The Taste of Translation

by Anne Gambling

  Betrayed? she cries. It is you who betrayed Father’s memory, Mother’s love, all because you listen to a jackal’s lies! Zamrak knows all about betrayal. And you are party to it!

  Enough of this! al-Gani commands. You are guilty, death by stoning is your penalty.

  He sits smug on the throne, its leather creaks in protest. Check and check-mate, the pawn no longer required.

  Oh yes, there you sit, ready for your courtiers to pay homage. Dissension, contrary voices, intelligent debates? All lie locked in your past. We used to recite these words of Ibn Arabi too, but only now do I see their truth before me:

  Your spring meadows

  Are desolate now. Still, desire

  For them lives always

  In my heart, never dying.

  These are their ruins.

  These are the tears

  In memory of those

  Who melt the soul forever.

  Enough! He crashes a fist down on the arm of his throne.

  But no, not enough. She will speak. And no one comes forth to take the condemned from the hall.

  Oh, my brother! What of all that is written on your walls?

  She sweeps her hand around the room, reaches out to dance with their scripted beauty.

  This is your book, your knowledge, your gift to the world! Yet you would deny the truths of the Qur’an, of your ancestors? The words of love and splendour, the full moon of our Nasrid dynasty?

  She bows her head:

  La ghalib ila Allah – there is no victor but God.

  Enough! And he hurls a goblet at her.

  It crashes against the wall. Plaster cracks, a verse plummets to earth. History crumbles, its fragile beauty as ephemeral as a snowflake on a summer’s day.

  The justices shift on their stools. The closest leans toward the caliph, murmurs restraint in his ear.

  Time stands still in the corner of the Mexuar, waiting, watching, holding its forever breath.

  Who brokers the past? Who preserves the future? Who, in the end, bears witness to the palaces of memory?

  Mumu, I do not understand! You are the older brother who cuddled me when Father died, saved me and protected me in our exile! Who was it who built the Hall which honours the Two Sisters, the sisters who stood by you through your trials? When did you forget all this? When did Zamrak make you forget all this?

  Slowly she rises, separating the mosaic of her existence from the solidity of baked clay.

  When did you forget? she asks a last, lingering time, and glides from the hall, leaving the court in the silence of her ship’s wake.

  The silence stays, stays long. It knows how to watch the watchers. Till split by Ayesha, path cleaved, seas parted.

  Yes, she says, into the echo of its witness. When did you forget all this?

  Thirty-six

  Esha comes while I sit with the flame but I turn her away. Esha comes and says: I will not let them do this thing to you.

  She sits at my elbow, beside me on the floor, staring full at my face while I stare into the flame of an open brazier.

  Laleima? Did you hear? Did you listen?

  I heard. Now go.

  She begins to weep. I know that kohl streaks her face, smudges her pure heart, but grit my teeth to the agony of her sorrow.

  Go! I repeat from the depths of the fire. And finally she does as instructed.

  At a distance, Rasool works his magic. Brings herbs and spices to add to the ivory pyxide where my hair and Mother’s lie woven. He stirs the small berries, flakes, powders with his finger, whispers an incantation in his ancient Feija tongue, spits and mixes again. His eyes are turned back in his head. He has begun the journey to the otherworld.

  A fass of frankincense bubbles and oozes over the glowing charcoal, its fumes sweep upwards in a slow swirled dance. He sprinkles the contents of the pyxide into the cobwebbed smoke and flames rise to their kiss. The mist between the worlds thins. The veil grows translucent. It is time to look within.

  I am in the forest of my last morning’s walk on a narrow path still thick with fog. But the sun warms the air, melts the columns of mist with its rays, transforming them into thin radiant pillars of dew-laden light among the trees. It is a spindly structure on first reckoning, until I see – yes, this is Allah’s staircase.

  Come, says Rasool. I will guide you to the staircase.

  There is still enough feeling of this world to know I have reached the garden, it is dawn, and I must kneel. Rasool covers me with the shroud of the fqih. Fully am I cloaked within its cocoon.

