7
The Caravan of Bani Murrah
The caravan that we accompanied to Cordoba had camels whose backs were yellow with the ginger and saffron they bore from the cities of Tlemcen and Fez, and most of its travelers were from Bani Murrah. They said that they had arrived after a long journey from the depths of the Arabian Peninsula, after which they had scattered. Some had settled in Egypt, some had gone to Kairouan, and the remainder had continued on to Andalusia. The owner of the caravan would be obliged to hire more guards to protect the caravan, and asked me when he saw my boxes, weighty on the backs of three mules, “What do you want with Cordoba? Her folk are departed from her.”
I said vaguely, to stop his questioning but not sever the bonds of friendship, “‘What is large starts with what is
small; / Seas built on seas were naught at all.’”
In Granada, my main concern was keeping the old man who had traveled with Zahira, and whose name was Dirbas, away from me and from Zahira. I approached her sedan chair to find her slumbering, almost supine. When she saw me, she reached out to embrace me: I would ask to lift her up onto my strong camel that she might sleep on my shoulder. When a shooting star decided to fall, we lagged behind the caravan, and canoodled between the murmurings of the demons and the springs with glittering stones.
Many times I asked her about herself, her family, her past, her childhood; her responses were usually short and she was clearly reluctant to expand. But this never dissuaded me from excavating the days and years of her life. I desired to grasp every inch of her, even the mysterious gaps in her memory, leaving no part of her behind a veil.
She told me of her father, the lute player, and her family that trained their girls to dance from an early age. The men learned to play and manufacture the lute, while the women learned to dance and sing. “My ancestors were priests of an old sect that served the temple of Zarathustra down the ages, but the Lord blessed us with Islam, and Fatima al-Zahraa, the Prophet’s daughter, took our clan under her wing and forgave us our slips and sins.” She smiled coyly. “It was Zahraa who sent me my fair-faced Arab boy who loves me with runaway ardor, an ardor I have never seen in the eyes of all those who came before him.”
I knew not whether to be pleased at what she said, or be dismayed at the “all” she had known, and mentioned so casually. Who? How? How many? Woe unto you, Mazid! How long can you withstand your frustration, and the flood of questions?
At the Albaicín market in Granada, she bought an anklet and a face veil embroidered with silver dirhams. I did not ask her what she would do with it in Granada, or whether Zahira would rekindle her old glory by placing a pearl in her navel and displaying it before the eyes of men. I would not ask her, for we might quarrel, and I could not part from her, at least not now. Old Fly Eye, Dirbas, watched us constantly, but I cared not. I knew that it was the cost of the war I had embarked upon to win the heart of a songstress: a war unbecoming of a Voyager, but still, I would keep sipping at her, and preserve the thick curtain that separated her from my books. When we arrived in Cordoba, I would rent a house and make my own rules. I would not permit Zahira to put herself on display once more before the lusts of men.
Rashid ibn Ali of Egypt had told me that the Andalusians were Sunnis, followers of the imam Malik, not inclined to follow the path of the Just Monotheists, and that their caliph, al-Mansour ibn Abu Amir, had banned Mutazilite thought, but that it remained a region bustling with libraries, discussion circles, and some lush oases; and it would not be exempt from the thinking of the Just Monotheists. He had given me the name of their man in Cordoba, Bahaa al-Zaman, and perhaps we might be blessed enough to be able to place a book in every library.
Lovers Suffer, but They Sing
I had expected from Zahira the brazen, high-pitched laughter of a temptress; I had expected seduction, coquetry, melting moments; I had expected debauched words and depraved actions, winks and raised eyebrows and bold looks and a bed burning with all the arts of lovemaking known to whores; but so far, all that had been shown to me was a housebound girl, shy and wary, as though I had asked for her hand from a family home outside of which she had never set foot. Was she concealing her true nature from her horned husband?
Her silence in the presence of men, her shy, nibbling way of eating, her reticence—for she only allowed me to touch her in the dark—the way she listened to me when I spoke, her eyes clinging to me like a young girl touched by love for the first time. The way she was fascinated at everything I said, even impossible things or the heresy of philosophers; the way she deliberately sat close to me and drew near me, and ignored the other passengers in the caravan who urged us to walk faster. She was disturbed by everything that called on her to part from me, and was slow to leave my side. If I recited explicit poetry to her, she blushed and covered her face with her hands, begging me to cease: “I swear I only fell in love with the chaste, pensive Arab who recites poems as though they were psalms, and sells books as though they were pearls—who buries his face in the pages of a book and ignores all women around him!”
The paths to Cordoba lengthened, especially as the caravan driver sent spies ahead of us to investigate the safe paths free of any remnants of soldiers or bandits, returning with bad news of highwaymen and military encampments. Therefore, the caravan moved haltingly along the bank of a river or beneath mountain outcroppings, and when the inhabitants of those regions saw the caravan passing, they descended the mountain paths and displayed dried fruit, flatbread, milk, and delicious butter. We stayed there for days, resting our bodies, plucking and eating from the walnut trees and rubbing our teeth with their leaves to make them white and shining, and lighting fires upon which we grilled small goats wrapped in leaves and stuffed with walnuts, figs, and apricots. Zahira and I might take ourselves off to some cave in the mountainside that looked down upon us from above.
One day, the old man Dirbas was at the mouth of the cave, waiting for us. Incensed, I cried, determined to subdue him this time, “What seek you here? I swear you will see something that will displease you, for you bring together ignorance and ill-breeding as you come to disturb us in the cave, much as the infidels sought to find the Prophet and Abu Bakr hiding in their cavern.”
He fixed me with a hateful glare. “I only wished to reassure myself of Zahira’s well-being. She was absent from the caravan for a while,” he said.
He was still speaking of her independently of me! “Zahira has a husband to take care of her now,” I retorted, “and you had better depart now before I roll you down the mountaintop.”
“Poor thing!” Zahira said, placating me. “He only wished to reassure himself.”
“This cur has gone too far,” I said between gritted teeth. I divined then that getting rid of this man would not be easy.
*
Zahira stuck close to me, reading over my shoulder out of the book to which I devoted a portion of my day. I gave her the Aghani to occupy herself, but she said, “Take it away: it was written for the palaces of the sultans and their company, and I have wasted my days going over its poems to recite them to drunken men and in the gatherings of nobles. Give me one of the books that make you speak like a wise man a hundred years old.”
I gave her al-Farabi’s The Virtuous City, hoping that it might be too much for her understanding and thus gain me some solitude; I knew not that it would shake the foundations of her world and rub the lantern that would let out the genie lurking inside her, leading her sweetly to the paths of utopias she could never abandon. She took to reading it and reciting it over and over, her long lashes fluttering as she contemplated its passages, completely absorbed by every line. When Dirbas passed by her, he muttered mockingly, “‘Great staffs shall small sticks surely make; / A snake can only spawn a snake.’”
His interference and intrusion galled me; I was waiting for a chance to pluck his white beard.
