5

Kairouan,
15 Rajab, ah 404; January 20, ad 1014

I know not if it was good or bad luck that I joined a caravan so great that it was feared by thieves and bandits, but it was unjust and cruel, comprising merchants and pilgrims on their return journey to Andalusia. It was guarded by ten mounted guards and twenty more on foot. It would eventually split into two groups: one would go to al-Mahdiya, then embark upon a boat for Andalusia, while the other would go on to Morocco. Al-Muizz li-Din Allah had appointed the Berber tribe of Sanhaja to rule over Tunisia. My heart ached to recall Kahramana–Lamis and her Berber origins, her perfume and her laughter and the gold dust that scattered from her skin. The arrogant mind attempted to tell me that she had been an illusion, like the dreams of the morning mists; but I paid it no heed. She had been real—as real as the blood that pumped through my veins and the taste of water in my mouth.

He Who Conceals His Illness Heals with Difficulty

Hanin ibn Ishaq tells us that Galen’s ring was engraved with the inscription “He who conceals his illness heals with difficulty.” I imagined that I had left Egypt behind me, never knowing that it walked alongside me. Trouble is lethal to the organs of the body, and feeds on the luster of youth.

I had joined the branch of the caravan headed for al-Mahdiya so as to ride upon the sea to Almería, in Andalusia. Ere sunset on the fifteenth day, we reached Kairouan; no sooner were we on the outskirts than I was struck by a terrible fever. It crept up on me at first in the form of weakness and nausea, quickly subsuming my whole body and leaving me shaking. I was no longer able to ride my camel, and lay upon the ground raving, unaware of those around me. My innards were burning with fire. I could see one of the servant boys of the caravan passing a damp cloth over my lips and attempting to feed me watered-down oatmeal with honey, but I could not let a drop of anything pass my lips. I withered and would have died, and at dawn, between sleeping and waking, I saw Canopus looking down at me in pain. In my ravings, I recited a poem of Ibn al-Rayb’s, which he had penned as he lay dying:

If only poetry would grant another night,
Suffering and fever-racked, the world above to see!
I tell my friends to lift me up. I see the light
Of Canopus, and it is joy enough for me.

But no friend lifted me up. On the contrary: the members of the caravan took my raving and moaning as an ill omen, and moved away from me. I heard them discussing if they should bury me facing Mecca now, or wait until the following day. “It appears he is dying,” said one helpful soul. “Let us dig his grave.”

“We cannot go into Kairouan with him in this state,” said another. “They will stop us, thinking we bring the plague.”

I trembled. I did not want to die here in this desert: I wanted to go back. I started to scream at the top of my lungs, or thought I did: “I want to go back!” But it appeared they did not hear me, for they did not so much as turn to me, even though they stood at my head. In the end, they settled upon digging a pit beneath a large acacia tree, placing me in it, and putting food and water and a bag of flour next to me, and flint to start a fire. If I recovered from the fever, I would wake and follow them; if not, I would be buried beneath the acacia tree, as the winds would eventually pile the sand up on me.

Who would tell Shammaa of my death? Who would distribute the books? I sobbed until I lost consciousness.

In my dreams, I saw Shammaa at my head, dabbing at my fevered brow and washing me with water from the well of al-Yamama, whispering, “God of all, banish this affliction, heal this sickness. Heal it, for you are the All-Healing.” Shammaa kept washing me until a great lion appeared beneath the acacia. I was terrified, and took it for Death. But instead, it crouched at my feet, guarding me, while Mazid’s heretical tongue muttered Aristotle’s words on theology: “I may be alone with myself, take off my body, and become pure bodiless essence; I may be within myself, outside all things, and see in myself such beauty and brilliance that I stand speechless and admiring, and thus know that I am part of the ideal higher world.”

I know not how much time passed, but when I came to myself, I glimpsed in my grave the shadows of my mule shaking its head and my camel ruminating, both tied up next to me. The caravan had left. I fell into another deep slumber.

I awoke to a woman in a burka circling me and looking at me. I gathered my strength about me and climbed out of my grave, sitting on the edge and looking into it with revulsion. She seemed to pluck up her courage, and approached me. She was a Bedouin shepherdess, who lived close by, with a small pot in her hand. “May you recover soon,” she said. “Drink from this pot and it shall heal you. You will return to full health, God willing. It is from the Spring of Brouta, which they call the Zamzam of Kairouan, because its wellsprings are connected to those of Zamzam in Mecca; and as you know, Zamzam’s water becomes a cure for any affliction for which it is taken.”

Stunned, I looked up at this shepherdess: had she too been sent by Shammaa of the House of Wael? When I lost consciousness, the air around me had smelled strongly of the flowers that covered our hillsides in spring. I washed myself and prayed. I examined my effects and my crates of books. They were covered in dust, but still unopened, the keys hanging at my chest. I went back to sleep.

