The Taste of Translation

by Anne Gambling

  She shrugs. Ibn Arabi writes of divine love, but it can just as easily be read as earthly love. The Beloved can be seen as a woman or man, or God. The Qur’an instructs us to share with other faiths and be open to all they share. Dispute not with the Peoples of the Book, we are told. Say:

  We believe in what has been sent down to us, and what has been sent down to you; our God and your God is One, and to Him we have surrendered.

  Alright, he laughs, you win. A Beloved is beloved in any language or faith.

  And she recites:

  Oh, her beauty--the tender maid!

  Its brilliance gives light like lamps to one travelling in the dark.

  She is a pearl hidden in a shell of hair as black as jet,

  A pearl for which thought dives and remains unceasingly

  In the deeps of that ocean.

  He who looks upon her deems her to be a gazelle of the sandhills,

  Because of her shapely neck and the loveliness of her gestures.

  A gazelle of the sandhills, he repeats. That is truly a deft line of verse.

  That evening, as on most others, Sébastien sits with the court at table. al-Gani enjoys his company well.

  Tell me, how go the translations? he asks. Is my sister a worthy Mozarab?

  How cruel you are, brother! Esha cries. How can he answer with honesty! If he answers in the nay, his mission will be at end. If he answers in the yay, his real assistant will resign in protest!

  Ah, but Lady, I can speak in truth, Sébastien responds, and neither fate will be as you fear. Your sister is herself a gifted translator and guides my understanding by translating the spirit which infuses your texts. She is no Mozarab. And indeed must be praised for my total conversion to your world of words.

  Khaldun sighs into the conversation. Indeed we do inhabit a world of words, literature as lavish in its decoration as our architecture. Alas, it has been our fate to be born into this age of verse:

  Ask for an invitation, it will be penned as rhyme.

  An insult equally will be treated as fine.

  No matter his station, a man can compose

  Whatever he wishes – high art, or base ode!

  But this is what I love! Sébastien says. You make ornamentation of words, prose is lyrical, poetic. It becomes fine filigree of expression!

  Laleima lowers her eyes away from the banter and says:

  Whether on paper, in our minds or our hearts, whether written, read, recited or memorised, words are ever with us, companions of the road on a journey through life. Whether the parchment unfurls before us as we walk or follows as we reflect, or sits in our left hand or our right, it matters not. Words are with us. Always.

  Suddenly she looks up, smiles. As you say, Khaldun, an unending font. And I blame your writing box for mine!

  Ha! says al-Gani. Well said!

  Merry chatter, but Zamrak cannot take his eyes from the girl – her speech is a new door opened onto a heart scripted with envy and a poverty of compassion. These are his companions of the road.

  Many centuries ago, he says, voice low with longing, al-Jahiz wrote:

  A book is a visitor whose visits may be rare, or frequent, or so continual that it haunts you like your shadow and becomes a part of you.

  Esha watches Zamrak watching her sister, claps her hands loud and breaks the spell. So, she says to Sébastien, have you tired of your task?

  On the contrary! he replies. You have only commended me further into the heart of your lyrical world.

  Then translate until you are overfilled by the cup of our generosity! says the caliph.

  Alas, Sébastien grimaces. Pedro seeks my return by summer’s end. And, his eyes drop to his lap, I wed in the autumn.

  Oh, dear Christian, al-Gani tut-tuts. Sacrificing our words for the bed of a woman? You are too cruel. And they laugh as one, a pretty conclusion to conversation shared.

  Laleima hears none of it. For her eyes are fixed on a parchment unfurling beneath her feet, hazy though its contents, cloudy still with forms and colours fluid and shifting.

  But somewhere in this universe blue eyes transect her thought. And elsewhere a dark shadow throws its arc about her heart.

  Twelve

  The court poet is busy, his deadline approaches for the verse to grace the new fountain in the Court of the Lions. He tries to work in the library but finds their chatter too distracting.