But Zahira did not mind, and was undisturbed by his passage, instead asking me insistently about the Essential City of al-Farabi, and whether its inhabitants could survive only on necessities such as food, water, and whatever they could come together to acquire. She then described the city of Kerman, where she had grown up, as “the Low City,” which epithet al-Farabi had used for the city where people only enjoyed sensory pleasures of food, drink, joking, and all manner of amusement. Her lips twisted in derision, making her pointed chin protrude. “In all the cities I passed through on my path from Baghdad to here,” she said, “I never found what al-Farabi calls ‘the City of Dignity,’ whose inhabitants cooperate to ensure dignity and fame, honor and renown, in word and deed.”
Mournfully I responded, “On this path you shall only see the Agate Cities, pulsing with blood and wounds. They are cities of conflict, whose monarchs seek only power.”
The thing that made us burst into laughter with such abandon that all eyes stared at us was her admiration of the idea al-Farabi had adapted from Plato in comparing a city to a human body. Just as in a complete and healthy body whose every organ cooperates, in their difference and integration, to preserve the life of a person, there is a main organ, the heart—so the city’s sections are different in form, integrated in function, and it has a person who is the leader. Just as in the body there are organs that serve and wait upon each other, in a city there are people who serve one another.
We divided the parts of our body into the forms of the city’s institutions. “The right hand,” she said, “is for the planters, the farmers who plant our food.”
“And the left,” I said, “is for the police, who drive off those who would usurp the planters’ efforts.”
“The head for the wise folk.”
“The tongue for the poets.” Then I would put my hand on her breast. “And what is the role of this?”
She would lift my hand, blushing. “This is a silo of wheat. The other is honey.”
Lewdly I asked, referencing the Qur’anic rivers of milk and honey, “Is it good to drink from?”
She gave me a reproving glance. “Only for the devout.”
Still, this mischievous talk never stopped her asking me more and more questions, especially about the reason al-Farabi gave the keys of the Virtuous City to the philosophers and wise folk, leaving mimesis and representation to the common people. I opened the book to the page where he mentions that attributes are based on natural inclination—that is, the instinct we are born with—and kept on reading to show her the twelve attributes with which a leader is born. Thus, a leader is chosen by a city for his positive attributes, not out of power or by dint of being a descendant of any royal family. I never knew then that I was planting a seed, in parched and fertile land, from which would sprout a field
of questions.
Crimson Winds
My head was turned by the singing of the trees whenever Zahira passed them. She still had the eyes of a virgin raised in a walled garden. I sought out chances for the caravan to stop in order to hold and kiss her and smell the scent of her hair, and slip my hand into the folds of her clothing. She had finished al-Farabi’s book and asked for another to fill the long hours of journeying within the silken curtains of her sedan chair. “Would you like a book by al-Farabi’s teacher?” I asked her. “For al-Farabi is but the Second Teacher.”
Still enamored of al-Farabi, she said, “I doubt that one so great could have a teacher. Who could be better than him in this world?”
Tenderly, I said, “I fear for this beautiful little head to be stolen away by delusions and heresies.”
She leaned on my shoulder lovingly. “I fear nothing. Fatima al-Zahraa is with me, and so are you. Every day the wings grow that will bear me above the paths of debauchery.”
Was she saying this to grant me the illusion that she had abandoned her old habits? I knew not, but I had no desire to tell her that the path in my company was not as secure as she thought: the birds of confusion and suspicion pecked at me too. I had never told her that I was Shiite, for I knew not if I still was. I had left al-Yamama; should I keep the religion of its monarchs? Nor had I told her that I was a Voyager, bearing my seven commandments to spread throughout many lands, nor that I had in my possession a letter from a dethroned king seeking to regain his power. What heavy burdens! But no matter; perhaps she would know some day.
*
Half a day’s journey from Cordoba, we stopped in a field among the mountains known as the Valley of the Walnuts. We were told that there was a waterfall close to the valley, but that reaching it required circumnavigating the mountain over uneven, rocky paths. The caravan driver gave us directions, as a special privilege for two newlyweds thrust onto the path of travel, who had not enjoyed the safety of a roof over their heads.
The treacherous path took a long time to traverse, and when we arrived, the sun was high in the sky. When we found it, it was not as full as had been described to us, but it emptied into a pellucid stream with small stones glistening on the bottom. The stream was surrounded by lavender and wild mugwort. We plunged into it, washing off the strain and fatigue of the mountain, and rubbed ourselves with lavender. Zahira collected handfuls of a tiny insect with red wings that she said was good for making henna paste.
At that moment, we heard two lions fighting savagely atop a nearby mountain. Around us, great winds stormed, of a strange crimson color. They moaned as if telling a story. As we hurried back to the caravan, I said to Zahira, “Do you hear the wind?”
She replied, “I swear, O wise Solomon, you who hear the song of the trees and the wind, I only heard the sound of two lions fighting, and it struck fear into my heart.”
Cordoba is surrounded by fighting lions and ravaged by crimson winds. When the evening star rose, we had reached the outskirts of the city.
An Alabaster Bridge and a Burning City
Safar 29, AH 405 / August 29, AD 1014
That was the night we awaited the sighting of the new moon for the month of Rabi al-Awwal, while the folk of the caravan cheered, “May God fill the new month with good fortune, gladness, and blessings!” I have traversed the universe to reach you, Cordoba: what lurks for me behind your gates and closed doors?
I looked down at the city from a hill on the outskirts, separated from the city by a river and a bridge. The bridge had been built by the Romans, though not with the intention to divide Cordoba; the city had sprung up on either bank. Evening was falling, and the lanterns had begun to twinkle upon the garment of night. As usual, I was wary of entering a new city in the evening. We would not be able to see its streets; we would arouse the suspicions of the inhabitants and might lose our way. Better to remain by the caravan until the morning, which always bears good news on its wings.
There were great crowds of people traversing the bridge, exiting from Cordoba to the surrounding hamlets. They seemed to be servants and slaves, with tattered clothing and exhausted, dismal faces. The paths leading away from Cordoba divided them into streams, flowing to their miserable mud-brick houses alongside some dhimmi and gypsy tribes. I was laden with gifts for Cordoba. The books of the Voyagers and their commandments, silken garments we were conveying for Hamdouna to the princesses of the Umayyad house, and a letter from their ousted king. All this in the company of a blossoming woman who bore all the women of the world within her person. I wished to provide a suitable and safe dwelling for her, especially because Ma‘in had been frank with me from the start of the journey, and said he would not be able to come with me to Cordoba, but would join a Sanhaji tribe in Elvira.
Ma‘in’s departure had left me unbalanced: there was no prop for me to support myself and shoo away my enemies, especially old Dirbas, who kept popping up with eyes reddened with hatred, as though lurking in wait to ambush me. Whenever I wished to get at him, Zahira told me to beware of him. “He makes a bad enemy. He only agreed to our marriage when he assured himself that it was a Kairouan contract, which allows me to divorce you at any time.” Her voice always dropped beseechingly. “He has kept me company these past ten years, like a tent that sheltered me from the vicissitudes of time and the vagaries of fate, and they were many. It is his right to be dismissed with the dignity befitting his advanced age.”
I had no wish to start an interrogation: who was he? Why did she hold him in such respect? Why did he circle us like an expectant jackal? I had no desire to hear things that would dismay or anger me, so I remained silent. I would handle these matters in due time. Most importantly, now I must separate from Zahira’s troupe, from their music and drums and dancers and mules and the cunning old man, and draw her away alone to some small, quiet home, far from prying eyes and nosy neighbors.