When I woke again, the sun was high in the sky. I was overcome with a great hunger for everything: food, motion, and life.

The Helper

I entered Kairouan, wasted with illness, lack of nourishment, and the fatigue of travel. Curious eyes scoured me as I walked, but the dirhams around my waist secured me a room where I could remain until I had fully recovered.

On the afternoon of the first day, a tall boy with a fair face and fine features knocked at my door. He had wide-set eyes, almost on opposite sides of his head, and protruding teeth: the whole reminded me a little of a rabbit. “I am Mu’in,” he said, which means Helper.

“Mu’in?” I sighed, still weak. “And whom are you going to help?”

“One of the members of the caravan you were with,” he said, “decided to act like a God-fearing man, pricked by conscience because they dug a grave for you while you were still alive. He told me where you were and asked me to take care of you, feed you, and bring you water. He gave me a gold dinar as payment. He told me that you were a learned man coming from the Arabian Peninsula, and that your head was filled with knowledge and your boxes with books. If I took good care of you and nursed you diligently, I might be apprenticed to you and earn a shade of your glory, and you might take me to Andalusia as your servant or your assistant, and—”

“Come in,” I said, hoping to shut him up. He seemed delighted. “But where were you?” I questioned him. “Why did you not come?”

“The man only told me of you last night. I went immediately to the acacia tree, but you were not there. I did find a shepherdess who told me that you had recovered and mounted your animals and come into Kairouan. I returned to Kairouan and asked after you until I found you.”

His genuine demeanor eased my worries. I made him welcome. He had a ringing, refreshing laugh that drove me to ask him, “Is your name Mu-een, for assistance, or Ma-een, which means a spring of water?”

He grinned. “Call me what you will, Arab. You yourself are the spring.” It was then that I realized he knew something about me. “But my name is Ma‘in al-Sanhaji.” He told me of a woman at the far end of the market who kept a chicken coop, selling birds and eggs, who also had goat’s milk and dates. “These foods are just what you require for your convalescence. You are obviously much weakened.”

He came and went away for short periods, which I passed lying upon my bed; the final time, he entered bearing fruit and cooked chicken. “Fruit and flesh of fowl that ye enjoy,” he half quoted from the Qur’an, “to regain your strength. Come, why still abed? Much awaits you outside.”

The fruit and the chicken were not the only things to return my energy to me; I also had the water of youth in my veins. Youth is the best antidote humanity has known against illness and feebleness.

I have seen no lower forms of humanity than caravan leaders. The leader of the caravan would have sought any method to rid himself of me for fear I had some infectious disease that would sweep his caravan and keep him from coming into Kairouan; and ship’s captains are no better. They are careful in selecting their passengers, I have heard, and do not hesitate to cast anyone struck with fever into the sea. What a world of many veils! Each time she rips off a veil, she shows us a face uglier than the last.

Shammaa of the House of Wael brought me into the world once again by that graveside. I came back to life with the grief of an old man and the skin of a young one. I left my cares behind in that grave, and came out thin and light, thirsty for wellsprings. To my shock, I emerged from it completely cleansed of the sorrow of leaving Egypt, my longing for Kahramana, and the talk of the cranes. I had shed my skin and left it in the bottom of the grave, slowly being covered up by the sands. It was an exhausting rebirth, of which I had been in dire need so as to remove myself from Egypt, and to remove Egypt from myself.

The first time I left the house was to go to the mosque for Friday prayers. Ma‘in took to calling me “the Arab doctor”; I lost the title of “the man with the fever” and acquired the title of “the doctor.” The folk of Kairouan took to examining me, finding in my face neither the wisdom of age nor the gravity of a learned man. They saw only a young man from Arabia whose eyes sharpened under his long lashes when a woman passed by.

The call to prayer mentioned Ali ibn Abu Talib, this part of the world being Shiite, and from the pulpit they prayed for the Fatimid caliph and the Sanhaji wali he had appointed. Apart from this, though, I could see no signs of their sect. After prayers, some of them stayed at the mosque of Kairouan, and the circle began to expand around a sheikh they called Abu Ishaq Ibrahim ibn Ali al-Hosari al-Kairouani. Many people appeared to revere him, most of them young men who carefully took down every word he said. He was speaking of the science of Arabic meter and the modifications to it that appear in verse in practice. I did not stay long at his circle, for there was nothing there that I had not already studied at al-Azhar, so I went out to investigate the affairs of Kairouan. I found that most of those who had left the mosque after prayer had gone to the tomb of Abu Zamaa al-Balawi, said to be one of the Prophet’s men.