  Through closed eyes and heavy cloth, I feel the morning sun crest the mountains. I know I must pass through the arched hennaed gate painted on the cloth to climb the staircase and reach the Sierra snows.

  This, then, is how it ends. And how it begins.

  Thirty-seven

  I am at the still point, the centre, the hub of the turning wheel, where time and eternity share the same breath, where stillness and movement fuse into one, where love is and always will be.

  Walking through the gate and onto Allah’s staircase.

  But who is this before me? An Angel stands here!

  Not to guide – he looks back, far over my shoulder, eyes wide, mouth open, confronted by history and all its dead, a pile of debris sky-high and sky-wide.

  He spreads his wings, backs away in horror, back into a future far beyond our sight. Conjured by an artist’s hand in an age I will never see, I cry out to the Angel:

  Do not despair! I may only be a small smudge to your eyes, the pain heaped on the world far greater than my speck of suffering. But love’s heart still beats eternal!

  Taut-frozen, mute, he hears not my words, has been crafted only to lament the tiny firefly flickers of love throughout history cindered to ash by others’ hate.

  I cry out but in vain, his eyes fixed on the bigger tragedies, the evils that have befallen humankind. But still I cry out, climb further the staircase to where he stands:

  Hear me, oh Angel! There is hope. Always, ever, there is hope!

  If only one person understands the message of love and lights its flame with his firefly spark, then it is one more than none. And that one could be the One to bring the message to All. To bring All back to the One, in love.

  Our tiny lights will not fail, oh Angel! Each firefly joining together in the radiance of the One Light cannot fail.

  So turn, Angel. Turn!

  Into a future where poets will compose like the sages of old. Words which echo Ibn Arabi’s wisdom, words which share the dervish dreams of Rumi.

  Do not give up! There is always the chance to shine the light of love into the forgotten corners of the shadowed wastelands of this world.

  I beg of you, Angel – search history’s wreckage! Trawl through the piles and you will find our tiny firefly sparks nested in some crevice or other, alive, aflame with hope.

  On this long string of time from the past to the future – step off, Angel! Step off! And dance!

  The stones rain down upon her, split open her head, spill out her life’s blood. But she feels none of it. For Laleima is too busy on the staircase to Paradise. Helping the Angel of History re-find his lost hope.

  Thirty-eight

  There is a nearness to times past. They are ever at your elbow, or a-whisper in your ear, or embedded in a nook, a cranny of the mind, biding, ever-biding, and ever-ready to re-enter, reconstruct, recreate that which should never have been lost, forgotten, let slip by memory in the first place. These are the maps of the heart, their scrolls a pilgrim’s journey. Remaining as written, whether remembered or not.

  al-Gani has sat in his throne room all this long night long, hearing again, over and over, the voice of his sister, of each of his sisters. He sits alone and remembers: When did I forget all this? When was the rotten seed planted in the fertile soil of my ego? He sits alone and remembers that he has indeed forgotten.

  Now he despairs of what he has soured and will find her, s
tay her execution. It is not too late. To repair what is irreparable, reconcile the irreconcilable. He is a Nasrid caliph, after all. He will prevail.

  He will send a scroll to Zamrak: Desist!

  He will send a scroll to Ibn al-Khatib: All is forgiven! I was wrong!

  Such small words. Yet so full, so full! He will tell Laleima what he has done and they will dance again and hug and laugh. And she will stay his little star.

  He leaves the chamber. The night has been long. He knows not the hour. The sky is clear, no storm threatens, the sun has risen.

  But still he hears the thunder roll. Still he sees the lightning flash. Still he hears Ayesha’s scream.

  Oh –

  It is as if midday has burst upon them. Sudden. Swift. The sky split by a kingly blow. A flash, an instant of white, floods the scene brighter than crystal snows drenched by the full moon’s smile.

  He sees her, more than an outline, less than a form, a bloodied shroud over a crumpled body.

  The instant of white shimmers, hovers. Its thunderous twin explodes, booms.