With the morning light, Cordoba dawned bright and appetizing, like a spring of silver. I crossed the bridge and entered by the door facing Mecca, topped with a statue of the Virgin Mary. It is said that its inhabitants, the first Christians, had erected it there, where it still stood. How I wished for Ma‘in then! He was wily and observant, and always found the shortest route to his goal. The tales of ordeals and battles between the Berber and the Umayyads he had heard in Almería had made him wary of entering Cordoba, although he had made light of the matter at first. In vain had I attempted to persuade him to accompany me. I had told him that all in the caravan were confident that there was no more danger for the Berbers. “The swords are no longer drawn in their faces,” I said, trying to convince them, “but are in their hands, and they draw them when they please, now that the Umayyad caliph al-Musta‘in has enlisted their help and given them entire villages and estates in recompense for his predecessor al-Mahdi’s mistreatment of them.” But these reassurances fell on deaf ears, and Ma‘in insisted on leaving, promising to visit me soon.
Zahira and her slave girl Bustan walked alongside me in silence, looking at the balconies and passageways and into the Khoudariya, the Jewish quarter near the Great Mosque. They found a women’s bathhouse with a great doorway surrounded by mosaics of crouching lions facing each other as though set there to protect the women bathing. The scent of perfumes and soap drew them inside, and they asked to spend the afternoon there; I would return after arranging our affairs.
Hassan the Egyptian had always jokingly explained away his reluctance to marry by saying, “A married man gradually becomes a beast of burden, a hired man groaning under baggage and weighed down with cares!” Should I search my back for a hump? My grandfather always repeated the words of Imam Ali: “Marriage is cowardice and miserliness.” He explained it as having a woman who eats and drinks with you, forcing you to be the lion who protects her from the misfortunes that befall her, an early doom inconsistent with the Voyager Mazid al-Hanafi who had emerged from Najd, from the depths of the desert, and was now perched high on the shoulder of the world in Cordoba. Were these merely excuses that I might escape from Zahira, the charming Persian Anahid, in whose dark eyes lay all the enchantments and all the demons of Persia? But she was still a woman, a burden, an interference in life—indeed, she opened the boxes of books with curious ardor and took out the volumes that pleased her, and spent her time discussing them and arguing about them.
Were these the imaginings of a man still under the spell of his woman’s ecstasy, in an attempt to save himself from her power over his heart? A bid to dry the sticky river of perfumes from his wings, to soar once more?
I escaped from my imaginings and set out to find a house for us to rent. It was not the best house, but the rooms were sunny and the air refreshing. It had a courtyard with a fountain in the center ringed with rooms with bright blue doors, prominent sunshades above its windows that resembled balconies, and a tiled floor. The agent, in an attempt to make it more attractive, said, “This is a benefit. Most houses in Cordoba are floored with arsenic, not tile.” And because it had a stable and a trough for beasts wide enough for two camels and four stubborn mules, I did not haggle overmuch with the agent about its rental.
I returned to the caravan to bring Zahira and her slave girl only, and to announce a clean break with the rest of the chorus who had accompanied her from Baghdad. The old man Dirbas no longer spoke to me after I had rebuked him, and I avoided looking at him. I paid him no heed, collecting our things and separating the beasts in silence, my brow furrowed. One of the Ethiopian boys accompanying her said in a placating, submissive tone, “Where are my lady Zahira and Bustan?”
I gave him a menacing glare. “She is now in her home. When she needs any of you, she will send for you.” I dragged the beasts and their burdens over the bridge, accompanied by a boy from the caravan. I feared that this decision might not suit Zahira, or that she might take some action that would make me appear green and idiotic in their eyes. No matter. It appeared that we would pass the first few months in a soft battle and many skirmishes until we had established the features of our life to come.
There was a great waterwheel by the bridge that lifted the water from one side and poured it out into the other. These are the days of our lives. We think they belong to us, but time comes and makes them slip through our fingers, pouring them into the river that reclaims them. The universe is changing about me and shedding its garment: who is the green, naive Mazid al-Hanafi who left al-Yamama on a caravan to Mecca to me now?
Wisdom comes, but it steals innocence and carelessness with it. I awaited the afternoon prayers to go to the Great Mosque and search for Bahaa to pay him the greeting of the Just Monotheists.
The Light That Never Dies
Zahira was almost mad with books. None knew better than I that there is no antidote that can cure one bitten by the asp of knowledge.
I had thought previously that women had sweet little minds, incapable of ascending the plateaus of wisdom and the towers of philosophy, kept from this by menstruation and ovulation. But this tigress fairly devoured books, even staying away from my bed for many nights in favor of reading by candlelight! It did not disturb me: first, it would make her forget the melodies of the tanbur and the beats of the drum, or at the very least defer her decision about such things; second, it would make her care for the crates of books like precious gems, finding them a place away from the damp, polishing the brass fittings and dusting the dross of travel from their pages.
She was currently immersed in reading books on theology and wisdom, and the writings of al-Kindi and Allaf al-Mutazili and Ikhwan al-Safa. She said petulantly, “Instead of giving me answers, they have given me noise.”
I told her, “Let your only guiding imam be your intellect.”
“What is my intellect? My intellect is marred by the madness of my emotions, my past, my changing moods, and my homesickness for Baghdad. How will I find it?”
I laughed out loud. “Bless you! You have instinctually hit upon the Law of Circumstance, which the Mutazilites of Basra made a condition of passing just judgment. We must respond to the change of circumstance from one era and one place to another. Still, your mind will remain your light on the path, and your guide to the Valley of the Virtues.”
“What is virtue?” she asked. “For instance, if a man marries a widow in addition to his wife in order to protect her and raise her children, are we to consider it a virtue? It is the greatest curse and vice to the first wife. There is no such thing as absolute virtue.”
I snatched at Aristotle’s response to relieve me of her contentiousness. “Virtue is the mean between two vices.” Then I escaped her argument, for I knew no more than she. “When is Bustan going to present the silken garments to the princesses?”
“Perhaps tomorrow,” she said carelessly. “The women in the bath told her that the princesses no longer live in Zahraa since it has been destroyed, and most have returned to Cordoba. Their palaces are surrounded by a private wall of palm trees adjoining the wall of the Great Mosque, and its gate faces west, opposite the prince’s stables, surrounded by high palms revered by the folk of Cordoba. They say that they are planted from the pits of the first conquerors’ dates.”
I called on Bustan and told her to go to the palaces tomorrow, and when she was there, to ask discreetly and circumspectly about a man named Tammam al-Saqalibi.
Hisham ibn Hakam al-Marwani’s missive was still in my sleeve, hardly ever leaving me. Even when I undressed, I placed it in a box and locked it with a padlock I wore around my neck in anticipation of what Bustan would tell me, that I might pass it to Tammam or else burn it. I had told Zahira nothing of the message, although she had become addicted to leafing through the crates of books and disturbing their contents. This remained a darkness between us.
