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Following the Big Dipper
Muharram 4, ah 400; August 28, ad 1009

We were three companions, brought together by the caravan that accompanied those returning from Mecca, leaving for Basra after a brief sojourn in Hijr al-Yamama. The caravan leader told me that it was a long way from Hijr al-Yamama to Basra: two hundred parasangs. It was a long and costly journey, and payment must be made in advance. It devoured most of the coins in my possession, and an ardab of dates besides, which I plucked from our date palms with my own hands and presented to him.

We left al-Yamama in the evening to avoid the blistering heat of noon. The caravan followed the stars of Banat Naash, also known as the Big Dipper, along flat pathways where mountains and elevations were rare. The sobs of the daughter of the House of Wael tore at my innards: my loneliness at the thought of what was to come and my fear of the dark path we were on made me cling to Musallama and Sakhr, who hailed from the tribe of Tamim. They were two young men who were traveling with the caravan to rejoin their cousin in Iraq, and they were exactly alike, although one was taller than the other. Both wore their hair in long braids and looked at you with the same fleeting glances; both had the same loud voice and light, graceful step. Although their clothing was somewhat modest, and their demeanor somewhat rough, they were skilled at lighting a fire and preparing food in mere moments, and they could catch a rabbit, skin it, and prepare it with bread to make an excellent tharid soup for dinner. I shared their meals, feeling that they were shields for me against the arrows of being alone in a strange land. By the third day of our journey, I and Musallama of Tamim and his cousin Sakhr counted each other as traveling companions, brought together by our youth, the harsh unfamiliar path, and the songs we sang to the camels to make them walk on.

The two young men from Tamim were affiliated marginally with the great tribes that had quit Najd and the small towns in the embrace of the mountains of Tuwaiq, heading for the lands of Iraq, seduced by the promise of Caliph al-Muizz li-Din Allah al-Bouhi to grant them what plots they could settle in and cultivate in that country, for ownership or lifelong use, depending on how close each of them was to the clerks of the Diwan or the treasurers. There were two forms of this: a qatia was a gift outright, granted to a man to live in and cultivate, with one-tenth of its crops going to the treasury, and passed on to his children after him. The second was a tuma, or lifelong right to use the land, which the treasury would reclaim after a man’s death. The Tamim boys’ uncle had a tuma, which he had been given by the Diwan of Bakhtiyar, son of Muizz al-Dawla al-Bouhi, ruler of Baghdad.

The voice of the camel driver from al-Yamama to Basra was a yowl, pouring yet more blackness into the pit of my soul. I availed myself of every opportunity when he was silent to raise my voice in one of the poems I used to sing with Grandfather among the date palms of al-Yamama. Afterward, the owner of the caravan hurried to me and begged me to walk in the lead, so that I could recite poetry and sing to the camels to make them walk on. The caravan poured out slowly over the sand dunes of the al-Dahna Desert that led to Iraq. Musallama and Sakhr were glad of the new, privileged position I had attained, and joined me at the forefront of the caravan. When I ceased my camel song, exhausted, they took turns reciting some short verses of the Qur’an, and occasionally the Sura of al-Rahman, which would motivate the camels to resume their trotting over the dunes, our way lit by the distant glimmer of some feeble stars or a newborn moon that never strayed too far from the horizon.

The Mausoleum of al-Qarmati

The caravans were uneasy and apprehensive when we reached the outskirts of the land of Hajjar, inhabited by the clan of al-Qaramita: it was said that they contaminated their wells with bitter melon to afflict passing caravans with thirst and exhaustion, whereupon the tribes people would attack them, capture the pilgrims, and sell them into slavery or force them into servitude as shepherds until such time as they could ransom themselves after long years of hard labor, returning to their homeland only to find their inheritance divided up and their women remarried.

The leader of the caravan issued various commands to us: first, that we only enter Hajjar in groups; second, that we not display any sign of riches; and third, that we not engage with any of them in argument. We arrived on a Friday night, the horizon cloying with the scent of date palms, and the air filled with the susurration of waterwheels. The camels were rested and fed, fires were lit, and dinner cooked. The next day, we went to the town marketplace, the doves easing the sweltering afternoon heat with their cooing. We performed Friday prayers in the great mosque of the town.

On our way back to the caravan, we took a path that passed by a walled garden, lush and flourishing. We glimpsed a great dome in its center, ornamented with mosaic tiles and surrounded by a low wall, inlaid with stones carefully set in the likeness of palm fronds, and with pots of mint and sweet basil set atop it. The windows of the dome were made of green-painted wood, decorated with rings of iron. Outside the gate to the low wall stood a magnificent black stallion, whickering and shaking its head violently against the flies.

We dared not broach the wall or draw too near the dome, so awe-inspiring was it, and because the people of Hajjar appeared to look upon it with great favor: everyone leaving the mosque raised a hand and saluted the structure, which remained mysterious until we reached the outskirts of the city and asked a date seller about it. Tradesmen are the best source of secrets; every tradesman hopes to unburden himself of his wares all in the folds of conversation. “That dome,” he whispered to us, “is built upon the tomb of Our Lord and Master Hamdan al-Qarmati. The stallion, with bit and bridle and saddle, never leaves that spot, day or night; he is waiting for him to be born again, surge out of his grave, and ride him once again, setting out to fill the land with justice after long unfairness.”

Musallama’s and Sakhr’s eyes gleamed with derision and they began to make uncharitable jests. Chasing one another around the date stall, they lurched drunkenly and yelled, “I am the sainted Hamdan!” and bellowed boisterously in the date seller’s face. They quite disrupted the air of reverence with which the poor tradesman had been telling the tale of al-Qarmati’s grave. I gave him a few coins and comforted him by sending up a loud prayer to Master al-Qarmati for his benediction and forgiveness, then chased Sakhr and Musallama off.

We all shared the dates, which melted in the mouth, so sweet were they. I turned a blind eye to Sakhr’s and Musallama’s harsh and ill-mannered demeanor. Their preferred method of waking me for dawn prayers was poking me in the shoulder with a stick. They stared long and openly at the women in the caravan with overwhelming lust, and gobbled their food greedily, provoking the mockery of the caravan owner, who said, “When will you be satisfied?”

Sakhr would mutter back with his mouth full, “When I fall on my face fast asleep!”

But “the companion is your light on the way,” as the proverb goes; I made no attempt to disembarrass myself of them at that time.

Eye of the World

We set the sun at our right hand and journeyed until we arrived at a place only a parasang from Mirbad, three miles from Basra. Although it was nearly sundown when we arrived, no sooner had we settled the camels and sat down than the horizon filled with the dust of carriages drawn by donkeys and mules, driven by the tradesmen of Basra. They eyed us like vultures circling their prey. I could not see anything about their clothing that set them apart from the people of al-Yamama, except that their turbans were more carefully wrapped about their heads and in colors that matched their abayas. They craned their necks to see the best wares we had brought from the depths of the desert: thick woolen camel-hair abayas, colorful carpets, fat preserved in pots made of dried pumpkins, and hard, dry pellets of yogurt called jamid. There were some gourds that the pilgrims from Mecca had been careful not to touch throughout our journey, and these they now hawked with calls of “Water from the sacred well of Zamzam, for those who would drink it!”

A group of camels now split from the caravan and continued on to Kufa. I saw their procession heading north, and wished I could have gone with them to visit the tomb of Imam Ali, peace be upon him. Musallama called to me, “Hold your tongue! It’s only those who want to die martyred that go to Watermelon Land,” by which he meant Kufa. “If you call for prayers and peace upon Prophet Muhammad like a Sunni, and pray for his companions, you’ll be chopped into little pieces by the Shiites who live there! Sunnis have only one job there, and that’s as street sweepers.”

Musallama and Sakhr’s words sobered and shocked me: how had they known that I was not a Shiite descendant of the Prophet? Was it only because I was their friend? When the caravans to Mecca passed us by in al-Yamama, those in the caravans would ask us, “Have the descendants of Hanifa turned Shiite now that they are ruled by the clan of Ukhaydar? People follow the religion of their monarchs, after all.”

My grandfather would respond with verse twenty of the Sura of al-Imran: “So if they dispute with thee, say, ‘I have submitted my whole self to Allah and so have those who follow me.’” This only mystified me more: were we Shiite or Sunni? Grandfather would lead the men in prayer; we fasted in Ramadan; when he came back from Iraq, he added his prayers for the descendants of the Prophet, traditionally Shiite, to his Sunni prayers, and asked God to return their rights to them and vindicate them against their enemies. But he was incensed by the clan of al-Qaramita’s actions, their arguments, and their theft of the Black Rock in Mecca and placing it in the region of Ihsaa. He always said, “They are nothing but thieves, heretics, and social climbers.”

When Grandfather died, a great many things changed. His Majesty Ahmad ibn Ukhaydar rejected everyone who applied to replace him, and brought in an imam from Basra, a thin man with a narrow brow and a hooked nose, a piercing glare and an irascible demeanor. He arrived in al-Yamama on a Friday, and spent a week in bed with a fever. The Friday after, he glimpsed a nitraria bush in a square adjoining the palace. He ordered it to be cut down at once, for the End of Days was nigh, when the Muslims, it was said, would vanquish the Jews, and if a Jew hid behind a tree branch it would betray him and say, “There is a Jew behind me”—all but the nitraria bush! Besides, he went on, the nitraria bush came to Yazid in his sleep and said to him, “Take vengeance on the people of Medina, who murdered Uthman!” leading to the Battle of Hurra.

At the time, I thought the imam’s resentment of Muawiya and Yazid was part and parcel of his cantankerous nature and a means of flattering the Shiite lord of the Citadel; I had not yet heard the imams of Karkh hurling vile insults at these two personages every Friday from their pulpits.

Ah, Basra. They call it “The Eye of the World.” “Mother of Iraq,” they say, too, and “the Tigris’s favorite daughter.” They say if you take a handful of its soil in your hand, a date palm will grow out of it. Together we went forward, Musallama, Sakhr, and I; the tradesmen of Basra passed by us and we were devoured by their eyes, with our humble clothing and unkempt hair. We had nothing to barter with them, for our supplies were exhausted; we only had a few dirhams left, and were unsure if these would be enough to secure us passage to Baghdad with another caravan.

I suggested that we spend some time in Basra, working for a wage at some inn or another, or in harvesting crops in estates or farms, until we scraped together the money to continue on our journey; it was a valuable opportunity to explore its mosques, discussion circles, and theological discussion groups before going on to Baghdad. My companions fell silent. Instead of responding, sly expressions formed on their faces. Since we were some distance from the marketplace and far into the palm groves, I feared that we might appear suspicious. “Let’s go back,” I said.

“You go back,” said Musallama. “We’ll catch up.”

I know not what alerted me to the fact that they had some plot in store for me. I was exhausted and alone, filled with dark thoughts. The scent of palm pollen surged through my veins. Still hearing the waterwheels of al-Yamama, I let the sound of the wind calm me as it wended its way through the cracks in the dry earth. I went to sleep for a while in a mud-brick mosque I had glimpsed at the start of our path.

The windows of the little mosque were set high, close to the ceiling. I curled up in a dark, cool corner. The faithful performing the evening prayers had started to leave the mosque, leaving only an imam in a black turban inside, with some farmers and young boys clustered around him in a semicircle as he told them the Story of the Owl.

As I lingered between sleep and wakefulness, I heard him preaching, repeating in bored tones, as though he had given this sermon hundreds of times, “That bird insisted that Imam al-Husayn must die a martyr, and like all birds, it sang in the morning, sought its daily sustenance, and returned to its nest to sleep every night. But after the lord of all young men in Paradise, Imam al-Husayn, died, the owl repented by fasting all day and weeping all night, so it fasts by day and laments by night, wishing peace and prayers on the Prophet’s grandson and the members of his family.”

I do not know whether the story was being told to preach or to entertain, but my eyes began to drift shut as I listened, and I knew not when they left. I remained, listening to the hooting of the owl coming in through the high windows of the mosque all night long.

The poke of a stick in my shoulder woke me from a deep sleep and a dream that had captivated all my senses: white skies, the scent of rain. I was soaring with a flock of cranes. Our eyes were fixed on the pinnacle of a shining mountain, toward which we were flying. Another poke in my shoulder, harsher. Although I was still half asleep, I could make out in the predawn mist the face of Musallama of Tamim, with his unkempt braids, thick beard, and prominent cheekbones. He whispered roughly, “Wake up for the dawn prayers!”

“The imam hasn’t announced the start of prayers yet,” I slurred.

He poked me again. “Get up! I want you for something. It’s important. I’ll wait for you at the door to the mosque.”

I dragged myself up heavily, shuffled over to the place set aside for ablutions, and washed to rid myself of the fogginess of sleep. When I came out, Musallama and Sakhr were standing at an angle next to the doorway on the eastern side, waiting for me, their woolen abayas wrapped around them, glancing about apprehensively. The outlines of the farmers were beginning to appear from among the shadows of the date palms, hurrying toward the mosque.

They motioned to me to follow them. I did so with difficulty; it was all I could do to keep pace with their hurried footsteps. We walked for a long while by the fence until morning had broken completely, although misty; finally, we reached an abandoned wall at the edge of a thick grove of palm trees. In this mist, I saw the head of a slaughtered animal, severed and cast aside by the wall, its skinned hide and mounds of its meat cut up next to a pool of blood.

All the sleepiness left me and my eyes widened. “What’s this?” I asked them.

“We found it, a stray,” Musallama said. “And a stray is a find, and a find is a gift. We slaughtered it and ate our fill of its flesh.” He added, “We shall light a fire to cook the meat, and you will eat your fill as well.”

“Are we going to eat all this meat?” I asked, slack-jawed.

“The rest of the meat and hide we will put in these baskets and cover them with palm fronds, and slip into the Basra market to sell them,” said Sakhr. “We can buy new clothes and a lively mount to ride in turns, and accompany a caravan to Baghdad. We have no wish to go into Baghdad and enter our uncle’s house with such mean attire and looking so unkempt.”

Stunned, watching the morning’s flies swarming the carcass’s head, I said, “But how do you know it was a stray? The custom is to go calling throughout the marketplace for a number of days, three at the least, calling out for its owner, and only then, if no one responds, is it a find.”

“It’s a find!” Sakhr yelled out.

“The rule for a stray is three days!” I cried back heatedly. “And you only arrived in Basra yesterday!”

Mocking, Musallama said, “We don’t know about your religion, you who lived all your life in al-Yamama, how you misinterpret it and twist the meanings of the sacred texts.”

Sakhr was usually a man of few words, leaving the talking to his cousin Musallama, but he suddenly called out with a passion betrayed by the tremor in his voice and his fist, which he shook in my face, “It’s a find! Don’t you understand? Come near and eat of its delicious grilled liver! When it’s in your stomach, cover it up with some of these delicious Basra dates we plucked from the abandoned wall behind us.”

“And are those stray dates, too?” I said dryly.

“No,” they said, uncaring. “But the wall’s abandoned and unguarded. It’s probably a charity field for passersby and travelers like ourselves. We have heard much about the people of Basra and their generous nature: they do not even pick up the dates that fall from the trees when the wind blows. If the winds are strong, they know that the dates will go to the poor and needy, and to lone travelers.”

Musallama turned to the west and called out “Allahu akbar,” then added: “Let us perform the dawn prayers here before it is too late.”

We stood behind Musallama, who led us in prayer. The buzzing of the flies grew louder around the head of the animal. The stench of blood was all around us. Some sparrows and other birds alighted, pecking at the remains. I snatched a glimpse of the birds. The owl was not among them: it was fasting, readying itself to mourn all night, lamenting al-Husayn. What a life, frittered away between fasting and grieving!

We knelt and prostrated ourselves, led by Musallama, who recited the Sura of al-Kawthar sweetly. We arranged to meet the following day, when I would tell them what I had decided with regard to accompanying them to Baghdad.

All the way, I walked with my head down, full of suspicion, for fear someone would realize my stomach was full of stolen meat. The afternoon sun shone down on the date palms and the birds in the branches called out with joy. How I wished I could spend the day cooling myself among the waterwheels, washing my soul clean of the slaughtered animal’s blood. I had thought that strangers in a new place would be extra careful, timid and timorous, asking permission almost for the very air they breathed. But Musallama and Sakhr had transformed it into a land of conquest, battles, and booty.

The walls of the mud-brick mosque appeared before me, with its high windows beneath which I had spent the previous night. When I arrived there, I met the imam at the door, the teller of the Story of the Owl. In the morning light, his face looked fresher; he was short and stout, with a large paunch. “Which clan of Arabs are you from?” he asked, friendly.

“I am a Hanafite Sunni from al-Yamama,” I replied.

“May the clan of Bani Ukhaydar always prosper, proud descendants of the Prophet Muhammad!” he said genially. “What was rightfully theirs was wrested from them, but God is all-knowing. I saw you yesterday, coming to the mosque to sleep. I didn’t like to wake you; you seemed tired. I am Sheikh Zakir, the imam of this mosque.”

“Two hundred parasangs between al-Yamama and Basra, and it has taken all I have to get here,” I said. “My destination is Baghdad, but I mean to stay awhile in Basra before I journey on to Baghdad.”

I did not tell him that I was penniless and without resources, but he appeared to divine it, for immediately he asked me, “You are of the clan of al-Yamama, which must mean you can climb palms and collect dates and prune the trunks and cut off the dried fronds, in exchange for a dirham and a handful of the dates of each palm?”

I agreed at once; Sheikh Zakir’s offer was a valuable gift indeed, especially as it would rid me of Musallama and Sakhr.

I met them the next morning near the mosque; they had changed their clothing and bought abayas like those brought in by the caravans, although they were still barefoot and wild-haired. They urged me to accompany them to their uncle’s house; he was a camel trader, they told me, between the desert of Samawa and Baghdad, and was a close friend of the Persian clerk who managed the treasury. Proudly, they told me that the clerk would place them on the list of those who would receive gifts and bequests from the caliphate, allowing them to remain in Baghdad and enjoy the rivers, buildings, bridges, and gardens that city boasted, filling their ears with the music of the anklets of its wanton slave girls. They had no need to go forty parasangs northward in order to cultivate desert land bequeathed to them for five years and confiscated once more if they were to fail to make it bloom. “We will only need to visit those bequests of land once a year, or else hire someone to cultivate them,” they said slyly.

I made excuses, telling them I was still exhausted from the journey and needed a few days in Basra. I also said I planned to attend some discussion circles held by the imams, and to visit the libraries in the city. I made sure to say farewell to them well away from the mud-brick mosque, and slipped away wondering at how gentle, even vulnerable, they seemed at our goodbye. Tears sprang to Sakhr’s eyes, and I could not recognize them as the men who had decapitated the animal in the predawn mist and eaten its liver raw.

They left, waving and insisting that we must meet as soon as I arrived in Baghdad. Their uncle, they told me, was named Qutayba al-Tamimi, well known to all the traders of Baghdad. “But I have no desire to know him,” I muttered under my breath. I turned and made my way back to the mosque, to retrieve the rest of my things I had left there. I looked for Sheikh Zakir, the imam who had promised me a job and a boat to carry me to Baghdad.

The afternoon prayers had just ended and the men were leaving the mosque and spreading throughout the fields. I entered the mosque to find a foreign boy who spoke broken Arabic. He was collecting the reed mats after prayers and humming a song whose words were a mystery to me. Sheikh Zakir was sitting behind the pulpit turning a book over in his hands. He glimpsed me out of the corner of his eye as I approached him, so he closed his book and turned toward me, saying, “Warmest greetings to the Hanafite traveler!”

I sat near him, cracking my knuckles nervously. “I can start work today,” I said.

He tilted his head and stared at me doubtfully. “Have you ever trimmed date palms before?” He added mockingly, “Mind the climbing ropes; they’ll give you calluses. Besides,” he went on more seriously, “the ropes they give hired hands aren’t always the strongest. They’ve caused many a man to fall off the top of a tree. That field behind you”—he gestured—“has swallowed up seven men. That’s why they call this orchard ‘the Man-eater.’ But, after it claimed the lives of seven men,” he explained, “its owner devoted its earnings to charity, to support the discussion circles of Basra, including its slave boys and girls and all its cattle and beasts of burden.”

I held my breath. How did this man know that I had never trimmed a date palm in my life? I had no wish to be dissuaded from continuing on to Baghdad by the superstitious nonsense of this sheikh. I had been up all night making my plans and budgeting for the hundred dirhams I planned to earn from working on the date palms, even if I was a failure in these orchards—as I had been in al-Yamama. My father’s hired farmhands had always done this job in my stead.

“Never fear,” I said. “I will do the work as it should be done.”

He nodded, visibly unconvinced. “Are you good at anything else?”

I was speechless, not only because of this sheikh’s stubbornness, but because I realized that I was not good at anything—or, at any rate, nothing of any use in a date-palm orchard by the riverside. Even slaughtering lambs had been a bitter experience that had permanantly turned me against my father. Without waiting for my answer, he said, “What did you do in al-Yamama? How did you pass the time?”

After some hesitation, I said, “I assisted my father, who was a camel trader.” Then I whispered, “And most of my time I spent reading.”

His eyes, narrowed in ridicule throughout our conversation, suddenly widened. I discovered on the spot that they were bright green, like a cat’s. He passed me the book in his hand and said, “Then read: let’s hear you do it.”

I opened it to a page and read. “And know, my son, that there are two types of fortune: fortune that you seek out, and fortune that seeks you out; the latter will come to you even if you do not go to it. How bitter is submission when you are needy, and cruelty when you are wealthy!”

Shocked, he shook his head. “I swear, my boy,” he whispered, “it is your own fortune that you have read. What is all the world but signs and omens? Here is your fortune: it has found you.”

Not long after, I found myself seated at a low, round wooden table, holding a sheepskin-bound ledger with pens, ink, and several sheets of parchment at my side, setting down the name of every man who was due to work that day in the farm of the Man-eater, north of Basra: the name of every one of those I had been going to stand alongside as a day laborer. But every man’s fortune is predestined, you see.

Great numbers of men poured into the Man-eater orchard. Most of them were strangers to the city who had asked around in the marketplace for a means of earning money. There were Bedouins from Yemen, Hijaz, Amman, and Upper Najd whom fortune had brought to Basra, eyes fixed on Baghdad. I spent some time after the dawn prayers setting down the names of the men who had arrived that day and separating them by task: some collected dates, some trimmed the roots and cut off the dry fronds. These earned two dirhams a day, while those who cut the grass and cut canals for waterwheels earned one. When that task was done, I made out another copy of their names, and gave it to a peasant who was slight of build, with repulsive features and copper-colored skin, and who wore a wide-legged sirwal and a short shirt with no garment over them. He carried a whip everywhere, but he only ever lashed at the flies. However, he seemed to like brandishing it to fortify his image and make up for his shortness of stature and slightness of build. The first of these copies I would rush to the owner of the orchard, who lived in one of the mud-brick houses next to the barns. He asked me to help him set out the dirhams next to each man’s name; when we were done, he put them in a cloth sack, which he placed in a leather belt around his stomach.

Then we heard the call to the noon prayers from several minarets; we would pray together, whereupon he would invite me to share his meal. The only time I was able to find a moment to go into Basra and make the rounds of its marketplaces and stores was after the afternoon prayers; when sunset came near, I hurried back to the orchard to supervise the handing out of payment to the men and match the names to the faces, as a long line of men may always be infiltrated by sly freeloaders claiming to have done a day’s labor in the orchard. At that time, a few servants would come out of the mud-brick houses adjoining the orchard, bearing parcels and utensils, and helping each other carry gigantic baskets full of puffy, hot wheat bread, just out of the oven. They spread out reed mats beneath the palm trees and placed the loaves on them, along with bowls of date syrup and milk, around which the laborers gathered, exhausted and ravenous; they did not leave until they had all but eaten the utensils and mats as well.

I would stride back to the mosque, filled with unaccustomed pride: that of a man upon whose shoulders weighty burdens are placed and upon whose every word people hang—a man who comes home in the evening with dinars singing in his pocket. In al-Yamama, I had been always under someone’s wing: the wing of Shammaa from the House of Wael, the wing of Grandfather, the wing of the overarching fame of my father, the wing of the great Citadel of Bani Ukhaydar. Beneath that shadow, I could see but remained unseeing; my eyes had merely widened at the boundless wonder of this world.

Despite the sultry evening air and the fatigue in my limbs, my longing for books remained as strong as ever, nagging at me persistently enough to make me break the bounds of guest etiquette, and I approached the imam before he began the evening sermon. Defying his vigilant green eyes, I took small steps toward him. He had taken off his turban and placed it next to him, revealing his pointy bald head, and stretched his legs out, leaning on the wall and lost in thought. I whispered in trepidation, “May I read some of the books on the shelves?”

He looked at me silently for a while, and I almost retreated. Soon, however, he gathered in his legs and stood. I reached out a helping hand, but he ignored it. I muttered, “I’ll just take a quick look at them,” as if to apologize for the trouble I was causing him. Then, as though to assure him of my good intentions, I added, “Just . . . I’ll just stand at the shelf for a moment.”

He made his feeble way to the wooden closet where he stored his books, and pulled out the key he kept hanging around his neck. Then he pulled the doors fully open for me. Hurriedly, I reached out and snatched the first book my hand could reach: I was afraid he would change his mind or forbid me from reading something or other. Unfortunately for me, it was a short manuscript, just a few pages long. He gripped my wrist and read the title: The Influence of Melodies on the Souls of Animals by al-Hassan ibn al-Haytham. “Ah, Ibn al-Haytham!” he cried out. “But be careful of old Hassan’s words; they may drive you mad and fill your head with bizarre imaginings. “Why, they say that once he was in a mosque in Baghdad and was stopped by a man by the name of Ibn al-Marsataniya, right hand raised high with a copy of the book On the Configuration of the World—which is a book Ibn al-Haytham wrote, in case you didn’t know—and started accusing him of heresy and sacrilege!” He chuckled. “The man pointed out the circles and symbols in the book and said they were spells and magical talismans, and that ‘These are the circles penned by a man who claims to know the mysteries of the Unseen! What a travesty, what a disaster!’ Meanwhile, the common people and the rabble around him were yelling God’s praises and getting all worked up. Then he set the book on fire in the central square of the mosque.” The sheikh shook his head regretfully. “Hordes of people were always following Ibn al-Haytham around. They almost killed him before the Fatimid caliph rescued him and invited him to Egypt, saving his life.”

I arranged my features in an expression of interest and sympathy for Ibn al-Haytham, just waiting for the sheikh to finish speaking so I could be alone with my short manuscript. I looked at the title again: The Influence of Melodies on the Souls of Animals. I found that someone had written on the cover of the book, below the title:

I have always searched for knowledge and the truth. I believe that to draw nearer to God, there is no better way than to search for knowledge and the truth.

—Ibn al-Haytham.

I rushed to the place where I made my bed: a dark corner, two pillars separating it from the rest of the mosque, where the extra mats and pillows for Friday prayers were stored. I lay down there with a lantern whose flame was almost extinguished, but I leapt energetically among the book’s lines, despite the poor quality of the paper and the worn pages. Those only increased my ardor, like a beauty withholding her charms. I caught some lines saying that singing affects camels, making them go faster or slower, and that music fills sheep’s udders with milk, and brings chameleons out into the sunshine, and increases the yield of date palms, and makes goats more fertile.

Sleep claimed me before the lantern could go out; in my dreams, I saw a short man with dark skin and a sparse mustache and neatly trimmed beard. He had visited us once at my grandfather’s guest rooms in al-Yamama, bearing a book in his sleeve, and he had joined us in reciting the poetry of his beloved al-Asha, the poet of all poets: the horses and birds had fallen silent, listening to us, while the owl above my windowsill never ceased its lamenting of al-Husayn.

Fliers

I had swum beside the waterwheels of al-Yamama. I had plunged into its pools, searching for fish and frogs. I had splashed water on the other boys and been splashed in turn. Still, for all that, the thought of a journey by boat filled me with terror.

The harvest-season labor lasted three weeks. On the day the work concluded in the Man-eater orchards, the supervisor gave me a gold dinar over and above my pay, and prayed for my safe journey and success. Before this, he had been urging me to stay: “There are many people who will want a silent accountant, who eats little and gossips less, with a neat and beautiful hand.” But his offer did not interest me; it was, besides, clear that he was making it by way of apology for the paucity of my recompense. He did not insist, nor did I take it seriously. Perhaps Basra was only a way station for me on my journey to Baghdad, also known as the Home of Peace. It was he who had advised me to take a riverboat to Baghdad. “Getting to Baghdad by river will save you several days compared to traveling by caravan,” he advised me. “If you wish, I will give you the name of a man who is known for his skill in riding the river and controlling his boats, and has a reputation as a good man, besides.” It was clear that he was trying to palm off the ignorant traveler onto a friend of his, but why not? I would go to where he had directed me, and he who feigns ignorance is the winner, as they say.

I went to Bata’ih, the location he had described to me. There were not many people there. I told one of the dockworkers that I wished to register among the travelers leaving the next day. “Oh, there’s no need to register,” they said. “Every day there are quite a few boats leaving, although the water’s low this time of year. Just come out here tomorrow after the dawn prayers, and you shall definitely find a boat to take you aboard.”

My heart trembled. Was it from fear of riding the river, or being near Baghdad? I told Imam Zakir that I planned to leave the next day. He nodded soberly. After the evening prayers, he brought me Ibn al-Haytham’s book as a gift. I thanked him and rushed forward, meaning to kiss his brow, but he fended me off, laughing. “Not to worry! I have placed this book in the most honorable location: instead of it being eaten by moths, it fell into your lap. It shall not crumble to dust now! Take it and copy it. This, I swear, is the original copy from the pen of Ibn al-Haytham.”

I did not know back then that one day I should play the game of light and shadow with Ibn al-Haytham himself.

