale of the Birthmarked Boy, which includes, The Tale of the Raiders

  I could hear Abu Nuwas shouting behind me as I clambered up the riverbank, but I ignored him. I was not sure, and did not want to explain, why I was chasing the birthmarked boy. However the mere fact that he fled as soon as I noticed him justified my pursuit.

  When I reached the top of the bank the boy had gone. I looked across the bridge, and up and down the road that ran alongside the Tigris, but there was no sign of the dirty green turban that topped his blemished face. Then a flash by the water caught my eye. In a bid to escape unseen he was crossing the river by jumping over the boats that supported the pontoon.

  I raced to the bridge and dodged between the porters, mules and horsemen that thronged its wooden boards. Ahead of me I could see a green shape bobbing along beside the deck. Despite the difficulties of negotiating the traffic, I reached the other side in time to follow him as he turned away upstream.

  “You! Son of a dog, stop there!”

  He was heading up a strip of muddy beach, with the river to one side and the back of a row of houses to the other. No-one else was around. He turned when he heard me, and for a moment his eyes darted around like those of a cornered rat. Then he realised that I was alone, unescorted by policemen or lanky swordsmen. He swaggered towards me.

  “Who are you to insult my parentage, you albino monkey? I am Mishal ibn Yunus al-Rafiq, son of a better man than you will ever meet.”

  As he spoke he pulled a short sword from his robes. It appeared to be old and rusty, but still sharp enough to deal death. I took from my sleeve the knife I had been given in the Hall of the Barid. Compared to his sword, it looked like an instrument for peeling fruit.

  “I am an agent of the Wazir. I command you to come with me and answer our questions – about the death of the grandson of Abd al-Aziz.”

  Mishal laughed. I am sure he intended to be menacing, but, although he was growing a scraggy beard to cover his birthmark, his voice was still high and childish, and his laughter sounded like the cackle of an old crone.

  “You command me? You are an agent of the Wazir, you bastard offspring of a whore and a leprous ape?”

  I tried to summon an authority I did not feel.

  “You have nothing to fear if you are innocent, and tell me the truth.”

  “Fear? What do you know about fear?”

  He was close enough now to take a couple of swings with his sword, and I jumped back.

  “I’ll teach you about fear, lackey of the Barmakids.”

  And he let out a bellow, and charged at me. Like his shout, his charge lacked the conviction of his words. I sidestepped easily, and jabbed with my knife as he passed. I struck out with my words too.

  “Fear, street rat? I have fought with pirates in the White Middle Sea, and battled bandits while crossing the Empty Quarter. So teach me what you know, street rat, I am eager to learn.”

  I ducked under his crude slash, and darted quick stabs at his belly, forcing him backwards. A blow from his sword threatened to sever my hand, and we separated. As we circled it was his turn to launch a verbal assault.

  “You think you are the only one to have experienced suffering? I watched my friends and neighbours drop dead from the plague, one by one, all the time wondering who would be next. Then the disease took my mother, leaving me alone to fend for myself over the freezing winter that followed. I will face your pirates and bandits any day, rather than the cold and sickness and evil that stalk the city.”

  Mishal lunged again. I dodged, but that was what he was expecting. His left arm grappled me, pinning my knife arm to my side, and as we struggled we toppled to the ground. We were too close for him to use his blade, so he tried to bring the pommel up to my face. My free hand seized his wrist, preventing him from bludgeoning me to death. For a few moments we wrestled in the silt, grunting desperately.

  Then he began to laugh. This time there was no counterfeit menace in the sound, but instead real hilarity, a puerile giggle that erupted from his stomach and convulsed his whole body. There was something infectious about the unexpected innocence of the sound, and I found that I, too, was chortling, shaking at the ridiculousness of the situation, two boys with barely thirty years between us battling to the death in the mud over God knows what.

  He rolled off me, still cautiously pointing the rusty sword, but the point was shaking, and I knew he was helpless with laughter. I sat up and put the knife back in my sleeve. As soon as he could gather his breath he spoke.

  “You know what, albino monkey? I like you. Have you really crossed the Empty Quarter? I would enjoy hearing that story some time.”

  He fell serious.

  “And I wished no evil to the grandson of Abd al-Aziz, whom I counted as my friend and brother, and if you are truly seeking his killer then I will help you. Take my hand in peace, and I will tell you everything I know.”

  So he did.

  The Tale of the Raiders

  They should never have killed the Camel.

  Of course, that’s not where it started. Nor is it where it ended, if it ever has ended, or ever will end, before the Day of Judgement. But most of the rest of it was just people doing what they had to do to survive. The imams teach us that God has decided our destiny for us, and usually that’s the way it feels, on the streets of Harbiya. There aren’t many choices, just necessity. But there was no need to kill the Camel. That was just greedy.

  I suppose where it really started was when they built the City of Peace. That’s how my father told it, anyway. A lot of soldiers came to settle here, not just from the Army of the Black Flag, but veterans of other campaigns as well. Old al-Mansur paid out a pension to anyone who could prove they had served in the revolution, or the Holy War. It must have grieved him sore, because every penny he ever spent was like pissing stones, but he was too smart to have starving warriors wandering the streets of his new capital.