They say that a man must keep some mysterious things away from his woman, by which he can arrange his affairs and rearrange his armies before a world that keeps him in a constant state of battle. I did not know her intentions yet: would she return to dancing and song, which was the reason she had left Baghdad? I know nothing of you, full moon of the house, musk that perfumes the halls.
Bahaa al-Zaman
The Great Mosque was the soul of Cordoba and the center of its glory. The tenderness of its flagstones was embraced by flirtatious gilded mosaics, awe-inspiring arches, and stucco so well wrought that it seemed to move, with circles of plaster branches endlessly chasing bunches of grapes. Outside, the water in the fountains of the mosque lapped in a golden sea at the bases of the date palms and poured gold onto the orange trees.
The inner doors of the mosque all stood open, most of the faithful bearing a book or a scroll under their sleeves. I performed my ablutions and entered. The columns towered above me like a cohort of noble giants, rising and joining hands to protect the people praying: their arches were formed of palm fronds providing shade. It went on and on, and I could scarcely see the pulpit from where I stood. The scent of Indian incense permeated the atmosphere.
When I finished my prayers, I looked around for a discussion circle to take refuge in and ask the students about Bahaa al-Zaman. The closest was the circle of a sheikh telling an anecdote he thought was funny. I recalled having read it in al-Hamazani: the story of a young man whose father furnished him with money to go into business, and warned him against the blandishments of the self. But the boy fell in love with learning and spent his money on seeking it, and returned to his father penniless. “Father,” the boy said, “I come to you with the power of history, and the riches of history, and eternal life: the Qur’an with all its interpretations, and the Prophet’s Tradition with all its references, and religious jurisprudence with all its permutations, and rhetoric with its arts, and poetry with its oddities, and grammar with its conjugations, and language and its origins.”
The father, it is said, took him to the moneychanger, the tailor, the spice trader, the baker, and the butcher, ending with the grocery store. He asked for some groceries, whereupon the grocer said, “We accept the coin of the nation, not coinage and interpretation.”
Then the father scooped up dust and heaped it on his son’s head, saying, “Son of misfortune! You set out with cash, and came back with trash, myths that none with a brain in his head will give you groceries in their stead.”
Was dust on the head Cordoba’s measure for sciences and arts? What a dismal and depressing reception committee from the circles of the Great Mosque. Groceries were now superior to knowledge! Those who repeat old tales of biographies and parrot quotations filled the mosque, and the circles of learning and jurisprudence had lost their luster. I slipped away from the circle and moved through the pillars of the mosque to find out where the books that had captivated the world were hidden, but could not find them.
The first Friday prayers at the Great Mosque, I glimpsed two of the mosque attendants helping each other carry a massive copy of the Qur’an between them, a man with a candle walking ahead of them, head held high. They said it was the Qur’an of Uthman, the ancestor of the Umayyad Dynasty. Had his copy arrived here, too? Did they too pretend that upon its pages there were droplets of Uthman’s blood, the Umayyad claim to a vendetta that was even now alive and well?
The copy had a beautiful silver cover with verses of the Qur’an and ornaments in relief. It was placed on a chair and the imam read some verses from it. Then the attendants smoothly and carefully returned it to its place in the closet. I looked around the pillars. There were two men I must find today. The first was al-Qadi Abu Mutrif, who, I had been told, held a circle in the mosque after Friday prayers, and had amassed a collection of books in Cordoba greater than that of any Andalusian in his era. It was said that he kept six copyists permanently in his employ, and when he learned of a new book, bought it forthwith, even if the seller charged an exorbitant price. The other was Bahaa al-Zaman, a Voyager of Cordoba, who would give me its keys and its maps.
The pathways of Cordoba were crowded with soldiers and beggars, but its great mosque was still filled with Arab students and those white-faced, red-bearded foreigners.
I had no need to ask after the circle of al-Qadi Abu Mutrif: it was opposite the pulpit, with ten semicircular rows about it, and everyone headed there. I sat at the outer edges. The first thing that came to my hearing was “He who quotes the First Teacher, Aristotle, is an atheist!”
O God! Why was Andalusia set against the philosophers? First Almería, and now Cordoba!
Abu Mutrif fell silent, staring into the people’s faces. Then, in an apparent access of energy, he burst out, “Atheists!” He swallowed, waiting to observe the effect of his words on the assembled faces. “That means the philosophers. From their first teacher, Aristotle, to their second, al-Farabi, who followed his predecessor’s path into atheism and disbelief in Almighty God and His angels and prophets and the Judgment Day. If philosophy, in essence, is based on liberating the mind and using the unfettered intellect, according to clerics and theologians, any deviation or doubt is caused by the use of the mind. The Devil’s doubt, may the Devil be cursed, lay in his privileging of his own opinion over the text, and following his own judgment in disobeying God.”
I stared. After all these books you have read, O Sheikh Abu Mutrif, are you nothing but a copy of my sheikh Muhammad al-Tamimi, who sees the mind as the source of all deviation? I swear, Cordoba, you are nothing but a burning coal pulsing with rage and blood, one of the Agate Cities.
I took to gazing at the ceiling, ignoring Abu Mutrif’s ramblings. I gave myself over to the melancholy columns that shaded us, shaped by the first conquerors into the form of palm fronds. Longing crowded my breast: I sighed and rose, seeking a pathway to the storehouse of books in the Great Mosque—if one even existed.
*
A woman’s voice in the mosque! Yes, a woman’s voice, slightly nasal but with the characteristic pronunciation that is unique to clerics. “Thanks be to God,” she said. “We thank Him and return to Him, and invoke prayers and peace upon the Prophet Muhammad. There are two forms of devotion: religious jurisprudence and politics. Religious jurisprudence fulfills devotions; politics peoples the earth and builds nations.”
I headed, stunned, for the source of the voice. I had heard that there were female clerics in the Haraam Mosque of Mecca, and in the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus, but I had not known that the mosques of Andalusia opened their doors to female clerics. I kept my footsteps light, fearing that the voice might be coming to me from beyond the barrier separating the women’s section of the mosque from ours, but I glimpsed her among the columns, erect on a chair, surrounded by her students and disciples. “The fitna of the creation of the Qur’an is a great fitna to whom many lost their lives and their faith. Some attribute it to philosophers and heretics; some attribute it to the Just Monotheists, sometimes called Mutazilites.” She glanced around with self-possession before continuing. “This fitna goes back to the concept that ‘nothing comes of nothing,’ which indicates that the world is eternal and was not newly created. Even the philosophers themselves have debated this. Al-Kindi affirmed the pillars of our religion, such as the creation of all creatures and the natural world, and that everything that the Prophet Muhammad says, prayers and peace be upon him, does not go against reason. Al-Kindi, therefore, confirms things that neither blaspheme nor transgress.”
I was filled with an overwhelming ecstasy. I was not accustomed to hearing such shining logical arguments from any other than a rough male throat, but here the words were flowing in a soft feminine lilt, like the sound of the waterwheel over the Great Valley. She was sitting in the southern corner of the mosque, at the end of the corner parallel to al-Qadi Abu Mutrif, separated from him by a forest of columns. On her right was a latticed, ornamented window running the length of the wall and overlooking a garden by the mosque. At the end of it shone the waters of the Great Valley.