With the morning mist, steam still rising from the river reeds, we boarded a narrow dinghy, twenty arms’ lengths long, of the type called a flier, to take us to the ship, which could not make it as far inland as Basra. The river route from Basra to the city of Wasit, which we would pass by, branches into three, and the water coming from upriver all empties out before arriving at Basra into marshlands and swamps called al-Bata’ih. When ships arrive, they unload their cargo onto small boats that can traverse this portion, which splinters into narrow channels choked with interlaced reeds. Among these channels were huts for the guards, their windowless shapes like beehives. I did not search for the man recommended to me by the supervisor at the orchard. I took a boat whose boatman seemed to have sprung up among the river reeds, short and thin and wiry, with sprightly movements, leaping and bounding over the surface of the boat with the effortless skill of a dragonfly building a nest. But his boat was narrow, barely enough for my size: I placed my things in the bottom of the boat beneath my feet. The boatman gave an oar to each of the ten men who had boarded the boat. “Row calmly and gently,” he advised us, “so you do not tire yourselves out. Keep calm even if we meet thieves or bandits: row fast and cry out loudly, ‘God damn all infidels!’ so that the guards will hear you and come to our rescue.”

As we slipped through the reeds, he never stopped chattering praise for the sturdiness of his boat and the strength of its construction, using papyrus stalks harvested in the heat of August, the craft being a family secret handed down for generations since the dawn of time, and so on and so forth, until we reached the sailboat that was to carry us to Baghdad.

The sailboat was roosting on the edge of the marshlands, imposing as a clan leader’s tent. Next to it was a small boat bearing two boys as identical as two peas in a pod. Or perhaps I should say two pumpkins: they had huge heads and were uncouth, demanding the full fare, first to Wasit, then to Baghdad, before the craft so much as set sail. The man boarding the boat ahead of me was coming from Yemen, and I could hear him insulting them under his breath. “Damn them! They want their fee in advance, even if they let us fall into a whirlpool or become food for the fish on the journey.” His ire, however, did not show on his face: his narrow lips were carefully clamped together in a feeble smile he aimed at them when they helped him up on deck.

We sat in a corner of the deck: the breeze was cool and refreshing, as though we had ascended to a higher plane of the atmosphere, quite different from the sticky heat that had buffeted our faces when we were closer to the surface of the river among the reeds. The ship delayed its departure until it was almost evening. Although the boatmen were uncouth, we were pleasantly surprised to find a little boy handing out stalks of sugarcane and some cucumbers by way of hospitality. The captain finally told us that he would not be able to set sail by night, and that we would commence our journey at first light. Some of the passengers berated him angrily, quoting Khalid ibn al-Walid’s famous saying, “Travel by night, morning’s delight.”

“That, my dear fellows,” the captain said, “is all very well in the desert, when we travel in the nighttime to avoid the heat and the harsh hot winds; but it is different on the river. We must be able to see our path and watch out for whirlpools and clumps of reeds.”

I was undisturbed by this, unlike my companion from Yemen, who began to show the symptoms of seasickness. His name was Hezekiel. I thought his name strange until he told me he was Jewish, a follower of Moses. His destination, he told me, was Wasit, to join his family there and work at minting coins, now that there was little demand for such work in Yemen: in that land, he told me, they now mixed gold and silver with mercury when minting coins, so that their weight would not change despite the loss of precious metal replaced by mercury. Wise traders recognized these coins, he told me, and called them “mercury-laced” or “counterfeit.” You could only tell such a coin by biting it and bending it with your teeth. The trade caravans had stopped accepting gold and silver coins from Yemen, because the path was rocky and treacherous and the sea full of pirates, and now the money was counterfeit as well. The market for such coins had slumped in Yemen, but flourished in Wasit.

I remembered then the uncle of Shammaa of the House of Wael, who had left for Iraq and lived in Lower Wasit, and worked in a farm given to him that was called al-Yamama of the Foreigners. Should I stop in Wasit, the City of Pilgrims, and spend some days there? Should I do my religious duty to visit my mother’s family, and visit my great-uncle? But it appeared that the dirhams in my possession would not allow for such a luxury.

On the evening of the second day, we glimpsed Wasit at a distance. “There it is!” called the boatman. “We shall drop anchor on the western side. If you want the eastern bank, you’ll need to take a dinghy.”

The port was crowded with ships and boats carrying dates, pumpkins, and pomegranates northward toward Baghdad or back south to Basra. Hezekiel took his leave after extracting a promise from me to visit him in Wasit. The pumpkin twins resumed their uncouth demanding of the full fare in advance of the passengers embarking at Wasit, before the latter could so much as catch their breath and put down their traveling chests.

The Home of Peace Is Theirs

That night, I left the Karkh market behind me and left for the place they call the Circular City, having secured a tiny room that I rented at the Khan al-Hashimi boardinghouse a few days after I arrived in Baghdad—a rare achievement for a stranger to the city. But the bird of good luck, who is not a frequent visitor to me, was flying in my skies and dropped the room into my lap. The fabric of Fate weaves its threads in secret. I was led to this room by a chain of events that could not possibly have been coincidence: they had shaped my life up to this point and would continue to shape what was left of it, all my tomorrows, causing me to doubt once again whether one is predestined or the possessor of free will. The answer still slips through my grasp, and I do not think that I shall ever manage to reach it until I am laid in the earth.

Baghdad, the Circular City, boasts a perfect circular shape that would be the envy of any heavenly body, and glitters like a garment of light. If you wish for glory or seek to capture power, find it here, on its streets and among its mosques and paper traders, for whatever bounty you do not avail yourself of, you shall not find in any other city. It is a place that orbits around itself, its heart a cluster of caliphs’ palaces separated by three walls from the rest of the city. Crowded, noisy, bustling, where shoulders rub in its streets, it was overwhelming for me; I was accustomed to limitless open spaces and a desert horizon that unfurled broad and lonely, where anyone approaching could be glimpsed from afar. It is the destination of those who seek knowledge and the final stop on the path of caravans: it was hard to find a place that offered shelter to a studious man who would venture far to seek knowledge but does not have the warmth of a sack of dinars on his belt. The places available for my lodging were limited. But the muezzin of the Great Mosque directed me to this boardinghouse: perhaps it was a discreet dismissal, to rid himself of my presence, sleeping every night in a corner of the hall or under the stairs of the pulpit.

I had always heard from my grandfather that the best sanctuary for a stranger to any city was the House of God, the Great Mosque. “It is the center of any city,” he said, “and the location of its treasure, and its affairs ultimately come together there. Its laws have their origins there.” But the muezzin of the mosque appeared not to have heard my grandfather, and he was not friendly to strangers. During my nights at the mosque, I made the acquaintance of four brothers from Baluchistan, who had performed the hajj pilgrimage that year and were now on their way home. They had a fifth brother, they said, who had opted to remain in Mecca as a neighbor to the Holy Kaaba. We slept beneath the steps of the minaret, and every night they would tell me the strange and wonderful story of the brother they had left behind. He was a skilled horseman, they said, and an avid hunter, and he spent most of his time in that activity, giving all his attention to it; he left the shepherding, the keeping of cattle, and the planting of fields to them, and occupied himself with chasing prey. One day, on a hunting trip, on a high mountain with serpentine rocky paths, he had glimpsed a white deer, finely formed, with gold rings around its hooves and thick black lashes that feathered upward from bright eyes. Its delicate nose was extended to a spring of water, about to drink. “What did our brother do but loose an arrow that pierced it to the heart?” they told me, “It fell, dead. Then the entire mountainside was filled with screams of grief and wails of despair. The leaves of the trees and the rocks on the mountainside fell. The deer was none other but the daughter of the sheikh of the mountain, and she had taken the form of a deer to drink from the spring away from her bodyguards.”

Another took up the tale. “This was in defiance of the prophecy of her old nurse, who told her, ‘An arrow will pierce your heart. I hope it is the arrow of love, not of death.’ Our brother managed to escape the vengeance of the ruler of the mountain, the fearsome sheikh who made the wind, rocks, and caves of the mountain do his bidding, for killing his favorite daughter, Jilayn. But he returned to us distracted, his eyes wandering every which way. His sprightly nature was gone; he took to staring at us and then bursting into loud weeping, or else he would wake up in the middle of the night, sit bolt upright, and scream out, ‘Jilayn!’”

“The doctors and physicians tried to cure him, but to no avail,” another brother said, “and so we resolved to take him on a pilgrimage to the Holy Lands. When we arrived in Mecca, he clung to the curtains of the Kaaba and would not let go. He just kept weeping, day and night, without ceasing, until a patch of the fabric fell into his hand, upon which was written: ‘From the Almighty and All-Forgiving to My truehearted believer: Go, for you are forgiven for all your sins, before and since.’ And this was the very heart of the reason he had performed the pilgrimage: to be forgiven for his sins! Before that, we had asked him to leave the holy place and return to where we had pitched our tents, and he had refused. But after the piece of fabric fell upon him, he came back to us, his color improved, and his eyes no longer wandered. ‘I was waiting for permission to go from my Lord God,’ he said, ‘and here He has given it to me.’ He showed us the piece of fabric, and after that, he decided to remain in Mecca, close to the Holy Kaaba, for God only knows how long, now that his health and peace of mind have been restored after long confusion.”

The Baluchistanis told the story of their brother over and over again, recalling it with wonder and admiration. Then they would take to muttering, “If He wills a thing to happen, he has but to say ‘Let it be’ and it shall come to pass.” I did not interrogate them as to the details of their story, although it changed every day in the retelling, and they corrected one another or reminded each other of the events in their own tongue. Eventually I, too, began to remind them of some of the details they had forgotten—the valorous exploits of their brother; his sharp, lethal arrows; and the leaves falling all at once from the trees as the sheikh of the mountain wailed in grief.

The Baluchistanis were absent from the mosque for most of the day seeking gainful employment and the dirhams I had earned at the Man-eater orchard allowed me some space to explore the city. I wandered for long distances through its alleys, allowing my feet to lead me. I wanted to drink in the city: its mosques, its discussion circles, the paper markets, the flirtations of its girls taking the air on the riverbanks. In the evenings I took care to return to the mosque, because the policemen and the informants were always to be found in the alleyways and the squares after evening prayers time. They had flashing eyes, belts bearing long knives called tabrazin at their waists, and green turbans on their heads adorned with a piece of brass stamped with the caliph’s seal. I did this for a few days before the muezzin came rushing to me, bearing the good news that he had found a room for me in at the khan of Abu al-Hassan al-Hashimi.

The Khan of Abu al-Hassan al-Hashimi

Abu al-Hassan al-Hashimi was one of the notables of Baghdad. He was well known as a lover of science and knowledge; he spent most of the days of the year journeying between Baghdad, Sindh, and the northern borders that adjoined Byzantium. He built a great boardinghouse on the eastern side of the River Tigris, close to its banks, and hired the most skillful craftsmen and the best builders and fabricants to build it. Roofed and three stories high, it was a magnificent architectural achievement, far grander than the surrounding houses and dwellings. When it was perfect, he set it aside as a religious endowment for scholars and students of theology. This information was all given to me by Abu Qandil, the muezzin who secured me the room. I knew it was prudent to ignore half of what he said, on account of his earnest wish to get me out of his mosque, but the other half still sounded good enough for me to direct my steps there. After all, just the availability of an empty place was a blessing for which I should be thankful.

Abu Qandil held forth on how Khan al-Hashimi had a section devoted to craftsmen and a section for tradesmen, while the second floor held stalls, paper traders, and calligraphers. Some of the rooms in the boardinghouse, he said, were set aside for students of theology coming to Baghdad from all over the world in exchange for small services performed by the students— assistance in running the boardinghouse in Abu al-Hassan al-Hashimi’s absence, as he was away for many months. “Go there,” the muezzin said, “and tell them you were sent by the muezzin Abu Qandil. That should, God willing, be enough to guarantee you a room.” Ignoring my openmouthed stare, he patted me on the shoulder and exited through the eastern gate to the mosque. As he went, he gestured to an aqueduct, a stream of water paved with stones. “Walk next to this canal,” he instructed. “They call it the Chicken Canal. Go east toward the river. You’ll find it there. If you get lost, ask somebody. Everyone knows where it is.”

The muezzin’s enthusiasm was almost like an eviction: I felt a little insulted. I collected my things, resolving never to darken his door again. But soon enough I found myself muttering under my breath, “That’s probably just what he wants. It’s never a bad thing to get used to the rudeness of those you meet on your travels, where there’s no protection from your mother’s reputation, nor from your grandfather’s prayers, all intertwined with the scent of the date palms of al-Yamama.”

I went eastward, alongside the Chicken Canal. There were some leaves and straw floating in it, and dried windfall fruit. On my left was the round wall of the city, tall and imposing, said to be thirty-five arms’ lengths high, with square stones interlaced like the tight knit of fabric. Entry was only permitted to travelers. No beasts of burden were allowed in the circular inner sanctum of the caliphate except those belonging to the caliph and his retinue and the palace courtiers.

The smell of the river led me to my destination. Here, in Baghdad, the river smelled different from Basra. The river gives every city a different air, mood, and scent, and while in Basra the river breezes come to you mingled with the thick scent of reeds, here they come to you laden with sounds like cooing, chuckling, and neighing. The cries of birds grow louder by the riverbank, and the paths are crowded with walkers, passersby, and folk hurrying on their way. The closer you get to the river, the thicker the date palms around it.

Suddenly I came out onto a great round plaza, into which a number of narrow paths led. A wooden platform was erected in its center and everyone crowded around it. I stood watching them curiously as they whispered among themselves and looked around, directing their attention to one of the alleyways.

Before long a group of guards appeared at the mouth of the alleyway, shoving a man with a bowed head, who was crying out and trying to get away from them. When they passed by me, I could see that their captive appeared to be wealthy, his features showing the soft living of palaces: he wore a luxurious garment and expensive leather slippers, and when they pushed him up onto the scaffold, they made him kneel and pulled his turban off, whereupon his well-groomed hair spilled over his shoulders like a shining curtain. From where I stood, I could see the beads of sweat on his broad noble brow. They bound his hands behind his back with hempen ropes, then tied him to a pillar on the scaffold. Suddenly, I saw him surge up and spit in the face of one of the guards. The guard slapped his face and kicked him between the legs; he fell forward, retching.

My bones trembled. I began to feel nauseated myself. Around me, the assembled throng took to clapping and whistling, and some shouted, “Yes, slap him! He hoards money! He doesn’t pay his zakat and give his rightful due to charity!”

One of the guards brought a bucket filled with a sticky black liquid, a ladle floating at the top, and started to pour it over the man’s long, glossy hair and his expensive garment to the cheering and whistling of the crowd, who pelted him with pebbles. The bound man cried out, “Merchants of Baghdad! Lend me money to give to these demons! You all know who Abu Muhammad ibn Umar is! You all know my integrity in the marketplace! Lend me money, or tell these demons to give me five days to sell one of my holdings and pay the amount they claim I owe the treasury! But know that it is unjustly demanded, making its way into the stomachs of the Persians!”

When he said his last line, the soldier upended the bucket over his head: he floundered around, gasping, half dead, as the onlookers called out, “Have you such need, then, keep the sum of your zakat?” And they took to pelting him with orange peels and cow pies.

It was as though Baghdad was stealing my joy from me, the joy that had filled me as I was walking alongside its aqueducts and enjoying the river breezes filling my lungs. It had shown me one of its darker faces—of which many were yet to be revealed.

Abu Qandil had been right: I had no need to inquire of any passerby the location of Khan al-Hashimi, for it dominated the riverbank, towering over it with the solidity of a mountain. Only about a hundred arm spans from the Tigris, it was bustling with folk coming in and out, chimneys emitting smoke dotted about the corners of the building. The northern outer face was devoted to craftsmen’s workshops, heads bent everywhere to their carving, tapping and ornamenting the edges of various things. Despite the press of faces and tongues, they quickly spotted a stranger, and turned to stare at the man loitering by the boardinghouse. To conceal my embarrassment, I approached a blacksmith standing at the door of his stall. His face was smudged with soot, and his thick, fleshy features softened to see me. “What is the name of the person responsible for the khan?” I asked.

“Over there.” He pointed out the entrance to me. “At the far end of the khan, by the stairs that take you up to the second floor. His office has a green wooden door. It’s the only one that color in the whole place. You’ll find the man you’re looking for there.”

I could tell from his accent that he was a foreigner. Before he could press me for more detail, I thanked him, feeling that his eyes were glued to my back.

The khan’s ceiling towered high above me, its cylindrical central hallway so vast you could scarcely glimpse the other exit: to my left, like a far-off light, was the ground floor, surrounded with archways and close-set wooden pillars with bases of green marble. A stinging spicy scent and a thick perfume suffused the entire place.

I pushed in toward the right-hand side: to my left were spice stores, perfumers, potters, and sellers of fabrics and carpets. By the time I arrived at the room with the green wooden door the blacksmith had described, I was overwhelmed by the colors, smells, and sounds, as though I had been transported to a magical market.

I knocked on the door, and waited for a while before knocking a second time. There was no response. I had already turned to go when I heard a muffled voice from inside. “Who is it?”

I hurried back and pushed the door open, poking my head inside. Inside were thick shadows, the smell of paper and inks that concealed the interior from me. I pushed the door open wide to let in enough light for me to identify the owner of the voice. He was a slight little man, like some poisonous creature that never leaves its hole. He had slender fingers, red eyes, and a pale face. He was sitting at a table piled high with papers, inks, files, and sheets of inscribed leather. My boldness in opening the door wide appeared to have disgruntled him. “What’s the matter?” he squeaked snappishly. “What do you want?”

I was taken aback by the hostility in his tone, despite his squeaky voice. “Peace be upon you,” I said. “I come recommended by Abu Qandil the muezzin—”

“Damn that fellow!” he burst out. “He never stops sending riffraff and idle trash our way!” Not waiting for an answer, he growled, “Look here, young man. This khan wasn’t set up by my lord al-Hashimi to provide shelter for every stray mendicant. It’s for brilliant students only—those who have the ability and talent that can serve and receive service in return. A man’s value lies in his skills. Where are you from, and what is your skill?”

My experience in Basra seemed to have been a preparation for this moment, making me better equipped to withstand his boorish response. I took a step in his direction and plucked his quill from the inkwell. Upon a piece of leather that lay before him, I wrote in my best handwriting, “I am from the land of the poet who wrote: ‘He who headbutts a rock to soften it, / Does it no harm, but his skull’s often hit.’”

“Isn’t that a verse by al-Asha?” he said. Then he recited: “‘Still you remain swaggering and arrogant; / Sunnis of al-Yamama; what do you want?’”

He went on: “You would speak of skulls, you who are related to the lying false prophet Musaylima? No wonder, for it’s among your folk that the horns of the Devil will appear!”

By now I was red in the face, and quite ready to come to blows. Perceiving this, he surged up from his seat and quickly opened a wooden box that lay in the corner of the room. From this he produced a key. “Maysara!” he called out. The little boy who had been at the door to the room came in. “Take this gentleman to room seven.” Turning his attention to me, he said, “Close the door behind you on the way out. Tomorrow, come to me after noon prayer to receive the list of your duties.”

The Spirits of Room Seven

Although the room was small and sparsely furnished with a threadbare carpet and a cotton mattress rolled up in one corner, with a small high window, little more than a porthole, it was a palace compared to the space I had occupied beneath the pulpit in the mosque. It was friendly, devoid of the cold, abandoned air of some long-empty houses, where the walls stare at you with chilly suspicion. In fact, some small creepers growing outside had pushed their buds into the room and were curling about the corners of my casement. I said the traditional greeting, “Peace be upon you,” by way of hello to the room when I came in, which made the boy, Maysara, look at me oddly as he handed me the key.

It soon became clear that Khan al-Hashimi was one of the prominent landmarks of Baghdad. It was close to the wall of the Circular City, in a neighborhood overlooking the Tigris called Bab al-Hadid, ornamented with estates and date-palm orchards. The close-set stalls in the khan wall meant the streets around it were packed at every time of day, and guaranteed custom from the denizens of the Circular City. In fact, they had clients from every neighborhood in Baghdad, as their wares were of a high quality that was rare indeed.

The rooms of Khan al-Hashimi were not an outright endowment; in other words, living there was not free. It was said that al-Hashimi had established the boardinghouse to protect students from the humiliations of want, hoping that they might become accustomed to a proud life of labor by means of providing accommodation in exchange for services provided. One of these was helping rebuild the outside of the building, especially the eastern wall, which faced the river and sustained regular damage from the flooding of its waters. The Tigris was prone to flooding, and could flood up to twenty-one arm spans on occasion, quite high enough for the waters to reach the floors of the stalls. The playful creatures of the river would swim up to the walls of the khan, climbing plants would grow upon the walls, birds would nest in the cracks, and all this needed continual restoration. The students who lived in the khan would come together under the supervision of a group of Nabatean builders, and soon the walls would be restored, the path to the river repaved, and some of the windows of the façade stained with tar and then decorated with colored gesso. The students might also take part in the harvest season, plucking dates for the estates owned by Abu al-Hassan al-Hashimi in their spare time. Some of those who could read and write kept the accounts for the stores of the khan in his absence. This was my allotted task, which I performed diligently and with a devotion to duty so palpable that it eventually made me share the fate of the cranes. It was indeed a shocking tale, filled with wonder, terror, and cunning.

There was a slave girl whose task it was to take care of the rooms, by the name of Jamra. She gave us food every morning: bread as dry as her veined hands, which we dipped in date syrup. Although her face was half obscured by tattoos, and her eyebrows as hairy as a scarecrow’s, some of the students who lived in the rooms winked and nodded that she could also be prevailed upon to perform other services in the night. But her manners were as unpleasant as her looks, and I had no inkling how any of them could bring themselves to know her. But for all that, sometimes she would give me a pomegranate or an apple; I would find it on the windowsill of my room.

My neighbor in the next room of the khan was a young Egyptian named Hassan. He had a round, smiling face, with a light smattering of beard on his cheeks. His large head was always moving and turning this way and that. He was a merchant fallen on hard times, here from Egypt to sell his wares—namely, papyrus. He had brought large quantities of it, polished and shining, and was trying to sell it in Baghdad, but it was not as popular as he had hoped: the paper traders only used it for book covers, and for drawing and ornamentation to hang on walls. Papyrus was no longer in demand, having been replaced by thin sheets of paper made by the Barmakid factory in Baghdad, or manufactured in Fergana, China, or Khorasan, the last of which was currently taking over the paper trade. The thin sheets of leather that used to be written on were now reserved for bookbinding, not the pages of books; leather is dry, heavy, and unwieldy, and if damp should touch it, it softens and renders the text upon it unreadable, then dries wrinkly and malodorous, tempting the mice to it as a meal.

Due to the lack of interest in Hassan’s wares, he now worked as a boys’ schoolteacher. One of the corners of the khan was endowed as a small school for two groups of folk: the poor boys of Karkh in the morning, and foreigners who wished to learn Arabic, the language of the Qur’an, in the evening. The school was noisy at all times: the reprimands and shouts of the teachers, the games and mischief of the pupils. My neighbor’s good-natured and friendly demeanor made me even fonder of the khan and those who lived in it, for Hassan the Egyptian was a pleasant companion with a keen memory who knew by heart many verses by al-Mutanabbi, and recited them fluently. When Jamra reproached him for lingering in his room of a morning, keeping her from cleaning it, and punished him by withholding his breakfast, he chuckled, laying a hand on his breast and bowing before her in mock contrition. “What shall I do with you, Jamra? You whose lips are like wine, whose commands are ours to obey, yet you have a harsh tongue!” Then he recited: “‘Each man to what he is accustomed, O my word; / To strike the enemy’s the custom of the sword.’”

He was not only conversant in al-Mutanabbi; he knew a great many works of grammar and theology by heart, or so he said. When I asked him to recite them together so I could learn them, or to dictate them to me so I could write them down and learn them later, he shook his head and avoided me, parroting an old proverb, “He who learns texts knows all that’s best!”

I had no wish to tell Hassan much about my life, not only because he was garrulous, but because his behavior was strange: sometimes he was filled with jokes and good cheer, generously handing out sweetmeats and fruit to the other students; at other times, however, he would plunge into moods of despondency and resentment so black that he barely returned my morning or evening greetings. Curled up outside his door was a pretty Persian cat. She came to see him, meowing, whereupon he would pet her and feed her. She disappeared into his room and slept there all day. She remained resistant to my efforts to coax her into my room or offer her some food, waiting for Hassan to come and feed her. He named her Morgana, and said, joking, “Morgana is my lady friend; she turns into a ravishing fairy at night, and stays in my bed until dawn, when she jumps back into her cat skin.”

“Why don’t you have her knock on our doors, then?” I asked, grinning. “Instead of leaving us to flirt with dry, withered old Jamra.”

Slyly, he would quote to me: “‘None shall know her but the patient; / None shall know her but the reverent.’”

I recall waking once at dawn and going out to relieve myself. I seemed to glimpse a coat of calico fur hanging at Hassan’s door. My mind was half-addled with the idea that perhaps Morgana was indeed with Hassan.

*

The name “al-Hashimi” was often mentioned in the khan, until it became immense in my head. I could not manage to form a clear image of him in my mind’s eye. The only time I could see him closely was when I glimpsed him sailing through the library of the khan, surrounded by his men and those who wished to speak with him. Hassan told me that he had tried many times to get a small plot of land by the river from al-Hashimi, to plant papyrus and then use it to make paper, but, according to Hassan, “He seems always pensive and distracted, thinking of this and that. He has no idea of the importance of this project! Or,” he mused, “maybe he’s afraid that by supporting my endeavor he will make me a favorite, which will arouse the suspicion that he is close to the Egyptians or to the throne of Egypt—and that would mean he is tacitly supporting the Shiite Fatimid Dynasty against the Sunni Abbasids. Especially since the Abbasid caliph, al-Muqtadir bi-Allah, never managed to beat back the Fatimid Dynasty or stop it from forming. All he could do was put out a message casting doubt on the heritage of the Fatimid Mahdi, who claims, as you know, to be the grandson of Muhammad, son of Ishmael, son of Jaafar the Truthful! His message affirms that the Fatimids who now rule Egypt are not the descendants of the Prophet Muhammad after all, but of a man named Disan ibn Said al-Kharmi; in other words, that their claim is false and they are not the descendants of Imam Ali ibn Abu Talib, the grandson of the Prophet.”

Hassan went on, head bowed as though he were imparting some great news: “No matter what they say about their heritage, the Fatimids have managed to build glory, to found a civilization and raise the light of Islam high!”

Everyone who frequented the Paper Traders’ Street in Baghdad also visited the Library of Abu al-Hassan al-Hashimi. He had devoted a broad expanse of the khan to it: it was not for buying or selling but only for seekers of knowledge. He moved some of the books there that his personal library could not house, or that he did not need at his home, a great palace in Rusafa on the other side of the Tigris, which Hassan described as “like the sultans’ palaces.” I recall, back home in al-Yamama, that the Prophet’s descendants considered it beneath them to work in trade or craft: according to them, they ought to live off al-khums, or the fifth of any sum collected as the spoils of war (in Sunni tradition) or according to a number of complex tax laws (in Shiite tradition), the honor of their ancestry, and the income from their estates. They should be above jostling with the common folk in trade and taking a portion of the poor man’s lot.

Perhaps this was why al-Hashimi had established this endowment, along with its library, which drove me mad, so many books did it hold and so varied were their titles. The library took up the entire eastern corner of the khan, some of its windows overlooking the river. I crept into it on the second day I stayed at the khan. I could not wait to become accustomed to the place, or earn its denizens’ trust: even the blacksmith at the front of the khan stared at me as I headed with quick strides to the door of the library, a mysterious deep look in his eye that I was unable to interpret at the time, and only learned the meaning of much later.

There was a door inside the khan leading to the library, but it was closed; that was why I used the outer door with access to the street. Outside, I paused for a moment by a magnificent elm, with a thick trunk and lush branches, some touching the windows of the khan. Birdcages of varying sizes hung on its branches. One held several yellow-bellied bulbuls that sang and hopped around inside; the other held a single sullen nightingale. Three of them held large colorful birds that looked rather like eagles; they returned my scrutiny with their own silent gaze. One of them tilted its head and squawked out a strange sentence: I staggered back in shock. It was the first time I had heard talking birds. I looked about me questioningly. The boy, Maysara, who had led me to my room the previous day, was sweeping up the bird droppings and cleaning out the cages. “What is it saying?” I asked him avidly.

With a cunning smile, he said, “A status between two statuses.”

“What does that mean?” I asked.

Instead of answering my question, he said, “These birds were put here by my lord al-Hashimi. Whenever a student finishes reading a set of books specified by the librarian, and passes a test on them, he gives him a gift by setting one of the caged birds free, as a sign that the student has been liberated from the cage of ignorance.”

I smiled, entranced by the charming conceit. “What further wonders, Baghdad, do you have in store for me?”

Leading into the library was a short passageway with a few wooden seats on either side and a breathtakingly high ceiling topped with a glass dome. This led into a large circular room that was rather dim, with shelves of gesso up to the ceiling, all covered with books and manuscripts and ledgers that were numbered and arranged by subject. A strong smell of leather mingled with the heaviness of smoke and the perfume of tree leaves that the librarians burned incessantly to keep moths and rodents out.

I completed my tour of the library, a deep delight spilling through my veins. How I yearned to devour the pages of these books! I was like one of the faithful touring the dwellings of his nymphs in Paradise for the first time.

Something at the farthest corner of the library caught my eye. It was a room without a door, within which a scribe and a number of copyists sat at neighboring tables. Around them, the floor was paved with boxfuls of all kinds of paper, ink, and writing utensils. They were so engrossed in their work that they barely spared a glance for my arrival, then bent their heads once more over their texts. They were writing upon polished, glossy paper that their pens slipped over with ease. This must be, I thought, Fergani paper. They were not only rearranging and rebinding books and replacing ruined pages, but copying and correcting as well. Three of the copyists had long, delicate fingers holding dainty pointed pens. They were numbering the pages, ornamenting the margins and covers, and applying gold leaf. When they were done with each book, they handed it to a man sitting in the corner of the room with a crucible of melted wax bubbling before him. He waited for it to cool and painted the front of each page with a thin layer of wax to protect it.