  Anyway, that wasn’t the only living available to them. Some of them were very rich, and came to retire in comfort. Victorious soldiers never come home with empty packs, unless they squander their booty on gambling and whores. The best were recruited to the Khalifah’s Guard, and for those still willing to march there were wars to be fought: campaigns against the Christians, and rebels to suppress, like Muhammad of the Pure Soul, or that Khorasani peasant who pretended to be Abu Muslim risen from the grave. For the truly desperate there was the city police.

  Even so, there were still many in the city who knew no trade, no life other than fighting and killing. It was inevitable that they would try to find ways of turning those skills into a source of income. The Abna, those who had fought under the Black Flag, were already tied to each other by oaths of brotherhood. Soon they were forming into other bands, and swearing other, darker oaths, of secrecy and fidelity till death.

  They were not all easterners, the young men who formed these gangs, these fityans. My father, Yunus al-Rafiq, was an Arab, from Najd, east of Madinah. Nor were they bad men. He was a warrior, my father, respected within his tribe. He had fought for the Umayyads at the Battle of the Zab. There was no shame in having been true to his allegiance and supported the losing side, although it meant there was no pension waiting for him in Baghdad.

  But robbery came easily to men of the desert,
like my father. The tribes had always raided each other, for horses and camels and cattle, and then boasted of their exploits. And any caravan which crossed their territory without taking suitable precautions deserved to be taught a lesson, by having their goods confiscated. Anything else would be shameful.

  These had been the old ways, the ways of the jahili, the ignorant ones before the Prophet brought us back to the truth. But the truth is a hard dish to consume in one sitting. Some were still digesting it after nearly two centuries.

  There were no caravans to be plundered, in Baghdad. But there were merchants, and shops. In particular there were builders, and building sites, everywhere. Thousands of artisans came to create the Round City, from all over the Khalifate. When it was complete, many of them stayed. Al-Mansur gave land near his palace as gifts to his friends, family and women. It cost him nothing, but if they developed it they could grow rich on renting out the property.

  As a result there was a frenzy of building. All around the walls of the capital houses sprouted like mushrooms. They seemed to appear overnight, and still it was not fast enough to satisfy the demand from new arrivals. The fityans soon learned that foremen would pay to ensure their precious materials were not stolen and sold to other builders. They applied the same principle to shopkeepers, and passed some of the gold to the police to ensure that they did not bother to interfere. Soon they could consider themselves guardians of their neighbourhoods, keeping the peace and protecting the innocent.

  Some people are born to be leaders. Others are born lieutenants, and my father was such a man. What he lacked in glamour and imagination, he made up for in loyalty and diligence. The leader to whom he gave his allegiance was al-Malik, “the King”, a handsome Yemeni who had fled to the new city after a mysterious scandal in his homeland, which he never discussed. Al-Malik had two other close friends. One was ibn Nafi, a sharp-witted Badawi with a good head for numbers. The other was a man called Yusuf al-Jamal. Usually al-Jamal means the Beautiful One, but with this ugly, lumbering giant of a man everybody understood the name to carry its other meaning: the Camel.

  Together the four of them assembled a group of disaffected young men, bound them by secret and terrible rituals which they invented to suit their purposes, and soon became the most powerful fityan in southern Harbiya. Al-Malik gave the orders, my father ensured that they were carried out, and ibn Nafi counted the gold. And those who refused to pay received a visit from the Camel. It was a boom time in Baghdad, and they quickly grew rich.

  However, the Abna and the other veterans were not the only ones coming to the new city. Many of those who came did not follow the true faith. Of these, the worst were the Christians. Their perverted beliefs permit them things forbidden to decent folk: usury, gambling and intoxicants.

  First came the monasteries. In the time of old al-Mansur, no respectable Muslim would be seen drinking wine, and it was banned from Baghdad. But the Christian monks petitioned the Khalifah, saying that they needed it for their disgusting rituals. Did you know, they claim to turn it by magic into the blood of Isa ibn Maryam, and then drink it anyway?

  The old man granted them special dispensation, and soon everybody knew you could procure wine from the monasteries. The more pious establishments only shared it on feast days, but some were seduced by the opportunities for making money, and slid into degeneracy, becoming little more than drinking dens.

  Nonetheless, the monks became very wealthy from the trade, and al-Malik decided that he and his friends should not miss out. When my father visited them, however, to warn them of the dangers of their cellar being raided by unscrupulous brigands, they told him that they already had protection. From the shadows stepped a villainous Christian, a man with no nose. His name was Thomas the Syrian.

  My father was raging as he brought the news to al-Malik. He would have gathered his men and gone to battle with the Christians immediately. However, ibn Nafi counselled caution, and it was his advice that prevailed. Al-Malik feared drawing the attention of the authorities by brawling on the streets. The police were impoverished, apathetic, and easily bribed, but if the Khalifah sent his Guard to restore peace they would show no mercy. Besides, al-Malik knew that for all the Camel’s intimidating appearance the big man was at heart timid and gentle. Against determined opposition his most powerful weapon might be exposed as a fraud.