  Down the steps he runs. The guards stay their stones as the caliph falls to earth, lifts the shrouded figure in his arms, and weeps. Weeps.

  Too late, too late – ever too late. He would be Mumu again, he would a brother be.

  Rasool comes, rests a hand light upon the child’s shoulder. For indeed he is Mumu, and another of those he loved best in the world has been taken from him.

  Weep not for what is passed, says Rasool, for now she is free. See? And he points to a dove high-flown into the white of Sierra snows.

  But Mumu does not see. Only Esha crawling to where she can wrap herself in a sister’s blood.

  We are Nasrids, Father said. And we will be remembered.

  Thirty-nine

  They had sailed away from her on a day long past. East from Sala, through the Strait of Gibraltar and on across the sea to the isle of Sicily. A monastery in the royal city provided refuge while passage was arranged on a ship further east. On they sailed, around the toe and heel of Italy before charting a northerly course into the Adriatic to the port of Ragusa.

  Entering safe harbour, the abbot called for the boy, sat him on his knee, there upon deck, as seagulls wheeled overhead and a noonday sun beat strong and bright on their uncovered heads.

  He told the child a story, about a boy who had journeyed far to a new land in the east, a boy unafraid of the unknown because love walked beside him each step of the way. He was the son of a stranger, this boy, a foreigner to those he would meet, but nevertheless welcomed, a gift.

  You speak of me, said the boy.

  Yes. The abbot smiled. And we have a special name for such a boy. You are Doran, the son of the stranger who is most certainly a gift.

  It is not so different, he said to Fenula while drawing ships some weeks later in their rooms at the monastery perched on a cliff above a fast-flowing river. It is not so different from my birth name.

  No, she agreed. It will be easy to remember.

  But I shall never forget the name Mama gave me!

  No one expects you to, she said, hugging him. We have all changed names. Me, your mother – it makes not a scrap of difference to who we are inside. She kissed his hair. Are you ready to continue the story map now? Is the sailing ship enough to your liking?

  The boy looked at his sketch, crinkled his nose. Perhaps, he said.

  We also need to do a big drawing of the monastery with the mountains all around, he chattered as she brought the scroll. So Mama knows exactly what it looks like and how pretty and green the valley is. And the paintings on the walls too. The one of the Virgin and Christ child, he said, looking up at the solemn expressions which graced the fresco, the child’s face angled up to his mother’s, hers turned sadly away.

  You will be very busy! Fenula laughed, clapping her hands. Come, let us begin.

  In bed that evening, Doran lifted the pillow, took out his amethyst stone, kissed it, and whispered: I drew you the sailing ship today, Mama.

  And as he traced over the script with a small and grubby fingernail, he was sure he heard a whisper: Thank you.

  One day, as he played in the garden in the white dust of the paths, sketching with a stick his ships of memory, he had a visitor. Fenula had called from the kitchen. It was time for lunch, and he had gone to the courtyard fountain to wash when he heard a bird coo from its shade tree. A dove, pure, white as snow.

  Oh! he breathed. Then: Stay, stay! Before rushing into the kitchen to snatch bread from the bench.

  What is it, what has happened? Fenula cried as he rushed out again. She followed to the courtyard door. But stopped –

  And watched the boy tear the loaf apart, crumble it onto his outstretched hand, slowly, slowly walking, calling softly to the bird, before spreading the crumbs about the fountain.

  Yes! She flew down, hopped to and fro, pecked here and there. And after a time, flapped back to the edge of the fountain where she drank, preened her feathers, before returning to the treetop, where she sat, eye fixed on the boy.

  Thank you for visiting me! Doran called as at last she flew away, over the courtyard wall, over fields, forests, streams. Beyond hills and beyond still beyond, her journey not yet at end.

  In the kitchen, quietly eating his lunch, Doran said: May I have the scroll, please? And he added the dove to the tree by the fountain, and drew a white angel, close to the sun, bright in his painted blue heaven.

  Forty

  In a small inn on the way from here to there, a man has a dream. He flies across broad plains the colour of straw, sculpted hills of dusty green, steep cliffs of muddy red earth, and then, in the distance –

  Ah. The snows.