The tomb was close to the Great Mosque with its breathtaking blue dome. The grave itself was inlaid with mosaics and decorated with birds wearing crowns of gold. Once they left the Friday prayers, people visited the tomb to pay their respects and pray to the saint to lighten their loads, banish their cares, and give them their daily bread: he was a saint and an intercessor, said to have kept three hairs of the Prophet Muhammad, whose barber he had supposedly been. I recalled the mausoleum of al-Qarmati and the Pyramids. Why do people leave the living and seek out the dead to intercede for them and solve their problems? Is death a just adjudicator?

Why did Kairouan captivate me? I had been seeking the port of al-Mahdiya. What was the message it wished to convey to me? It had given me Ma‘in. Its folk spoke the same foreign tongue of the soldiers of Cairo, who were from the tribe of Kutama. However, if I met someone who spoke Arabic, it was always with a fluency and eloquence that amazed me. I knew no Voyagers in this city. Its air was as sweet as date jam. I would tour its mosques and libraries, and spend a few days in the discussion circles of its imams, until I had regained my full health, whereupon I would resume my journey.

Their books were not for everyone. They stored them in the mosque in closets with ornamented façades, but locked with a padlock. They were not arranged on shelves, except some books of historical anecdotes and biographies of the prophets.

I spent nearly a month in Kairouan. Then I told Ma‘in to start looking at caravans and find one that would, for a reasonable price, convey us to al-Mahdiya. In truth, Ma‘in did everything he could to convince me of his usefulness. He was polite and attentive and spoke only when spoken to. If he did speak, his speech was concise and indicated intelligence and perceptiveness beyond his years. He did not ask me about the boxes of books, although he observed my care when I opened them and looked through their contents. He believed that speaking to a desert Arab from the Peninsula would help him diminish his Berber accent. In truth, his presence provided companionship and comfort now, in my convalescence, but what about taking him on as a permanent assistant and companion? I had always enjoyed my solitude.

In any event, Ma‘in was not a disturbance, except for one thing: he always recounted his dreams and visions. He told me of the many people who had watched me in my sleep after my illness; of the lion who had crouched at my feet, or the bald man holding a drum who looked in on me from a door that stood ajar, or the woman he had glimpsed walking back and forth the length of the room wearing a yellow veil embroidered with flowers and spreading the scent of their blossoms everywhere. When he saw my eyes glinting with mockery, he said, “It is well known here, a kind of miracle in the Sanhaji tribes.” I felt that Ma‘in had a great many of these tales hidden away, but I carefully held my peace. I had no need of more storks alighting on the roof of my house.

Ma‘in arranged with a caravan to bring us to the port of al-Mahdiya, from where we would travel by sea to Almería. How I wished for a caravan with which to travel overland to Gibraltar, to cut short the time we spent on the water. I feared the days between al-Mahdiya and Almería, on this blue, rippling, treacherous terrain. I am a son of the desert. Only sand embraces and warms my feet. But it appeared that Ma‘in thought differently. “It is faster and cheaper to travel by sea,” he said.

When we arrived in al-Mahdiya, we found the city silent and grim as a bereaved mother. The sea embraced it on three sides, only an isthmus linking it to the land on the western side. Over its streets spilled a veil of the grief of abandoned women, despite the commotion of sailors, travelers, and store owners surrounding Almería.

The ship we were to take to Almería was called al-Nagiya. Most of the passengers were merchants. It was a large ship, used for transporting goods and supplies. I stood on the docks watching Ma‘in move our things onto the deck of the ship, along with sacks of wheat, hemp, and cinnamon being stacked and piled into the ship’s storerooms. My heart beat in terror: how would this great beast take to the sea with all this baggage in its belly?

When Ma‘in had reassured himself that our things had been safely conveyed into the ship, and had secured us a room, he returned, out of breath. “We shall set sail tomorrow at dawn.”

al-Nagiya

I left al-Mahdiya, still silent and grim. When the sea swallows up the four directions of the compass, staring you arrogantly in the face, lying in wait, a desert Arab must be frightened and greatly disturbed.

The rivers of Baghdad and Cairo had flowed between two banks: they rippled like a refreshing breeze between two lovers, bearing small craft, greeting people, listening to their woes, and washing away the sorrows of the day with fresh air. Cities on the river are friendlier, always thirsty for affection, fertilized with hot silt like the first life God breathed into humankind. But this was the sea. I had not befriended it, and did not think I should. We sailed upon it like a band of terrified dwarves walking upon the body of a giant djinn, rippling and blue, not knowing when he would wake to swallow us all.

Our room on the boat had a window onto the deck. We would spend five days to a week on board between al-Mahdiya and Andalusia, depending on the humor of the sea, stopping at a few cities. We might take on new passengers, or some of ours might alight; in any case, we would remain in the hands of this scowling, salty creature for entire days and nights. I stood on deck, greeting the sea and contemplating it: it slapped me in the face outright, with a salty wave that soaked me to the gills and drenched every hair on my head.

