The Taste of Translation

by Anne Gambling

  Over and over the chant, rocking back and forth upon the cushion. But breaking through, ever-breaking through is the image of him, his horse fast-flown across the Vega. Or that image banished, another immediately replaces it. Of the ship and her child, a small smudge on a vanishing deck. Each time the horizon swallows hope while she stands, stilled, as the world turns.

  Please, she pleads. Please. Just this once. Do not turn. Let me keep them in my sight.

  Sébastien! she cries aloud. Darim! On she rocks, back and forth, back and forth. These names she chants, these veils she would dissolve on her way to the Unity of Being, the fusion of form where All is One, Ibn Arabi’s words imprinted in her heart:

  I rubbed my face in the dust,

  Laid low by the fever of love.

  By the privilege of the right of desire for you.

  Don’t shatter the heart

  Of a man drowned in his words,

  Burned alive

  In sorrow.

  Nothing can save him now.

  She hears the cat. He scratches incessantly at the door to her cell.

  These are the ruins.

  These are the tears

  In memory of those

  Who melt the soul forever.

  The cat continues to scratch at the door, his claws slash her nerves. She dreams, hallucinates.

  Here he is in the room, as big as she, it seems, a wicked grin upon his face. What game does he play? She walks back and forth and each time feels the swipe of an outstretched paw, the scratch at the door now a rent in her flesh. Claws rip her back raw, but still she cannot stop this to and fro pacing, her surrender to his whiplash.

  She cries out. No use. Pleas for mercy goes unanswered. Trembling, her whole body a quaking earth with this blood-letting of the soul, she sees only his paw, huge, claws flexed ready to strike. Walks into this pain, toward her destiny, over, over, over again. Rumi’s chant:

  In pain I breathe easier … When I am ruined, I am healed. In pain I breathe easier … When I am ruined, I am healed.

  Over, over, over again. Until suddenly, over. The sound of scratching at the door vanished, the pain of stripped and flailed flesh gone. And she finds herself lying prone, cool, tranquil, at peace. In the poorhouse of not wanting, everything given, nothing left.

  Days pass, nights pass. She knows not of the world outside her door. Knows not that Saffaar has come, leading a delegation from the court of al-Gani to take al-Khatib into custody and try him for heresy, for his Sufi beliefs, for fleeing Granada, for treason. Knows not that her master has been taken to Fez and imprisoned to await his Lord’s pleasure by a Merinid court beholden to a Nasrid sultan – by one ready to do an Andalusian’s bidding.

  All this she knows not.

  But an evening arrives when she eats slowly of rice gently spiced with cumin until her platter is bare, until she sees its painted glaze. A gazelle looks out at her from the centre of the platter, eyes wide with fragile fear, and a memory fast-rises – of her first hunt and the gazelle she greeted in the forest clearing. On the day her brother became the hunted. But this memory is soon overlain by another image – her vision of the day in the clearing when she and the dagger became one.

  She puts the platter aside, reaches for Attar’s Conference of the Birds. It is time to cross the Seven Valleys on her way to the Simorgh.

  Forego all the shadows; before the sun

  The visible and the hidden are the same.

  Yes, this she has done.

  There are so many roads, and each is fit

  For that one pilgrim who must follow it.

  Yes, this she understands.

  If thousands were to die here, they would be

  One drop of dew absorbed within the sea;

  A hundred thousand fools would be as one

  Brief atom’s shadow in the blazing sun;

  If all the stars and heavens came to grief,

  They’d be the shedding of one withered leaf.

  Yes, this she contemplates.

  When you are me and I am wholly you,

  What use is it to talk of us as two?

  All talk of two implies plurality –

  When two has gone there will be Unity.

  Yes, she has experienced completion. But the valley of bewilderment confronts her.

  Blinded by grief, you will not recognise

  The days and nights that pass before your eyes.

  In ice you fry, in fire you freeze – the Way

  Is lost, with indecisive steps you stray –

  The Unity you knew is gone: your soul

  Is scattered and knows nothing of the Whole.