Seeing my fascination with and constant frequenting of al-Hashimi’s library, Hassan said to me, “The scribes are the grandsons of those brought in by the vizier al-Fadhl al-Barmaki when they founded the papermaking industry in Baghdad, and it’s become an inherited family business.” I had no real interest in this information: I had acquired the skill of filtering through the mountains of anecdotes that Hassan deposited in the laps of his interlocutors. However, it did give me pause when he put his head close to mine and whispered, “Al-Hashimi owns priceless copies of the translations that were in the House of Wisdom, which they now sell in secret for fear that they will be burned for heresy.” He went on, “It is said that the Surianese and their priests pay high prices to have them in their church collections. And that’s nothing to the prices they pay if you take them to Andalusia, and especially Cordoba! They’re mad for them there.” After a moment’s silence, he resumed. “I don’t know now, of course, what’s become of Cordoba after the Fitna. Does it still have its old passion for books and libraries, of which they say that the Fitna of the Umayyads has burned so many?”

I listened to Hassan with profound regret that these translations were now scattered throughout different lands, depriving me of the chance to read them. He whispered, “Abu al-Hassan is a lover of science. His home in Rusafa is a Mecca for poets and men of letters. But he does not stay in Baghdad long; he is always journeying hither and yon, for fear of arousing the suspicion of the caliph that he is hiding some wish to rise to power because he has so many visitors to his home.”

“But this caliph is weak!” I burst out. “He wasn’t even able to keep the Fatimids out of the Hijaz! And the sermon at this year’s hajj was given by Egyptians, and the Buyid Dynasty controls the region!”

“Do you think that anyone needs him, or listens to him?” Hassan whispered. “He’s a puppet caliph. The Persian Buyids have already got all his power. He does not sound the bugles of battle or send armies out, or even choose a wali for his throne. They coin money in his name and theirs; it is only for fear that the people will rise against them that they pray for him on Fridays. Other than that, his hands are tied. If he was not a descendant of the Abbasids, and were it not for the Persians’ fear of a popular uprising, they would have unseated him already. Last year, there was a strong rumor that they would remove him and instate the Fatimid caliph in his stead, but they hesitated for fear that there might be a descendant of the Prophet with a claim to the throne, someone who would command their obedience and they would end up sharing power.”

Ishaq al-Wasati’s Tavern

My days in Baghdad began to take on a certain order. I divided my time between the discussion circles and the library and, in the evenings, the welcome and friendly company of Hassan’s varied and neverending chatter. My silence stretched in his presence: there was no need for me to keep up my end of the conversation.

Ten days after I settled in the khan, Hassan told me that a relative of his, a trader coming from Egypt, was on his way to Basra, and that he wished to invite him out to dinner. With a sly wink, he said, “We’re going to Ishaq al-Wasati’s bar! I know my relative—he likes a bit of fun. He sways in time to the music and the dancing lovelies!”

I was not about to turn down such an offer. It was a side of the city I had been awaiting my whole life long. I had never tasted alcohol, for no other reason than that it was unavailable in al-Yamama—at least in our house, although there was a certain fabric trader in al-Yamama who brewed it and sold it in secret. When he died, the people of al-Yamama were perplexed: should they bury him with the Muslims, or had he committed a cardinal sin? My grandfather settled it, not bothering to argue with them: he went to his house, washed and prepared the corpse with his sons, who were still young, then ordered him borne in his coffin to the mosque. Only some paupers followed him, hungry men whom my grandfather promised the customary meal after burial.

Hassan’s relative did not resemble him at all; he had nothing like that brightness and alertness that Hassan’s large head contained. Hassan was always looking about like a hawk watching a hunter; his relative was a bent-backed older man, wearing an almost threadbare abaya and sandals so intertwined with his toes that he seemed to have been born in them. He had nothing of the elegance and good humor of a rake about him. Why had Hassan chosen to entertain him at al-Wasati’s bar? Apparently, the one who wanted to drink and sway with dancing lovelies was Hassan, not his broken-down old relative.

Ishaq al-Wasati’s tavern was some distance from the khan, so we took one of the small boats clustered around the riverbank for two dirhams each. The boatman took us to the bar, also on the river, discreetly situated behind fruit trees and date palms which shielded it from passersby to a great extent, so that only would-be patrons could divine its existence.

I had never been to a tavern in my life. Therefore, I stepped into it with my left foot forward, as one does when entering an outhouse. Later, I would look back on this behavior as naïve and childish: a man is firm of purpose, after all; either you wish to enter, or you do not. The tavern was a building like any other; not, as I had imagined, a gloomy cavern. It had a red-tiled roof and good stone walls: it might have been a renovated monastery. Its outer door opened onto a long rectangular room with a back door leading out into a rear garden whose walls were covered with climbing jasmine. There was a fountain in the center, a lady of stone pouring water into it from a sculpted urn. Around it, the patrons sat at tables with short wooden legs inlaid with mother-of-pearl, and drinks were being handed around that did not make them, as I had supposed, lose their minds; they did, however, talk loudly and burst into guffaws of laughter. To one side was a man with a lute who played a mournful, melancholy tune. Everyone was occupied with their own companions. I was astonished to see white-bearded old men wetting their mustaches in the silvery tankards of beer and licking them in delight.

Everyone there seemed to know Hassan. As soon as we walked in, we were approached by a young waiter with a smiling black face and in clean, elegant clothing. Hassan said haughtily, faking a noble mien, “Muhammad, take me to Ibn Hani’s trellis.” Muhammad bowed his head with a smile and led the way with quick strides that had us running after him. We went down a colonnade overlooking the garden, roofed with palm thatch and surrounded with pots of Persian jasmine, two steps elevated from the ground, furnished with colorful rugs and couches adorned with paintings of hunters chasing gazelles. As we were sitting down, Hassan called out to the waiter, “Bring us some of what Abu Nawas speaks about in his poetry—‘Give me the medicine that is itself my sickness!’”

Muhammad, the waiter, strutted about, pleased that the patrons knew him by name. We had followed him like barnyard hens following a crowing rooster. I studiously refrained from saying to him, “Being famous among tavern patrons is hardly cause for vainglory.”

A low brass table was set before us. The smiling, dark-skinned young man left and returned at once, bearing a tray laden with dishes: greens, fried unripe dates, salted hazelnuts, peeled pistachios, and pieces of sugarcane washed with rosewater. Hassan poured our drinks from a jug. “Have a taste of this,” he said. “They ferment it from Tawhidi dates. It’s delicious.”

“Does it make you drunk?” I asked naïvely.

“Give me strength to deal with you desert Arabs!” said Hassan, already starting to lean back, smiling and humming along with the lute player. “Forever in your tents debating how to find the Good Lord Almighty with what you can deduce from your senses! You quote the likes of al-Jahiz’s apocryphal Arab who, when asked how he knows God, answered, ‘The baby camel indicates the camel’s existence, and the tracks indicate the traveler’s persistence,’ and so on and so forth! Mazid of al-Yamama, use your head! The Lord has said only ‘Avoid.’ He says, ‘Intoxicants are an abomination of Satan’s handiwork, so avoid them.’ He has not said that they are prohibited. He has only said that of pork.” He sat up straighter and assumed a more serious tone. “Whatever has become of Imam Abu Hanifa’s fatwa that strong drink is permissible in small amounts? And Sufyan al-Thawri, who issued his own fatwa that the only drink that is prohibited is wine made from grapes, and of course drunkenness itself, but not alcohol? What is prohibited, he says, is that which will make you drunk if you, once you have started, are on the verge of inebriation.”

In a deep bass voice like a bull’s, our guest bellowed, “Hassan! Don’t press our guest in matters of religion! Let him choose as he pleases!” He grinned broadly, showing yellowed teeth. “Or else he’ll end up like the judge in the story. They say that a judge went knocking on the door of a nobleman, being thirsty, and asked the servant for a drink to quench his thirst. It was a cunning waiter who answered the door, so he brought him wine, and the judge asked him, suspicious of the flavor, ‘Is this alcohol?’ ‘No,’ the waiter said, ‘it’s liquor.’ And he kept on telling him different names for it: raisin juice, then booze, then sauce, then sozzle swill, and the judge kept on drinking glass after glass until he fell flat on his face, and had to be wrapped in his garment and carried home.”

Hassan threw back his head and laughed until his turban fell off, pointing at me. “We’ll see tonight whether we’re going to have to wrap this son of the desert in his robes and carry him home!”

Music filled the air. Breezes from the river wafted over us. And the imam Abu Hanifa had permitted a glass of wine in these surroundings, after all, as long as it didn’t make one drunk. But how was I to know how drunk is drunk enough for a sin? Should I measure it with the span of my hand? I was an innocent, but at the same time I had a great thirst for experience. I gave myself over to the ecstasy running through my veins.

The smell and taste were too sharp for me: I brought the cup near to my lips, only to move it away again. After a short while, Hassan’s guest slurred, “Where are the fat geese?” He too had taken off his turban, and was starting to watch the people around him. I realized then that, since we left home, we had not spoken to him or made any pleasantries as hospitality dictated. He spoke again like a grunting bull, “Is there some place where a man can take his pleasure with a wild young deer or gazelle next to this house of wine? I hear that they only cost two dirhams a night.”

“Ishaq al-Wasati’s tavern is for gentlefolk only!” Hassan snapped. “It isn’t for lowlifes or men who call for gazelles or geese! Sit in your corner. If a goose, as you say, comes to you or beckons, then that’s allowed tonight. Otherwise, stay put, or they’ll throw you out and your shoes after you.”

I was not accustomed to hear such reproachful and harsh tones from Hassan, but clearly alcohol brought out sides of him that he normally kept hidden. To lighten the atmosphere, I said, “How goes it for the paper traders of Egypt? Is the market flourishing?”

He turned to me with his entire body, putting his back to Hassan in an attempt to avoid another argument. “The book trade is not very strong with that mad boy on the throne of Egypt,” he said. “He is full of doubt and suspicion, and is a burner of books. Therefore, people occupy themselves with their own affairs and calamities rather than writing books. Although I have heard that al-Azhar University has a great library.” He bowed his head, shaking it sorrowfully. “A few days before I left Egypt, Cairo of the caliph al-Muizz was abuzz with what its ruler had done. He was riding through the market and passed by a women’s bathhouse, and heard the women within singing and laughing loudly in a manner he deemed debauched. He commanded that the gates be shut and locked and bricked up, so that the women all suffocated inside the bathhouse.”

When he saw my jaw drop in shock and my stricken face, he caught himself, perhaps not wishing to sully the image of his homeland. “ Slow down,” he said. “There is no longer anything in Egypt worth visiting. And if the very name of Egypt is mud in Baghdad these days, it’s because Caliph al-Qadir of Baghdad never ceases to stir up public sentiment against the ruler of Egypt. Everyone who comes and goes from Egypt is classed as a spy.” His voice rose. “They even charged me extra for an entry tax! I’m no trader! All I have are a few valuable embroidered cotton caftans that I do plan to sell, but they wouldn’t believe that they’re part of the clothing I plan to wear. The guards all but devoured me with their eyes, as if to say, ‘How can a man so ill-dressed be carrying such rich Egyptian cotton caftans?’”

Hassan sighed. “At the head of this nation are three caliphs. Each has set aside minarets to sing his praises: one in Baghdad, one in Cairo, and one in Cordoba. We do not know which prayer will reach the ears of the sky first, that we may join ranks beneath it. In any case, if they fall out, they will trample us like elephants, and it is we who will pay the price dearly, from our daily bread and our livelihoods. See how the prices are rising in Baghdad now that the trade routes are beset by bandits and the taxes high!”

It was true; all trade was going through a slump, even the book trade. Many old manuscripts were in the possession of my lord Abu al-Hassan al-Hashimi, for instance, carefully preserved in his home at his estate in Rusafa, hidden away in a secure place, only viewed by his family. Due to their content, he could never convey them to the sellers of books and papers.

I took to poking fun at the sudden wisdom that had come over Hassan. At that moment, I seemed as far from that library as Canopus from the Pleiades.

Rajilat al-Hanabila
2/3/ AH 401, AD 14/10/1010

I trod carefully on the shores of the discussion circles in the mosques, watching closely. I listened to what the imams said before selecting a number of them to frequent studiously so as to be accepted as a student there. I feared being captivated or enthralled by any single one of them, and thus unable to break free. In Baghdad, many wonders awaited me. In the first week after I arrived, the brothers from Baluchistan and I had been out looking for a place to stay when the call to the sunset prayer sounded from the minarets, and soon after, the imams announced the start of the prayer. Hurrying to the gate of the nearest mosque, which was on my right, I found myself pulled back sharply by a hand grabbing my tunic. “Hold, hold!” one of them said. “Go not into that mosque. They are suspicious characters.”

I wriggled free. “What of it?” I said. “How know you this?”

“Soft you, young friend,” he cried, “and beware the followers of Imam ibn Hanbal!”

“Why? What is their fault?” I asked.

He came closer. “We know them,” he whispered. “We pass through Baghdad frequently as we come and go from the pilgrimage to Mecca, so we know enough to avoid them now. Look around you! Not one man in Karkh is going into their mosque. Just praying with them is enough to call down suspicion on you. They think nothing of depicting the God they worship as an image, with limbs and dimensions, spiritual or physical! They think He may move about, descend, and ascend into the heavens, and”—he lowered his voice—“that He can manifest and take tangible form.” He straightened. “Ask the muezzin of our mosque about them; he knows their blasphemy well.”

Their urgings and the looks on their faces forced me to acquiesce, resolving to ask further about matters of which I knew nothing. I prayed with them at a mosque of their choosing. I refrained from telling them that when I pray to God, I picture Him on His throne surrounded by light and angels. His hand is white and veined, and it is like that of my grandfather. Sometimes he rests it on the arm of his throne; at other times he is holding a pen with which he writes our fates. My perplexity and the winks and whispers among the people of Karkh at the mushabbiha—that is, those who envision the Lord God as a personage—did not dissuade me from joining the discussion circle of the sheikh, the follower of Imam ibn Hanbal, Muhammad al-Tamimi. His fame had reached al-Yamama; I recalled that Musallama and Sakhr of Tamim waxed lyrical about him and his vast knowledge. For all that, I knew they were only praising him because he was a member of the clan of Tamim, not out of experience or awareness or any real desire for learning.

In his discussion circle, Sheikh Muhammad al-Tamimi appeared awe-inspiring and imposing, with a great many followers. He had the expression of a father preaching to his sons, although his two lower front teeth were missing, making his lower jaw jut out slightly. But this did not affect his mellifluous voice, the freshness of his imagery, or his fluid and well-turned phrases. The whiteness of his beard connected with the whiteness of his turban, forming a halo around his face that made it light up. His abaya was of the fine wool worn by most of the notables of al-Yamama. The discussion circle around him was wide enough for several rows, and his followers listened to him reverently, holding their breath like hunters lying in wait for an unapproachable herd of deer. I did hear some of them whispering and nudging one another about the fact that he had married a young girl from Yemen in recent years: when he spent the night with her, he would come to them the next morning smiling from ear to ear and in a very cheerful mood, the wellspring of inspiration would open, and he would chatter and digress and fill the circle with talk. On the other hand, if he spent the night with his first wife, he would arrive in a dark mood, scowling and impatient: on those mornings, beware of asking him for a favor or for clarification of anything that seemed unclear. I did not become a regular there, for reasons I knew not. Was it because the Tamim cousins had spoken of him? Or was it because the night I decided to join his circle, I had seen in a dream a great eagle come to my window, with a face like Sheikh al-Tamimi? Had it only been his accent, tripping off his tongue like that of my grandfather, that first drew me to him?

With the early signs of spring, the sky may lour over Baghdad. Strong winds spring up and the roads are clogged with thick red mud. Cold winds laden with sand and dust veil the sky with a color like saffron. The mosque I was going to was opposite the Kufa Gate of the Circular City. I emerged from the gate and walked along the city wall. I was worried and confused. I had been told that the discussion circles of the mosque were filled with arguments and even insults, all but telling the other party, “Leave me alone.” I had laid out the cups of my soul to fill with the knowledge of Baghdad: with interpretations of holy texts, biographies of important personages, well-formed arguments, and the charm of poetry, all the while searching in the desert for the poets of Najd and Tamim, whose poems, my grandfather said, formed the basis for all the rules of grammar and language, set out by Sibawayh in his Excursion of the Thirsty Soul; yet I had found naught but the discussion circles of the mosques, which had become a forum for exchanging insults.

I left the circle, feeling the red dust between my teeth. I wondered whether to pass by the market to buy food for myself or go back to the khan, perhaps for Jamra to give me something to eat.

Suddenly I heard a hubbub and the footsteps of a crowd approaching. I drew back, afraid. It was not yet time for evening prayers, but the red dust had brought on an early darkness against which even the streetlamps struggled. The smell of the Chicken Canal was stifling, as it had been since the flooding of the Tigris, clogged with manure and the remains of spoiled food. In the tight space between the wall of the Circular City and the canal, a few arm’s lengths away, a crowd of perhaps eight men thundered, yelling and cheering. They were mightily built, with great beards ending in unkempt braids that looked not to have seen balm or care for a year or more. They were barefoot, brandishing thick sticks. When they passed, they looked at me suspiciously. “Peace be upon you,” I said.

They all muttered a greeting under their breaths. One of them came up to me, so close that his nose was almost touching my face. I could smell him: he smelled like a billy goat getting ready to mount a nanny goat. Then he drew back. He had been sniffing me. Why should he do that? Had he been seeking the scent of alcohol on my breath?

I caught snatches of their conversation as they retreated. They were saying that the red dust that covered Baghdad was the wrath of God because ministers had been appointed from among the Rafida, or rejectionists, and clerks from among the Christians and Sabians to work in the ministries of the state. I slowed my steps, stealing glances at them. They stopped again and encircled a young man walking with a small boy beneath one of the streetlamps of the Circular City. In the faint light, I could see the young man scream at them, the cords of his neck standing out: “This boy is my brother, you disgusting, filthy boors! How dare you!”

“How shall we know that he is?” one of the men said. “Perhaps you are leading him astray for vile purposes that, as they say, shake the throne of the Almighty, thus bringing down more of God’s wrath upon us.”

Passersby had started to congregate, drawn by the commotion. The young man looked hither and thither, crying out, “Police! Guards! These riffraff would abduct my brother!”

At this, the men dispersed, muttering rebelliously. The young man kept calling, “Chief of police! Captain of the watch! Where are you?”

My chest was tight as I went into the khan. There was a fine layer of red dust over my bed and my books; but this had not kept Jamra from placing three pomegranates on my windowsill once more. I devoured one and took the other to Hassan, the light from under his door betraying that he was still awake.

Thank the Lord, Hassan was in a pleasant mood. He had just bathed, and was robed in a new silk caftan, which I guessed was a gift from his relative, the merchant. He greeted me, wreathed in smiles, and invited me in. When I told him about the ruffians causing a to-do in the streets, he turned his head to the right and spat. “Ah,” he muttered. “Those are probably Rajilat al-Hanabila.”

“What on earth are Rajilat al-Hanabila?” I asked.

“They are followers of Sheikh al-Birbihari of the School of Imam Ibn Hanbal. They call themselves Rajilat al-Hanabila, or the Foot Soldiers of Ibn Hanbal. They walk around the marketplaces as though they were debt collectors or keepers of accounts. They spy on store owners buying and selling, block the path of men walking with women or young boys, and attack bars, spilling the wine they find, attacking the singers, and smashing musical instruments. Ishaq al-Wasati’s tavern used to be a favorite place for their conquests, before Ishaq made a secret agreement with the chief of police and a group of guards, who now defend him in exchange for protection money. The chief of police has many times made an example of these self-styled foot soldiers, prohibiting them to meet even in twos, forbidding discussion of their creed, and also forbidding their imams from starting group prayers without saying ‘In the name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate,’ at morning prayers and the two evening prayers, since it is their blasphemous habit not to say it out loud.” Resentfully, Hassan went on, “But it was no use. It didn’t stop their evil; in fact, it made them more seditious.”

Hassan’s words were a balm for the lonely heart, calmed the troubled soul, and leached the blackness from one’s breast. We devoured our pomegranates, and the trouble in me receded. I took my leave of him and returned to the shelter of my room. As my hand was on the door, he said, “Where do you get these good pomegranates?”

“I don’t know,” I said, “but Jamra puts them on my windowsill.”

“Jamra?” He gave me a look, eyes full of mischief. “She puts them? Or do they put them for her?”

I froze. “Who are ‘they’?”

“The ghosts of the room,” he responded carelessly.

“I’ll leave it up to God to give you the punishment you deserve!” I burst out. “You just urinated in the pool of rosewater you gave me with your own hands.”

My sleep that night was disturbed. Every time I startled awake, I glimpsed a group of men, perhaps eight in number, in a line against the wall facing me.

A Sentinel, Ready

Toward the end of Ramadan, there are fewer students around the sheikh, and during the feast they all but disappear. Most of them go on excursions, taking boats out on the river and heading north. I was alone in the discussion circle, so near to Sheikh al-Tamimi that he observed how carefully I bent over my papers. I was trying to follow what he was saying about the sum of the zakat for breaking one’s Ramadan fast. Perhaps it was my good handwriting or how close I was to him, and how careful I was to take down everything he said, but the students were teasing me and making fun of my assiduous note-taking. “Not a word does he utter,” they joked, quoting verse eighteen of the Sura of Qaf, “but there is a sentinel by him, ready to note it.” In any case, Sheikh Muhammad asked me to sit by his side and take down everything he said. He would like, he said, to compile it into a book in the future.

A discussion circle dictated by Sheikh Muhammad Zayd al-Tamimi at the Mosque of the Mother of Sultan al-Mutawakkil, may she rest in peace, Tuesday 4/10/ ah 401, 11/5/ ad 1001. I write as my Sheikh Zayd al-Tamimi says, anger in the depths of his voice, “Shiites claim to follow the Prophet’s descendants, yet they insult every one of the Prophet’s followers. They believe in raj‘a, that the Prophets will rise again, and in bida‘, meaning that it is possible to change what is divinely ordained by human deed, although the sacred texts are clear as day before them and cannot be changed, as ijtihad, or interpretation, in the texts is forbidden.

I was writing silently with my head down, until such time as I could find out who Mazid al-Hanafi was.

I had no time to spend alone to “consult my heart,” as Islam says; Baghdad’s marketplaces are filled with argumentation, and no sooner does a black cloud lift off the discussion circle in the mosque than another takes its place. At the circle of Sheikh al-Tamimi the day before, three young men I did not recognize had arrived. They walked about the assembly, bristling with ill intent. They wore silk and fine wool, and their hands were smooth and soft like those of pampered slave girls, hands that had never held hammer or hoe. Their gazes were insolent and they seemed to be spoiling for a fight.

A few of the sheikh’s disciples whispered among themselves that they were Persian merchants from Rusafa, their bellies full and their hours empty, so they filled them with blasphemous arguments that amounted to casuistry, empty talk, and remnants of the heresies preached by the fire-worshipping Persians. Thus, they came to make trouble at the Sunni discussion circles, picking fights with the congregation, the venerable sheikhs, and the theologians. Some of them claimed to be descendants of the Prophet’s disciples, but they were all cursed with casuistry and heresy. Thus, they secretly became adherents and disciples of the school of rationalism, the Mutazilites. They remained, however, loyal to taqiya, which means they show outward piety while hiding their true intentions. I had no idea who they really were: Baghdad showed me a strange new face every day, and from its numerous neighborhoods one surprise after another dawned, leaving me startled and pensive. I had a constant premonition that something significant would befall me here, but I did not know at that time that it was behind the door of my own room.

Why do enemies of Sheikh Muhammad al-Tamimi spring up from every nook and cranny? Even that gecko of a supervisor of the khan! He was now friendly enough and returned my greeting—especially when he observed how studious I was and how keen I was on spending time in the library. He called me over as I passed by to write out the cover of a book of notes he had compiled, and gave me papers on occasion to copy out for him. This day, he called me to him as I was hurrying out. I wished he had not called! Sheikh al-Tamimi was accustomed to preaching his sermon the minute the afternoon prayers concluded, and I did not want him to finish his prayers before I had prepared my pens and paper and tools for note-taking. “At your service,” I said, perforce, breathing hard.

“Mazid,” he said, like a father advising a son. “I am glad you have found employment.”

I looked at him, taken aback. “I have not, but am still seeking it.”

The right-hand corner of his mouth turned up in what might have been a smile, making him look even more like a lizard. “What about your note-taking for Sheikh al-Tamimi?”

“He asked me to.” I tried to be curt, hoping to avoid extending the conversation. “I couldn’t say no. But he only gives me two dirhams.”

“What?” he shouted. “Don’t be naïve, boy! Don’t let the followers of al-Birbihari exploit your naiveté and your fine handwriting. May the Lord punish them for what they have done! They are but ignoramuses of ill breeding and filthy origin. They devoured their books when hungry, thinking them bread. They are many, breeding like flies in Baghdad, since the era of their mushabbiha. it is said that Sheikh al-Birbihari crossed the Tigris to the western side and sneezed, and when his companions blessed him, they made such a noise that the caliph heard it all the way in his palace. The caliph asked after them, and, from what he heard, he came to fear them.” He nodded. “See? Even caliphs fear them.”

I raised an eyebrow in surprise, wanting nothing more than to pick up the inkwell and upend it over his head for his rudeness and boorishness, but I had neither the time nor the courage. Instead, I feigned great interest and surprise: this gecko fellow must, after all, feel that his advice was well received and that he had done me a favor. The ground between us must remain green and fertile, for it was he who was giving me free accommodation in the khan. “May God protect us from their evil!” I said, nodding. “Heaven preserve us from the mushabbihah! Prayers and peace upon the Prophet Muhammad and his pure descendants!”

I had imagined that this prayer for the Prophet’s descendants would appease him. I only found out that he was a Sabian, a believer in Noah as his prophet, a few days before my departure from Baghdad.

The Sedition of Strangers

The season of pilgrimage to Mecca was upon us. The hajj caravans from India and foreign lands began to arrive in Baghdad. But this year, none of them went on to Mecca, so treacherous was the road and so full of bandits and Qarmatians. The hajj season they spent in Baghdad, which caused the markets to fill up and flourish, and anyone with stock brought it out and displayed it: jars of oils, crates of dried dates, small dolls of wood and cloth, old pots and pans, little statuettes found in the ruins of bygone nations and presented as people who followed the magic spells of Harut and Marut and were cursed thus by God, metamorphosed into stone. Even Ishaq al-Wasati’s tavern was livelier in the hajj season: pilgrims from China poured in, drinking raisin wine and listening to the music. Their eyes would narrow in delight until you could barely make them out, all the while keeping their wits about them and remaining alert; then they would leave, in groups, looking down and always on guard, having left the waiter a generous tip.

My heart was heavy and I was preoccupied at that time. It had been a year since I left al-Yamama. How had the days slipped through my fingers so fast? An entire year since my breast had filled with the breezes of al-Yamama, the perfume of its date palms, the spray of its waterwheels. A year since I had watched our star, Suhayl of al-Yamama, rise; a year since I had felt the cold of the late night, a year since I had seen Shammaa of the House of Wael and heard the rustle and swish of her clothing. I sent two letters to her with caravans headed there; I had also met her uncle when he was visiting Baghdad, the one whom the Bouhis had given land in Wasit. He told me that they were well, but that my mother missed me and asked me to return: she had, he said, found me a young and stunningly beautiful bride. Heaven forgive you, Shammaa of the House of Wael! Still tempting her little boy so he would listen to her, just as she used to tempt me with dates soaked in syrup.

The strange young men still hovered around the discussion circles of al-Tamimi, their flowing silken abayas dragging behind them. I did not know who they were; what I did know was that they could not stand my Sheikh al-Tamimi, always dragging him into disputation. Because my ears still retained the clarity and sensitivity born of the desert sands, I heard them one day as they whispered, drawing near our circle: “We’ll see what that senile old fool and his men do today.”

I was struck by the hate in their voices. As they came nearer, I recited the verse: “Not a word does he utter but there is a sentinel by him, ready to note it.” But they paid me no heed. One of them scrutinized me closely, then turned up his nose and looked away. The others ignored me completely, although I sat at the sheikh’s side. As we were preparing for the lesson, the mosque attendant, whom I often saw filling the pitchers for ablutions, hurried toward us. In the center of our circle, he threw down two leather scrolls carefully wrapped, crying out, “Pray for them!”

Every day, one or two of these scrolls, bearing names of the sick or dead, arrived, that we might pray for them. We passed the scrolls to our Sheikh al-Tamimi, who opened them up and turned to face Mecca. “Heal all sickness, Lord of All, You who heal all. There is no recovery but through You, a healing after which there is no illness. In Your hands is all healing, and there is none who may reveal it but You, Lord of both worlds. I ask You, of Your limitless compassion and generosity, and Your protection, to heal”—he looked at the scroll to assure himself of the name of the sick person—“to heal Fatima, daughter of Hammad, and to grant her health and vitality.”

“Amen,” the murmur went through the circle. I remembered the “Bless you” in the story that reached the palace of the caliph. Only an “Amen” from the lips of the faithful fills the abayas of the imams, and puffs up their turbans, and reassures them as to the submission of their followers. Sheikh al-Tamimi unfurled the second scroll hurriedly. “Lord, ensure that Yusuf ibn Nour is in a better place, with better folk, and admit him to Paradise, and protect him from the torments of the grave, and the torments of Hellfire. Lord, treat Yusuf ibn Nour according to Your worth and not according to his worth. Repay his charity with charity, and his injuries with forgiveness. Amen.”

The entire mosque reverberated with such a hearty “Amen” that I half fancied Yusuf ibn Nour would emerge from his grave reborn. The circle complete, we began, hearing murmurs from other discussion circles in the mosque whose sheikhs had started to give their sermons. Our sheikh, al-Tamimi, adjusted his turban, then began in a mellifluous voice. It appeared he had taken note of the young men lying in wait for him and seeking to make trouble. In my hand was my pen; on my right was my inkwell, and I attempted to keep pace with the words issuing from his mouth and set down some of what he said about the signs of polytheism and how to rid oneself of it and pray sincerely to the face of God Almighty. Suddenly, someone called out, interrupting: “Venerable Sheikh! I wish to inquire about a lesson I am told you gave yesterday.”