  I thought you were supposed to be translating great texts, not talking about everything but! he grumbles. If the Christian’s task is complete, he should return to Castile.

  But Zamrak, she says with an innocence born of age and self, behind a good and true translation must be an understanding for the things said therein. I share with Sébastien aspects of our way of life so that our texts and the manner of their crafting make sense to him. Only then can he write in a way which brings our world to life for his reader.

  Humph, is the sum of the poet’s response. I take my leave of you – Sir, Lady.

  Does she not know her effect on me? Does she not see the Christian’s interest in the form of her ankle, the beauty of her brow? I hunger for her! And yet to think of her at the side of that white hairless youth – I want her with me! To touch me, kiss me –

  He sweats, moans, bangs his fist hard down upon the dais and finally calls for the servant to bring him a slave. Finding release in another’s slit will be his fate this night.

  Not a long operation, he slides from the bed, washes, lights a candle.

  Hmmm?

  The slave rouses at the movement, shifts under the silken coverlet, her naked form slender as a bough, the curve of hip enough – yes, enough – to reignite desire. His hand moves over the silk, unsheathes her from its cocoon, and she rolls onto her back, spreads firm thighs. Lips parted by a moist finger, hand cupped to an ebony breast.

  Get up, he growls. Leave me. He slaps her backside. I have work to do.

  She is slow to go. He hears her dressing, feels her brush against his back as he sits at the dais. Now she stands beside him, robe still unfastened, the scent and sight of her mound level with his eyes.

  Easy, it would be so easy, to reach out, cup that flower, suck as a honeyeater in hovering flight. Instead turns to write:

  If chance would let me sleep with her,

  I would slake my thirst in the nectar of her lips,

  I would make a date to meet her in my dreams,

  I would kiss the flowers inside their calyxes.

  Thirteen

  What is this volume?

  She peeks over his shoulder. Ahhh, I had thought this book lost! And turns the scripted pages gently, thoughtfully, hennaed fingertips at one with the colour and texture of the script.

  It is the codex of Ibn Sa’id, she says, from more than a hundred years past. Himself a poet, he was of a mind to collect all our centuries of verse into a single volume.

  She points to the slim text of his introduction. See? His wish was:

  To preserve these few fragments, whose idea is more subtle than the west wind, and whose language is more beautiful than a pretty face.

  Is that not exquisitely expressed? And looks to him, eyes shining.

  He sees better the green this day, emeralds caught and held fast within a black ocean’s depths.

  Look here, she says. This one is by Ibn Hazm. Mother always recited his words. She closes her eyes, each line known by heart:

  You came to me just before

  The Christians rang their bells.

  The half-moon was rising

  Looking like an old man’s eyebrow

  Or a delicate instep.

  And although it was still night,

  When you came, a rainbow

  Gleamed on the horizon,

  Showing as many colours

  As a peacock’s tail.

  Building. Building. Till a finger click, hand clap, cough or call to prayer brings each back and aligns them once more on separate paths, returned to task from the bea
uty of shared flight.

  I must attend my lessons, she says. And goes swift to her master, the ghazals of Attar her recitation today:

  Love of the Beloved burned me like a candle, head to foot.

  My soul-bird burned like a moth, wing and feather.

  The fire of her love smoked my heart like aloes;

  Then her fire consumed both the smoke and the aloes.

  A coal from her face fell into the desert:

  Both worlds burned like kindling from her ember.

  I was to offer my soul to the soul-mate.

  The Beloved outsmarted me; I got burnt.

  There’s nothing left of my blood or flesh, but ash;

  The zealous fire burned me altogether.

  When I scattered the ashes upon her street

  The blaze of disdain struck and charred the remains.

  So I said: I’ve been reduced to particles.

  She said: That may be, but all particles shall burn.

  But she hesitates before the last lines:

  In Attar’s state of neither being nor not being,

  Neither doubt nor trust, the pious and the infidel both burn.