  Yes, I know suffering, she thinks. What more do you want from me? she asks the voice inside, the voice at once herself and not herself. Is it Allah with whom she speaks? Or the memory of her master?

  Are you ready for the final station? asks the voice.

  Every time your existence becomes nought

  At once your nothingness becomes being.

  God is not external or separate but the totality of existence within, the voice instructs. How do the birds know of the great Simorgh when they arrive?

  They see only their own images reflected in the pool, she responds.

  Their lesson?

  That Allah resides within us all, she whispers, and recites the hadith:

  I was a hidden treasure and wanted to be known. So I created the world so I could be known.

  The sweet fruit of Sufism is ever the same, a tree is ever a tree even when it changes its cloak, the voice explains.

  She smoothes her lemon veil, its translucent silk a longer-than cloak.

  Janayd said that the self is like a veil, the voice prompts. To reach the Beloved you must surrender your veil.

  Dissolve the clouds

  Melt the veil

  So I may truly see.

  Laleima rises from her mat. Rumi, she remembers, once asked:

  What is unification?

  And answered himself:

  It is to burn one’s self before the One.

  She holds her lemon veil, her precious silken shroud with its protective Feija symbols, above the candle flame. There it enters a frenzied dance, self and fire mingled. And she holds it till it is no more, simply lemon cinders floating up, away, and with them her ashen pain.

  She leaves the cell, descends the staircase, walks out and into the bright light and brilliant colours of the quadrangle to find Saffaar standing to attention, and Rasool on bended knee. She hands the platter with its hunted gazelle to the eunuch.

  And without knowing any of it, knows it all.

  Thirty-two

  I am here to take you home to face punishment for your crime. The voice of Saffaar Salim steadily recites the line repeated over and over in his mind till now.

  So it is done, she says. He has done what he always threatened. No perhaps, no one day, no soon. But now. Here and now.

  Yes, says Saffaar. Now.

  Aboard the ship taking them across the strait, home to al-Andalus, he tells of al-Gani’s florid anger, his outrage that Zamrak had not told of his suspicions earlier, had waited until he had evidence enough to convict both al-Khatib and herself.

  What evidence?

  Saffaar shrugs. Who knows? All nonsense in any case. You know how these things work.

  Yes, she thinks, I know. I am a whore, al-Khatib a traitor, Zamrak the merchant with the earring of death, pawn at the ready a kingdom to fell. It takes but one. All this she knows.

  It must have been awful for Esha, she says aloud. All this politicking and scheming.

  Yes – but she still believes she can save you.

  I am already saved.

  His eyes shift from the look on her face to her uncovered hair. Why did I not see it before? he says. Where is your veil?

  Ah, she laughs, that is a long story. And hooks her arm through his. Do not despair. This may have been your duty, but I know where your heart lies.

 
He watches her walk down the gangway, across the dock, thinks she is far older than the unlined face she presents to the world.

  Six years, six years. What has she seen, where has she been, what has she done these long six years?

  Laleima enters her brother’s presence and falls to the floor at his feet.

  In the midst of a rant, al-Gani is seemingly unaware of the prone shape before his throne.

  I trusted him. I trusted him! I should have seen this coming – his Sufism out of control, his decadence beyond compare!

  You mean his love of the divine beyond reproach, she says, speech muffled by kissed tiles. The beauty of the Beloved celebrated.

  You! he rounds at her voice. You the chief architect of his fall! You and your lust that forced him to protect you!

  Do not speak with her that way! Esha cries, not yet at liberty to embrace her sister. You know how deep her feeling is for the old man.

  Yes! Which led them to conspire against me in the matter of the Christian. What next I wonder if Zamrak had not acted?

  That matter of which you speak is love! A matter which matters! She raises her head from the floor. And what conspiracy? she snorts. Paranoia has overtaken your senses.

  Enough! Esha cries. It is over, past. We should not argue.