My sheikh frowned. Everyone’s necks craned toward the owner of the voice. It was one of the strange young men. He had a sparse mustache and no beard, and his white silk turban had slipped back to reveal half his head. His wide, long-lashed brown eyes had dark circles around them, like one who is up reading half the night; but his fresh complexion betrayed the featherbeds of luxury he hailed from. He spoke loudly, mockery concealed deep in his tones. “Sheikh Muhammad. You insist that the Lord is seated upon His throne, and insist upon describing an embodiment of the Lord. Therefore, would you tell us what form He took when he manifested in the final third of last night?” He went on: “When He manifests, He is not one. There are many of Him, spreading far and wide in every land. Imam Ali, in his Nahj al-Balagha, says, ‘He who describes the Lord limits Him; and he who limits Him places Him among the number of things that can be counted,’ which is a clear instance of polytheism and blasphemy against the creed of monotheism.”

This question was received with dead silence. A ponderous hush fell over the discussion circle where my sheikh’s students and adherents sat. I could tell the difference between the students and the adherents: a student always has an inkwell by his side, while an adherent merely listens closely. Despite his disgruntlement and the ire that sparked in his eyes, my sheikh lowered his head and clapped his hands for silence, swallowing with difficulty.

That night, when I went back to my room, I went quietly over the notes I had taken at that moment, when hands had been raised bearing inkwells with the desire to split open the strangers’ heads. I found that I had written, by way of introduction to my sheikh’s response to the would-be rationalist:

The curse of the People of the Book is contentiousness and sophistry. Ibn Hanbal has written that the Lord created Adam in His image: sixty arm spans tall. When He created him, he said, “Go, and greet such and such a number of angels seated there.”

Then there was a blank line. He must have fallen silent; then, I found that I had written:

One of Sheikh al-Tamimi’s students said, “He who turns rationalist turns heretic.”

I had left another line blank. Then I had written:

Sheikh al-Tamimi said, “Sophistry is sin; in creating a fatwa, one must judge by the general intent of the text, not by the specific occasion. Whoever delves too deeply into the books of philosophy and follows the Mutazilites in being rationalist, follows them into their conflict with the pillars of religious law. Nothing they have said comes of a clear conscience, but of ill intent and weak faith. We come now to the response to your question. Sheikh al-Birbihari, may he rest in peace, mentions that the Lord seats the Prophet, peace be upon him, next to Him on the throne, and that the seat is where the feet of Almighty God are placed. That said,” he added in the standard conclusion of every imam explaining a matter of religion, “only God is all-knowing.

The reader will note that I neglected to close the quotation marks on the above speech: this is because the mosque suddenly erupted around us into an uproar. The questioner yelled, “Allahu akbar!”—a cry taken up by his companions, who added, “Blasphemy! They say that God has feet! The Holy Qur’an says, ‘There is nothing whatever like unto Him!’ Death to the Hanbalites!”

Then another of them roared, “Wasil ibn Ataa, the founder of the Mutazilites, has said, ‘He who proves that the Lord hath a meaning or an old description hath proved that there are two gods!’ Remember, according to the Mutazilites, the changeable forms of Earth cannot be applied to an unchanging God!” Then a third bellowed, “The Lord is above any image or likeness!”

Then one of the men ran up to the pulpit. He climbed up it as though he were about to call out to prayer and yelled, “There is only one God, and there is nothing whatever like unto Him! He has neither body nor spirit nor corpse nor form nor flesh nor blood nor personage nor essence nor breadth nor length nor color nor taste nor smell!” From around the circle, his friends yelled the name of God and screamed out, “No coldness! No dryness! No height! No width! No right, no left, no front, no back! He does not beget, nor is He begotten! Anything that can come to mind or be pictured by imagination is nothing His like!”

The sheikh of the neighboring discussion circle rushed over to us, barefoot, staring as if to ask what was going on, craning his neck behind us, his students gathered behind him. When they heard the verbal battle and saw the inkwells being brandished, I heard him saying as he moved away, “Damn them all! The Hanbalite mushabbih who would give the Lord dimensions is describing a graven idol! And the Mutazilites who place the Lord above meanings and descriptions are but describing nothingness!”

One of his students asked him, “Which of them is in the right? Who has escaped damnation, my imam?”

“Heaven preserve us!” His sheikh called down the blessings of the Lord, shaking his head. “I cannot but think that they are both headed for Hellfire.”

I had written no more beyond this point. What I wrote down thus far was from memory. Sheikh al-Tamimi yelled, “Allahu akbar!” followed by a great number of those around him, and craned his neck high, two greenish veins standing out in it, which I had only seen before on the pulpit at his Friday prayers. He recited in a voice shaken to the core, “‘Fain would they extinguish Allah’s light with their mouths!’ That is what the heretics and blasphemers have done! The Prophet of this nation has come to show us the shining white path, from which none stray but the damned. . . . Sophistry and contentiousness on the pretext of using one’s mind is a deviation from the Prophet’s tradition. Every deviation and suspicious behavior is rooted in using one’s mind. The sin of Iblis, the Devil, was allowing his opinion to rule him instead of the text, and his choice of his personal desires in defiance of God’s command.”

I remember that at that moment, one of the young strangers grabbed a hand armed with an inkwell on its way to split his head open. I leapt up then and ran out of the mosque, hoping to find some soldier or captain of the guard to break up the quarrel. Someone had already done so, I found, for I had barely gained the doorway when the guards thundered into the mosque. Their leader entered the mosque on horseback, followed by four foot soldiers with their swords drawn, followed by two others armed with slingshots. The horse neighed loudly, making the walls of the mosque vibrate. Everyone fell silent. The captain of the guard, mounted on his horse, yelled fit to shake the walls of the mosque, “Who would defile the House of God with contentiousness and sophistry? Have you returned to your old ways of rationalization and contention? May the Lord curse you all!” Then he quoted,

Our religion was well and good until
The rationalists, with their logic bottomless.
Whene’er they meet, they shout and yell
Like foxes howling at a sarcophagus.

I was astonished at the education of the captain of the guard: my sojourn in Baghdad had only shown me foreign, boorish guards. He cried out, “My Lord Abu Ghalib ibn Khalaf, the best leader and the commander of the armies, has commanded us to preserve the land and cut off the heads of evildoers and hang all those who would spread fitna among the Muslims. And you are the imams of fitna! You are the root of all evil! You never cease your temptations but continue on! And I swear to God, I shall not leave this spot unless I take the fomenters of unrest with me, leading them with a rope around their necks like beasts!”

My bones quaked. I was astonished to observe that none of the combatants said a word or made a move to report any of the others. They knew full well that he meant what he said: that a severed head hanging in a public square would guarantee peace in Karkh for at least a month. He returned to roaring at them. “Who is stirring up the rabble in the House of God?” Then he turned around to find the one who had rushed to call them in from the square. It was one of the mosque attendants, fearing that the expensive carpets of his mosque would be stained with ink; but now he found himself in great trouble. He tottered forth, his legs barely able to support him. He wore an odd turban with a tall cap. It made him look like the majazib, one of the softheaded religious fanatics who ran around in the squares. He spoke clearly, but I could not hear it from where I stood: I gathered that he had made up some story, I know not how he managed it that fast. “The people in the mosque are upset,” he said, “because beardless boys are allowed into the discussion circles, tempting men to sin and lust, and distracting seekers of knowledge.”

The captain of the guard’s voice was suspicious. “Where are they?”

The attendant pointed out a young man sitting in a nearby circle. The boy fell onto his face, prostrating himself, sobbing so hard that he choked. I thought that he would die from weeping. “Bring him,” said the captain to one of his guards.

The guard went to him and dragged him by his ankle, facedown, still in a crouching position, screaming like my pet goat, Shaqran, being dragged to the slaughter. The guard lifted him by his ankle and struck him across the face. “Silence,” he said, preparing to throw him under the hooves of the captain’s horse.

“No! No! No!” screamed the boy. “I don’t want to die!”

It was evident that the captain of the guard had not been taken in by the trick or the answer: he could see that the boy was only a scapegoat. “What’s your name?” he bellowed.

The boy made no answer, prostrating himself and crying. “Take him outside,” the captain said to another guard. “If I see you again in the circles of men, I’ll string you up by the ankle on the gate to the city!”

The captain looked over everyone again, staring into the terrified, lowered faces. With a tug on the reins of his horse, he wheeled about and exited. The guards remained in place, looking after him, the rear end of his horse scattering dung here and there to tell them what its master thought of them.

Sheikh Muhammad crept out, holding his turban and his shoes, having lost them in the fracas. He headed for the small door of the mosque set next to the place for ablutions, followed by two of his students who feared for his safety. I followed, bringing his books and papers. We sat in a safe corner underneath the stairs leading up to the minaret.

We sat there for a long time. The guards stayed for a while in the mosque. There was a window opening onto where they were standing, and we could hear them saying, “Where are they? Where are the whoresons? Where are the ones who stir up foment in the House of God?”

My sheikh muttered, eyebrows raised, “Heaven repay you with everything you deserve, you fire-worshipper.”

That night, I volunteered to accompany our sheikh to his home in the outer courtyard of the mosque. There were few people passing, but we had barely slipped into the alley where he lived when, from the shadows, a group of men burst out, bellowing, “God grant you victory over your enemies, our sheikh!”

I stilled. The blood froze in my veins. I had not recognized them at the beginning: they were barefoot, with thick beards, and brandished thick sticks. A group of Rajilat al-Hanabila. They surrounded the sheikh and insisted on accompanying us for his protection. My sheikh shook his head, refusing adamantly. “Bless you, gentlemen,” he said smoothly, “but we would prefer not to attract attention or provoke passersby or the guards or, worse yet, the Ayyarin gangs. Go on your way, God be with you.”

They looked into each other’s faces in perplexity. After much hesitation and lingering and whispering between Sheikh al-Tamimi and their leader—who had a truly extraordinary beard, which carpeted his chest like those of the monarchs of bygone kingdoms I used to see adorning the maps of Baghdad—while the rest of his companions thumped their staffs against the ground and incessantly called down God’s understanding and His forgiveness, they finally disappeared into one of the houses behind the mosque.

I slowed my steps, trying to keep pace with my sheikh’s heavy, exhausted tread. “What happened?” I asked him.

“They have gone astray,” he said, “and seek to lead others astray with them. They would extinguish the light of the Lord with their mouths. God damn the Rafida and the atheists!”

“But how do you know that they are Rafida?” I said, perplexed. “Where did they come from? They surrounded us in the mosque, crowded around us, and then disappeared in a flash.”

My sheikh answered despondently, drooping like a wet chick: “Be not dismayed, my son. This has long been their custom. Now hand me what you have taken down.”

I excused myself, telling him I had not written everything down due to the chaos that had descended upon us. He made no reply. I felt uncomfortable asking more, so we walked slowly toward his house, which was luckily (or possibly unluckily) quite a distance from the mosque. He seemed much older, and very tired. I had no desire to add to his burdens. When we arrived at the door to his house, he reminded me again of his papers and notes, and how important it was that I bring them tomorrow.

*

In addition to taking notes for him, my sheikh, al-Tamimi, required me to copy out ten pages every night, which he then sold as though they were his, at two dirhams a page. Meanwhile, I got nothing but two dirhams for everything. He explained it away by saying that he had a large family and two wives to support. “What will it harm you,” he said, mocking me, “if the rats in your room go hungry? But I have a thousand mouths to feed alongside my rats, not to mention two she-wolves who compete with one another for my money.”

How hard it would be, after all this, to bend my knees at your discussion circle, Sheikh al-Tamimi! I should finish the copy of Sahih Muslim, Sheikh Muslim’s well-known compilation of the Prophet’s sayings, that I was currently working on, then take my leave of him. If he wished, he might grant me a degree in the science of hadith; if not, I had no need of his degree.

On my way back to the khan, with my sheikh’s voice ringing in my ears—“Be glad; the Lord is with us”—I muttered, “Is the Lord really with us? Is He on our side? Those strange young men with their soft hands quoted God and the Prophet too!”

Graven Idols and Nothingness

The strangers’ fitna did not cease. That night, it made its way into my breast. It remained there like chaff stirred up by the winds, howling madly, keeping me awake and making me easy prey to thoughts of graven idols and nothingness. I could scarcely wait for morning to come, so I could become something other than what I had been the night before, like a snake that sheds its skin and goes forth enjoying a different taste of the air and sunlight on its new hide.

But that night, the argument started by the strange young men with Sheikh al-Tamimi remained in my ears like the buzzing of a beehive, and clung to the hem of my garment. My eyes remained open, fixed on the rafters of my room. A spider, wispy but diligent, was spinning its home. What form had God taken in His descent to the lowest heaven in the final third of the night?

I rose from my bed and commenced the tahajjud prayer, placing my requests and my abject need in the hands of my Creator. “I am Mazid al-Hanafi, seeking Your blessing and forgiveness.”

When dawn broke, I approached the soul-stealing gates that separate the moment of death from the isthmus that links this world to the next. I glimpsed great crimson curtains falling from the sky into my skull. They were of costly silk, with gold ornamentation, the Qur’an verse “There is nothing whatever like unto Him” embroidered on them. I drew near to them and buried my face in them. I felt their softness against my cheek like the velvet cushions that the mother of my lord Yusuf had brought in to decorate the mosque at al-Yamama. I pressed my face against their smoothness. They parted to reveal an awe-inspiring man with an imposing build, seated with a bowed head that stretched from east to west, contemplating what lay beneath his feet. I trembled all over; I heard the beating of my heart in my ears; it looked like my grandfather, with some of the features of Sheikh al-Tamimi, a pen in His mighty hand.

At that moment, I felt I was upon the isthmus, and that I had been dreaming. I opened my eyes and tore up the picture, erasing it from my mind. Curse the heretics who had sown doubt in my heart and banished sleep from my eyes. But was it they who had sown the seed of doubt? Or was it my fate that challenged my will? What was I but a vigilant jerboa that spends its time chasing a chance to gnaw and nibble on books and yet more books? I had become the joke of everyone who worked at the library, who told me I might as well use the books for pillows and make my bed there.

The next morning I woke heavyhearted and drained. Had I forgotten to recite the verses of the Qur’an that morning to bless my day? Or had I eaten too much yesterday of the lamb shank soup that the people of Karkh make so well? Was it the soup that stole the lightness from my spirit, robbed my movements of their grace, and dragged me down to the level of the common folk who care for nothing but their base urges?

I had come to Baghdad only to find that it was not the city I had constructed in my mind during my childhood in al-Yamama, envisioning it as built of bricks of gold and silver. It was a cold and heartless place that cared nothing for those who visited it. I had wished to pluck the fruits of its glory, and to be blessed with an education at the hands of clerics and learned men and good friends; but Baghdad is an angry, forbidding city, visited by every nation; people from all lands pour into it like a river. There is little to be earned, and there are so many learned men and poets that they number more than the civil servants of the caliph; they are so unfortunate that they envy one another their daily bread, snatching it out of each other’s hands like goshawks and kites.

Nevertheless, on many occasions, the manservants of the caliph al-Qadir would emerge from the gateways of the Circular City, coming from the kitchens of the caliph’s palace, bearing upon their heads trays with breakfast for all the mosques close to the wall.

Baghdad’s alleyways clamored and flourished with chatter; it had no time to listen to me. When I arrived there, its people were still speaking of a star that appeared in its sky the Friday night that was the first of the month of Shaaban, like Venus in size and luminescence. It bobbed up and down, with a light like that of the moon; it remained there until the middle of the month of Dhi Qidah, three months later. The people of that city considered it an ill omen and went around expecting a disaster; stars always bring disaster.

Back home in al-Yamama, after Grandfather’s death, my announcement of my wish to leave for Iraq was akin to another funeral coming out of our house. My mother wept; she refused to sit with me or talk with me any more. She would place my meals before me, then jump up and swish out, the only sounds the whisper of the silver jewelry at her hands and in her braids. Our talk was limited to my request for her blessing at my departure. I laid siege to her with that request for months, closing my eyes to the tears that gathered beneath her eyelashes; when I insisted, tears would spill from both her eyes at once.

I had decided to go, but not when; should I wait for wintertime, or accompany the caravans going to Mecca? It was forty parasangs from al-Yamama to Ihsaa, a hard distance to cross unless it was winter, when the rainwater collected in streams that people could drink from. Upon my arrival in Ihsaa, I would be close to Basra; but I decided to accompany the hajj caravans despite the broiling heat, as these were better equipped and more securely guarded. Shammaa of the house of Wael was, at that time, still reciting a list of suitable brides for me, finding them the best traps for a boy of twenty to keep him in al-Yamama. “If a boy reaches twenty and remains unmarried,” she always said, “the men of al-Yamama will cast doubt on his manhood. Your cousin, who is your age, is married and has started a family already: his first son recites the Sura of Ikhlas whenever he comes to visit!” Then the list started: “Salma, Jazla, Wadhaa . . .” How pretty they looked in my mother’s list! There they stood in her words, all lined up, smiling, like pampered narcissus blossoms by a stream. Anklets, bracelets, henna-painted hands, flirtatious smiles . . . but if I should point, lay my finger on a name, and meet the owner of that name at our house as a prospective bride, well then, she would become like all the other women who visited my mother, bony and dusty, complaining of their boorish husbands and the unfairness of Fate.

My grandfather had had an unfinished dream in Baghdad that he had never managed to fulfill; thus, he returned to al-Yamama. This was why my cries to be permitted to go there grew louder after his death. Al-Yamama appeared to shrink, its houses becoming smaller and its streets narrower, like an old garment I had outgrown. My soul mounted higher, reaching for the stars: I was visited by strange dreams, filled with the voices of women singing poems about waiting that sounded more like mourning, songs I had never heard before. Was there someone waiting for me in Baghdad?

The Ashmuni Festival

The Christians of Baghdad have a festival they call the Ashmuni Festival, held at the Monastery of Ashmuni in a region west of the Tigris they call Qurtubl, not far from Khan al-Hashimi. The sound of their hullabaloo and the clangor of the celebrants’ utensils and the preparations rang out as far as the khan. “Come home early from the circle of that sheikh of yours who speaks of what he does not know,” Hassan said, and winked at me as we headed out that morning. “We must go and celebrate with the Christians of Baghdad at their festival; it is a joy that cleanses the soul!”

It was not only for Christians; the entire populace of Baghdad seemed to have moved there, to the banks of the Tigris, while others were still arriving from nearby towns, mooring their boats and small craft by the monastery. They strolled around and took the air, making their way down the pathways to reach the wall of the Circular City. They stared astonished at the regularity and solidity of the stones that made it up, reading al-Jahiz’s verses carved into a polished stone by some students:

I never saw such circular regularity,
As though poured from a mold of singularity!

Then they would go back for a stroll on the banks of the river.

Some of the celebrants had pitched tents and thatched shelters around the monastery and a branch of the river they called Batatya, where there were also rest houses and marquees. Unveiled girls came out of these, walking about, their eyes taking in with pride the hearts that broke under their feet. A few paces behind them walked boys with silver daggers in their belts and whips in their hands, which they cracked in the air to defend the girls against anyone who might disturb them. Despite their come-hither looks, the girls’ shaved faces betrayed that they were naught but eunuchs.

The monastery flung open its doors and the bells rang. There was a bar in the corner of the monastery, which had set out a great many jugs and massive jars of wine and fermented dates, which were doled out in scoops, poured into brass cups, and sold to the revelers. “The best wine in Baghdad is here,” Hassan whispered to me. “That is why the clerics ask the caliph to confine Christians to their homes and force them to wear tan tunics with a patch in the front and rear, and don wooden clogs if they are riding a beast of burden.” He shook his head. “How terrible that the caliph grants their request when he has two Christian physicians in his palace, one of whom attended his own mother, Sultana Tamani, may she rest in peace.” He warmed to his subject. “Last year, the common people revolted against the Christians’ presence in Baghdad: they attacked the church in the neighborhood of Daqiq and set it alight. It collapsed upon some people and killed them. They are hardly different from that insane boy currently on the throne of Egypt! He had the Church of the Resurrection in Jerusalem, site of the Holy Sepulcher, burned to the ground.”

“And in spite of the persecution,” I said wonderingly, “here they are, celebrating. The balm of time and the will to live heal many wounds.”

He gave me an unreadable glance. Then he tugged at my sleeve and quickened his pace. “Let’s eat some of that fish I promised you.”

I was not a great lover of fish: I was, after all, an Arab of Najd, who had never known the taste of it. Hassan always told me that the folk of Baghdad had their own strange and delicious recipe, wrapping it in sweet basil. He hurried around, looking for the places where fish was being grilled. He was wide-eyed and impressed, his big head darting with more gusto than usual as he watched the bold beauties walking about; he flirted with them with one eye and glued the other to the smoke ascending from the barbecues, constructed of carefully set stones on the banks of the Tigris. Atop them were great slabs of river fish, as long as your arm, and everyone jostled and crowded the cooks.

Hassan shouldered his way through the throng. Abandoning the reticent, almost dainty stride he normally affected and the way he wrapped his abaya about him with the dignity of a teacher, he thrust his way into the crowd and took to pushing and shoving to get a share of the fish.

I stood waiting for Hassan to return with his prize of two fish for us: I had no stomach for jostling. I watched the people passing by. My curiosity was piqued by a great crowd around a marquee, kept at bay by guards. When I approached, I glimpsed through the heads and necks of the crowd a group of stunning girls, unveiled, sitting cross-legged on cushions and playing musical instruments. In the center was a singer with her face veiled, a great brass bowl of water before her with flower petals floating in it. She played passionately on the lute and bent her head to the bowl like a mother protecting her infant. Her lady friends took up her song and poured it over the tambours, shaking them seductively.

I could not take my eyes off the songstress. Despite the transparent green veil draped over her face, adorned with precious stones about her brow, her distance from me, and the heads of the spectators, I could still divine the light that surrounded her.

We selected a spot under a tree to take our meal. However, I was so captivated and enthralled that, for the first time ever, I could not taste it. The voice of the girl was still running through my ears. I recalled having heard that singing when I traveled to Baghdad in my mind with my grandfather, the nymphs of Baghdad calling to me.

“It is the marquee of Zahira,” Hassan said with his mouth full. He held out a grilled fish spread out on hot loaves of flatbread atop a plate of banana leaves. Then he saw that I had gone quite pale. “Be consoled, Arab of the desert! This is Zahira of whom we speak: she is a star that you may look upon but never reach, the loveliest songstress in all of Baghdad. She only sings in the marquees of the ministers, or at the gatherings of the elite.” He did not appear preoccupied with her, and seemed more interested in moving to a quieter location away from the crowds watching Zahira.

Suddenly, the crowd dissipated from around the tent and rushed off to the left-hand side. The servants were calling out, I found, that the marquee of the caliph’s late mother, Tamani, had just opened, with a great banquet free for all. At last we settled beneath two palms sharing the same pot, the ants industriously crawling over the palm debris scattered about us. “What on earth?” I remonstrated. “Would you have us eat by the roadside in full view of everyone?”

Hassan was hungry and short-tempered with it. Raising his eyebrows, his meal still in his hands, he said, “Tell me—if we were in a barn, and cattle instead of people all around you, would you still feel ashamed to eat in their presence?”

I blinked in surprise without speaking. He put his meal down and stood up, adjusting his turban and abaya, brushing the grass stalks and straw from the latter. Then he started declaiming at the top of his voice. “Thanks be to the Lord who alone is beauty and perfection! I swear there is no God but Allah, alone with no other gods, with nothing his like or his equal, the Blessed Names and the highest attributes are all His, and He is the greatest and the most proud and jealous God! I swear that our prophet Muhammad is His loyal servant and His messenger, of splendid character and good manners and a kindly nature, and the best of all who have ever been beloved of the Lord God by approaching Him with reverence and glorification! Prayers and peace be upon him, his companions and descendants, the best company and family, and all those who have followed them with good character, every morning and evening!” He had started to draw a crowd; I could hear him, but could hardly see him for the people who had started to gather around. “And now, to the point! I urge you, brethren in Islam and my brethren, to obey the All-Knowing Lord! Fill the days and nights with your devoutness, in hopes that the Lord will give you a high standing among the faithful and a beautiful afterlife!” He paused. “Trustworthy men, more than one, have been quoted as saying that if you can touch the tip of your nose with your tongue, you shall not go to Hell.” Whereupon everyone around him stuck out their tongues and tried to touch their noses. The saddest thing is that, taken unawares, I too stuck out my tongue and tried it. Then I saw him pushing through their ranks with great strides, wrapping his abaya about himself. “That said,” he concluded like an imam, “only God is all-knowing. I say this asking God’s forgiveness for myself and you! And in conclusion, praise be to God, the Lord of both worlds!”

He extricated himself from the crowd, which began to disperse, and swaggered up to me triumphantly. “How true are al-Buhturi’s verses: ‘My job it is to write poems in this land, / But not to make the cattle understand.’ Look around you.” He did so and let out a lowing sound: “Moo!”

I burst out into uncontrollable mirth, laughing until there were tears in my eyes. What wild, reckless man could have done this but Hassan?

The City of the Rams

I had not seen Hassan at morning prayers, so I searched for him at the Qur’an-teaching school, the kuttab, in the forenoon. The school had a large wooden gate facing south, and a spacious dome built out of the same terracotta that formed the khan. I had never sat in a circle at a kuttab when I was a child. Grandfather had instructed me since before I could walk; he not only instructed me in the sciences, but in the secrets of life, including the love of this city: the sound of the pupils reciting “By the sun and its brightness, and the moon that followeth . . .” lacked the beauty of skilled recitation and the sobriety in the presence of the Holy Qur’an, but was more like young rams leaping about. My curiosity led me to the classroom door: I wanted to see playful Hassan with the serious mien of a scholar. When he saw me, his face split into a broad grin and he called me over teasingly. “Where do you think you’re going, you Lucifer’s horn, you? Come on in and I’ll teach you how to recite the Sura of al-Shams as it should be done!”

“Lucifer was one of the best of the angels,” I said, “and it is he who molded the history of humankind. As for you,” I jibed, “you will drag behind on Judgment Day, a mere instructor of boys! Known for their feeble minds and flighty natures, no one believes your like’s testimony in a court of law, and it is common knowledge that you resorted to this profession to escape fighting in jihad!”

The boys, divining the lighthearted atmosphere between us, began to fool about and throw pebbles at each other, some of them hitting us; I quickly withdrew. Hassan brandished a cane at them, shouting, the tip of the stick catching a sallow-faced boy sitting in front, as a lesson to his fellows. In the mosque, the guards had picked out the weak boy, on the pretext that he was sitting with the older men, to make an example of him to the others. This city requires a scapegoat to bear the burden of others’ transgressions.

I arrived at the mosque early; it was not yet time for the afternoon prayers, after which my sheikh commenced his discussion circle. I went in, seeking the wooden box in which we locked all the writing implements. It was still locked; the key usually hung around Sheikh Muhammad al-Tamimi’s neck. He would open it after the dawn prayers, bring out his copy of the Qur’an, and start his recitation with a sweet, melodious voice until his students had all arrived and were sitting around him.

“Sheikh Muhammad ibn Ahmad al-Tamimi has been stabbed in the hand.”

I whirled around to face the voice. It was the mosque attendant, the one who had called the police in the fight. He was wearing the same odd pointed cap and the same idiotic expression. With a ghoulish delight tinged with gloating, he was telling some of the students who had clustered around in search of their sheikh and their discussion circle. Glimpsing me out of the corner of his eye, he raised his voice as he told of the incident. “At dawn today, on his way to the mosque, that’s when it happened. They don’t know who did it. Some say it was heretics who were disturbed by the argument about God being seated on his throne; some say it was the Ayyarin gangs seeking to rob him, and that they stabbed him when he resisted them and he stopped it with his hand.”

Amid their cries of “How?” and “When?” and their outraged, wide-eyed stares, I rushed over to him. “Where is he now?” I asked.

“At home,” said the attendant. “He didn’t come this morning.”

The sheikh of the neighboring discussion circle approached. He was short and rotund, veritably rolling toward us, half hidden by his students clustered around him. “I do not think it was the strange young men who come to his circle to cause trouble,” he volunteered. The students around him retreated slightly to make space for him when he spoke, so we could all see him. He added, adjusting his black turban, “I do not think that it was because of the altercation last week between Sheikh al-Tamimi and the merchant-born men with their soft and smooth hands. Their only use for knives is to trim their beards and cut their food. They have no stomach for blood; they pass their time listening to music, drinking, playing dice, and amusing themselves. They couldn’t hurt a fly.” He turned to a young man by his side, whose head was bowed and who was clearly in awe of him. “Jawad! Wasn’t it one of those young men whose father called us in to breathe hope into him and recite the Holy Qur’an over him? He had stopped eating and drinking and given in to wailing and weeping when a Turkish boy he owned died, one whom he adored.”

Jawad nodded. “It was.”

“Yes! Do you see?” The sheikh pointed a finger at him. “Those boys are softhearted and pampered. Their pleasures are closed ledgers, and they walk the city with them concealed in their sleeves. Dalliances and banquets and drinking, that is what they are good at. Go and seek out the one who stabbed your sheikh, for it is not one of these.”

There were murmurs among the students. A voice whispered, “Might it be the Persian blacksmith?”

Had Sheikh al-Tamimi really been stabbed? Was it a consequence of the argument that had devolved into a fight, only a few days ago in the great hall of the mosque, between the Persian blacksmith Abu Abbas, who owned a smithy in the khan, and Sheikh Muhammad, when they had argued over the “hand of God”? Sheikh al-Tamimi’s students turned to me, rage on their young faces that were
just starting to sprout mustaches and beards. They all looked at me with shouts of “The Persian blacksmith is your neighbor, Mazid!”

“Did you see him at dawn this morning?”

I felt myself pale as they stared at me. When I glanced at the door to the mosque and saw some of the Rajilat al-Hanabila coming in, I divined that the matter would only expand. I slipped away to the escape door beneath the minaret and managed to stagger to the home of my sheikh.

*

Sheikh Muhammad al-Tamimi was in his bedroom and was not receiving visitors. People stood and sat in rows in the entryway, the hallway, and the parlor. Some spread out lengths of fabric and lay on the ground outside his house. But when he learned that I was outside, he sent for me to be brought into his private sanctum.