  Suddenly she bursts into tears.

  My child, what ails you? asks al-Khatib softly.

  She hiccups, sniffs, mops her cheeks with a damp veil.

  Master, she confesses. My face burns with shame. I know not why, but my thoughts have been taken from Allah to –

  She stops. How to express that for which she has no knowledge or expression, no understanding or experience? But tries again.

  Master, she says, head bowed. An image consumed me during Attar’s verse. I do not know from whence it came, but the image was of the Christian at his parchment.

  Fourteen

  Dawn has touched the ridges, but still I cannot sleep. A faint glow lightens the sky beyond the far hills. A clear sky, its stars still bright. But with each lick of the sun’s slow creep upon their soft-shaded universe, I see them fade and flicker. Love’s candle each. Snuffed out by the wind’s lusty breath which rips through the cypresses in the garden and billows their full skirts.

  I stand at my window and listen to the fountain chime like cut glass in the breeze. A mournful sound which pierces my silence, gently it weeps like a young girl lost. Indeed it is only some hours since I walked with the Christian, a meeting al-Khatib made possible after my wall of tears.

  Have Rasool bring you to my apartments before the moon sets this night, he had said.

  But –

  I will dine with the translator, then leave you two to discuss the matter. This must be resolved in some way, or I have lost a most promising student.

  But –

  Seek Allah’s guidance, declare your truth.

  My master seemed to think this was a simple instruction.

  But I know not my truth! And fresh tears burst forth.

  It will come, he counselled and, so saying, hugged my streaming face to his fatherly breast. Remember Rumi’s words:

  Be grateful for whoever comes,

  Because each has been sent

  As a guide from beyond.

  Do not fear, he soothed. Allah guides and protects those who love Him. Speak your truth to this Christian. It was your wish to choose your own life. The genie has been released from the jar and you are the only one who can face it.

  He sat alone in the salon, doors opened to the patio where the medina’s canal shunted its fragrant rush through the centre. His thoughts on her, the stream, the all. That night as every night. But –

  Sudden, her appearance in the doorway, and for a moment he could not decide if she were a vision called forth from his own imaginings or real in the density of form she presented. Nevertheless leapt to his feet, a short cry escaping his lips.

  Hush, said the apparition. Needs be I must speak with you. And led him onto the terrace overlooking the ravine and the Generalife, quiet and content on its opposite ledge.

  He trembled, his mask slipping. Could he speak his truth to the one who stood at his side?

  She did not fade. He heard the silken swish of her robes, tasted the musk on the air she trailed in her wake, reached out and touched the veil which sheltered her face. Her turn was swift, her eyes serious. Had she seen too clearly into his heart? That her great lover-poets had been translated into more than script upon a page? Had become woven into the weft of his soul, transforming him into a poet-lover – of one, and one alone?

  She walked on and he followed to the low wall of thin red bricks which edged the ravine.

  The gorge is deep and wide, she said. It has been cut by the force of the water since the time Allah first made this world, cut by a river which desires only to return to the sea. What was once one has been cleaved in two. The Madinat and Generalife form two halves of a single destiny, but they are separated by Allah’s hand, by the river’s passage. This is the fate they must accept in this life.

  She turned and walked on to a long pool of bright fishes.

  They think we have brought them a midnight feast, she said and smiled. See how their tails whip the water’s surface, disturb its clarity and with it the moon’s peace of mind? It reflects the flurry afoot in my heart, she confessed.

  Oh, and mine! he cried, bursting to tell. Why have you come? Do you wish to cast me from your sight for something said or done, or left unsaid or undone? Is the rift between us as wide as this gorge?

  He gripped her hand, flooded the ravine. There was no need to speak her truth.

  Silent, this love, filled with tales of longing from throughout their known world, guidance delivered from history’s pages.

  Here, she says, when they return to al-Khatib’s salon. This is the story of Bayad and Riyad, he a merchant’s son and foreigner from Damascus, she a slave in the court of a vizier’s daughter.