She sat tall, straight-backed, kneeling as though finishing her prayers. Before her was a chair bearing a large book at which she glanced, a piece of embroidered silk beneath it hanging down to the ground. Her features were delicate and her skin clear. Her beauty was not overweening, but soft like a star’s. The gentleness of her features did not keep a slight frown from her forehead—the mark of a serious scholar. Her head was covered with a red silk cap from which a saffron-colored veil descended, matching the color of her caftan, which fell respectably over her slight shoulders and pooled about her in carefully arranged folds. As she looked at the book, she appeared absorbed and ecstatic, with a hint of pain. She soon raised her eyes. “The absolute infallibility of Almighty God means there is nothing whatever like unto Him, nothing similar nor any embodiment, which elevates God above all earthly things. As for the interpretation of verse twenty-seven of the Sura of al-Rahman, ‘There remaineth but the Countenance of thy Lord of Might and Glory,’ the evident meaning of countenance is ‘face,’ and we say here that ‘face’ is not literal, but signifies ‘essence.’”
I slipped into her circle, captivated by what I was hearing, the words of the Voyagers and the Just Monotheists, with which this woman was singing like the birds with eloquence and powerful proofs. I whispered to the young man next to me, “Who is this cleric?”
He answered without turning, eyes fixed on her, “Bahaa al-Zaman al-Mrouzia.”
Garments of Umayyad Silk
“If the mirror is distorted, and depicts physical forms falsely—also if a mirror is stained—then nothing can be seen in it.” That was what Zahira said to me as I came in through the door.
I kissed her and inhaled the scent of her hair. “Abandon the heresies of the philosophers! I have seen a wonder in the mosque. There is an eminent female cleric at the Great Mosque.”
“Where?” she asked.
“At a discussion circle in the mosque.”
“You mean in the women’s section?” asked Bustan, as though trying to find an explanation.
“No,” I said. “When they finished the Friday prayer, men and women sat at her circle.” I turned to Bustan, “And what of you? Did you find Tammam al-Saqalibi when you took the caftans to the Umayyad palace?”
Bemused, she responded, “They said they knew him not, and I could seek him in the Great Palace.”
“What great palace?”
“The one,” she said, “where the Umayyad caliph resides, Sulayman al-Musta‘in bi-Allah.”
I slumped. Sulayman al-Musta‘in? It was said that he was a lover of books and a writer of poetry, but was currently occupied with his own affairs, attempting to rule in the face of the revolt of the people of Cordoba. The Berbers had taken over all the surrounding hamlets, leaving him only with Cordoba.
“Dirbas came to visit today,” said Zahira seriously.
I felt the veins pounding in my temple. “Old Fly Eye? What brought him here in my absence?”
“Dirbas is a lifelong companion,” Zahira said, trying to calm matters. “Oft has he defended me and protected me. How can a person abandon his life’s companions and shut the door in their faces? Betray once, and you shall grow accustomed to it.”
I choked on my irritation, for she was imparting a moral lesson and reminding me that she was older than I, and that I was a green ignoramus who as yet knew little of the world—and that she still expected Dirbas to protect her. I screamed, spittle flying from my mouth, “He protected your thighs and your buttocks that you put on display for the drunkards, and lived off your labor! He did not protect you as a revered lady of the house! He dragged you out of men’s arms only to send you back naked unto them, time after time!”
I had not realized the cruelty of these words until her face turned blue, and she began to sob before me with a sound like wailing. Never before had I spoken to her with such harshness and obscenity.
I stormed out, slamming the door hard enough to make the hinges rattle, intending to find Dirbas and threaten him with all forms of harm if he visited again. But I did not know where he lived. The streets of Cordoba were bursting with soldiers, and the gates were mostly barred, and you had to avoid asking too many questions so as not to draw curious eyes. The city’s hearts were still broken, its wounds still raw: the stores only displayed some dried fruit, wheat, and jars of olive oil, for food and supplies were bought by the soldiers, who devoured it like locusts before it ever reached Cordoba, leaving nothing but scraps for the folk of the city.
Despite this, Cordoba rebelled against the rule of the soldiers, putting on her finery every morning: her windows still bore pots of flowers, her fountains sang as they watered flocks of birds accustomed to bathing in their spray, her streets were paved with shining flagstones, and her bathhouses’ doors were filled with the steam of perfume and soap. I walked aimlessly until I reached the gate that faced Mecca, and exited to the bank of the Great Valley to look at the waterwheel scooping up my life and pouring it away. I found the people of Cordoba, men, women, and children, out for holiday excursions on the banks of the river. The riverbank was planted with silks and perfumes and filled with the laughter of young girls. Their veils fluttered in the river breeze, showing their hair, and they let them fly in the wind with heart-melting coquetry.
Would Zahira forgive my impugning her honor and insulting her? Would I find her there when I came back home? Or would I find that the Kairouan contract between us had been severed? My soul would bleed dry if this woman left me, but I must stand firm. Now I was setting the terms of our life together. I would rekindle her passion for books and the words of the philosophers, the madness that had captivated her mind: that was the only way to bury her past.
I passed by the Great Mosque. I asked one of the attendants when the circle of Bahaa al-Zaman was held. “Tuesdays, Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays,” he said, “after the noon prayers.”
Zahira would not be comforted nor her grief dissipated until she sat in the circle of Bahaa al-Zaman.
We came early and sat together, Zahira and I, in her circle, which made Bahaa al-Zaman notice us. She nodded to us pleasantly in welcome. We sat close to Bahaa al-Zaman. Zahira was stunned, looking around at the columns of the mosque, the ornaments on the ceiling, and the people around her. I drew near to her until I heard the sighs that followed long weeping, rending my heart. She looked at Bahaa al-Zaman awhile, fascinated by this female cleric whose face shone like the flame of a lantern, and she stole a glance at my eyes, then sighed again. I pressed her fingers gently to let her know she was mine, next to whom all the women of the world were nothing.
Bahaa al-Zaman was speaking pleasantly of the origins of the Just Monotheists, careful of the curious eyes and inquisitive would-be hecklers. “Islam is a structure built on the Five Pillars. What lies within this structure is yours: you have the free will to build and establish your life with whatever choices you may take. Al-Qadi Abd al-Jabbar has divided those who preach virtue and admonish vice into two categories: one only to be performed by imams, such as enacting lawful punishment and preserving Islam and blocking gaps and building armies and the like, while the other is to be performed by all and sundry, such as admonishing the drinking of alcohol, fornication, theft, and so on. However, if there is an imam to be obeyed, it is most prudent to consult them.”
What a calamity! Bahaa al-Zaman was quoting the great Mutazilite, al-Qadi Abd al-Jabbar, before witnesses, before the guardians of the credo of Imam ibn Malik? Either Abd al-Jabbar was not known here in Andalusia, or they ignored the fatwas he issued, which had him branded a heretic. I was seeking an opening in her speech that might allow me to produce the key phrase of the Cranes. The circle was expanding around her, more and more rows forming.
I had no experience with speaking to women beyond the confines of closed doors. How was I to address this female cleric, who looked at our faces with such majesty, as though looking down from on high? Not only this, but I must tell her that one of the Voyagers had journeyed far to see her and kneel at her discussion circle. I whispered to Zahira, “Ask her of the ruling over those who commit venial sins—who should preach virtue and admonish vice to them?”