I came inside, head bowed, apprehensive, looking down at my feet with each step. I found him lying on a cotton mattress, bareheaded and looking weak. Around him, his little children jumped and played. This might be the explanation for the stench of urine emanating from his bed. His face was pinched and pale. By his side sat a woman wrapped in a garment that concealed her wholly. All I could see was a pair of kohl-adorned eyes and a pair of carefully painted hands, pleading with him to drink the beet juice in a cup she was holding. Her voice was reedy and thin. “You lost a lot of blood this morning! You have to make it up with this juice.” The way his eyes were fixed hungrily on her made me think this was the young wife whose nights he enjoyed and after which he was so cheerful in the morning. She seemed to know it: she was flirtatious in her glances and her speech as she stroked his white beard. His left hand was elevated above his head, wrapped in rags damp with blood.

When he saw me, he immediately started to speak. “There were three of them, all masked. They ambushed me in the darkness. I could not see their faces.”

Before I could reply, we heard a hubbub at the door. An older boy, one of Sheikh Muhammad’s sons who had taken it upon himself to receive his visitors and oversee their seating arrangements, called, “It is Elishua, the physician, sent by Her Royal Majesty Sultana Sharifa, the consort of our Sultan al-Qadir bi-Allah, God grant him long life, to visit Father!”

A moment later, a thin, old, white-skinned man burst in. His back was bent and his nose crooked, and he was dressed in rich, clean clothing. Behind him trailed a dark-skinned boy carrying a wooden box with a padlock. Elishua went straight to the sheikh’s bed without greeting me, as though he were above greeting the common folk. He approached the sheikh without greeting him either, instead saying straight out: “What is the matter with you, Sheikh, lying so feeble abed?” He went on: “Her Royal Majesty the Sultana has bestowed upon you a slave girl and an endowment!”

Displeased, the young wife muttered, “Why not examine him before handing out gifts?”

He ignored her. Taking the sheikh’s hand and looking at it, still with a supercilious look almost of disgust, he said, “He must be transported to the bimaristan. We fear that his wound may suppurate, as he is feverish. I will precede you.” Pausing, he said, “Bimaristan al-Adudi is on the west side of the city. Are you familiar with it?”

I nodded. Without further ado, he went on, already on his way out. “I will await you there.”

One of Sheikh Muhammad’s sons then suggested we leave by the back door to avoid the press of his students at the front gate. I expanded on his suggestion and said that he should leave with his face covered to avoid recognition. His wife then suggested he leave by climbing over the rooftop of one of his neighbors, but in the end, we settled on the back door.

His son hurried to the market and rented a wooden donkey cart, upon which we placed his bed, and piled bags of barley around it to hide his reclining body from view. Then we took him to the bimaristan.

Two three-story buildings on the western side of Baghdad built out of the same red brick as the Wall of Baghdad, one for men and the other for women, linked by a lower passageway on the southern side: this was the bimaristan. The sultana’s physician, Elishua, was waiting for us at the outer door. Our sheikh gathered up what was left of his strength and walked into the hospital, refusing to be carried. Elishua set down his name in a gigantic ledger upon a short stone pillar erected just inside the entryway, in the corner of a spacious circular atrium from which corridors branched off. Then he said, crooking a finger, “Follow me.”

Supporting the sheikh, we hurried to a room at the end of one of the passageways that branched off from the atrium, which they said was the head doctor’s consulting room. Our sheikh was ushered in, while we were asked to wait outside in the hallway.

He remained inside for some time; then he came out accompanied by two powerfully built foreign boys. I had never seen anyone like them. They were clean-shaven with shaved heads, their blue-black eyes glinting like the eyes of wolves. They wore white, and on their heads was the Christians’ cap. The sheikh was placed on something like a bier, and they went away with him, refusing adamantly to let any of us accompany him. They asked us to return in the evening to see how he was doing. Meanwhile, our supine sheikh was looking at us, terrified, as though being taken to his own burial.

We returned to his house. His sons waited for his students and disciples to disperse, after which we returned in the evening. We found that they had given him a hot bath and clean clothes issued by the hospital, and placed him in a private room with a soft bed and a coverlet of white damask. The sheet was white, and soft as silk. The bleeding in his palm had stopped, and he was loudly and greedily devouring a whole chicken swimming in a great bowl.

We had barely kissed his head and gathered around him, reassuring ourselves of his well-being, when a small man came into the room. Slight of build, bald and bareheaded, his eyes were barely visible through the wrinkles that surrounded them. A great throng of Arab, foreign, and Surianese doctors surrounded him, calling him “the chief physician.” Despite his short stature, he had a dominating and awe-inspiring presence. Even Elishua, the sultana’s physician, took two steps back and bowed his head in his presence, the perpetually supercilious expression for once gone from his face.

The chief physician took to examining the sheikh’s wrist, laying an ear against his chest. Then he gave Elishua instructions in a foreign tongue I could not comprehend. For our waiting faces, he barely spared the ghost of a smile.

A few moments after they left, Elishua returned to us, this time with a broad smile. “He can rise from his bed now!” he said. He went on to tell us that the sheikh could leave the hospital tomorrow, quite cured.

I was not, in truth, overjoyed at this news, for I had glimpsed, on entering the bimaristan, on the right of the corridor, a great library illuminated by colorful glass lanterns. Adjoining it there was a grand hall with wooden seats among the shelves; I had had high hopes of creeping into it as long as my sheikh remained here, perusing its contents and reading the titles, if only briefly.

“If my sheikh is leaving in the morning,” I thought, “there is nothing for it but to be with the books in the library all night.” I then informed his sons that I would keep vigil at the sheikh’s bedside all night, and that they could take the donkey cart and return the next day.

After the evening prayers, when sleep began to play around my sheikh’s eyelids, the sound of music and sweet, melancholy song began to fill the corridors, emanating from I knew not where. It was as though the stars of that evening had slipped through the fingers of the musicians and were moving around the rooms. My soul plunged into the sorrow of being alone and so far from home, alongside the questions battling in my mind like fierce lions, and tears burst from my eyes, so hot and untamed that I could not stifle them or hold them back. I pretended to be looking out of the window into the garden to conceal my flowing tears from my sheikh, like a motherless child.

There was a knock on the door. One of the foreign boys with the blue-black eyes came in. He seemed fatigued, his earlier vitality having left him. Despite this, he was exceedingly courteous. In halting Arabic, he said, “Your sheikh will leave tomorrow. Would he like to spend some time in the Convalescence Hall, delighting his ears with music, and spending the time in fruitful perusal, to speed the healing of his wounds?”

My heart leapt with joy and I dried my tears on my sleeve. Before I could respond, my sheikh burst out angrily, “After the Lord has healed me, you would have me spend my evening listening to the Devil’s own instruments? May you never prosper!”

The foreigner did not, I thought, quite take his meaning; but he did recognize that he was angry. He gave him water in a glass, with a few drops of lavender and sweet basil to help him sleep more deeply.

No sooner did the first wave of my sheikh’s snores rattle the ceiling than I was in the arms of the library.

The corridors were heavy white marble, upon which I trod carefully for fear of slipping. The walls smelled of the same healing potion the sheikh had drunk; the music was like a hand massaging my heart and soothing it, and it kept playing until nearly the middle of the night.

Most of the books in the library were Surianese and Turkish. However, I managed to find some Hippocrates and Galen of Pergamon in translation. A shelf of manuscripts also caught my eye for the odd hand they were written in, resembling gilded inscriptions on Chinese paper, padded with silken linings and covered in the well-tanned vellum that never fades. On the face of the shelf was inscribed “The Books of Mani.”

They piqued my curiosity. I recalled having read, in the khan’s library, a book by the Mutazilite founder Wasil ibn Ataa called A Thousand Responses to Manichaeism. I gravitated toward them, entranced by their calligraphy and illustrations. They appeared to be about their Lord Mani. I had seen the Rajilat al-Hanabila burn a picture of Mani. They had snatched it from a young water carrier making the rounds of the houses with a cart upon which was affixed the picture of this man with wide eyes and a friendly face. Most of the books were decorated with delicate drawings and miniatures: rivers, gardens, knights on horseback, and women with long hair sitting on squares of fabric on the grass, shaded by trees with fruit that hung low, surrounded by flowing rivers. Was this their Paradise? How I wished to know! There was a great deal of mysterious writing, surrounded by golden ornamented curlicues.

“Do you like them?”

I jumped, turning around. A man with a young face and bulging eyes was standing there. He wore an expensive silk turban and the sleeves of his abaya were rolled up as though he’d just returned from performing his ablutions. I answered, “Very much.”

He smiled. “I saw you admiring them a little while ago. Your eyes were practically falling out into the pages.”

I was flustered. He had clearly been watching me for some time. “Are you a patient here?” he asked.

“Accompanying one,” I answered haltingly, afraid these blessings would be ripped away from me and I would be cast out of this utopia.

“What you see around you,” he said, “is a charitable endowment from my Lord Adud al-Dawla al-Bouhi, may he rest in peace and find a home in Paradise. He set aside countless endowments for this bimaristan, to support the salaries of the physicians and staff and treat the patients. He appointed a director of the endowment to manage the moneys and properties it comprises.”

I did not know the meaning of “director of the endowment.” I thought it was like the man I had met in Basra. I asked him, “Does the director of the endowment supervise the running of the bimaristan?”

He raised his eyebrows superciliously at my show of ignorance. “The position of director of religious endowments is a great ministerial position in the diwan of the state. The most competent are selected, and they must have ability and integrity. Only men approved by the caliph are appointed. Everything you see is paid for by the revenue of the endowment.”

The Persian Blacksmith and the Throne of God

Abu Abbas al-Farsi, who was Persian as indicated by his last name, kept a stall in the outer wall of the khan. When I passed it, I was all but struck in the face by the heat from the forge, and the clang of hammer and anvil. I hurried by, barely returning his bellow of a greeting like that of a billy goat. At the time, I had no inkling why he awaited my passage and was so assiduous in greeting me. I was told that he was a slave of al-Hashimi’s, who paid his master two dirhams a day. I thought perhaps he greeted me so respectfully because I was always coming and going from the library, and spent long hours there, or perhaps because I was his next-door neighbor—which I did not really credit, for his other neighbors in the khan received no such attention. For that reason, I did not speak much with him, and if he did speak to me, I mumbled back in monosyllables. The tradesmen in the neighboring stalls gossiped about him: he was, they said, a famous bachelor, who had never married because of his love for boys.

He waited for me to pass and stopped me to ask about some grammar issue that perplexed his foreign tongue, saying, for example, “Who are the ‘Companions of the Right Hand’ mentioned in verse eight of Sura of al-Waqia?” or asking perhaps about the declension of words that ended with -an. And when I explained, he raised his hands aloft and bleated like a billy goat, “Good job, Arab of the desert!”

I found his enthusiasm and warm welcome hard to explain. If I lingered but a moment outside his stall, he would rush to pour me a glass of rosewater syrup from a small jar. One time he even made me a gift of a valuable dagger with a handle of banded onyx and an ornamental silver scabbard. I hesitated to take it: I wanted to tell him that I disliked sharp objects, but feared that this would indicate feebleness and effeminacy. I took it from him and turned it over in my hands playfully, then pulled it out of its scabbard, waved it in his face, and said, “This weapon is a saber against all who would injure a neighbor!”

He ignored what I had said, and responded, “You say that in the language of the original folk of Tamim, who hail from deep in the desert! You have never mingled with foreigners or heard strange tongues! The grammar of desert Arabs is instinct but ours is learned!” He added, perhaps to build me up and wear down my reserve toward him, the quotation: “‘Incur but the wrath of the clan of Tamim: / You’ll find the whole world is against you, it seems.’”

“I am from the clan of Bani Hanifa, not of Tamim,” I answered him coldly, “although we are neighbors.”

He did not pay much heed to fine distinctions between tribes. “But you are both linked by the native Arabic of the desert.”

The next day, he lay in wait for me by another entrance, asking, “What is your custom in pronouncing verse six of the Sura of al-Ala: ‘We shall make thee read, so that thou shalt not forget’?” I repeated it to him the way I had heard it from my sheikh in the mosque, or as I had learned it from Grandfather, not how it was pronounced in al-Yamama. I usually responded to his questions with quotes from al-Asmai, the grammarian of the Basra school, or what came to mind from the discussion circles of the mosque. He would fill with joy and his chest would puff up with pride, nodding in delight at what he thought to be my instinctual grasp of Arabic grammar, making me feel like a divinely inspired prophet spouting miraculous sayings, and possessed of rare gifts with which the other students of Baghdad had not been blessed. But all this did not stop me from keeping the onyx-handled dagger close at hand.

*

While I spoke, Abu Abbas looked intently into my face. His eyes licked glutinously at my features, lingering lustfully on my lips, as though he wished to drink the words I pronounced in the manner of the clans at the heart of Najd. It increased my distaste for him, and I avoided him so much that, if time permitted, I would leave the khan by a rear exit well away from his stall, leading onto circuitous back roads that passed by palm groves and broken-down walls of estates whose stones moaned and screeched in the wind. They said this was a graveyard for civilizations past, and in part of the wall, there was a wooden gate where a black donkey with a great head was always standing. Sometimes I heard it braying in my room in the khan. “It’s a demon manifested in that form,” Hassan liked to say, “protecting the people inside the estate from sorcerers and bandits and robbers.” I always trembled; but still I found myself obliged to use that road on occasion.

The back roads had not benefited from the great repairs implemented by Adud al-Dawla al-Bouhi in Baghdad. No sooner was I a hundred arm spans from the rear of the khan than I ran into a field of cacti and spiny plants at the end of the road, along with a number of abandoned houses and destroyed aqueducts. Before I turned the corner, there was a barracks for some Daylamite guards watching over the source that provides water to the aqueducts of Baghdad. They wore tattered clothes and were rough-faced and ill-mannered, with long scraggly mustaches. They pestered anyone who passed by with questions, hoping to get a bribe or a gratuity, covering up the abjectness of their begging with a fierce and brusque demeanor that helped save face. When I turned onto the road back to the Chicken Canal, paved with red brick, it was as though I had entered another city, with smooth, paved roads, streetlights on either side, and rows of trees.

The folk of Baghdad never ceased thanking Caliph al-Bouhi for repairing the irregularities in the flow of the river, erecting dams on the canals, and having them cleared of the pigeon feathers and weeds that had clogged them. He also built footbridges above them, had the roads paved and lit with lamps, and repaired some cracks in the walls of the Circular City—in short, he had returned to Baghdad some of its ancient stature and glory.

In recent weeks, when Abu Abbas the smith began to sense my increasing disdain for him, he began to seek out other ways of speaking with me. If I passed by his stall, he popped out suddenly, begging me to stay awhile. Sometimes he would do this and rush briefly into the depths of his stall, while I stood there cursing Shammaa of the House of Wael for giving me the heart of a bird that trembles at every predator that threatens to pluck the blush from its cheeks, and resentful of this accursed infidel lying in wait for me. Before I could think too much, he always hurried back, carefully cradling a leather-bound book in his hands like a newborn babe.

The first time this happened, I was shocked. “This means,” I thought, “that he is aware of my passion for books!”

He placed the book into my hands, looking longingly into my face. “Read this,” he said. “I know how studious you are, always in the library. I swear, I see nothing behind this bright brow but the signs of brilliance and intelligence deserving of being polished”—he indicated the book—“by these treasures!” He went on: “You know, Yahya ibn Khalid al-Barmaki said, ‘What is the worst thing? For an industrious man to content himself with a mean existence.’ I perceive that the paper market is corrupt. There are no books for sale now but empty sophistry, collections of quotations from the ancients, and the two good things.”

I frowned. “What are the two good things?”

He chuckled. “Food and sex.”

Taken aback, I plucked the book hurriedly from his hand and glanced at its title. Poetics by Aristotle. I was astonished: this was a valuable book! How had it come to be in the blacksmith’s sooty stall? Not only that—it was the translation by Yahya ibn Uday. I tucked it into my sleeve so as not to pique the curiosity of passersby and the owners of the neighboring stalls, who I had started to feel were watching our interaction with a cynical understanding, as though witnessing a business deal. I rushed off to the discussion circle, feeling at the book in my sleeve, looking forward to the moment when I would return to my room and immerse myself in studying it, reading it, enjoying myself, by turns surprised and astonished. Still, I could find no connection between this blacksmith, with his huge, dirty hands, and the contents of this book.

It was a Friday. On that day, there was no discussion circle for Sheikh al-Tamimi: he left after Friday prayers to see to the affairs of his house. However, that day there were two students from Hamadan waiting for him to grant them a degree in Qur’an recitation before their caravan left that evening for that fair Persian city. Sheikh Muhammad al-Tamimi was obliged, after Friday prayers, to sit at his customary pillar of the mosque to examine them. No sooner did his students and disciples see him than they ran to him happily and sat around him, forming three semicircles, although he was ill-humored and bad-tempered that day, with a frown on his face. He did not take out the writing implements for me to use, only asking me to listen to the students with him and go over their memorization with a copy of the Qur’an in my hands, in case he missed something.

One of the young men had an obviously foreign accent, and if I were in Sheikh al-Tamimi’s position I would not have granted him the degree. But I had scarcely lifted my head from the Qur’an in disapproval of the student’s accent when I glimpsed one of the strange young men, the most argumentative and querulous of them, striding fast toward the circle of my sheikh, bearing in his smooth hands one of the wooden stools used in the mosque as a bookrest for the Qur’an. The strange boy was so beardless and bright-faced as to appear effeminate. He wore no turban, and his hair flowed down to his shoulders. He had come alone that day, without his friends with whom he usually prayed. He drew near Sheikh al-Tamimi’s circle, offering the stool with a friendly smile. “Sheikh al-Tamimi, why don’t you sit on this, so as to be more comfortable?”

He was affecting a lisp. I was immediately suspicious. Was he making fun of the sheikh, or just trying to be humorous? I had found that the good humor of some of the boys of Baghdad included affecting a lisp for some reason. My sheikh waved a dismissive hand, frowning. “I sit on the ground beneath which the Prophet Muhammad, son of Abdullah, was buried!”

The mincing, lisping young man whispered with intent: “Then why would you give the Lord Himself a chair, upon which He is established? The Qur’an says, in verse two hundred fifty-five of the Sura of al-Baqara, ‘His Throne doth extend over the heavens and the earth.’”

My sheikh surged up and looked about him, then stared at the young man with his eyebrows raised almost into his hair. The young man went on, speaking fluently now, with no trace of a lisp. “The verb ‘to establish’ gives Him, the Almighty, a form, that is to say, hands and feet.”

Sheikh al-Tamimi realized that the young man merely sought argumentation and contention. He shrugged, muttering a proverb: “The clouds don’t move when dogs bark.” He met the boy’s eye. “When learned men speak of matters of the origins of concepts, they do so on a certain basis of knowledge. As for you, who play at it and listen to inanities, you push your way in and seek to argue with scholars and theologians.”

That day, Abu Abbas the blacksmith had finished the Friday prayers and gone off to the mosques’ discussion circles as was his habit every week: it was the one day he closed his stall and went out in search of what he was accustomed to calling “circles of argument or mirth.” If he heard something that bestirred levity in his breast, he sent up heartfelt prayers for the sheikh of the circle; and if he found argument, he cursed him roundly.

I will impute good intentions to—and ascribe to coincidence—the arrival of Abu Abbas the blacksmith at our discussion circle at that precise moment, but be that as it may, the moment of his arrival ensured that every word and scrap and syllable of the argument between my sheikh and the young man regarding the stool reached his listening ears as clear as day. His eyes, red and teary from the smoke of the forge, darted from one of us to the other. Then he burst out, yelling like a bleating billy goat, “Have you no shame, followers of Ibn Hanbal? You would make of God a human figure with organs, He whom no eye can encompass? The Lord is above your base descriptions!”

His bellowing made every head turn toward us. My sheikh was not taking it lying down. “Well, well, and now the Persian infidels are braying!”

“You idolaters,” the Persian cried, “giving physical form to the Lord!”

“Idolaters!” yelled someone else in the congregation. Soon the argument turned to shoving, and then a physical altercation broke out, with the Persian blacksmith and some of his supporters in the mosque on one side, and my sheikh’s students and adherents on the other.

The fracas only ended with the arrival, as usual, of the captain of the guard, looking around from astride his horse, which he had ridden straight into the mosque. “Have you not had enough?” he said. “Have you not heard of what I did to the Shiites who weep for al-Husayn, and those who weep for Abdullah ibn Zubayr beneath the gates of Basra? Do you not know what becomes of the fomenters of fitna? I chained them up by the neck, and the guards walked them seven times around the walls of the Circular City, while people pelted them with rocks and date pits.” Then, all at once, he commanded his guards to unleash their whips on the crowd in the mosque, making them all rush outside under his gloating eyes. He left after his horse had scattered its dung over the carpets of the mosque. But the story did not end there.

The Shiites the captain had referred to, who had been chained up and struck with rocks and the captain’s whips and forced to wade through horse dung, had had more to say. Baghdad had woken up the day after that incident to find that someone had scrawled on the fishmongers’ stores and the stalls that sold fried food: “Prophet Muhammad and Imam Ali are the best of all men; to agree is to be thankful; to disagree is to be an infidel!”

A great outcry followed: the Rajilat al-Hanabila had resumed roaming the streets of Baghdad, foaming at the mouth, brandishing even thicker sticks, despite the threats of the chief of police that he would have them beheaded and hang their heads upon the walls of the Circular City. They paid him no heed, saying that preaching virtue and admonishing vice was a holy duty that was absent and must be restored after the spread of corruption “on land and sea.”

The chief of police commanded the stall owners to erase what had been written, but this was only a short truce. This was around the time when my sheikh, Muhammad al-Tamimi, was stabbed; that aroused their ire afresh and their resentment against the Shiites. Back they went to walk the streets, shouting “Allahu akbar!” and threatening everyone. It was then I realized that a great evil was about to befall us.

The Science of Arithmetic

One of the books Abu Abbas gave me was Abu al-Wafaa Busjani’s A Book on What Is Necessary from the Science of Arithmetic for Scribes and Businessmen. I was overjoyed to receive it and it piqued my interest, not only because it was something outside the scope of what I customarily read, but because it would aid me in keeping the accounts of the stalls of the khan, a task I performed in lieu of payment for my accommodation.

In truth, the book was the best assistant I could have hoped for. On the first day of the Hajj, just before Eid, Mr. Gecko Hashimi, the director of Ibn Hashim’s endowment, told me to do the accounts for the stalls and get them in order before the month of Muharram started the new Islamic year. He always sent me the accounts, which I stuffed under the couch in my room so as not to be confused with the papers I wrote down for Sheikh al-Tamimi, and then completely forgot. Struck with sudden fear that the accounts had been lost or eaten by mice, I took the stairs four at a time. As luck would have it, they were still where I had left them, carefully rolled up and organized, tied with a ribbon of crimson silk that I did not remember having bought. Was that the work of the ghosts of room seven? I did not know, but they must be good fairies.

I then hurried to market, although most of the stalls were closed because of the holy day of the pilgrimage on Mount Arafat and in preparation for the Bayram Eid. I tried to get what I required from some stalls on the outskirts of the paper market that were still displaying their wares; I did not buy the cheap Barmakid paper produced by the factory in Baghdad, but squares of thin luxury paper from Samarqand, which cost a dirham a page. I purchased quality ink made in China, which never fades when applied to paper, not the poor ink made of black vitriol or cedar, which had ruined a great deal of knowledge in the khan’s library and here in the paper market.

When I returned to my room, I set out my tools and commenced my labor. I decided to make the cover in thuluth calligraphy, with which the scribes of Baghdad were so taken these days. It is known as thuluth, or “third,” because it is written with a third of the width of the reed pen, making the letters interlace beautifully. Using different colors, I added all the diacritics needed for correct pronunciation. As was customary, I began the document with a bismillah, then divided it up: a section for the stalls on the eastern face, with the name of each leaseholder and their industry. These commanded a higher price than the other stalls because they faced the river, and were attended by most of those who were walking on the riverbank or taking boats for pleasure. Other stalls, which paid quarterly, I named “annual stalls.” I left the papers in the back of the sheaf for those who paid quarterly. What was more, I left a small space at the end of the document for zakat—one-quarter of one-tenth of the stall according to rent—to make it easier for it to be paid to the needy.

I was hesitant to take this last step, for it was possible that zakat could be taken from other sources of the income, or it might appear I had placed it there out of a desire to be given part of it—there was a fatwa at that time in Baghdad that zakat could be paid to students of learning as wandering travelers. But in the end, I made my decision and set it down. When I had finished, I went downstairs to the binder’s at the library of the khan to have it bound. They held out several types and colors for me to choose from: I chose a piece of turquoise leather from the city of Faljan, well tanned and soft to the touch. I asked them to bind it with strong wool thread, all one strand.

I handed over the finished work to Mr. Gecko. To the work, I had added the inscription “To my lord Abu al-Hassan al-Hashimi, may the Lord grace him with honor and long life and all manner of blessings.” Mr. Gecko turned it over in his hands, his eyebrows raised in admiration. “I was not told that a desert Arab was capable of such skill and craftsmanship,” he said. I swallowed the insult in silence.

I fell into an exhausted slumber the night of Eid. I woke up to Jamra knocking on the door dragging a huge pot behind her, handing out great hunks of meat to the people living there. “Happy Eid!” she said cheerfully. The boy, Maysara, followed her, small baskets on his shoulders filled with dried apricots and nuts.

I took my basket of apricots and nuts with great joy, and said to Jamra, “You may have this leg of lamb. May the Lord always give you His bounty. I have no means of cooking or grilling it. Would you take it home for your children and bring me some to taste tomorrow?”

She showed no joy, nor did she thank me: smiles lost their way on their path to her face. “We’ll see,” she said. Then she left, Maysara trailing behind her, wearing clean clothes and sandals with shining leather straps. I sat by the walls of my room, nibbling at the dried fruit and nuts, missing al-Yamama. It had been a year since I left.

The new year had come and gone, and the first month, Muharram, was already done, when one morning I heard a light, polite knock at my door. When I opened it, I found a foreign boy with shining blue eyes, smartly dressed and appearing to be well bred. He presented me with a small sack of dirhams. “My master Abu al-Hassan al-Hashimi is very pleased with your work on the stalls he owns, and invites you tonight to his house in Rusafa.”

The Best of Times

My prayers were answered! It was as if the mythical bird al-Anqaa had alighted on the ceiling of my room. I was afraid and hesitant to go: what would I encounter there? I had heard a great deal in the discussion circles about what went on behind the walls of those palaces—the debauchery and dissolution. But Hassan the Egyptian said loudly, unable to conceal the envy in his tone, “You desert brute! Hesitating over an invitation to the famous salon of Dar al-Nadwa? It is the Mecca of Baghdad’s intellectuals. It was given that name after Dar al-Nadwa of the Quraysh, where all the learned men congregated in the time of the Prophet. All the Hashimite nobles gather there, Sunni descendants of Abbas and Shiite descendants of Ali ibn Abu Talib as well.”

“And are there many of the latter in Baghdad?” I asked.

He tilted his head, thinking. “It is said that there are four thousand of them, and they are given a stipend from the state.”

“Hassan!” I cried out. “How do you know all this information and these figures about the Prophet’s descendants? Sometimes you make me suspicious.”

He blinked and swallowed. “Are you, too, going to accuse me of being a spy for the Shiite Fatimids in Baghdad? Heaven forgive you all!” He went on, changing the subject, “But in Dar al-Nadwa, they soar on the wings of poetry, literature, song, and melody, rising above all petty matters! Al-Hashimi holds his salon with the new moon of every month; he was probably delayed this month because of the festival of Ashoura.” He smiled. “In Dar al-Nadwa, they converse, listen to music, share their knowledge, recite poetry, and are bombarded with food and drink. One time, Minister Abu Khalaf himself attended, and the head of the descendants of Abu Talib as well. Abu Hayan al-Tawhidi, the eminent man of learning, used to attend, and it is said that so did Badie al-Zaman al-Hamazani, who wrote the famous Maqamat.” He bowed his head as if to prevent me from reading his face. In low tones I could barely make out, he said, “Go. Don’t you dare decline. It may be the most important thing that will ever happen to you in this city, the thing you will remember when you leave Baghdad.”

Had Hassan seen the future in that moment?

I made to leave him, but he caught the hem of my robe. “What of your appearance and dress? You must wear clothing suited to a gathering of gentlefolk. You will find them strutting about in dyed linen, perfumed with nutmeg and saffron, while you will appear in this abaya of yours like a wild moose just done butting!” He went on: “Beware of wearing red. It’s the color of the servants who will receive you in the caliph’s palace. It is frowned upon for wits to wear heavy Nabatean abayas, but you are far from being a wit! You are but a desert Arab who seeks to be witty.”

Hassan rushed off to his students: children in the morning, foreigners in the evening. Heaven help you, Hassan! How have they not driven you mad yet? It was unsurprising that some clerics had ruled the witness of a schoolteacher inadmissible.

But his words still echoed through my head: “Dress finely. Your desert garb is unsuited to the couches and carpets you will be seated on. Don’t you dare go in your usual abaya! You shall be like a wild moose. Commit to memory everything you hear and see: I shall question you about it all tomorrow.”

What was I to do? Should I wear my old clothes and cover up their faded, threadbare fabric with a strong, embroidered abaya that would eat up all my dirhams, or borrow a garment for one night that would make me proud at Dar al-Nadwa?

Who would lend me one? People who owned rich clothing usually did not lend it to others. At a loss, I went out in the noonday sun to the Karkh marketplace. I asked some of the fabric sellers, who made fun of me, saying, “Nakedness covers nothing!” Another said, “It is essence that counts, not appearance,” in a mocking, derisive tone. Still others chose to advise and counsel me. “A garment in which no sin was committed,” they preached, “never falls apart.”

Finally, at the farthest end of the marketplace, I found a merchant from Maan, displaying some rough abayas lined with soft wool and sleeves embroidered with cords resembling the heads of hoopoes. I bought one, telling myself, “Though you wear white lambswool or silk, in the end you are an Arab of the desert.” I dragged my feet back to the khan, feeling somewhat like a camel who has been entered into a horse race.

Abu Abbas the blacksmith saw me coming. Seeing I was downcast, he made to recite the names of books he thought might entertain me. I interrupted him, thinking, “Let’s see what this ingratiating infidel has to offer.” Aloud, I said, “Abu Abbas, do you know of anyone in Karkh who might lend me a rich garment to fulfill the invitation of a nobleman?”