  So the Christians established their control over the wine trade, and then took to usury. Lending money at interest was illegal, even for unbelievers, but there were always men desperate enough with no other choice. Unable to enforce repayment through the law, Thomas hired Christian thugs to deter defaulters. Al-Malik and the Muslims, meanwhile, continued to protect the merchants and other businessmen from theft.

  In this way years went by. The Khalifah al-Mansur died and was succeeded by his son al-Mahdi. My father married my mother, and I was the only offshoot of their union. I grew up around his gang. They were tough, confident men, warriors of the suqs, and I adored them, and wanted nothing more than to be like them. One of my earliest memories is riding on the back of Yusuf al-Jamal, as if he were indeed the beast after which he was named.

  Al-Malik, the King of south Harbiya, never wed, and there was some talk that he preferred the company of men. Then, at the age of fifty, he fell in love. Fatimah bint Abd al-Aziz, the daughter of a boastful old veteran, came to her father’s house to live when her husband was killed at the siege of Samalu. She was not beautiful, not even back then, but there was a strength and a courage in her that somehow touched al-Malik in a way no other woman could.

  Al-Malik was wealthy, respected and still good-looking, despite the grey hairs in his beard. He was therefore astounded when the plain widow refused his hand, even at the lavish bride-price he proposed. He offered to double it, but she told him that money was not the issue.

  “My father looks after me well enough, and relies on me to look after him in turn. I can never marry another man. I would always be comparing you to my dead husband, and I would not want to insult you or his memory by finding one of you to be inferior. However, I will take you as my lover, if you wish.”

  Al-Malik was at first dismayed at this extraordinary suggestion. Then he came to realise that he still loved Fatimah, and decided that if this was the only way he could be with her then he would accept it. Her father, so concerned with propriety and his reputation, was hopelessly indulgent of his headstrong daughter, and permitted the liaison to carry on under his roof, provided that they conducted themselves in the utmost secrecy. And when she fell pregnant, he presented the boy child to his neighbours as the son of her husband nearly three years dead, and waggled his bushy eyebrows, silently daring them to contradict him.

  The boy had just turned two, and I was approaching my tenth year, when they found the Camel dead. He had been strangled and stabbed from behind, although which killed him, and whether there was one attacker or several, could not be determined. My father was furious, and confronted al-Malik.

  “I told you we should have stamped on that Syrian scorpion years ago. Instead we have allowed him to become so strong, that now he seeks to supplant true believers. We must strike now, before he picks us off one by one.”

  But al-Malik shook his head slowly.

  “We cannot be sure that Thomas is responsible. If he is, as you say, a scorpion, then we must tread carefully. I am making enquiries, and will act when the time is right.”

  The King stamped away, and my father saw ibn Nafi looking at him sadly. The old man spoke.

  “Don’t you know what’s going on? Then you are the only one. Al-Malik murdered the Camel, or had him murdered. That lover of his, that Fatimah woman – he believed that Yusuf was trying to steal her from him. Yes, I am afraid our King is losing his mind for love. Be careful, my friend. You may be next.”

  My father could scarcely believe what he was hearing. He dismissed it as an ill-judged joke from the old man. However, as the weeks went by, he began to notice al-Malik staring oddly at him. The King asked
him peculiar questions about his whereabouts and movements. Then my father started to come across gang members in unexpected places. He wondered whether he was being followed. Finally he went to see ibn Nafi in private, and asked him what was happening.

  “My friend, it is as I feared. Al-Malik’s jealous suspicion has now fallen upon you. You must act quickly, before you suffer the same fate as the Camel.”

  Heartbroken, my father resolved to strike first. He arranged to meet al-Malik alone by the river, saying that he had news of great urgency and secrecy. I remember still the sorrowful look on his face as he hid a dagger in his sleeve, and kissed me goodbye.

  My father never returned from that meeting. As I learned later, al-Malik knew of the planned assassination. Two of his men were hiding nearby, and when my father produced his knife they jumped out and struck him down. His body was found several days later, like the boy’s, washed up against a bridge.

  Al-Malik did not last much longer. He was poisoned the following month, probably by ibn Nafi, who had been in the pay of the Syrian for a long time. It had been easy for him to turn his friends against each other. At the same time he was warning my father of al-Malik’s jealous rage, he was telling the King that my father plotted to betray him. The suspicion felt by each caused them to behave suspiciously. It mattered little to ibn Nafi who killed whom. Either way he had only to remove one more obstacle to become undisputed leader of the fityan; provided of course that he paid tribute to Thomas the Syrian.

  Life became hard for my mother and I. My father had always spent money as if it would never cease to flow, as if it were as eternal as the Tigris. Nothing had been saved against lean times, and within a year or two of his death we had to sell our home and move into lodgings. The boarding house was dirty and crowded, and when plague came to the city in the summer heat it flourished in the foul conditions. I nursed my mother to the end, and dug her grave with my own hands.