  He looks to the page she holds open. Who is this? he points. What is the meaning of the scroll?

  There is a go-between, she says. Another girl of the court who carries their letters, back and forth, one to the other.

  Is that our fate? he asks.

  They call the Madinat al-Hamra a pearl set in emeralds – a forest to which he comes as night falls to be alone with her. Fast he walks down a shaded path beside cascading water. A nightingale repeats its song over and over, sharing its plaintive longing for a mate ever sought, never found.

  She passes through the arched gate beneath the wall, coursing the tree-lined path as smoothly, fluidly as the canal’s stream leaves the medina to trip its delight down the side of the red clay path toward the river Darro. And does not hear him approach, wants to revel in spontaneous joy.

  I am overwhelmed by this thing called love! she tells him. Like the hadith: I was a hidden treasure and wanted to be known. Through you, it has become known!

  He draws her to him, sweeps away her lemon veil, lets his hand rest in the curtain of her hair. But she hesitates.

  A wide gorge is between us.

  al-Gani calls me friend.

  It is not the same as brother.

  You are free to choose. The promise of your father?

  You yourself are betrothed.

  She takes his hand. He feels her tremble. But her voice is clear and strong as she says:

  Look at the cobbles which encircle the fountain, the white from the river Darro, the dark from the Genil. Different now, but their rivers will join in the sea. So will I carry you in my heart till we join in the sea of Paradise. Our paths are separated by destiny … I cannot forsake … nor can you …

  Certainty lost, hidden behind night’s thickening veil. How far does truth reach, how deep does it plunge? She discovers the cave is dark, and there is no light.

  She removes his hand from hers, straightens her veil, brushes his fingertips.

  I must leave, she says.

  Only a few days before he must say the same, his party readied for the return to Castile. Atop the tower, he recites to her a song of the Jews:

 
; I would discover secrets

  Secrets of my life.

  I would have the sky for paper,

  The sea I would have for ink.

  The trees for pen

  To write of my ills.

  No one knows of my sorrow

  Neither strangers nor kin.

  All Peoples of the Book know pain, he says.

  Yes, she whispers. And more.

  She thinks of the yin and yang fishes wrenched apart.

  Swift the river’s flow which carries him away, as he cries into the wind:

  I would the world’s boundaries dissolve to be one with you!

  Her veil a pale shadow, a twilit silken shroud. She cannot meet his eyes. Repeats only her promise: I will wait for you in the ocean of Paradise where All dissolves into the One.

  Words. Words. No words left. A pair of owls shake themselves awake on the far battlement. It is the one which flies first which cries loud its pierced heart.

  Truly, he says, does the sword tremble before plunging its blade? He turns away. Once, you recited to me the words of Attar:

  The Lover is like the butterfly who

  Is willing to speak of departing life.

  Then I have already died, she tells her lemon wings.

  Fifteen

  Let us contemplate Ibn Arabi’s Bezels of Wisdom, her master says. The Qur’an teaches that God created woman from man. Man therefore longs for woman as something yearns for itself, while woman longs for man as that place to which one belongs.

  She nods. Longing and pain, the nested fishes, the price exacted in separating their fusion. Zamrak had said this. Then you will know pain, he had said.

  Ibn Arabi calls love a knowledge of tasting, al-Khatib says into the space of her memory. One cannot know it until experience touches them. He who defines love has not known it, and he who has not tasted has not known it. Let us return to his text:

  The Beloved longs to see me

  And I long even more to see him,

  The hearts beat fast, but destiny bars the way,

  I groan in complaint and so does He.

  She draws her veil across a stream of tears.

  Hush, he quiets. Do not feed your distress. You have drunk of love’s cup, you have tasted its knowledge. Do not enclose your sorrow. Use it to expand your bliss. Let not a single experience hold your eye. Love exists wherever you look once you have tasted its fruit.