He tilted his great head, thinking. “Nobody lends clothing in Baghdad,” he said, chuckling. “As they say, the naked woman’s garb still wears out.” But then he muttered, “I’ll see what I can do.”

The call for the noon prayers was already sounding, so I hurried to the mosque of Karkh. It was not far from the river, built of red brick, its minaret slightly tilted, looking as though it had been built in a hurry. I rushed in, fearing to miss the prayer, then stood transfixed at the inner door, seeing something I had never seen before. A group of blind men were standing in a row, waving their canes, asking everyone who came in, “Are you a follower of Imam al-Shafei?” If he said “Yes,” they set his back afire with their canes. Those who came in mocked them, calling them “blind of sight and soul.” They pushed the blind men hard, making them fall on their faces. But they leaned on their canes and pulled themselves up again. They remained standing in a line, waving their canes, until we finished praying. I felt sorry for them. Who had filled the breasts of these poor deluded men against the followers of Imam al-Shafei? Were they followers of al-Birbihari? Who was it who kept filling men’s breasts with resentment, reducing them to mere rams butting at others?

I left the mosque and hurried to the circle of my sheikh, and started writing. “In the name of God, prayers and peace be upon the Prophet . . .” After the afternoon prayers, I excused myself and ran off without waiting for his permission. This did not keep him from calling after me, “If you don’t bring me an excuse tomorrow, I will punish you!”

When I arrived at the gate of the khan that led to our upper chambers, I was waylaid by the dumb boy, the blacksmith’s apprentice, carrying a large, wrapped package of fabric, which he indicated to me with a sly smile on his face. He put it in my hands and hurried off.

I took it from him warily, glancing around me, and carried it up to my room. When I unwrapped it with care, I found in it a pair of trousers and a shirt of fine linen, an ivory-colored silk garment, and a caftan of fine green silk embroidered with gold crescents, in addition to a long piece of green silk the color of the caftan, which I guessed must be for the turban. I was stunned at the caftan’s beauty. It was wide and a little loose on my thin build, but this might be the fashion among the wealthy men of Baghdad: the young hecklers at the mosque also wore silken caftans that hung loose about their shoulders and draped wide about their bodies, dragging proudly behind them. Did it belong to Abu Abbas? But it had no scent of him: he smelled like a goat that lives among iron ore and firewood. Before I could start to wonder what he would want in return for these clothes, and before I could be overpowered by the spirit of Shammaa of the House of Wael, I hurried to the bathhouse in the marketplace before it closed.

Dar al-Nadwa

The commander of the armies had forbidden the Shiites from wailing and mourning for al-Husayn the day of Ashoura that year; he had also forbidden the Sunnis at Bab al-Basra and Bab al-Sha’ir from lamenting Musaab ibn Zubayr eight days later. Both parties obeyed, but resentment and rage still simmered in men’s breasts.

In the steam, beneath the walls dripping with water and secrets, and the sound of water being poured over bodies, clothing is removed, and wariness and formality are likewise cast off. The heart unburdens itself of its cares and resentment. “How can we not wail over the grandson of the Prophet?” I heard one man saying. “Al-Husayn is foremost among the young men of Paradise. Curse those who murdered the apple of the Prophet’s eye! How dare they forbid us from mourning?”

The words reached my ears from afar, as though emanating from a deep well. The veil of hot steam, the shadows of the walls, and the scent of the perfumed lather half drugged me. I had divested myself of my garments and left them in an outer passageway, a towel around my waist. I sat on a stone platform encircling a fountain topped with a great stained glass dome, while a bathhouse attendant approached me, muscular of build, big of belly, and foreign of tongue. He instructed me to lie down by the fountain.

The steam released the memory of dust from my skin. Hot water pouring, a loofah dripping with lather scrubbed cruelly over my back and shoulders, lifting layers off me. The lethargy and the cloud of steam allayed my doubts; here I was, free of the specter of Shammaa of the House of Wael, the loofah leaving me peeled and clean, the voice of the angry man who wanted to mourn still reaching me from afar, as the bath attendant undid my braids and lathered my hair.

The bath attendant handed me over to another boy, who started to comb my hair, pouring jasmine oil onto it. With a miswak that he dipped in crushed salt and charcoal, he cleaned my gums and teeth, then clipped my nails and pushed back my cuticles with a twig dipped in vinegar and rose-scented fat.

I, Mazid al-Hanafi of Najd, emerged from the steam of the bathhouse as pure as the day I was born, clean and free of sin and impurity.

When a playful little moon appeared on the horizon, the scent of the river rose, green and tempting. I didn’t have to ask around to find the location of Abu al-Hassan al-Hashimi’s house: its wall, of gleaming pink stone, can be seen across the river by most of the inhabitants of eastern Karkh. All I had to do was to cross the bridge over the river from Karkh to Rusafa. But, to be sure, I asked the lamplighter at the wall of the Circular City where the house of Hashimi was: he pointed without hesitation at the pink wall and muttered, “Everyone knows it. It’s next to the endowment lands of the Bimaristan al-Adudi at Rusafa.”

On the bridge of Rusafa, my eyes did not search for the doe-eyed ladies of pleasure; my heart was beating fearfully, in awe of the gathering I was headed for. What would come to pass? What faces would I see that night? Would they seat me with the nobodies in the back row, “next to where they put their slippers,” as they say—nearest the door?

When I drew near the wall, I found that, up close, its color was not pink; that might have been caused by the reflection of the afternoon light on its great stones, or the flickering of the odd glass-covered brass lamps, the like of which I had never seen in Baghdad. I swallowed and whispered my name to the guard at the door. He kept me there for a few moments, then handed me over to a boy who came running from within and requested politely that I follow him. He had a shyly glowing lantern in his hand. The sound of the waterwheels was feminine and soft, like the alabaster of the path we trod.

There were vast gardens in which peacocks strutted proudly about; my companion was obliged to pause several times and wait for me as I stopped and stared, astonished. This was before we reached a wooden door with great hinges, ornamented with brass, flanked by two marble pillars, each as high as five men, with carvings of vines wrapped around them.

The door opened onto a passage entirely carpeted with rugs from Samarqand and lit with ornamented wall lanterns, the ones they call karmaniya in Karkh. I followed the boy, looking about like a lamb following its mother. Finally, there reached my ears an imposing but melodious voice saying, “I’m not praising anyone, Lord preserve you and defeat your enemies. That said, the Mutazilites are men of justice and good monotheists. There are many good scientists and men of letters among them who remain loyal to taqiya rather than face the dungeons that lie in wait for them. It is said that our comrade, Abu Hayan al-Tawhidi, is one of their imams.”

My innards churned as though I were about to face an army when I stepped into the gathering.

I had caught fleeting glimpses of Abu al-Hassan al-Hashimi on one or two of his visits to the khan, surrounded by his friends and retinue. I had been afraid, as I entered, that I might not recognize him, so full of trepidation was I, and so full the gathering of men, but I found him the moment I entered. As for him, he watched me keenly as I entered, while continuing his conversation: “I regret that al-Tawhidi, the great imam, the fount of learning, has been obliged to quit Baghdad for Shiraz, unable to stomach the heckling and contentiousness of those with closed hearts.”

His eyes followed me as I stepped into his gathering, a welcoming smile on his face. I knew not whether to go to him and greet him, or to seat myself at a distance until he should finish his conversation. But I merely stood speechless in the center of the hall, the sound of the fountain loud in my ears. Immediately he handed the book he had been holding to his companion and stood, coming toward me all smiles. “Welcome, Mazid al-Hanafi, maker of books, master of the elegant pen!” He turned to his companions. “Anyone who enters a strange place is perforce perplexed. Let us therefore begin by greeting him.”

He seated me not far from him, which piqued the attendees’ curiosity as to who I was; perhaps my borrowed finery increased it. All the while, he kept repeating, “Welcome, a thousand welcomes, al-Hanafi.”

I was trembling and confused; I jammed myself into the couch, wishing the curious eyes would disperse and return to what al-Hashimi was reading out of his book.

The room was circular, its walls adorned with gesso and its ceiling inlaid with gold leaf, surrounded by an arcade supported by marble columns with colored garlands; in its center was a fountain sparkling with blue water, with rose petals in its basin. Before the guests were brass dishes with feet about two handspans high, in the shape of birds facing one another: upon them were set out peaches, pears, and grapes, and next to them was a glass dish for the pits. I had not been there long when a group of young men came in wearing garments of red silk, turbans on their heads with a feather on the front, bearing trays with glasses of sekanjabin, palm wine, jallab, and buttermilk.

The boy who had brought me the invitation was among them; when he glimpsed me he smiled, bowing his head in a polite and refined manner. He disappeared and returned quickly, then bowed to me and presented me with a garland of jasmine, which he hung about my neck. It was then that I realized everyone there was wearing a similar garland, perfuming the entire place with the scent of jasmine.

I began to discreetly watch al-Hashimi as he spoke: he was squat, but he sat on the couches and silken cushions with his head high like those of noble birth. His face shone with a handsomeness whose source I could not identify: it might have been his broad brow, or where his eyebrows met above a nose that split his face like a sword. He had taken his turban off in a gesture of informality, placing it next to him, and his neatly combed black hair fell to his shoulders. From the first moment, I intuited that the conversation rolled from one guest to another like the round gem on the top of a scepter: he let no one monopolize the conversation for too long, and gave everyone a chance to speak. This disturbed my innards anew: I would certainly be called upon to speak.

This instinct proved true when he said, “And how are you, Mazid?”

I responded, sitting up straight and raising my head, “Well, and in good health, praise the Lord.”

“And how is the clan of Bani Ukhaydar, descendants of the Prophet? Do they rule justly in al-Yamama?”

I was filled with suspicion. He knew more about me than I thought. “There is no better ruler nor yet a better court. Prayers and peace be on the Prophet and the good descendants of his house.”

He inclined his head, pleased at my words. “Mazid al-Hanafi!” he said. “They say that you are in the company of the books in the library day and night. Tell us what the books have whispered in your ear.”

Suddenly I heard a rough voice from close by al-Hashimi. He said mockingly, “And what can the folk of al-Yamama have to say? There is no worse liar than Musaylima al-Hanafi. Have you not heard our imam al-Tawhidi saying, in his book al-Basa’ir wa al-Dhakha’ir, that a man returning from al-Yamama was asked, ‘What was the best thing you saw there?’ and he replied, ‘The exit.’”

The assembly roared with laughter. My face reddened and I stammered; this was too much for someone green like me, here for the first time.

My face was so red that Abu al-Hassan al-Hashimi noticed, and attempted to mend matters, saying, “Speak well if nothing else, Abu al-Darayn! This young man may well have knowledge up his sleeve that will put your laziness and dissolution to shame. Have you not heard the words of al-Fadhl ibn Yahya when he divided people into four classes: kings who deserve obedience and respect; ministers distinguished by insight and good counsel; noblemen lifted up by money and power; and well-mannered men of the middle class, trying to reach the station of the aforementioned? All others are but flotsam and jetsam, caring about naught but their food and sleep.” He turned to me. “And what will you set out on our table today?”

I divined that Abu al-Hassan had dragged the business about the classes of people into the conversation to grant me an opportunity to calm my trepidation and catch my breath. I soon gathered the scattered threads of my thought and thought I might recite the poem of Ali ibn al-Jahim upon Rusafa Bridge; but it had been cheapened now, on the tongues of storytellers and sung out of tune by singers at bars. Even the common people repeated it. I looked for something to contain the assembly and bind the demons waiting for me: I had no wish to direct the conversation to the books of heresy in the library in which I buried my head. Finally, I decided to recite a poem my grandfather and I had sung, by the greatest poet to come from al-Yamama, al-Asha.

I looked up at the ceiling: above me, my grandfather’s window opened, bringing in the smell of date-palm pollen and the hoofbeats of the evening stars, the bleating of the herds returning from grazing, and the clangor of the gates of the Citadel of Bani Ukhaydar. . . . My breast filled with all of these before I recited:

Take your leave of Hurayra; watch the receding caravan!
Can you bear to say goodbye to her, you loving man?
Her hair is long, her smile is bright, and oh, she walks so slow,
As barefoot in a mud puddle, so leisurely she goes.
Not lingering nor hurrying, she walks to the girl next door,
Like a passing cloud she moves, floating over the floor;
Her ornaments and finery all rustle when she goes,
As the desert wind sighs through the evening primrose.

Because every eye was fixed on me in shock, I dispelled my nervousness by imagining the faces to be the sheep returning from grazing, except for Abu al-Hassan al-Hashimi, whom I imagined as my grandfather. Then I recited the rest of the epic poem.

The hush that fell over the assembly was like that which fell over every creature in al-Yamama when my grandfather and I sang that poem; the bees building their honeycombs in the trees paused to listen. I sought out the rest of the verses in my head until my throat felt tight and my chest was fit to burst. I could not go on: I had not known that homesickness is a jackal lying in wait that, once released, buries its fangs in you. I was overcome with embarrassment and shame: I feared that the veil of my melancholy would cast a shadow over the lightness of the company.

Abu al-Hassan said loudly, saving the moment, “Bless you, al-Hanafi! I swear, your recitation has been music to our ears, even though our hearts have no strength this night for the longing call of the desert! Let us avoid the paths of poetry, for they are traps lying in wait for the unwary heart.”

But Abu al-Darayn said, “Mazid has recited the verse of his tribe’s poet. The desert Arabs are tribal and proud of their own folk, and that will never change.”

I fell silent, not knowing why he singled me out. Was it because I was new and only passing through, and so he allowed himself to appear waggish at my expense? Or perhaps he had divined my reluctance to make a retort. His unamusing taunts only redoubled. I watched him from my seat after I had calmed myself.

Abu al-Darayn was an older man who sought to look younger: his beard and mustache were dyed with henna, and his silken abaya had fallen about his shoulders in a show of simplicity. His eyes were as piercing as those of a bird of prey, catching every scrap and tittle that took place in the gathering, and never took his attention off those seated around him, not to mention his assiduousness in gaining Abu al-Hassan’s approval, agreeing with everything he said and nodding admiringly when he spoke. He was definitely a sycophant who would not hesitate to lord it over those beneath him and abase himself to those above him. This type of man is careful to seek out gatherings and salons, rush to them to flatter the master of the house, recite the poems they have memorized, convey to the lord and master the news of the marketplaces and mosques, fill their stomachs, receive some gifts, and go.

When the meal was served, he was seated near me. I was shy to eat, and the closest dish to me was the haris, or wheat porridge; I contented myself with reaching for this dish exclusively. Noticing, he said, “Why do you only eat haris, although it is the food of low-born riffraff?”

I could tell that this monkey had seized upon me to make me the laughingstock of the assembly, probably because I was new to the gathering, or because I was young or visibly withdrawn. But a man sitting next to him, divining his intent, said, “And what is served in your house every day, Abu al-Darayn, if not porridge and bones?”

Abu al-Darayn obviously cared nothing for these words: his seat at the table clearly filled him with joy and contentment. He launched into a mimicry of folk from every region, imagining each as they would sit at the table, as though he had brought them all into the room with us: now he mimicked a desert Arab, now one from Najd, now a Nabatean, a Sindhi, an African, a Turk. “This is how a Nabatean eats,” he said. All the personages he mimicked were in a state of ravenous hunger, providing a convenient excuse for him to stuff his mouth with handful after handful of food, crumbs scattering about him. The louder the laughter of those around him, the more greedy and unpleasant he became. He was the last to leave the table, and he did not leave until he had filled every cranny of his swollen belly.

When we concluded our meal, some boys came in, each bearing a bowl and two urns. I washed my hands with water and a paste scented with orange blossoms before the boy washed the traces away with the rosewater in the urn in his left hand. We dried our hands with kerchiefs of Egyptian silk from Dibaq.

Zahira

We returned to our gathering. “I shall never forget as long as I live,” one of them said, “the death of one who was the light of this assembly, and the flower of its company. His speech made the mind fertile, and comforted the heart, and dissipated all care: Badie al-Zaman al-Hamazani, may he ever have a cool resting place! His life was cut short; he was snatched from us.”

Abu al-Darayn leapt to catch at the thread of the tale. “Is it true what people say and the common folk bruit about, that Badie al-Zaman swooned, making his family think he was dead? They buried him quickly, they say, but he lived on in his tomb, and they heard him screaming: they dug up the grave, but found him truly dead, fallen over on his beard from the horrors of the grave.”

Al-Hashimi cut him off. “Here Abu al-Darayn would not rest until he dug a grave where we sit,” he said. Then he added, “Let us not give ourselves over to poetry entirely nor to talk entirely nor to song entirely. We must seize the day. Sing, talk, recite poetry, and let us seize life with both hands.”

He glanced to the right, gesturing with his hand. Silken curtains that had been covering the southern gallery of the room were raised. From behind them emerged a line of slave girls so extraordinarily beautiful it was as though they were born of the rain. Their garments were red with a hint of blue, embroidered at the hem, and they had the fine, fresh features of the women of the Sindh. They bowed before us in a pleasant greeting, then sat in a half circle among some couches and pillows set out for them. The lute player and the flutist sat before them; behind them sat others holding a tanbur, a tambour, and brass castanets. They spent a long time preparing their instruments, adjusting the strings, and tapping them with slender fingers. Their eyes were on Abu al-Hassan al-Hashimi, waiting for his command to start. “Let us hear some music,” he said, “No, allow me to repeat that. Let us have some music to welcome our new guest Mazid al-Hanafi from Najd.”

I blushed and looked down. I would have preferred to do without this greeting: it might turn those present against me, and bring a more intense scrutiny upon me, one I could do without. Abu al-Darayn, of course, seized this opportunity to get at me. “ Ladies!” he chortled. “Be gentle with al-Hanafi! We don’t want him to end up like Bashar ibn Burd, who spouted heresy when he was drunk on wine and song. He turned to a man next to him and said, ‘I swear, Abu Abdullah, this is better than the Sura of al-Hashr’—that’s what he said.” He turned to me. “Such hospitality merits that you kiss al-Hashimi’s hand, young man. Up with you, go and kiss it!”

I could not help scowling. I had never kissed the hand of anyone but my grandfather. I rose and hurried to al-Hashimi, who tried to catch me and motion to me to sit down, but I had already reached him, so I kissed his brow. Just then, the women I had dubbed the Daughters of the Rain burst into song:

Look back on Najd; my eyes do seek it,
Even though it is in vain;
Its soil is perfumed with ambergris,
Musk, and agarwood in rain.

Then they fell silent. Apparently these verses were all they knew in praise of Najd. The assembly went back to laughing at some unfunny story told by Abu al-Darayn about a judge by the name of Ibn Siyar, who had an immense turban and a long beard. He was, the story said, approached by two women, one accusing the other. “‘What say you to her accusation?’ he asked the second woman,” Abu al-Darayn recounted. “‘I am so affrighted that I cannot speak,’ said she, ‘by the sight of a beard an arm span long and a face an arm span long. I am so awestruck I am dumbstruck.’”

I could not tell whether his tale was meant to entertain or to make him the center of attention, and I knew not whether to laugh at his unamusing tale; I settled upon a quiet chuckle amid the gathering’s uproarious laughter.

Suddenly the gathering fell silent as the musicians began to sing a poem by Abu Nawas:

You are the full moon of the house,
The musk that perfumes the halls;
The fleeting scent of the dog rose,
The flowers on the trees so tall;
With heels like ivory, you are
Like a tanbur breaking hearts all;
You are the throne of Solomon,
Full of wisdom both great and small;
You are the Holy Kaaba with
Its pilgrims, curtains, and its wall;
For love of you I am adrift:
In Paradise, or Hell to fall?

Everyone applauded, having swayed along to the music. After this, I heard murmurs and saw everyone looking about. “Where is Zahira?” I heard them say. “These verses always announce her arrival.”

Suddenly there she was, tripping and swaying by the fountain. I fell silent, stunned at the thought that this much beauty could have been among us without my perceiving it. Back home in al-Yamama, we sang of the beauty of the women of the House of Wael and their long braids: what to say, then, of the hair of this wild mare, rippling about her like curtains of night? She began to sway. She slipped two silver daggers from her belt and moved them in slow arcs, their light reflecting off her figure and face.

In the beauty of women, there is tempting beauty, and companionable beauty, and miniature beauty like the melodies of the musicians; but Zahira’s beauty was painful, like the way the moon spills its light over the river, or the way honey spreads over butter.

I could not take my eyes off her, as though she were one of the women of Paradise who neither menstruate nor suffer from mucus. Her beauty was incapable of being moderate; did the very air change color when she passed?

She shook her breasts: the waterfalls of her hair spilled over her face. Her stomach was bare, a ribbed belt around her waist. Her pantaloons were of transparent silk that showed off the roundness of her thighs and the splendor of her legs. Over her navel was a pearl, upon which every eye that devoured her was affixed.

I was lost in bliss. I kept stealing furtive glances at Abu al-Hassan. He maintained his composure and dignity, unchanged: he did not so much as blink, drinking glass after glass. I had no idea what was in them, but he never overstepped the bounds of chivalry, to say nothing of drunken indiscretion. He contemplated her with admiration that was innocent of any lust; when the gathering concluded, he stood tall and steady as his guests took their leave of him, his eyes only a little fatigued, I knew not whether from the cups of whatever he had drunk, or from sleepiness.

Delight, the reed-scented river air, and the companionship of the stars: was it a woman like her who tempted Harut and Marut, making them, who had been angels of heaven, fall damned to the bottom of a well?

I caught a glimpse of Zahira leaving. She climbed into a sedan chair mounted on a camel, covered with two layers of shining curtains that fell to cover the body of the animal. At the gate of the mansion, a sullen older man accompanied her, and two Ethiopian boys loaded the musicians’ instruments and bags onto mules. Next to her, the sullen man trotted on a sprightly mule, upbraiding the musicians over matters that remained a mystery to me. He was sharp-voiced, his foreign words blazing with ire. I knew not whether he was her companion or her father, but she alone appeared unimpressed by him and spared him not so much as a glance. When she danced, she shook her rear seductively in a manner that a girl would not in the presence of her father.

If it had occurred to me in that moment to uproot every date palm in al-Yamama and plant them all along the paths of Abu al-Hassan’s palace in thanks and gratitude, I would not have hesitated. I took his hands and bent over them, thanking him. Suddenly he tightened his grip on one of my hands. Leaning closer, he whispered, “Come to the house tomorrow after the sunset prayer. I require you for something.”

His whispered words, despite their pleasant delivery and innocent nature, struck my delight in the face, scattering me far and wide. What did al-Hashimi want of me? I was overcome with unease. Had I made some error in the accounts of the stalls of the khan? Or did he want me to be a bookkeeper at his home? But he hardly stayed in Baghdad—he was only there between wintertime and the season of trimming the date palms; then he was gone again.

The next morning I woke early. Despite this, I performed the dawn prayer in my room, lingering a little, recalling the events of the day before, and the Zahira of Harut and Marut. She and I breathed the same air, the air of Baghdad. She was displaying her wares, all the glory and beauty she possessed, in the capital of the world, and she wished to captivate me and keep me there.

I told Hassan some of what had taken place, in order to stop his mouth and put an end to his incessant questions. I kept a great deal to myself, secretly drowning in its delight. A great many of our inner joys will fade when exposed to the air and to others’ questioning. When I mentioned that Zahira had danced, his eyes widened. “Was she there?”

It disturbed me that others knew her: I had thought to keep her exclusively within my breast, mine and mine alone. But Hassan said, “Baghdad is completely taken with Zahira. Some call her ‘the Blossom.’ And here you are, buried in books and discussion circles, knowing nothing.” He sighed. With some melancholy, he went on, “In the desert, when a caravan passes by a palm grove and the palm fronds sing, people know there is a bride in the caravan. And now, when the palm fronds in Baghdad sing, people know the sedan chair of Zahira, the Blossom, has passed that way.”

What a disappointment! It was painful to learn that I was not the only man captivated by her; the dreams of everyone in Baghdad clung to her. But Hassan added, “They know not who her master is. She came from the east with all of those who accompany her. Some say she’s a Persian; some say she’s from Sindh. They say she was a slave girl owned by a Bouhi prince, who fell so deeply in love with her that he never left her bed or her side, paying no heed to his family and friends. Disturbed by this single-mindedness, he instructed one of his men to take her to the sea and drown her. The man, having fallen in love with her, took pity upon her, and escaped with her to Baghdad: they say it is the older fellow who is always in her company.”

Was Hassan telling the truth, or was it another one of the tall tales that he told to drive home that he knew everything while I was a green bumpkin? “Do you remember the feast of Ashmuni?” he asked me. “When we had that fish? She was the one singing in the great marquee. But she was wearing a veil to protect the people from her beauty. In any case, everyone who has seen her says she is one of those nymphs who never live long, but die in the flower of youth.”

“Truly?” I asked. But deep inside me, an evil impulse was overjoyed that Zahira would die young, for I did not wish to leave Baghdad if it meant leaving behind this nymph. I did not know then that my overweening love for her had plunged its hand into the Book of Fate and written therein.

“Heaven protect her,” Hassan said. “She refused to join the caliph’s harem, on the pretext that she is the wife of that old man who goes about with her, and will not be shut into a house of slave girls where only her admirers can see her. Some people come to Baghdad only to delight their eyes with the sight of her; but she is retiring, which only makes her more attractive to them. The commander of the armies of Baghdad no longer extends his protection to her, now that she has refused to spend the night in his company.” He added, “They say that even the slave mistress at the palace, who is an adherent of Sappho and loves women, sent her a doll of wax on an ornamented base, which is a Persian custom they call ‘the bride.’ If she should accept, the beloved places a necklace around the doll’s neck, and rewards the go-between who brought her the doll with a new chador; but if she refuses, the doll is returned with a black veil over her head. But Zahira did not respond, leaving the door ajar without closing it. There are many who would do her harm: the commander of the armies has but to leave for Rayy or Mosul on business for the Rajilat al-Hanabila to rampage through the marketplace, smashing musical instruments, emptying jars of wine, and beating and attacking slave girls and slave boys. Also, the Ayyarin gangs have become more savage in recent times, and will commit robberies in broad daylight. All this is sufficient to keep her distant and remote.”

“What about you?” I teased. “How do you manage your affairs with the Rajilat al-Hanabila and the Ayyarin when you come home at midnight, or if they catch you staggering through the streets smelling of wine and the perfume of the women at Ishaq al-Wasati’s tavern?”

Hassan left. I remained in my room: I had no wish to leave it. There were three new pomegranates lined up on my windowsill, and a buzzing around the window of a small creature—I knew not whether it was bird or insect, but it had green wings and flitted back and forth, describing circles around the window as the sun rose higher.

I curled up in my bed like a fetus, my clothing wrapped around me, with no desire to move out of my ecstasy, knowing that Jamra, with her face like dried river mud, would knock at my door now wanting to clean the room.

What would al-Hashimi tell me tonight? I rose lethargically, did my ablutions, and prayed. I replaced the borrowed garments I had worn, wrapped it all back up, and went to the stall of Abu Abbas.

*

Before I reached the bottom of the stairs, I heard a hubbub in the street: running footsteps, voices yelling and shouting “Allahu akbar!” and the stall owners whispering, “It is the procession of the caliph, al-Qadir bi-Allah, Heaven protect him!”

It was a great procession, coming from Rusafa over the bridges, among the stalls, heading for the gateway to the Circular City. I stood stunned, watching a sight more majestic and awe-inspiring than anything I had yet seen in Baghdad.

Six horsemen preceded the procession on magnificent horses, with saddles fashioned of shiny colored leather, bearing shields of silver. Their turbans were of black damask, set with a great white feather that appeared to be from a male ostrich. Three of them were to the right and three to the left of the procession. There were two lines of men on foot, led by men with black flags upon which was written in white, “Muhammad is God’s Prophet,” which is the emblem of the Abbasids. The horn players were blowing so hard I fancied their cheeks would burst. There were three rows behind the caliph, weapons and shields clanging so loudly that they could be heard above all the clamor.

The stall owners stood outside their stalls to cheer and greet the procession and call blessings down on the caliph. “Heaven preserve Caliph al-Qadir bi-Allah, steward of the Prophet!”

The caliph was riding a giant black horse with a great chest and massive legs, which appeared to be a Byzantine mount; next to him scurried a guard bearing a black parasol shot through with gold thread. I could barely see his face for the crowd and the sun’s glare; I merely caught a fleeting glimpse of him, the Prophet’s garment, the burda handed down from sultan to sultan, around his shoulders. His ring and scepter glinted in the sun; his henna-dyed beard was thick and his nose sharp.

When he drew near to the gate of the Circular City, the crier preceding the procession called, “His Majesty, Servant of the Holy Line, the Caliph of the Prophet and the Imam of the Faithful, al-Qadir bi-Allah, has been disturbed in his rest by what he has heard of fitna and the spread of discord and hypocrisy among his subjects, and the introduction of seditious talk in the mosques and marketplaces. He commands everyone to remain on the straight and narrow, and the right path of religion as laid out by the Prophet Muhammad. He calls upon all to abandon the practices of the Mutazilites, and the Rafida, and speeches that are counter to Islam. He will prepare a document to that effect and publish it soon before witnesses. All those who have arguments shall sign it, and anyone who shall go against this shall receive swift punishment, to serve as an example for his fellows, the Mutazilites and the Rafida and the Ishmaelites and the Qarmatians and the Jahmis and those who would embody God. They shall be crucified and imprisoned and exiled and cursed from the pulpit. This decree is binding; if you do not accept it, on your own head be it.” Then the procession turned and headed back to the Circular City.

The stall keepers and passersby burst out with one voice: “We hear and obey, Heaven preserve the caliph, may God grant the Prophet’s steward long life,” and so on. Despite my awe at the impressive scene, I could not but be irritated by the cunning and hypocrisy of the stall owners. They spent their days complaining of the high prices, the scarcity of goods, and the injustice of the submissive ruler, when they knew full well that the solutions to all these matters lay in the hands of the commander of the Bouhi army. No sooner had the procession disappeared through the gates of the Circular City than they went back to whispering mockingly about the reason he had come out to meet the people; it was rare for him to go abroad in his procession, for normally he went out incognito, disguised as one of the common people. No doubt there was something serious afoot: there must be, as the saying goes, coals burning underneath the ashes.