  No. This will not be past until both have been brought to justice. Now leave us, Ayesha. It is time I spoke with your sister in private.

  So, he says when they are alone, you have come back. You did not run, hide, seek out a different place of exile it would take me more years to find.

  Yes, I am here and will submit to my fate.

  What of your child? For I know there was a child.

  He waits long, but there is no answer.

  No matter. If the child were here, it would simply complicate things. Now. Submit to your fate, you say?

  Yes.

  Well, as a matter of fact, I can offer you a choice of fate. For I am, after all, your brother, your loving brother, and willing to forgive this transgression.

  Oh?

  Yes. He inspects his nails, rubs a pudgy finger over a smooth gem at his wrist. Yes. Your choice is between the penalty for zina, adultery – death by stoning, of course – or being joined in marriage to one who is willing to overlook your sinful past.

  It would be a fortuitous marriage, he continues, my youngest sister to my chief vizier. A marriage made in Paradise, one could say. It is so long since we had something to celebrate. The past would be forgotten. There could be a new beginning for us all. Zamrak will return from the Maghreb in some months, having seen al-Khatib to his destiny and ready to fulfil his with you.

  So, he smiles. What say you?

  She rises, turns on her heel, leaves the hall.

  A volcano erupts. This is not her brother, the philosopher king, but one for whom power is the only God, one who believes only the truths of sycophants.

  At this very moment, he screams at her vanishing form, my chief vizier is in Fez to oversee the trial of a traitor! When he returns, you will either be in your bridal gown or dead!

  Thirty-three

  There is a way, Esha whispers, having found her in the Mexuar, silent now at eventide, the Council of Justice at leisure. There is a way to stay your execution.

  Laleima looks past her to the scripted tiles above the door:

  Enter and ask. Do not be afraid to seek justice, for here you will find it.

  Saffaar has been reading the law on zina. It comes from Ibn Rushd, who cites the Prophet. Punishment relies on the testimony of four witnesses in explicit terms or by confession of the perpetrator, to be repeated four times. If you do not confess, how will they find four witnesses?

  Esha, do not be so naïve. Anyone not wanting to be out of favour would be more than willing to speak against me.

  But it has been more than six years! How could the justices be convinced when all those closest to you are now far away?

  Does it really matter?

  Yes, says Esha. Yes! You are my sister and I love you dearly! I will not let my brother’s vile moods end in your sacrifice – either to Zamrak or to death.

  And there’s even another way, she continues eagerly. Ibn Rushd says that it is only zina when it occurs outside a valid marriage, the semblance of marriage, or lawful ownership. You could say that you believed yourself wed to him and therefore submitted to his will.

  Laleima frowns, inclines her head. It is true I felt myself bound to him, as much then as I do now. A marriage of souls is what we share. But, she shakes her head, I do not see how the justices could understand that. And, you said yourself that all those closest to me, who could support my claim to believing myself wed, are no longer here.

  But I am, says Esha. I am, and I would tell it!

  No, she says with a firmness that belies her place as younger sister. You will not enter this fracas. You will remain silent, and submit to what will be.

  You must continue at court! she insists as Esha attempts mute protest. You are the leader of the harem, your husband captain of cavalry. You both must survive this reign. For your children’s sake! That is your fate, as much as submitting to the will of my brother is mine.

  Esha bursts into tears, an unending stream of sadness. All the while cradled by the one she once did soothe.

  At her mother’s graveside she sleeps this night, cocooned by a chrysalis of the afterlife, comforted by one who understands the truth of love. Lies atop the tomb, its marble cool to her burning brow, and wakes, refreshed, in sight of high Sierra snows, the ever-snows she did not think to ever see again.

  In the silence of early morn, not a breath of breeze disturbs the garden, and her attention is drawn to the small things of God’s world, the things which, unnoticed in crowded spaces, now dance uninterrupted on centre-stage.