Like a child eager to prove its prowess to its parents, she burst out, “What of those who commit venial sins, Sheikh Bahaa al-Zaman?”
I seized the golden opportunity to say, enunciating clearly, “They are in a status between two statuses.”
Although Bahaa al-Zaman retained her seriousness and fixed expression, she looked fleetingly up at me with the ghost of a conspiratorial smile. “That is the fourth pillar of the Just Monotheists,” she said, “and it is the pillar we discussed in a previous circle. Today, our discussion revolves around the origins of preaching virtue and admonishing vice.”
On our way home, Zahira was twittering with happiness, virtually floating, clinging to me, her hand wrapped around mine. “What am I in comparison to all this knowledge and learning!” she gushed. “I swear, if my family had taught me anything other than shaking my hips, I would have been a cleric like Bahaa al-Zaman!”
“And they would call you Zahirat al-Zaman,” I teased.
“No,” she insisted. “I would keep my name as Zahira, to recall the blessings of Our Lady Fatima al-Zahraa, the Prophet’s daughter, who shades me in her love and care.” She went on with sweet melancholy, “I remember back home in Karman—I must have been no older than four, but I remember that my grandparents kept their old religion. When the folk of Karman began to embrace Islam in great numbers, many people fled to India to preserve their faith, and settled there. My grandparents never ceased praying to Zarathustra, and kept his image in the house. You could not imagine how similar that religion is to Islam. They pray five times a day, wash themselves exactly like Muslim ablutions, and believe in resurrection and the straight path; even Zarathustra himself had the experience of the two angels that split open his chest and pulled out the evils of the Self, just like our prophet Muhammad, prayers and peace be upon him!”
“Truly?” I asked, surprised. “Who do you mean? Zarathustra or Mani?” I recalled the poor water carrier of Baghdad, when they burned the image of Mani in front of him.
“I do not recall,” she said thoughtfully, “but they had the picture of a bright-faced and cheerful-seeming man, with great eyes and an imposing squared-off beard.”
“And when did you become a Muslim?”
“When I was born,” she said. “My parents were already Muslim—Shiite, believing in the family of the Prophet, and Ali—so I was born thus.”
“But the Just Monotheists,” I said, “are ruled by their minds, and do not turn Shiite nor privilege one Muslim over another. We know of no great differences between them, after all. My grandfather says that in his time, the only difference between Sunni and Shiite was the preference of Ali over Uthman—but just look how it has become in Baghdad.”
She turned to me curiously, mischief dancing in her eyes. “Who are the Just Monotheists?”
I had slipped! I murmured, “Perhaps I will tell you of them one day.”
What if I passed on the torch of justice and monotheism in Cordoba to Zahira? There would be none more passionate and loving and eager to gallop through the paths of knowledge than she. But now I must hold back: it must be love that veiled my mind and made me confused in passing the wisdom of the Voyagers to this crane who excelled in waggling her hips. I would wait and see.
But what of Bahaa al-Zaman? Did she menstruate and ovulate? I swear, if her wisdom and knowledge were spread out over Cordoba and its outskirts and the neighboring hamlets, they would overflow.
We arrived at the house. I had sent Bustan to discreetly ask after Tammam al-Saqalibi around the Great Palace. When we entered, we found her in the courtyard of the house, pale and crying. “There is a snake in a hole under the fountain!” she wailed.
Zahira stood rooted to the spot and refused to go farther inside. I rushed forward, drawing my dagger and scrabbling under the fountain. “Are you certain?” I snapped at Bustan.
“Yes. A long silvery snake, slithering up the pots of basil. It drank from the fountain, then slipped back into its hole. Here,” she said, pointing to a crack in the basin. I dug in it with the handle of the dagger. “Leave it, sir,” Bustan said. “This may be its home, and we intruders. If we kill it, we shall bring great misfortune down upon ourselves!”
“What do you want, foolish woman?” cried Zahira from the doorway. “That we should be neighbors with the snake?”
“No,” said Bustan, “but we could beg it to go. I heard tell in Baghdad that if you see such creatures in your house, you should not kill them until you beg them thrice in the name of the Lord, saying, ‘I beg you thrice in the name of the Lord to leave this place if you be a demon!’”
“Do it, then,” I said.
“I cannot, not I,” she said, “for you are the master of the house.”
I fell silent, and refrained from uttering the words. It would injure my dignity in their eyes and make me appear less of a rational man. Should I seem like a madman, talking to the things that creep and crawl and fly upon this earth? Enough that they already knew I listened to the voice of the wind and the song of the trees. Instead, I begged Zahira to come inside, and told her, “I will deal with the snake tomorrow.” Now I would go to market to buy food, for the snake had distracted the slave girl Bustan from preparing
our meal.
I glimpsed old Fly Eye Dirbas standing at a butcher’s stall. I saw him observing me with his cunning gaze, with an overtone of gloating that disquieted me. Should I go to him and threaten him? But now my anger had cooled, and I would not attack him as long as the women assured me that he hadn’t visited the house again. A few paces before I reached our home, I recalled Hamdouna’s law of parallels and resemblances. Was I back to superstitious mumbo jumbo? But then again, what was that snake doing in our house?
I stormed into the house, calling on Bustan. “Has anyone visited the house in my absence? Did that damned Dirbas come here?”
Despite her vehement denials, her bloodless face and trembling hands only increased my suspicions.
We spent a long time laughing and leaping about, entreating the snake to leave. Even Zahira lost her fear and offered to dance for him if he came out, but he did not.
Bustan suggested a bizarre stratagem to get him out, used, she said, in royal palaces to kill unwanted animal guests. Diamond dust pounded into a paste and mixed in with food near the hole would kill it, she said: diamond was not a poison in itself, but due to its extreme hardness and its sharp edges that never rounded off like other stones, it would stick to the walls of the stomach and intestines if ingested, puncture them when food pressed against the innards, and kill instantly. No other stone adhered like diamond.
This recipe disturbed me. It was an innocent poison that none could discover. What was the mystery held by Bustan that drove her to lower her eyes when I spoke to her? What did she not want me to see?
“Do you expect us to waste diamonds on a snake’s innards?” Zahira burst out. “Heavens, what a silly goose!”
All this time, I had been seeking a suitable location for my two crates of books to keep them safe. Zahira suggested a space in the cellar I suspected had been used for grain storage, and was designed in such a manner as to allow an upper and lower current of air to pass through it by means of two windows, one easterly and one westerly, that let in the light and thus would keep them from rotting. I liked her suggestion. She said, “I think it the ideal spot for them. On the one hand, it will keep them safe and away from prying eyes, and on the other, they will remain close to me whenever I require a book from them.”
At that, I held her and kissed her, and embraced her so tightly that she cried out. How delicious she was! How amazing the world in her eyes! At that moment, she felt the letter to Hisham al-Muayyad in my sleeve that I brought with me everywhere I went. “What is this?”
I said immediately, “Contracts of sale between myself and the booksellers.”
I decided then and there to slip it into the bottom of one of the boxes next to the commandments of the Just Monotheists, for it was dangerous to keep it with me in my comings and goings. It was no collection of theological quotations, after all, but a message from a vanquished king seeking to reclaim his throne.