They went back to whispering: “So submissive is he that the sultan’s preachers do not obey him; he named his son ‘the Conqueror,’ but the preacher, al-Sabi, refused the name, saying, ‘There is no conqueror but the Lord,’ and the sultan obeyed.”

There were two disgusting men from the clan of Khathaam, known for their sharp tongues and wiliness, who owned a stable of donkeys, which they rented out at the gates of Karkh. If a Shiite tried to rent a donkey from them, they took turns praising Imam Ali, so that he would pay them generously; if a Nasibi came by, they praised Abu Bakr, so that they would not sacrifice the coin of this man or that. In the city, we mockingly called them Nakir and Nekir, after the two angels who keep accounts on each shoulder—and sometimes Ass and Jackass.

Despite this, it was they who fanned the flames of foment in Karkh; it was said that it was they who had set the caliph al-Qadir over his people. They were the loudest to yell, “Heaven protect the caliph!” and ran after the procession until it disappeared. They staggered back, cheeks puffed out, bawling noisily, “There is a copy of the list of sects and groups forbidden to speak hanging on the wall of our stable for anyone who wants to read it! If you want a copy, come with your scribe.” I could not tell whether they meant some subtle jibe by hanging the list of sects on the door of a barn, or whether they were serious.

When I came to the blacksmith’s door, he was deep in the bowels of his shop. He did not come out to watch the procession pass, careless of the chaos caused by its passage. His face held subtle mockery. He smiled when I arrived at his store, broader than the smile he had worn to see the caliph’s procession. “Did you see the procession?” I asked, making conversation.

“O follower of Abu Hanifa!” he snapped. “The document from the caliph al-Qadir is coming! Mouths have been stopped! Heads shall roll! The jails shall fill up! Not so fast! Your head might be next if he learns that you have fallen in love with the books of heresy!”

He put his head near mine and whispered into my ear: “Al-Qadir himself was chosen by the Bouhis; he was on the run in the time of Caliph al-Tai; he came to Baghdad and was well received by Bahaa al-Dawla, who appointed him caliph, but now he has turned tyrant.”

I had no wish to engage in conversation: the marketplace of Karkh appeared congested, and after the fights at the mosque, everyone was on edge, watching and listening. I held out to him the suit he had sent to me yesterday. “Thank you,” I said.

“Please,” he said, “keep it, and remember me.”

He insisted, flatly refusing to take it. I put the bundle down on a pile of firewood in the corner of his stall. “I am not myself in this garment,” I explained. “I lose Mazid of Najd. I want to remain a poor student who looks up at the sky and down at the earth in search of answers.”

He smiled slyly. “Has Dar al-Nadwa given you some of the answers you seek?”

I stared so deeply into his eyes that I could make out the red veins in the whites. Avoiding a direct answer, I said, “Gatherings are private, Persian.”

He clapped his big soot-stained hands. “I was born and bred in Baghdad! My father came with the armies of Ali, son of Khosrow, who named himself Adud al-Dawla al-Bouhi. When he settled in Baghdad and it became the capital of the Caliphate, it became the capital of the Bouhi Dynasty as well. The minarets and pulpits said prayers for Ali Khosrow in addition to the Abbasid caliph. Since that time, my family has lived here. Despite all this, you all still call me foreigner?”

I felt he was about to become garrulous, and withdrew quietly, confused and preoccupied with what Abu al-Hassan al-Hashimi would do after the sunset prayer at his house.

The Pomegranates of Rusafa

Evening fell. Jamra caught sight of me when I was ready to go out to Abu al-Hassan. “Where to, fair-faced Arab of the desert?” she asked.

“Rusafa,” I replied curtly.

“The people of Baghdad say the best pomegranates come from Rusafa. Are you going to pluck pomegranates there?”

“What is it about this woman, who only thinks of pomegranates?” I thought. “And her imps, placing pomegranates on my windowsill every night!”

“What kind of pomegranates are you going to pluck? Are they the pomegranates of someone’s breasts, or . . . ?” And she burst out into a debauched laugh.

I pushed past her, eyes on the floor. “Jamra,” I said, blushing fiercely, “you must have been raised in a brothel!”

The minarets of Karkh called for the sunset prayer. Loud flocks of birds flew past in the sky over the river: thin beaks and long legs. Were these the cranes of the river? They did not coo like doves or pigeons, but made a sound like a moan of pain.

In the evenings, on the shores and on the bridges of Rusafa, I usually heard the croaking of frogs, but that evening the sounds of birds surrounded the place. I stared up at them, speechless, then replied, “And a very good evening to you too, birds! Are you singing with joy at the path I am taking, or crying out in mourning?”

I neared the mansion of al-Hashimi and, as I had last time, took to contemplating the color of the wall. Was it really as pink as it appeared from the opposite bank?

The carpets of the previous day had been taken off the pathways. I followed the boy, who turned into a different doorway from the one I had entered yesterday. A rear door led us onto a passageway, and then a wooden door on the right that opened onto a small room with high windows. It was jammed with shelves of books and manuscripts, and beneath the shelves were couches with silk cushions. In the center sat Abu al-Hassan al-Hashimi, who had lost none of his imposing stature or vigor.

My heart beat hard. Was this his library, the one that Hassan the Egyptian had told me about? The room was perfumed with Indian sandalwood; it looked like the cell of some devout monk. Despite its small size, it was richly furnished with carpets of Persian silk, embroidered with river scenes crowded with sailboats.

Abu al-Hassan stood to greet me. I rushed toward him deferentially, so that he would not have to come all the way to me. He wore a robe of white silk, in which his body moved with dignity and poise. I know not why, but I sensed he was less welcoming today than he had been the day before. In vain, he tried to conceal the slight frown on his brow with a polite smile, evidence that something was troubling him.

I took his hand in both of mine, bowing slightly. “In my haste to arrive in time for our appointment, I did not have the chance to pray,” I said. “I should like to do so in your company.”

He gestured carelessly to a corner of the room. “You may pray here,” he said. “For, as the Prophet says, ‘I have made a pure mosque of the earth entire.’ I’ve already prayed,” he added. Then, pointing to his chest, he said, “I have prayed here. I prayed to God within these ribs of mine.”

I asked no more, nor spoke, having learned from the mosques of Baghdad that silence is a treasure. When I finished my prayers, I approached him. He had me sit on his right side, a book in his hand. “Yesterday wine, and today momentous things. Dar al-Nadwa is held with each new moon. I do not hold the gathering for poetry recitations, entertainment, and the clinking of glasses, but there is no avoiding these salons to keep up the appearance of wealth. You must show power to the eager, give relief to the afflicted, offer help to the weak, grant charity to mendicants, bequeath gifts to poets, bestow largesse upon writers, and provide shelter to guests, or else glory and power will be taken away from you.”

A boy came in, placing two glasses of pomegranate juice on a small low table. I was reminded of that she-devil Jamra with her pomegranates. Hashimi finished: “There is my book for all to read.” He remained silent awhile. A tired smile still on his face, he said, “Every book lover has three books: the first is the tempting book that leads you into the temptation of its lines. The second is the turning point—the book that moves you from one point to another in this life of ours. And the last is the book you write or copy, to return the favor to men of letters.”

I looked at him, feeling that what he said had the tone of an introduction to what came next. But he merely looked at me. “Have you found your own book?” he asked.

His mysterious manner disquieted me. What was he getting at? However, I answered quickly enough, as I wished to appear bright and quick-witted and deserving in his eyes. “My favorite books are the Life of the Prophet by Ibn Hisham and The Classes of Poets by al-Jamihi. I read them in al-Yamama. The turning point was the great collection of books I found in your library at the khan: the books of al-Kindi and the House of Wisdom translations of the Greek wise men—”

“It is said,” he interrupted, “that you pour out the light of your eyes for hours upon hours among books.”

I was flustered. Were they spying on me? Reading is a private and intimate activity. I did not want anyone to come between me and my books. I folded myself into the pages of a book as into my mother’s arms. What did these people want from me?

“And the final book?” he said with gentle curiosity.

I fell silent. “I haven’t written or copied it yet.”

“You will,” he said.

He picked up a book, which I noticed was covered in the same leather as the books in the khan. He leafed through the pages with his long, spindly fingers. It was entitled al-Mughni. “Have you read this book by Abd al-Jabbar ibn Ahmad?” he asked. I shook my head. “You must read it,” he said, “and think well on the concepts and what it says. There is a copy in the library of the khan.” He added, “People no longer respect books and don’t long to read them; they merely lie in wait to attack each other, bandying about accusations like ‘Mutazilite’ and ‘heretic.’ And the spears and arrows with which the Shiites fight the Sunni Hanbalites well, those strike everyone.”

He leaned back. “In the khan’s library, I have brought together the best books and the most valuable manuscripts. I have filled it with good translations, some dating back to the House of Wisdom. The last addition to it is a collection of rare and valuable books that were part of al-Sahib Ibn Abbad’s library in the city of Rayy, which had started to arrive in Baghdad and were distributed secretly. There are also works by a young physician who has become famous in the court of the Samanid Empire in Bukhara, Avicenna by name.” He fell silent awhile, then almost moaned, “All this treasure, possibly destroyed by the spark of fitna!”

I said, encouragingly, “It is fitna indeed. Even the caliph, God preserve him, rode around the marketplaces today, asking everyone to abandon sedition and stay away from argument and debate.”

The light of mockery flashed in the depths of his eyes. “Does the caliph want anything else?” He looked down. “It is he who opened the door to the fitna that is now rolling forth like the waves of the sea. It is fitna that keeps him situated between the two scales, now pulling this one near, now pushing that one away. He will raise up the Prophet’s descendants until they grow wings and claws, whereupon he clips them.” He took a breath. “Then he turns to the Hanbalites of Sheikh al-Birbihari and lets them send their Rajilat al-Hanabila out into the marketplaces with their repulsive preaching and harsh ways. The fitna in the marketplace remains in the marketplace—away from his throne. He does not know that, as the proverb says, ‘Most incidents start with a glance; great fires from small sparks grow perchance.’”

He fell silent for a while, measuring my reaction. It appeared that he saw something in my face, for he said, seeking to calm me, “When Greek philosophy comes together with Arab religious law, that will indeed herald perfection.”

I said—phrasing it as a question so as not to appear pretentious—“But sir, Greek philosophy is fleeting human wisdom; how can we compare it to eternal divine wisdom?”

He said impatiently, “And this is what makes me even more sure that religion is for the common folk, while philosophy is for the few.” He paused before saying, “We were visited by a blind poet from Maarat al-Numan, whose heart had a vision for all that. His name was Abu al-Alaa al-Maari. When he saw some people in Baghdad awaiting the return of al-Hallaj, standing in the river before the place where he was crucified, and others weeping and wailing over al-Husayn, awaiting the return of those who were absent, he indited the lines:

These sects are means for the leaders
To seize power, free from fears.
People want pleasure, not the poetry
Of Shammaa and Khansaa with their tears.

“I swear,” he said, “the farseeing blind man spoke truth!” He went on, warming to his subject, but his speech and lack of formality made me tremble. Why was he showing this face to me? “And what is coming is perhaps worse and more bitter. Baghdad is no longer a place where one can abide; I hear that you were thinking of leaving. I, too, intend to leave. I see hands bearing torches of fitna, of which some spark must touch the khan’s library. Any accusation that one of the books within it contains heresy means that it may be burned to ash.” He took a breath. “I must spirit it away little by little, and distribute it among safe countries: the paths between different lands are now burning coals.”

At this point, two boys came in once more, another pile of books in their arms, which they laid down in front of him. He patted them with one hand as one might pat a thoroughbred horse. “You spend a great deal of time leafing through books of philosophy; you borrow others from the stall of Abu Abbas the blacksmith.”

I felt the blood drain from my face. Did he know Abu Abbas? Was the man a spy? Was it he who had recommended me? Was it the very man who had given me the silken suit? All these questions surged through my head; I hoped they did not show on my face. I did not stop him to press for details: I was eager to know what he would say after this introduction.

“What you heard today in the marketplace,” he said, “is not the first time death threats have been made against the levelheaded, sober, monotheist Mutazilites, leaving the way clear for charlatan sheikhs and preachers in Baghdad threatening the science of the Mutazilites. Even grammarians and linguists now poke their nose into these affairs: Abd al-Qahir al-Girgani claims philosophy is heresy, and places those who study it on the list of those who follow their own judgment and are apostates from Islam.” He sighed. “When the scales of the mind are not available to weigh words, the tongues of fire will definitely touch books that scientists have spent the better part of their lives recording, and poured out the light of their eyes in writing and translating. They were safe and sound under the wing of Caliph Mamoun in the House of Wisdom. The ulema know nothing of the precision of the words of these books,” he went on, “nor the noble meanings they convey. If one is not a thinker and endowed with free will, one is not responsible for one’s actions, which would make it unjust to divinely reward or punish one for those actions.”

I nodded, astonished by his intellect, his lucid phrasing, and the depth of his knowledge. “How can they burn books of philosophy, just like that, when Sheikh al-Kindi always said, ‘Philosophy is the science of the first truth, which is the reason behind all other truth’?” I asked.

When I said these words, his face broke into a smile for the first time that evening. “You are now quoting the Just Monotheists, the Mutazilites! This is the nature of free spirits, flying high in the kingdom of knowledge, like a line of great cranes that never becomes extinct! Bless you and bless your path. I know that the sharp eyes of the blacksmith are never wrong. He chooses our men with care.”

“Our men?” A tremor went through me. What men had I just become one of? I did not ask him. I let him speak, pouring out his heart without hesitation or suspicion as I merely nodded my head calmly. I recalled that my sheikh, Muhammad al-Tamimi, had spent an entire month telling us about the things that spoiled one’s ablutions and how to divine the direction of the qibla, while Abu al-Hassan al-Hashimi unfurled his prayer mat between the parentheses of his ribs, and I was obliged to accept them both as they showed themselves to me.

I bowed my head. “My sheikh warned me against the books of philosophers, because their authors are not Muslims and so it would not be a sin to kill them—and this is exactly what made me creep out in the evenings after his discussion circle to the paper markets or to the khan’s library, to seek out the books my sheikh had cursed!”

Al-Hashimi burst into helpless laughter. “This is why I called you to be one of my trustworthy secret keepers, for the mind is the measure of what is right and wrong, by comparing what is acceptable and unacceptable, and permission and prohibition.”

My eyes must have widened: what he said was not so far from what Aristotle had said! I opened my mouth to say something, but he threw me a quick glance and went on. “I am leaving Baghdad soon. I know not when I shall return. I have married a Surianese woman who lives in the Levant, on the borders of the Byzantine lands, and I have a daughter by her. Perhaps I shall live out my life on a peaceful estate of mine there. I do not wish to liquidate my business and my properties as I don’t want to arouse suspicions about my absence; however, I have devoted most of them to religious endowments to benefit the students of knowledge coming to Baghdad. My other estates, and this house of mine, will be taken care of by my cousins.

“As for the books, I shall give some to the paper market, although I know that their fate may well be the flames. Others I shall keep in the library at the khan for the edification of bright students. They may be taken as damning evidence against me, but perhaps they will light up someone’s mind. The libraries of the mosques are closed to us, the caliph’s sword hanging over our heads.” He paused. “But I have poured molten gold and distilled wisdom and the cream of the ages into crates of valuable books that I plan to distribute among different countries, on the wings of cranes: you, and a group of selected sober and just folk like yourself.

“These crates are like pomegranates: each one bears many books, like pearls. I shall give you your share: make sure to place them in a place worthy of them. It is the secret that turns base metal into precious metal. They shall remain for future generations of bright minds, to light the deep darkness of this nation.” He added: “There will be a crate waiting for you at the eastern gate when you leave.”

He rose, taking his leave, indicating that our meeting was at an end. Placing a hand on my shoulder with tender trust, he said, “Mazid, where did Aristotle place virtue?”

Fearing he would back away, I responded straight away: “Between two vices.”

“You did well,” he said. “He placed it between two statuses, and this is what we seek to do: to wash Islamic religious law clean and purify it with philosophy, now that it has been defiled by ignorance. When you plan to leave, pass by the door of Asad al-Furati. He lives east of Baghdad. Everyone knows his house. His father is one of Baghdad’s most eminent merchants. Ask to see him, and greet him with the words ‘A status between two statuses,’ and he will complete the bequest I have given you.”

I left, wondering: “The bequest he has given me? Here are the pomegranates of Rusafa, come from the windowsill into my hand.”

The Monkey’s Sorrows

I went out of the khan early next day to meet Abu al-Hassan, the face of the river misty in the morning, a flock of cranes wheeling about it. I walked around the rear of the khan on the path of the abandoned estates. I had no wish to meet the blacksmith so early with my doubts and fears; I needed to arrange the mosaic tiles of my mind in a manner that would allow me to burn my bridges and go into this new land bare of everything but my mind. A fetter had been placed around my wrist, though I did not know where the chain led. I wished to be alone with my thoughts.

But what was happening here? The rear path was nearly empty. The black donkey with the big head was not there; but no sooner did I reach the Chicken Canal, from which I went around to eastern Karkh, than I heard tambours, horns, and singing, splitting the calm of the morning with rude effrontery. I saw a handsome Indian in clean clothes spreading an expensive carpet out by the mosque. He had a monkey with him and got him to shake hands with the passersby, walk around with a miswak in his mouth, lift the prayer beads in his hand, run them through his fingers, and weep. This was exactly what I needed: to watch this monkey, taking me far away from the suppositions and presumptions that had stolen my sleep last night. I followed the monkey and his keeper as they went around every mosque in Baghdad until the afternoon prayers.

After the faithful had quit the mosque following the prayers, the monkey was dressed in a special costume like that of a prince. His owner scented him with expensive perfume. He put on him shoes embroidered with gold thread and placed him on a mule. When he was done, three Indians arrived, one of them leading the monkey’s mule, the second carrying his shoes, and a third carrying a parasol with which he protected the monkey from the sun. Then they walked through the streets, the people chasing after them to shake the monkey’s hand.

At the end of the day, exhausted by walking around everywhere, we stopped at the door to a mosque for the sunset prayer. One of the Indians rose, telling the story of the monkey. “Listen, one and all! Whoever has been cured of an illness must be grateful to the Lord for His boundless gifts. Know that in his youth, there was none better than this monkey, nor more obedient to the Lord God. But a devout man is always sorely tested, as they say: his stepmother cursed him into the form of a monkey after he caught her fornicating with a slave of hers. She struck him down from his noble mien to this form.”

When the Indian reached this point in his speech, the monkey pulled a kerchief from his pocket, put it over his face, and took to sobbing bitterly. The men’s hearts melted: their imam himself started by going to the monkey’s kerchief and putting two dirhams therein. He was followed by the rest of the men who had been praying in the mosque.

The Indians invited me to supper with them that night. They had bought grilled meat, bread, stew, and sweetmeats, and I became more certain that Baghdad was but a great market where everything could be bought and sold, even the monkey’s sorrows.

“And We Made the Iron Supple unto Him”

The Persian blacksmith stopped supplying me with books. He was waiting to see the effect of my visit to Abu al-Hassan al-Hashimi—I still saw him bursting into the mosque some Fridays, looking in every way like someone lost, hands dirty, clothes soot-stained from the forge. He did not respect the discussion circles enough to wash himself and don a turban and a garment appropriate for the revered status of the mosque, instead coming in barefoot to sit at a far corner of the circle, listening. Sometimes he would ask a question that showed he was avidly following the lesson. Whenever asked his name and profession, he would always answer with verse ten of the Sura of Saba: “And we made the iron supple unto him,” indicating that David, a prophet in his own right, had been a blacksmith.

I still had two of the books he had passed to me: one was by al-Kindi and the other Aristotle’s Metaphysics. They remained in my possession for a long time; I did not return them because, in truth, I could not let go of them. He ceaselessly reminded me of them when I passed by his stall: “Have you read al-Kindi’s book? If you’re done with it, I have another by him refuting the claims of those who say they can make gold and silver.”

That subject was not exciting to me, so I would hang back and say, “I’ve read it all. But of all the sayings I took to heart, the most significant was al-Kindi’s ‘Be not ashamed of loving what is right and acquiring it, even if it cometh from faraway lands. There is nothing as deserving of demanding your rights than what is right.’”

When he heard that this quote, his perpetually red eyes glinted with pride. “That is what is right,” he said. “Not the tradition of quoting the ancients! The books I give you are for thinking and learning about the kingdom of heaven.”

I said, teasing, “Atheists started in heaven. The first deviation was when Lucifer disobeyed God, after all, and the reason was that he used his head and logic without accepting what he was told.”

I had heard this from the odd young men at the mosque, and I said it to Abu Abbas to provoke him. He pulled more books out of his store, which seemed like a depthless dark cave, but definitely protected a gate to a secret garden of which nothing could be heard over the sound of his workers’ hammers and anvils.

The morning of that day, the attendees at Sheikh al-Tamimi’s discussion circle numbered a few over ten thousand; his students were obliged to make use of human amplifiers who stood close to my sheikh and placed their hands around their mouths like a horn, to convey his words to the listeners like an echo.

How I wished to leave them for the neighboring circle, where they were arguing about whether or not it was sinful to quote a debauched poet like Abu Nawas, or a modern poet like Abu Tammam. The sheikh of the circle saw this as a blot on the sanctity of the mosque and a reduction of the status of the ulema, but one of his students offered as evidence the great Imam Shafei, who listened to the poetry of Abu Nawas, although he kept it at a distance from his notes and books. How I wished I could cast my papers aside and go listen to them. But I was tied to my papers and inkwells like a sheepdog guarding a flock.

The Head of the Beast

There was nothing special about the day I decided to return the books by al-Kindi and Aristotle to Abu Abbas the blacksmith, except that the morning was thick with a cloud of dust as yellow as turmeric: I planned to negotiate and buy Aristotle’s book from him, as I could no longer part with it.

He was praying in the corner of his stall, prostrating himself long and devoutly. I remained out of the way until he had finished, whereupon he came to me hurriedly, smiling, as was his habit. I said cheerfully, “Here is al-Kindi. The Arab returns it to you, foreigner! And it is the foreigner”—I motioned to Aristotle’s book—“that I wish to buy from you.”

“Would you buy me also?” he asked lewdly. “You could be my master, and I your slave who must do whatever you say.”

He never ceased conveying his debauched messages to me. I no longer paid it any mind, having realized they were but empty words. I went on, presenting him with a book I had bought from the paper market recently: “I found at Abu Yusuf Abu Durri’s at the paper market: a book by Galen of Pergamon, translated by Hanin ibn Ishaq, and he claims that it is the original copy from the House of Wisdom. Examine it; I doubt it is. The writing in it is soft, and the paper looks like new Barmakid paper. Also, the colored embellishments in the corners of the pages indicate its newness.”

He took it from me, pushed his great head into it, and scrutinized its lines, muttering. “Many books have been copied,” he said, “and these copies may be an exact facsimile of the original. They are good books.”

“But,” I responded, “how can Abu Durri sell it as the House of Wisdom copy? The way it is written and organized does not resemble the copy of Aristotle at the khan’s library, which I think came from the hands of the translator Bukhtishu himself.”

Abu Abbas was rubbing the pages between his fingers and sniffing them. He could tell the age of a book by the smell of its pages. I watched his great thick fingers stained with coal dust, saying to myself, “Do these two hands, which have lifted hundreds of hammers, still retain the delicacy needed to examine paper?”

As we were deep in conversation and looking at the books together, I suddenly felt a darkness fall over Abu Abbas’s stall. The light seemed to have been blocked. I glanced up at the entrance to the stall to find two great figures in the doorway, with heavy wool abayas and long braids, leaning on thick sticks resembling shepherd’s crooks. A great terror came over me, taking me over so the air turned to stone in my lungs. What had brought the Rajilat al-Hanabila here? I whispered to myself, “You are dead, Mazid, for in your hands you hold the book of Galen of Pergamon!”

Before I could look at their faces, one of them roared, “Are they the books of heretics and atheists in your hands? You would put out the light of the Almighty? What evil!”

The voice turned me to stone. Images poured into my mind unbidden: the Sura of al-Rahman; “the sun and the moon are made punctual”; the braying of camels; the sand dunes of the al-Dahna Desert. I turned with difficulty; my neck was frozen. It was no other than Musallama and Sakhr of Tamim, their beards longer and their shoulders broader, their prominent cheekbones rounded out with flesh. Their eyes had abandoned the look of the wily hunters about to attack their prey, and replaced it with the airs of arrogant religious clerics. Their faces showed nothing but rage and resentment, so much so that I could not even smile to see them. I went to the entrance of the stall, looking fully at them. Had they joined the Rajilat al-Hanabila? But Musallama cut my ponderings short. He approached me, flinging his arms open for an embrace. “Mazid! Mazid al-Hanafi! You old bookworm, where have you been!” He whispered in my ear, “What are you doing in the company of this accursed Rafidi foreigner, may God punish him as he deserves?”

At that moment Abu Abbas bellowed, “Some people have no shame!” He rushed into the bowels of the shop, coming back with a great hammer he used to forge the edges of shields, and brandished it in their faces. “I swear, if you two don’t get out of my shop,” he roared, “I’ll bash your faces in with this hammer, and if you don’t understand me, well, too bad for you!”

“How dare you, infidel who lies with men!” Sakhr yelled back. “I swear we will crush you! You Rafida, you fire worshippers, you who dare speak of faith!”

At these words, Abu Abbas’s face split into a snarl the likes of which I had never seen. The veins in his neck pulsed violently. “The desert Arabs say: ‘We believe,” he quoted from the Sura of al-Hujurat. “Say unto them: Ye believe not, but rather say ‘We submit,’ for the faith hath not yet entered into your hearts.’ Damn you! You are accursed until the Judgment Day! You embody the Almighty, you give Him hands and feet! The Lord is above what you describe! You pretend that your ugly, charmless faces are made in the image of the face of the Lord of Both Worlds and that your obnoxious forms are made in His likeness? You speak of hands and fingers, and feet with golden soles? And thick hair, and ascending to the sky, and descending to the earth? The Lord is above what you unjust ingrates say, far above it.”

By now, the owners of the neighboring stalls had arrived, crowding into the space between Sakhr and Abu Abbas after they had almost come to blows. My bones were quivering: all I could do was push them violently out of the stall, saying, “Let us go now!” and quoting the Qur’anic verse that says, “Those who control their wrath and are forgiving!” having first stuffed Galen of Pergamon’s book up my sleeve. I had no desire to walk with them: my speaking with them and their whispers in my ear stunned every one of my neighbors in the marketplace of Karkh; it would ruin everything I had built by being meek and reluctant to draw attention to myself. They would now think me a spy planted among them. Therefore, I gestured goodbye to Abu Abbas, still standing in his smithy like a demon of rage, hammer raised. In a halting, shaky voice, I recited to them,

Ignore the barbs of the ignorant man,
For all he sayeth doth lie in him.
It never harmed the great Euphrates
That dogs dived therein to swim.

Please,” I said, “let us go upstairs to my room in the khan.” I had no idea what to do with them in this crowded marketplace where all eyes were on us.

I took them up to my room, and then wished that I had not. There they told me of their intention to “cleanse the whitest city of the world from the impurities of idolatry and polytheism, and shed blood until it be so.” The first one they would slaughter, they said, was “that filthy blacksmith who stabbed our sheikh, Muhammad al-Tamimi.”

Terrified by what they said, I burst out, “But how do you know that it was Abu Abbas who stabbed our sheikh?”

“Where have you been, Mazid?” Musallama thumped the floor of my room with his stick. “We have heard that you keep company with the sheikh, and take notes from him and for him. Did you not hear of the altercation between the blacksmith and Sheikh Muhammad? Those who witnessed the incident said that he left the mosque foaming at the mouth and muttering threats. And then it was only a few days until the sheikh was stabbed. You left our sheikh alone, God forgive you! As the proverb says, ‘Those who are too heavy for their friends become too light for their enemies.’”

Feigning stupidity, I said, “Why do you not raise the matter of Abu Abbas with the wali or the commander of the armies?”

“The chief of police is an infidel like him,” Musallama said derisively, “and he will definitely take his side. It is we who will set up the scales of what is right: the Bouhis themselves have presumed to divinity, giving themselves such names as ‘Prince of the World,’ ‘Lord of All Princes,’ and, for their ministers, titles that belong only to God: ‘The Perfectly Capable,’ and ‘The Only Authority.’ May they taste humiliation in this world and the next.”

I did not bend to the storm of their rage, which seemed too fierce for my diminutive room at the khan. “But the sheikh has many enemies,” I said. “A few weeks ago, for example, we were besieged by a group of privileged young merchants, who exchanged sharp words with my sheikh and his followers.”

“We know them!” Musallama shouted. “Seraj al-Din al-Furati and his band of heretics who pass around the books of atheists. They live in the lap of luxury; they could not so much as shoo a fly away from their well-washed faces. I doubt it was they who stabbed the sheikh. Still, we are not unaware of their heresies; their heads must roll, and soon.” He snarled. “The sick shall find their cure with us.”

“Those effeminate fops!” Sakhr roared, waving his stick. I knew that he did not speak unless it was time for action, leaving most of the talk to Musallama. “They are nothing but a band of heretics! How I wish to smash in their clean-shaven faces with a stick such as this!” He snorted, brandishing the stick. “But we must avenge our sheikh upon the person of that filthy fire worshipper first.”

Musallama took up the thread. “Those fops are like asps, like an incurable disease. Their poison is slow-acting; their evil has touched the Prophet’s descendants. Abu al-Hassan al-Hashimi holds audiences with them, and goes to the paper stalls that sell their books, and brings them together in his home in Rusafa in the center of vast estates and lush gardens.” He shook his head. “And instead of thanking God for His great blessings and abundant gifts, he has made a library in his house, which they say is filled with the books of atheists and heretics, to say nothing of the ones he brings in from Byzantium smuggled among the carpets and inks he claims to have purchased from Persia.”

Sakhr added in a high voice, letting some of his idiocy slip out: “We reported him to Sharif al-Radi, head of the House of the Descendants of Ali, but he excused himself from the whole affair, saying he had no authority over him, and merely prayed for the Lord to guide him. But in any case,” Sakhr continued, “the eye of God never sleeps. God has punished him with a small animal that nibbles away at the plants of his orchard day and night, and no tree or shrub escapes unscathed, no matter how they wipe it down with tar or set it alight.” He smirked. “Here he is, seeking a buyer for his estate and about to leave for the Levant, where, it is said, he is married to a Surianese woman who bore him a daughter who will grow up beneath the domes of churches, Christian crosses, and infidel creeds.”