  A spider’s web nested in a cypress is a frenzy of sudden activity for a butterfly has become trapped there, its broad bronze wings full-coated in icky-stickiness, held fast, its weight shared across a wide surface, escape impossible, each web-strand stronger than the entire mass of paper-thin brittleness of its featherless bird wings.

  No desperate struggle to free itself, no flailing or attempt at feeble flutter, and she imagines its conversation with the spider.

  Feast on my flesh, is its selfless offer. For my soul has already flown.

  Laleima leaves the Rawda to find Rasool waiting in the patio. She smiles, holds out her hand to him.

  It is time, she says.

  Thirty-four

  al-Khatib will ever-write, ever-compose. In his prison cell in Fez, they bring him books to read, parchments on which to scrawl. The guards stand in awe of his courage, yet the puppet court resigned to its fate, and his, awaiting only Zamrak’s arrival from Granada.

  One day as he sits in his cell, he hears the cooing of a dove at close quarters and looks up to find a white angel perched on the edge of the sill of his barred window, a tiny slit cut into stone through which some light, a little air, can enter from the outside world.

  He can barely reach the window, so stooped is he from crouching over parchment and pens on cold, musty stones, but is excited enough to pile books up, step high and stretch a hand through bars to touch this visitor unafraid of his aged and trembling fingers.

  Each day she comes to bring him fresh joy and he in turn feeds her small morsels of his repast. Crumbs only, for crumbs are all he receives.

  Let me tell you something, my dove, he says, stroking her pure wing, for I know you would understand:

  Even if we are near Earth’s frontier, we are away from it.

  Having arrived at the sepulchre, we remain silent forever.

  Even as powerful we were before, now we are just bones.

  When earlier we feasted, now we are feast of worms.

  We were the sun of glory but now the sun has disappeared

  And the horizon feels sorrow.

  How many times the spear pulled down the one who wore the sword!

&
nbsp; How many times misfortune brought down the happy man!

  How many times was buried in miserable rags, the one whose clothing filled many trunks!

  Tell my friends that Ibn al-Khatib is gone away.

  He doesn’t exist anymore.

  And where is the one who were not to die?

  Tell to the ones who feel glad about themselves:

  Be happy if you are immortals!

  Suddenly, there is a commotion outside his cell. Much shouting and the sound of sharp tools. Faces he recognises from the Granada guard of his Lord and King break down the door, rush in. The dove in her fright flaps away.

  Over before it even begins, Zamrak stands above him.

  My former teacher, he sneers, and reaches out with hands of hate to encircle an old man’s throat and silently crush its life from the slim pages of history.

  Indeed, al-Khatib is gone away.

  Thirty-five

  The Council of Justice is in session, sitting in judgement of a caliph’s sister who kneels before them in the centre of the hall.

  There are no witnesses, says the chief justice, only the accusation of al-Gani’s chief vizier who is unfortunately absent. Are you therefore willing to confess your sin?

  I confess to my belief in love, yes.

  Do you confess to the crime of zina?

  I confess to my belief in love, she repeats.

  al-Gani snorts from his throne. You committed the crime of zina. And with an Infidel at that!

  Oh? she says, the Council forgotten in this shadow play of two upon a stage. You know the words of Ibn Arabi as well as I do – there are no Infidels, there is only love:

  My heart has become capable of every form:

  It is a pasture for gazelles and a convent for Christian monks,

  And a temple for idols, and the pilgrim's Ka'ba,

  And the tables of the Torah and the book of the Qur’an.

  I follow the religion of Love, whichever way his camels take.

  My religion and my faith is the true religion.

  Do his words mean nothing to you, Brother? Was it simply a game to recite them when we were children? Were you only showing how clever you were to Father while in your heart you did not believe?

  al-Gani humphs. Nonsense, what you speak. I blame al-Khatib for this ridiculous Sufi nonsense spouting from your mouth.

  He scowls, turns to the chief justice. She has confessed. Sentence her. She has betrayed her faith and her king.