On the second night, sleep did not come easily: the sound of the waves was so loud that it drew me out of my room. Outside, the moon was playing its favorite game of laying bare the graves of grief and bringing forth longings. It had attracted other travelers besides me, including two Andalusian merchants who were in the habit of traveling with a great store of musk, ouds, and Chinese cinnamon. Their wares exceeded the limit for each traveler on the boat, and the fierce captain had threatened to throw the excess into the sea, saying that all he cared for was the safety of the boat. Every day, he placed a dish of fat and rice on deck to feed the angels that watched over the boat. Faced with the haplessness of the merchants and the captain’s ire, we had hit upon a solution. Our room had enough space for some of their goods, and we willingly let them use it. Although our room was packed with their additional crates before we set sail, the gratitude they showed was worth the sacrifice. In addition, they now called me “honorable Arab,” which filled me with pride, reassuring me. In a strange land, it is wise to have an abundance of brethren and men you call friend, for you never know when you shall need them.

The moon broke up on the surface of the water. I examined my compass and astrolabe in an attempt to map the stars and follow their directions. Meanwhile, the two merchants had taken to insulting the cruel and grasping captain and swearing that they would never more ride with him. Then we heard women wailing.

I looked about me, frightened, seeking the source of the sound. Then I saw them. They appeared on the surface of the water, bareheaded, their long, thick hair glinting in the moonlight, waving their arms and screaming for help. Their voices were strange, echoing like the cries of gulls. There were three of them, bobbing up and down in the waves, bare-chested, their long hair floating all about them. They approached the boat, so close that I could make out their features. Whence had they come? “Stop! Stop!” I screamed at the top of my lungs. “There are people drowning!”

The Andalusian merchants laughed, looking at the sea where the three women were. Calm yourself,” they said, “these are the sirens, the demons of the sea. They signal to lonely mariners who have been months at sea without women, making them think they are shipwrecked, and when they lure them in, they drag them to the depths of the sea and take them to the merfolk.”

I shuddered. I recalled the succubi of al-Yamama, who chose a boy to love, then flew him on the trunk of a palm tree to Amman. But the witches of the tree trunks only showed themselves to those who had forgotten to perform the evening prayers, while the sirens could be seen by everyone.

One of the traders approached the edge of the deck and mocked their voices, making obscene gestures at them with his fingers and spitting on them. One of the sirens retaliated, hitting him in the face with a well-aimed, sticky jellyfish. At this juncture, one of the sailors approached from the other end of the boat, crying, “Do not jest with them or provoke them. They are demons of the sea: their ire might affect the boat and all those in it.”

Since I am gentle and not accustomed to harming any creature, I took to going out on deck every night to look at them, meaning to ask them secretly what had become of Kahramana. But when any of the sailors saw me, they would tell me to stop my ears with cotton, because their song was tempting, stealing your sanity and causing sailors to fling themselves to the sirens. So they floated on, with pert breasts and long hair that glittered, shapely arms and wide eyes glinting with lust.

How many dangers and wonders does the sea hold in store for us, and ordeals too! On the fourth day after we set sail, we encountered high winds laden thickly with rain. The boat listed, and our things were scattered all around. I exited my room, nauseated, my feet stumbling on the deck as I walked, and so terrified I feared I should faint clean away. The sailors were nonchalant, I found, while the captain had a tight grip on one of the poles. He had large, strong hands. His lips muttered prayers. He was in his forties, with narrow, frowning eyes set deep in wrinkled skin tanned by the sun. I approached him, questioning him in terror. He looked at me for a moment, then told me in a high-pitched voice, struggling to be heard over the wind and the rain, “Fear not! We are merely passing over the grave of the good man buried at sea: we must simply call down God’s mercies on his soul and pray for him. His name is Sari al-Saqati, a Sufi saint, and the best man of all his time. The world came to him in the shape of an old woman, swept his house, and brought him two loaves of bread every day. One of his miracles is that when he died on a boat, they prepared his body, prayed for him, and would have thrown him into the sea, but the sea dried up suddenly, and the ship sank to the bottom. They dug a grave for him in the seabed and buried him, whereupon the waters rose again and the ship sailed once more.”

The waves had started to calm, and the rain ceased. The travelers’ heads popped out of their rooms, pale with terror. The captain called loudly, “We are now past the grave of the good saint and his miracles, but the greatest miracle humankind can enjoy is for the Lord to replace one of their execrable attributes with a wholesome one. None can hold back a blessing the Lord grants you, and none can grant you what the Lord has withheld.”

The captain’s aphorism echoed through my head all day. It was like a pearl he had pressed into my hand. Wisdom is what every believer seeks, even from this primitive and savage captain with his burning eyes. But what was the attribute within me that I must pray to God to modify? Was it disobedience?