A little while before the sunset prayers, there was a gentle knocking on the door, so soft we thought it was merely the wind moving it this way and that. When we listened carefully, we heard a continual, shy knocking. I leapt to the door, bristling, thinking it was Dirbas, and meaning to destroy him. I wrenched the door open violently. At the door was a young woman who took several steps back at my stormy approach. She had a soft voice and was dewy as the dawn, with shining blue eyes and golden braids wrapped in a blue veil the color of her eyes. She seemed hurried and wary, looking about her. In a sweet voice, she said, “My lady Bahaa al-Zaman, may God grant her long life, invites you both to the discussion circle held in her house tomorrow after the afternoon prayers.”
I stood transfixed at the girl’s beauty and the speed of Sheikh Bahaa al-Zaman’s response to my sign in the mosque, and the path that had opened up. The girl disappeared down a side street before I could ask her where her mistress’s house was. No matter; we whould find it.
As I was asking the mosque attendants the location of her house, it became clear to me that Bahaa al-Zaman was a person of some status and esteem in Cordoba: she had studied for seven years in Mecca, then returned to become the teacher for the princesses of the Umayyad palace, all while continuing her studies. She had never married, and had many students and adherents. The palace had conferred upon her a space in the Great Mosque. Still, Zahira and I spent a long time circling the streets of Cordoba in search of her house. Finally, a small boy volunteered to take us there. It was a house with white walls, on the corner of two streets, with a great barred wooden gate guarded by an elderly man. He opened a smaller door set into the great gate to admit us. “Is this the house of Bahaa?” we asked.
He nodded, welcoming as though he was used to receiving strangers. He looked into the street behind us, turning his head this way and that. “You have arrived.”
There was a great gulf between her house and the street, as though you were stepping into Paradise and the angel Radwan closed the heavenly gates behind you. The roof of the passage leading inside was a wooden trellis, wound about with a climbing plant whose astonishing purple flowers hung in garlands, their scent filling the path. After this, we entered a wide courtyard surrounded by a colonnade with marble pillars, likewise with the flowering plants wound around them. The basin of the fountain in the center was covered with the petals and leaves of the flowers.
“To see her glow and beauty and the splendor of her clothing, and the details in that woman’s appearance,” gasped Zahira, “you would know that she comes from a place such as this before she ever reached the mosque.”
Bahaa was sitting in a corner of the courtyard of her home, a book in her lap, upon a small stone platform covered with carpets, apparently prepared especially for her to teach. A curtain of silk hung between two columns on either side of her. Beneath her feet sat a cat with thick fur looking down at the guests haughtily—after all, it was only he who had attained the privilege of sitting at the feet of Bahaa.
When Bahaa saw us enter, overwhelmed and hesitant, she nodded pleasantly and motioned to us to sit on one of the seats scattered. There were no more than twenty people in attendance, including two women. My mind was set at rest to see them, as I had not wished for Zahira to be the odd one out.
Bahaa went on with what she appeared to have been saying. “Al-Ashaari is said to have numbered many women among the prophets, and the clerics say they are six: Eve, Sarah, Hagar, Moses’s mother, Asiya, and Mary. The Lord sent His message to Mary, mother of Jesus, for it says in verse nineteen of the Sura of Maryam, ‘I am only a messenger from thy Lord, to announce to thee the gift of a holy son.’ This is a genuine prophecy, with genuine inspiration: a message from the Lord God to her.
“Some,” she went on, “disputed this, saying that prophecy must comprise the prophet preaching the message of right and disputing those who stand against it; but this is not a position for women but for men. Our response is that what they mention is the message and not the status of prophet: a prophet is any person whom God has inspired with His message. What Mary heard was not an illusion nor a divination—it is known that demons may whisper into a diviner’s ear, and divination ended with the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him. What Mary heard was not a vision, which might be true or false, but a direct communication from God, which makes her a prophet.”
Bahaa appeared more comfortable and expansive in her own home than she had been in the mosque. She read from a book on her lap, while the attendees listened silently, in awe. I noticed that most of the attendees were young men. There were a smaller number of older men in expensive caftans and costly turbans, of dignified mien. The lesson ended a little before the sunset prayers, and everyone headed to the door, while bright-faced slave girls moved about, bearing glasses of ginger with honey. Parodying verse twenty-five of the Sura of al-Mutaffifin, “They are given to drink of a pure wine, sealed,” I winked at Zahira and said, “They are given to drink of ginger, honeyed!”
She bit her lip. “You seem impressed. You have not taken your eyes off this woman. But when we get home, things will be different. Spend the night here, for you will not be sleeping in my bed tonight.”
I was delighted at her jealousy, and would have teased her further, but spied Bahaa coming toward us. Her feminine lilt and nasal, musical cadence could not conceal the strong, unyielding soul behind that voice, lending coherence to her phrases and clarity to her words. Her handshake was firm, and her eyes met mine steadily. Her presence overpowered all around her and overflowed, luminous and dignified. Before I could say a word, she said, “Whence come you?”
“I am from Najd, and she is from Baghdad. We came together in Almería in marriage, and found shelter in the garden of your company.” She appeared nonplussed: she was clearly accustomed to being approached by cranes singly, not in pairs. I reassured her. “I have a collection of books, some original translations from the House of Wisdom, and others that I have collected on my journeys from Baghdad to Cordoba, according to the precepts of the Just Monotheists. Rashid ibn Ali in Cairo sends you a letter with his greetings.”
Her face split into a gentle smile. “How does Egypt? Is there still suspicion between the folk of Cairo and of Fustat? Are the swords of the soldiers still drawn in the streets?”
“Egypt is licking its wounds,” I told her, “but it is still a rare and precious gem. It bleeds like an agate.”
Zahira’s silence piqued Bahaa’s curiosity. “Welcome to the society of the Cranes,” she told her. “Whenever a woman steps into a discussion circle, a window of light opens in the city.”
Zahira stammered and blushed in a manner I had never seen before, she who had no qualms about swaying and dancing at a gathering surrounded by dozens of lustful eyes! Perhaps she saw in Bahaa al-Zaman another type of woman, one who had no need of flirtations and coquetry and the usual tricks when speaking to men. Bahaa added, “In Cordoba, times have changed. You must both be careful here and walk with measured steps. The wounds are still bleeding. There are a vanquished monarch and a usurper, and some preachers lined up behind the victor. The streets are lurking in wait and the houses of learning are silent, every head turning this way and that in an attempt to divine whence disaster will strike. Did you observe,” she asked, “how many spies were watching the entrance to my house?”
I shook my head. “No.”
Nodding, she went on. “I know them well. Sometimes they wear a beggar’s disguise; sometimes that of a water carrier; sometimes they even come in uniform, staring curiously at those who enter my house.” She sighed. “I may have to cease these lectures until the situation is resolved.”
“I am sorry to hear it,” I said with sincere distress.
She adjusted her veil. “In any event, I shall send for you both when we find a suitable place for the books. Although the libraries have been burned and looted, there are many who would like to acquire them, and seek them out, most importantly the Jews of Cordoba.” She then went inside, her garment spreading about her and rippling around her firm steps.