I could not quite keep my composure when he mentioned al-Hashimi, his pink mansion, and the date palms heavy with the perfume of the river, thinking of the carpets woven with bounding gazelles and Zahira poured out of a honeypot. I feared that these thoughts would show on my face, letting them know that I, too, frequented that paradise.

They were filled with rage. Their abayas smelled so powerfully of sour milk that I found it hard to breathe in the confines of the little room. I thanked God that I had hidden Aristotle’s book in a box in the corner of the room, or mine would have ended up on the list of the heads that would roll. I now understood why al-Hashimi insisted on leaving; for whence had these two obtained the story in minute detail if not through spies sent out by them?

“That fire worshipper,” Sakhr hissed, “has been planted here to draw people away from their religion and cast doubt upon their creed. Do you not see that his stall is unique among the tailors, cloth merchants, and sellers of nuts, located among the stores and not at the craftsmen’s market? It is planted there incongruously for a reason. Have you not seen that his dumb apprentice is a fire-worshipping Sabian? He closes the stall at night and commits debauchery with his apprentice, whereupon they spend the night in worshipping the fire.”

My soul trembled at the depravity in his words, which he spoke in the refined language of the tribes of al-Yamama. “How do you know?” I burst out. “Have you seen them? Have you pried open their hearts?”

“Pay that no mind,” Musallama responded, catching Sakhr’s idiocy, “and let us speak of what concerns our sheikh. The blacksmith wormed his way into the discussion circle of our sheikh and questioned him and started the fitna that would have killed our sheikh if the Lord had not protected him with soldiers who descended from the sky and shielded him from the daggers aimed at him.”

Because I had been there, I realized that news becomes distorted in the telling, and the more people tell a story, the more falsehood enters into it, and the more twisted it becomes with each retelling. And now, here was this pair of jackals in my room, waving swords and spears. What was I to do? “Musallama!” I snapped. “You are raising your sword and placing the sacrificial animal on the altar: what is your excuse for severing heads and committing murder, which God has prohibited?”

Eyes blazing and hawk-like nose flaring, he said, “Do you really need more than this? I swear, I fear for you, lest their books and their writings have corrupted you and made you turn away from the Holy Book and the Prophet’s Tradition. I swear that I will not rest in my bed until that Rafida is resting in his grave, and I have rid our world and our religion of him!”

I tried everything to calm his ire: I asked him the secret of the abaya he wore, of a style normally only worn by ministry clerks. He said, “Our cousin, may God reward him, registered our names on the list of ministry clerks, so that we now receive monthly salaries and wear the garb of the ministry.” He stood abruptly, and Sakhr did likewise. At the door, he turned. “You must come and pray with us at our mosque near Bab al-Sha’ir.” He gave me a reproachful smile. “I swear that I see the marks of the softness and lassitude of the city in you. You must join us for the dawn prayers and regain Mazid the wolf that we know.”

Without another word, they left.

I lay down on my back, terrifying images filling my mind. What if they knew I was unconvinced of the image of God in human form? I was a firm believer in “he who describes the Lord limits him,” and that God was greater than any image in which He could be embodied. My beliefs would not please them. They had been pleasant with me because it was our first encounter, but they would not be so forgiving a second time.

Their visit left me confounded. I was now certain of two things: first, since they knew where I lived, they would never leave me in peace; second, they had prepared the sacrificial altar and the sword for the head of the Persian blacksmith. I must leave Baghdad with all speed; I must also hurry to Abu Abbas and warn him. That was what any honorable man would do, out of respect for neighborliness, not to mention breaking bread and sharing books. But I was not an honorable man. There were other thoughts in my head. What if Abu Abbas lost his temper and went on a rampage—not unexpected, given his fiery temperament—and went to confront them with a group of his friends? That would make me the instigator of a flame of fitna in Baghdad that would never die down. What if I slipped away in secret to tell the captain of the guard? I would, at the very least, be dragged into an unending interrogation. What if I went to Abu Hassan al-Hashimi for guidance? But I did not wish to appear like a fearful, ignorant yokel to him after he had chosen me and entrusted me with the secrets of the Just Monotheists. He would definitely doubt my competence; the matter would arouse suspicion, and he would withdraw the valuable crate of books from me, my life’s dream. I prayed to God to help solve the conundrum, reciting the poem:

There may be an affliction that tightens around you,
Of which but the Lord holds the key.
Like a noose it did tighten, and then it released—
When I thought I should never be free.

I fell asleep to the sound of muttering and shouting: I knew not whether they were coming from my own head or from the Pomegranate Window. I was accustomed to sleeping on catastrophes and waking to find them gone: I was sure this calamity would dissipate with the night and its nightmares. This time, though, it failed to evaporate.

*

Baghdad woke to a light drizzle pattering against the bitter orange trees that filled the khan’s back garden. But it was not only the rain to which Baghdad awoke: there was also the news that the blacksmith had been murdered.

There was a heavy knocking on my door. I had missed the dawn prayer at the mosque that morning and had prayed in my room, preparing to collect my things for departure. I opened the door fearfully. Hassan was standing there, pale and panting. “They found Abu Abbas the blacksmith in his stall with his throat slit!” He gasped for breath, visibly searching for words. “Something dark is on the horizon. Fitna is coming. I fear you will be the first target. You are the recordkeeper of Sheikh al-Tamimi, and I your friend: they have seen us together often. We must flee and escape Baghdad.”

I caught at his hand. “Calm yourself.” It was difficult for me to take in the rush of his words.

“Mazid,” he said, still wide-eyed, “you must take this seriously. We may be killed and our money confiscated as part of the khums. I have seen many Shiites here washing their hands after shaking hands with me because I am, according to them, one of the Nawasib. It is preferable not to spend the night in our beds here. During the fitna that broke out in Karkh before, when they burned the copy of the Qur’an belonging to Abdullah ibn Masoud, who they say wrote it down as it was revealed to the Prophet, a great many people were declared apostates and fit for execution, and a good deal of blood was shed. It was a copy the Shiites had kept for years, and they say it is completely different from the standard Sunni Qur’an commissioned by the third caliph after the Prophet in its meanings and the order of the suras. The Fatiha and the suras of al-Falaq and al-Nas are completely missing from it.” He dragged in a breath. “Sheikh Isfaraini commanded that it be burnt because of that discrepancy. After the burning, the Shiites revolted, flooding the streets beating their breasts and cheeks, and some of the more weak-minded among them went to the house of the judge, meaning to set it alight and murder him, but the captain of the guard caught them and beat them back. News of it reached the caliph, who was incensed and sent his men to defend the Sunnis, and thus many of the Shiites’ own homes were burnt to the ground. Their blood, you see, has still not dried and the slightest thing will set off fitna. What do you think will be their response when they wake to find one of their number with his throat slit in his own shop?” He took my arm. “Our presence here is dangerous. We shall be rats trampled underfoot.”

But he lingered awhile before he left. A veil of tears covered his eyes. “Yesterday, a stray dog killed my cat, Morgana,” he said. “Everything in the universe is telling me to leave.”

A Full Moon, Waning

His imposing presence and powerful build had not protected him from being found in the morning in his stall with his throat slit; in fact, he had been completely decapitated. They found his dumb apprentice crouching, trembling, in the farthest corner of the shop, describing with shaking hands two men who had entered the shop in the dead of night and cut off his head.

A great horror crushed my chest: I recalled the head of the animal tossed carelessly beneath the garden wall in Basra, flies buzzing around it in the morning mist. Would the stall owners gossip much about how I had frequented his stall? Would they tell the chief of police that I had taken Rajilat al-Hanabila to my room in the khan? Would my neck be the first to be placed on the altar of revenge?

There was no time to waste. My hands were steeped in blood, up to the wrist. I’d wait a few days so as not to arouse suspicion, and then I would quietly leave. These days must be spent far away from Karkh, for I knew not whence the knife would come. I must start now by looking for a camel and a caravan to take me away. The few dirhams I possessed might not be enough for the good caravans capable of carrying a heavy crate of books; but no matter, for I could distribute the books among several cloth or leather bags.

Hassan the Egyptian had resolved to go to India and teach the boys in a kuttab there: this incident only sped up his decision, and he also went to contract with a boat that would convey him to Basra, thence to set sail for India. But, for all his worry and disquiet, he was still his playful self: that night, he secretly brought in a small jar of wine. His eyes glistened with tears. His gentle soul made parting difficult. “Hassan,” I said, wishing to see what he would say, “are you grieved at parting with me? I am nothing but an odd desert fellow, silent and bookish.”

He leapt up from where he had been sitting, as though he had remembered an important matter, and waved a warning finger in my face. “Have you concluded your affairs in preparation to leave Baghdad? Never think that your comrade al-Hashimi will save you, for none of us will escape the wrath of the caliph, and no one has power over the caliph.” He shook his head sorrowfully. “Most of his anger is directed at Egyptians. He sees us as nothing but spies for our Fatimid caliph. Once he called in the followers of Ali ibn Abu Talib who were descendants of the Prophet, and made them sign a document casting doubt on the ancestry and creed of the caliphs of Egypt, stating that they were not descendants of Muhammad at all, but of a man named Disan ibn Said al-Kharmi; that they were infidel Manichaeans and fire-
worshippers, and that they were sinners who did not punish what the Lord had forbidden, and who made free with women’s virtue and spilled blood and cursed the Prophets, and a great deal more beside. It is said that a great many men signed it, including Sharif Murtada and his brother Sharif al-Radi and a number of eminent members of the clan of Ali, and the judge Abu Muhammad al-Akfani, and Abu al-Hassan al-Hashimi.”

As usual, I forgot in my disquiet to ask Hassan where he had obtained such full information if he were not, in fact, a spy for the Fatimids. I remained silent.

Hassan never abandoned his know-it-all role. “If you want to buy your camel for a caravan,” he said, “go at the end of the day as the market is drawing to a close, and everyone wishes to be rid of their wares at low prices.”

I ignored his advice, asking instead, “Is there a book market in Egypt?”

“There is always a book market in Egypt,” he said. “It has never ceased, and never will. Most importantly, we have a jewel buried in the mud of the land of Caliph al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah: Ibn al-Haytham!” He smiled. “They say he invited him to Egypt from Iraq after hearing that he could control the Nile waters and build a dam to hold back the annual flooding, but he failed. The caliph gave him a job in the Egyptian ministry, although he desired it not. And because the ruler is as changeable as the wind and spills blood for no reason, Ibn al-Haytham sought a ruse to escape his punishment. He found nothing for it but to feign madness. He did so, and the news spread to the caliph. The caliph set a guardian over him and seized his moneys, assigning him a servant and leaving him in his home not far from the mosque of Ahmad ibn Tulun.”

I bowed my head, thinking. Euclid’s The Elements on geometry and Ptolemy’s Almagest on astronomy would be the best gift for Ibn al-Haytham in his distress.

The next day dawned. It pained me that I was obliged to take the rear gate from the khan, not this time to avoid meeting Abu Abbas, who had watched me so avidly in life, but to evade the eyes that would doubtless stare at me after his death.

I would not go to Abu al-Hassan to say goodbye; I had no wish to arouse more suspicion. I went only to my sheikh and said goodbye. I did not tell him that I was leaving for good, only that I was going away for a few days to visit a relative of my mother’s who owned a farm in Wasit. He cared nothing for my words: he was incensed that day, as there had been a quarrel the day before in the mosque between two students in his circle, and the Daylamite guards had entered the mosque again and sullied it with their horses’ dung. He was busy cursing them and calling them the root of all evil.

I spent little time in my room. No more pomegranates appeared on my windowsill.

At dawn, in two days’ time, I must hand back the key and leave. I would give Jamra a big present: when asked where I had been the night the blacksmith was murdered, she told them I had not quit my room all night. Only one thing was left: Seraj al-Din al-Furati and the crate of books.

Voyage of the Cranes

I headed for Bab al-Sha’ir, examining the houses and streets and looking at every wall and gate, in search of al-Furati. But when I reached the house, I froze.

It was opulent and lavish: no sooner did you reach the outer wall than you recognized that those inside had never known hunger or thirst. It was ringed with palm trees and Christ’s thorn jujubes, whose branches leaned on the solid rock of the wall, flocks of doves nesting within. There was a spring for whoever wished to drink, as a charity, flowing from the wall into a stone basin over twelve arm spans across, from which passersby, animals, and birds all drank. There was a towering wooden gate decorated with brass rings beneath an arch with mosaics and vines executed in gesso. This was one of four gates surrounding the mansion of al-Furati.

The magnificence of the place stopped me in my tracks. I could not advance, but stood staring at a large group of guards at the gate. I could hear the clatter of their shields as they came and went before the great doors. I slowed my step, and concealed myself around a corner, watching them closely, until they walked away from the gate, only four of them remaining. Only then did I come forward slowly to ask after Seraj al-Din al-Furati.

How would I walk out of here with a chest without arousing suspicion? Did they provide visitors with wings with which to transport crates full of books?

The guards scrutinized me suspiciously when I approached. I asked after Seraj al-Din al-Furati. A bright-eyed young man appeared, light of step and dark of skin, and asked me to follow him down a long corridor opening onto a sitting room with blue silk couches, glowing in the light spilling in from the arched windows. The boy bowed, indicating I should enter. “My master Seraj al-Din is on his way to us.”

It was not long—mere moments—before I heard the sound of footsteps in the corridor. But when their owner stood at the door, the blood froze in my veins. It was none other than one of the odd young men of luxury who came to the circle of my sheikh al-Tamimi, heckling and arguing, bags under his wide eyes from late nights, soft hands like a slave girl’s, and glossy hair that spilled onto his shoulders. He slowed, pausing at the door for a while, an unreadable smile on his face. He stepped forward, muttering, “Welcome, I’m sure.”

I overlooked his lukewarm greeting. “My lord al-Hashimi sent me.” I paused, then whispered, “He says there is a chest . . .” I fell silent.

Somewhat reproachfully, he said, “You are al-Tamimi’s scribe, are you not?”

In low tones, like one excusing some transgression, I explained, “He selected me for my good hand and the speed at which I followed his speech.”

His glance was mocking. “You mean following his ramblings, sophistry, and errors. In any case, where is the key to the chest?”

Only a few times has my intellect come to my rescue despite my panic: this was one such occasion. Slowly, looking him deep in the eye, I said, “It is in a status between two statuses.”

He raised his eyebrows and looked at me. Then he gestured to me to sit down, saying, “Rest awhile: take a seat. I have been told that you impressed everyone with your recitation at Dar al-Nadwa last month.” Still he scrutinized me, gathering his velvet caftan about himself. Then he sat with the air of a lion in his own den, although I had last seen him buffeted by screams, crowds, and those running from the whips of the guards.

He did not cease his close inspection of me, but now it was as though he was submitting to a great will that he could not disobey. “Subh!” he called, and a foreign boy, with a red nose and red hair, came running. “You and Layl,” he said, “bring the third crate of books.”

Layl was the dark-skinned boy who had brought me inside. Al-Furati turned to me, smiling and showing even, shiny teeth. “You see?” he said. “I named them Subh and Layl—Morning and Night. I divided the day between them, for we are a just, monotheist people.”

I raised my eyes to him with a conspiratorial smile, indicating that I was a Mutazilite like himself. “Justice,” I said, “is one of our five pillars.” Meanwhile, I was thinking about the “third crate” and the two who had come before me: had they taken the rare and valuable books and left me the dross?

My host pulled me from my musings. “They say your sheikh is battling a fever, and sick at home,” he said, “and no longer spreads his ramblings at the mosque.”

“He was,” I responded calmly. “His wound was infected, and he was feverish: but he recovered after the sultana had him treated at the Bimaristan al-Adudi.”

He nodded. “What a wonderful location chosen by the fever! Perhaps it will burn straight through his bones and purify him. ‘A wound healed over pus and pestilence / Shows naught but the physician’s negligence.’ The disease in your sheikh is not in his wound, but also in his mind.” He paused a moment. “And after all this, he is treated at the Bimaristan al-Adudi.” He shook his head with regret, running his soft fingers through his beard. Then he burst out, “They are always like that. They have all the luck. When the cleric al-Isfaraini issued his fatwa that Abdullah ibn Masoud’s copy of the Qur’an be burned, the Shiites revolted and almost set al-Isfaraini himself on fire. The caliph repressed them and had their houses burned down to pacify the cleric. So how do you think the clerics repaid the caliph al-Qadir for ingratiating himself to them?”

I tilted my head questioningly. He went on, “With disobedience and disrespect! When he desired to dismiss al-Isfaraini from his position, to balance the scales between the Rafidis and the Nawasib, al-Isfaraini wrote to him with barefaced insolence: “I know that you cannot dismiss me from my position because it is God who has appointed me to it, but with a word from me to Khorasan, I can have you dismissed from your position as caliph.” He bowed his head and said with venom, “That is the way of all clerics: if a sultan panders to them too much, they seek to share their power. Even the head of Ali ibn Abu Taleb’s descendants, al-Murtada, did not dare go against them. I hear he plans to leave Baghdad after what he said about sirfah, which caused the preachers to stir up the rabble and the common people against him.”

His lack of formality and his openness encouraged me to interrupt him curiously. “What is sirfah?”

He shook his head in exasperation. “Al-Murtada followed the Mutazilites in affirming the miraculous nature of the Qur’an. The Mutazilites believe that any person could have written the Qur’an or similar, but that God deterred them from it. That is sirfah—determent. Baghdad shook at these words of his, and but for their respect, or what was left of it, due to the descendants of Ali ibn Abu Taleb’s lineage, the senile old man al-Isfaraini would have issued a fatwa that he be killed.”

“I have never heard of this in the two years I have spent in Baghdad,” I said.

“Voyager,” he said, “never regret what you have not seen in Baghdad, for there may be great evil within: the lash of the caliph’s proclamation is now a threat hanging over all our heads. Now it remains for us to preserve the wisdom of the world and the cream of the ages, and keep it away from the charlatan preachers and the sophistry of would-be theologians and the sycophants of the powerful.” He took a breath. “We, the Voyaging Cranes, the Just Monotheists, must distribute these books among libraries and houses of learning, and place them in the hands of brilliant and insightful thinkers and those who have chosen the intellect and rationality as a beacon to bring good and defend against evil.”

Subh and Layl returned, bearing with difficulty between them a great wooden chest studded with brass nails. It was engraved with rounded patterns polished with shiny wax, locked with a padlock with a circle of leather around it. My heart fluttered. Here were the pomegranates of Rusafa, stuffed with pearls! I wanted to leap up from my seat and peruse its contents.

“Hold on!” Al-Furati put a hand on my shoulder. “We have not yet concluded our business.” Seeming to sense my urgency, he said, “Patience. Voyagers do not race against time. They are careful, reserved. They turn matters over this way and that before coming to a decision.”

He gestured with two fingers to dismiss the boys. Then he looked at me. “Abu Abbas the blacksmith, may he rest in peace, attempted to give you to understand some things, but you did not listen. Al-Hashimi has given you some of the landmarks, but not the map. The Voyagers are descendants of ancient human wisdom, which believes in God, in justice and monotheism, in preaching virtue and dissuading from vice and injustice. We have made the intellect our imam, and any matter our minds cannot accept, we reject and do without.

“We are the keepers of the legacy of the House of Wisdom, which was a pearl in the crown of rationality. Now it is being overtaken by preachers, schoolteachers, and idiots, and has lost its wisdom; nothing remains but chains of quotations from the ancients that put paid to rational thinking. We have decided on preserving this legacy, not only in our breasts, but by conveying it far and wide via the Voyage of the Cranes, to every city and every land.”

He fell silent and looked down at his feet. Suddenly he sat up. “I do not wish to go on for too long. These books are the repositories and keepers of knowledge. They are lanterns that will light up a dark fitna on the horizon. They are seeds planted in fertile hearts that understand them and take them seriously.” He looked from me to the chest. “Do not concern yourself with their price, but rather with where you will plant them.”

He dropped his head back to lean on a cushion behind him, letting out a sigh that came from the depths of his soul. I felt that he had exhausted himself. He closed his eyes for a moment before sitting up straight again and recollecting himself. “Yesterday, I witnessed an auction for the book explaining auditory science by Alexander al-Aphrudisi of Damascus. It sold for one hundred and twenty gold dinars. There is nothing wrong with making money from them, but do not let money be your master. In every land you find yourself, you will take the torch and pass it on. You will hear and be heard. You will listen and enlighten. You will be a learner and a teacher at once.

“Look for your own secret garden. It might be hiding in the shadows, or in the depths of the seas, or within a person’s breast. Look deep, use your vision, and it shall be revealed to you. Seek out the flocks of Cranes and watch them quietly and patiently; they shall surely alight on your fingers.”

*

He insisted that I stay and share his meal. He passed the time setting out items of advice and wrapping me in instructions. He left no detail unmentioned. “When you arrive in a city, go to its Great Mosque. Observe its clerics and its libraries. That is where the Voyagers fly. Be secretive: what goes beyond two people is public. Beware of spying eyes, for they may ruin you. Do not stay too long in one place, especially if you should become well-known there and you find heads turning to you and the envious multiplying. . . .”

In the end, I tried to retreat; I felt overstuffed with his advice, which made me seem like some naive bumpkin. As I was drawing my caftan about me and adjusting my turban to make my exit, he asked me to stay back a moment, and disappeared into his house. He returned quickly, bearing in his sleeve a brass folder meant for keeping papers, with mysterious words engraved on it. He held it out to me, then put his hands behind his back, as if announcing that he was finished with his task, and with me. He said, as if imparting some great news, “This is a copy of the road map. Read it as though it were written expressly for you. The Lord creates at every moment, depending on circumstances, the word, and the manner in which it is read and spoken.”

His words enveloped me. I felt that the earth was moving beneath me, so I leaned on the wall. Seraj al-Din went on: “When you arrive at the status between two statuses, you should have, like a disciple, some signs and symbols, that you may seek out what is too high or concealed from your stairway. Some of these instructions will seem mysterious to you. Others you will have already left behind in your journey. Some will appear too general and not applicable to you; but their interpretation will become clear in the places and situations through which you pass. There is no eternal, changeless interpretation: interpretation is formed through situation, as I have told you. If you do this, the commandments I shall give you will tell you how far you have ascended on the staircase of the Way of the Voyagers.”

I fell silent. I had no idea what to say, so I shook his hand warmly and said, “Thank you.”

“Where are you headed after Baghdad?” he asked.

I said, “Jerusalem.”

He smiled. “That city has not lost its questioning spirit. You will find there a noble imam from the clan of Qays, named Amr al-Qaysi. Tell him that his cousins greet him and say to him, “Is morning not nigh?”

The Mirrors of the Djinn

I am Mazid al-Hanafi. I have left al-Yamama behind for what glory I can pluck from the streets of Baghdad. What shall I do with myself? To what ruin am I headed?

The books of the House of Wisdom captivated me: they transformed me into a voyager spreading good tidings and bad, yet I was nothing but a fleeing, terrified man with blood on my hands.

Voyager? Was that a title, a description, or a rank? I dared not ask.

I had agreed to meet the Daylamite perfume dealer at the eastern gate of Baghdad. I would pass by this house tomorrow with my she-camel, Shubra, to take the chest of books, garlanded with the mists of dawn.

I still had the book of al-Kindi. I had not returned it to Abu Abbas the blacksmith. How death turns every tyrant into a saint! It had completely erased any resentment I felt against that book-loving blacksmith. He made metal melt, but the world had been hard to him: he had made locks, but not keys. Knowledge for him was an antidote and an excursion of hope, that he might inhale a breath of fresh light in the darkness and smoke of his stall. Life had not been kind to him: he had not had a chance even for a final wish, a knife lying in wait around a corner to cut off his head, casting him aside by the fire and molten metal of the forge.

I must spend the night away from Karkh, as though I were feeling it already disappear and fade away. I had not returned since I had left there that morning. I prepared a bed beneath the wall of a garden not far from the caravan, and slept there so as to comfort myself with the travelers’ voices, but not so close as to be confused or distracted by what they were saying.

After afternoon prayers the next day, the travelers began to arrive in succession. I busied myself with arranging my things on the back of my camel, and feeding her, and stealing glances at the people coming to join the caravan. There were not many: most were merchants, and some were Christian pilgrims headed for Jerusalem, with four guards bristling with weapons staring curiously at everyone from their spot underneath a pair of nearby date palms.

I was eager for evening to come so that I might read the commandments. I had no wish to be seen reading them.

The evenings in Baghdad were still cold, and fell fast. They brought with them melancholy yearnings and dark fancies. I curled up in my abaya and lit a small fire, nibbling at some wheat cakes, of which I had purchased a great quantity to eat on the journey. When everyone began to disperse around me, dissolving into the darkness, and only their shadows remained, I glanced about me fearfully. Then I carefully pulled out the brass folder and started to work on its locks. I was nervous: my hands were trembling as though I were about to release a djinn from its depths. Instead, the scent of perfume overwhelmed me. Was the wind bringing me the perfume of the wares on camelback? Or was it the ghost of the perfumes worn by Seraj al-Din al-Furati?

When I opened the package, a faint light glowed. I raised it to my eyes and stared at it again. The words were as though written on water, their letters rippling as though floating. I was afraid.

What was this? A fairy mirror? It shone in the misty night. Was it made of mercury? I closed it, fearful.

Shubra was ruminating placidly, watching me indifferently through her long lashes. I opened the folder again. Its letters lit up in the darkness once more. I had no need to light my small lantern to read them; they were written in diwani calligraphy, and started with the Qur’an verse, “Therefore of the bounty of thy Lord be thy discourse.” It went on:

When He of the absolute Will, He whom the mountains have sung of His power and might, He who with His great authority makes the planets move, He to whom every creature prays in the night and the morning, desired to guide His faithful to the right path, and shelter them beneath His great throne, and wake them from the somnolence of luxury, and lead them to the path of truth and verity, He blessed them with the Two Ways, giving them free will instead of predestination. He bestowed upon them enough of the light of rationality and proof to lead them to Paradise; glory to the One who is bound by neither space nor time. Now that the Voyagers are besieged by trials and tribulations, and folk resent them in many nations; now that everyone is lying in wait for them with tooth and claw, and voices are raised against them among those who would extinguish the light of God with their maw, we find it prudent to set down the contents of our minds on paper, that it might be passed around among disciples, and spoken of among knowledgeable Voyagers, that they might remain as lights on a path besieged by seditious plots like fragments of the night.

As to you, Voyager: we have written down these commandments for you. Read them with the eyes of your circumstances before those of your head, that they may be as a lantern and a companion to you.

*

First Commandment
Do not hesitate if you find you have chosen the long and circuitous path: do not look back.

Second Commandment
If you seek knowledge, knock on the door of your own self. Consult your heart, but before taking its advice, show it to your mind for approval or disapproval. Knowledge is a gate with two doors: one of the heart and one of the mind.

From afar, the braying and snorting of camels came to me as the men tied them with ropes and prepared their food and water: I was like a man transported. Had I consulted my heart?

Third Commandment
The world is light and it is fire: drink from the cups of the sunlight of knowledge without being burned by its flames. Your greatest aspiration here is to be saved.

Fourth Commandment
Erect no dam, raise no veil between yourself and the truth. If it cometh in the shape of a person who claims to possess the truth in its entirety, remove him far from your path, for this is nothing but his own truth. If it cometh in the form of certainty, purify it with the water of questioning and doubt; if it cometh in the form of a mountain, climb it to seek what lies behind that mountain. Do not submit your mind to any creature who seeks to direct or lead you on the pretext that they alone have claim to certainty: in so doing, you become like the donkey who gives its reins to a thief to steal it.

Fifth Commandment
Monotheism is an unattainable goal: each one finds it through his mind according to his ability.

Sixth Commandment
Beware! Never become the enemy of the wise sciences, never be tribal or feudal or bias yourself toward one creed or knowledge: he who hateth any of the sciences remaineth ignorant of it.

Seventh Commandment
Burn all these commandments, that they may not become a parallel religion to entrap you in bars of their own. Life is greater than instructions and commandments. Life is ever-changing and nothing remaineth the same. Time flows on and takes all. Everything leaves its place; nothing remains forever.

The desire for learning is the mother of all virtues. Burn these commandments and start anew.

I did not sleep that night. I remained suspended between the beating of the wind and the pulsing of the commandments made of rippling water, to pour into my mind whenever my soul thirsted.

The first commandment: I had taken the longer path, away from sleepy al-Yamama, safe in the embrace of its date palms, placing the North Star before me and heading for Baghdad, full of rage and fitna. The second: had I consulted my heart and asked my mind? That was what had snatched me from the presence of al-Tamimi and to the paper market and the library of the khan, and placed me on the path of the Voyagers. The stock in trade of al-Tamimi was nothing but a long string of quotations from the ancients.

I could hear the sounds of the camels and the rustle of the wind. It was my last night in Baghdad—the city where I had spent two years, baptizing myself in its river, washing myself clean in its libraries, cradled in its clouds. It had stripped Mazid of al-Yamama away from me, making me a blank page upon whose ribs Fate now inscribed its seven commandments.

The last thing I left behind in Baghdad was an anonymous message I wrote with my left hand, that my handwriting would not be recognized.

In the name of the God who never sleeps, nor ignores the rights of His servants, and prayers and peace upon the prophets:

Justice is a universal law. It was placed in the hands of rulers and responsible figures. If it is implemented by those with twisted horizons and the common folk, sedition runs rampant and chaos is the order of the day. Blood shall flow. Blood has already flowed—the blood of Abu Abbas, the Persian blacksmith, who was killed by Musallama and Sakhr of Tamim. They are members of the Hanabila; they enacted their own judgment within his stall. This is the truth, as God is my witness.

I placed the note in one of the cracks in the outer wall of the khan, where it could be seen. No doubt it would soon pique the curiosity of some passerby. I knew not what would come of it—if justice would establish itself in Baghdad now that blood had been spilt, houses burned down, and mosques filled with fighting.

Baghdad was no longer a place to abide.