22

Martyrdom

THE CURSE OF THE LION was pride! His curse was pride even when he was of sound body. How much more of a curse would it be now that he was weakened with wounds? He would repair to the first hideout he came to, lick his wounds as he waited to heal, and then, as always, go on a new offensive. She couldn’t help but chuckle when her spies informed her that this Hassan, not content to lick the wounds of his defeat in Barca, had engrossed himself in building projects there, immortalizing his memory by erecting mansions after having failed to immortalize it by the sword! It was also said that he had stationed himself there on orders from his sovereign, who occupied a throne somewhere in the distant regions of the East, until reinforcements arrived from other nations that had been subjugated by the Arabs.

This meant she would have to prepare to wage deadly war not only against the Arabs, but against the entire East, if not against the four corners of the earth, since the Arabs, as she was told, had taken over all the kingdoms on Earth. The only ones left standing in their path were the inhabitants of the unruly backwater over which the Goddess had given her jurisdiction. Still, she was capable of protecting them from bloodshed. She could have protected the Arabs themselves from bloodshed if they had placed their affairs in the hands of someone who embraced the creed of love as she did, someone who appealed not to the letter of the Scriptures, but to their spirit.

She did not believe, nor did she want to believe, that on their way to her, the invaders had lost sight of their Scripture’s inward truth. However, the mean-spirited among the Arabs had robbed them of their true message and mission by exalting material gain as the purpose of their expeditions. As she had learned over the course of her life, this did not bode well, since disputes that arise over spoils are bound not only to grow intractable, but to deteriorate into out-and-out enmity.

Like all those who had gone before her, al-Kahina had sought to persuade the invaders to agree to spare people’s lives in exchange for money, silver, and gold. However, they rejected such a truce as blasphemy against their Book, stipulating that in addition to the proposed “ransom,” her people must embrace the Book’s teachings and perform its prescribed rites. However, when some individuals such as Kusaila and the leader of the Garamantes had assented to the aggressors’ demand in order to avoid bloodshed, they had soon been betrayed and subjected to all manner of abuse and humiliation: They had cut off the nose of the Garamantes’ venerable leader on the pretext that he was plotting to wage war on the Arabs, and humiliated Kusaila by forcing him to skin sacrificial animals as his servants and followers looked on.

She too had sought to purchase peace with money, not because she feared war, but out of a desire for a peace based on the law of love to which she had reverently surrendered herself. What is the Divine, if not love? Could It possibly be worthy of worship unless love constituted Its innermost essence?

In making these overtures, she had been mindful of the need to accept the contents of the invaders’ Book as her own religious creed, since she had learned that all Scriptures—be they those that had been lost and recovered, forgotten due to the passage of time, or newly revealed through visions—had been kneaded from a single lump of clay. However, they refused her gesture. They refused it because they knew that if their ruler received wealth from her as a gift freely offered, he would no longer need their services. If this happened, he would release them from their military duties and abandon them to starvation, since the only profession they had ever mastered was wielding a sword! Consequently, they preferred to risk their lives fighting rather than to meet their end without a reward. For those who view themselves as soldiers, starvation is not simply a way of dying, but a way of dying tainted with ignominy. As for death in battle, it is an act of heroism, and in the case of fighters dedicated to spreading the teachings of a revealed Scripture, death on the battlefield is always met with divine approval. It is a covenant sealed with the stamp of the gods. Therefore, in the view of peoples who take pride in bearing a sacred burden such as a revealed Scripture, death by the sword is a form of martyrdom; it is not evidence of death, but a testimony to life.

How, then, was one to change the thinking of someone who made a profession of killing in the belief that killing would guarantee him life not just once, but twice: first by winning him worldly plunder, and second by winning him the martyrdom which, according to the promise of the Scripture, would intercede on his behalf in the life of eternity?