  Fast over the Vega he flies, its green ears of new wheat and pastures of sleek horses which challenge his speed. Suddenly he is atop one. A black beauty with clear eyes, black eyes which catch the green of the fields. Bareback he rides, fast, faster still. On and on forever, but merely a blink in time’s eye.

  Can you see? the horse asks.

  The long pool of deepest green,

  The sky of purest blue,

  The palace walls of ruddy stone,

  Sierra snows of whitest pearl?

  This is the Madinat of Memory,

  She says. And we are memory-made.

  He turns over in his sleep, and dreams on. Now he climbs the high mountains to reach her ever-snows. Where he finds a tree weighed down with white powder. A branch rustles, he hears a loo coo, a dove sits there. As white as snow, only her black eye is clear to his sight, reflecting the green of pine needles. She shivers. No wonder – it is cold!

  He reaches out a hand to catch and cradle her, bring this small body to the warmth of his breast, hold her safe within his raw woollen cloak. She flutters, trembles. He reaches, reaches. Almost there, almost in his grasp –

  Master. Master! A rough shove to his shoulder. Master! says the servant again. Morning has broken.

  Gone.

  The dove flown, the horse lost to the speed of the wind, wisps of mist that fade and vanish before a squinting eye. Only the blue of sky remains.

  Morning has indeed broken. God’s creation and re-creation, ever-over, ever-over, and he kneels by his bedside to pray, in another tongue, from another faith, his prayer the same each day:

  In the morning when I began to wake,

  It happened again –

  That feeling that you, Beloved,

  Had stood over me all night

  Keeping watch,

  That feeling that as soon as I began to stir

  You put your lips on my forehead

  And lit a holy lamp inside my heart.

  The man rises, stretches, pulls on his travelling cloak. A stranger in these parts, needs be he must journey on.

  Report of the Last Witness

  A man sits at his dais. His beard, stretching to the waist, is grey-flecked. And if one were to peek beneath the turban twirled about his head, it wou
ld not be a surprise to find thinning and greyed strands of hair tucked within.

  He sits at his dais, a letter to compose in that age-old lyrical way of words threaded, woven, one to the other. There is a past where his pearls were celebrated near and far, but at some time, he remembers not when, their lustre faded. Age seems to have come upon him suddenly, his desire to compose vanishing likewise. He knows not when, he knows not how.

  Knows only that when he looks to the verses inscribed upon these palace walls as he shuffles from one appointment to the next, he wonders from whence they came. Could he ever have been the architect of such beauty? Feeling as he does now? Parched?

  Weary, he decides, tired of this life and his place in it. His caliph ever of foul mood and courtiers still loyal to the one he displaced ever-circling like hungry vultures. Let it be soon, let it be over, let it be brought to end, he thinks.

  In such a mood, he would this letter write. And scratches at the parchment, stops long between lines, his sigh a zephyr blown across lands baked by a desert sun.

  This prickling heat is caught by one who suddenly scratches at the back of his neck, shades his eyes, looks whence the next oasis beckons. Where a letter awaits him:

  My old friend, he reads. So do I greet thee.

  Far in the East. Far advanced on your journey.

  Khaldun reads Zamrak’s letter several times. Smiles into the memories it conjures. Yet from the far past, for he never looks into what happened later. That pain wrapped in silken cloth, sealed with frankincense, locked in a small chest buried deep in his heart.

  Books, a request for books from Egypt is what this letter contains, and the memory which had caused his smile. The beauty of books, the sharing of words, there in the library when it had only just begun, the translation of what was to what would be.

  Books, a request for books. Nothing else upon the page. Simply a blessing for his safe arrival in Mecca, his safe return to Cairo, and thanks in advance for a gift of words if ever they be received.

  Khaldun returns the parchment to its scroll, leans back on his couch, sips apple tea, smokes his waterpipe. So much unsaid. So much left unsaid. So much written on another parchment never sent, a postscript to all that had been.