The Air of Cordoba
The Great Valley wakes Cordoba early, blowing the gentle breezes of the field through it and sending the neighing of the horses across the bridge. Its air suited me and filled me with familiarity and comfort, but its streets disquieted me. I was still fettered by my wariness, ignited further by Bahaa al-Zaman and the soldiers’ scrutiny of my face. It was enough for me to attend her circle and search through the market and the paper traders’ stalls for books, careful not to chatter or talk too long. Zahira occasionally came with me on my tours, for a man out with his wife is less suspicious than a stranger inspecting stores and sitting at lessons in mosques.
One day, we happened to encounter the lute player from Zahira’s old troupe. A woman from Sindh of about fifty, with an imposing presence, she still retained some of the freshness of her old beauty. She told us that Dirbas had rented a house for them in Rusafa, on the other side of the Great Valley. They had started to receive invitations to entertain at weddings and circumcisions. She hesitated awhile before saying, “But everyone is asking about Zahira.”
Out of pity for her and respect for her age, I refrained from cursing her all the way back to Rusafa. I merely turned on my heel and left without a word, letting Zahira stumble after me, barely able to keep up with my strides. I knew that I could not erase her past as one removes an eggshell, for it had merged with her consciousness early, and mingled with her essence. Even if the sciences of the Greek philosophers poured into her, and she read them day and night without pause, she was nothing but a whore. Mazid al-Hanafi, you are the first person who should know this. Today you met the lute player; tomorrow it will be the one who beats the tambourine, and the day after the tambour. But I had satisfied her heart with affection and compliments, warmed her bed with a young man in love with her, furnished her home with the best carpets and covers, and filled her coffers with good things and spices . . . what more could a woman want?
I breathed in the good air of Cordoba: it did away with displeasure and cured heaviness of heart. I had not found Tammam al-Saqalibi, which meant I must burn the letter with all haste. Still, Bustan returned every time with an answer that left a thread of hope still connected. First they would say he was gone to Elvira and would return in a week; another time they told her the odd news that he had become a monk and retreated to a cave close to Cordoba to get away from the Berbers and Sulayman al-Musta‘in. And still the letter remained unburned. The second new moon had risen on Cordoba and I had not yet burned the letter.
Are you keeping the letter, Mazid, out of some greedy hope that Muayyad may return to his throne and appoint you to a position or give you a bounty to last you all the days of your life? This world is nothing but temptation: its demons never cease dancing, and they arrive incessantly, in the ever-changing garments of seduction. I was still overcome with the desire to get to the library of the surgeon al-Zahrawi. I had been told by a paper merchant that his heirs refused to sell it. His al-Tasrif, or The Method of Medicine, comprised thirty volumes of every miracle of this field.
Although we had dismissed Dirbas, he had not forgotten us: and, as Zahira said, he made a bad enemy, slow to retreat. One day, I returned home to find Bustan presenting me with a package. “One of Dirbas’s boys brought it for you.”
I took it, hands shaking with rage, and unwrapped it to find the book Why Dogs Are Better Than a Great Many Men by Ibn Mirziban. Should I go to his house in Rusafa and whip him until he vomited his mother’s milk? He had not left us alone, and would not—not until I made him eat dirt. But my life in Cordoba was on a crumbling cliffside: my books, my letter, the commandments of the Voyagers, a woman whose discussion circles I must attend, and another, a beauty bitten by the seduction of knowledge. Was this what they called prudence, or wisdom? Or was it cowardice, the fear of teaching a lesson to one who called you a dog?
I would refrain. But I would not forget my vengeance on that dog, Dirbas.
A brave knight chooses his enemies with care, as he chooses his friends. Dirbas was unworthy of my enmity. Where you set your horizons, there are your aims and your kingdom. My quarrel with Dirbas was no more than two house cats squabbling over a dish, while the horizon glimmered with winged creatures and adorned stallions. What did you have in store for me, Cordoba, pomegranate tree with fruits full of rubies?
I am Mazid al-Najdi. I have ridden long and hard to find you, from the heart of Najd. But all I have found in you is another Agate City, lit with vendettas, blood, and fights over power. What lies within you, Cordoba, for a young man who always rises from the depths to soar on high? What city should I go to after you, you who perch on the shoulder of the world?
Cordoba did not wait long to respond.
Fling Him into the Depths of the Pit
Lord, Companion of every stranger, friend of every lonely man, refuge of all the fearful, You who dismiss every affliction, know every solitary prayer, hear every complaint, and are everywhere, Ever-living, Self-subsisting Sustainer of All, I ask You to fill my heart with faith in You, so that I have no concern but You. Let there be an end and salvation to my affliction, for You are capable of everything.
This was the prayer that never ceased to fall from the lips of my companion in this solid stone dungeon, as though he imagined it as a saw that could cut away the bars of our cell. As if this was not enough, he asked me to repeat it with him: it was, he said, the prayer that had liberated Joseph from his prison, ended his captivity, lightened his affliction, dismissed his fears, and given him dominion over the treasuries of
the earth.
But I was not afraid. Nor was I reassured, sad, stricken, or despairing. My heart was only empty, like the site of some great battle after the armies have withdrawn, leaving broken arrows and shattered swords in severed hands that had been readying themselves to embrace a lover, and turbans for heads that were filled with dreams, and shoes with feet in them that had been seeking a way to return. I was not afraid or grieved or lonely or anything at all. Is this what the dead feel at the taste of dust? I know not how long I have been in this place. The days are circles within which I turn, unable to grasp a beginning or an end. Perhaps I can make out some of the seasons through the window at the top of the cell, through which a great tree can be seen, extending its branches and leaves to dance with the sky and inform me of the succession of the seasons in its foliage. When I am tired of looking at the tree, I open the windows of my soul to see what has become of the boy from Najd who bears such a heavy burden upon his soul that it has brought him to his knees.
I no longer dare to remember my time in the house in Cordoba, for the pain might destroy me.
When the soldiers came to take me thence, Zahira was wailing and shrieking, clawing at her face and chest, Bustan trying to calm her. It was as though I glimpsed old Fly Eye Dirbas at the gate; then everything slipped from around me and became part of the past.
The soldiers said they had been watching me since I arrived in Cordoba, and told me that those who spread the books of the heretics receive a terrible punishment; but how could they have known that my crates contained books of heresy? Who had betrayed me? Dirbas? Bustan? Or perhaps Zahira? Had she only been a flight of fancy, or had I been a fool, transported by love, the victim of a troupe of conjurers and dancers whose mission was to capture the minds—and money—of men? Or had they seen me frequenting the circles, and home, of Bahaa al-Zaman? Two days before my arrest, I had gone to her house, where the old guard at the door had told me, in tears, that the caliph’s soldiers had come and taken her away, along with all the books in her library. But the crates of books were still there in my cellar. What had Zahira done with them? Had she betrayed me? Had she given them to Dirbas to sell at the paper market for next to nothing? Or had she kept them?
No one had visited me as yet in my cell. One desolate day in the freezing dead of winter, my companion in the cell had died, and since then, I had spent long months without speaking to anyone. When the Berber guard told me, “There is a man asking to see you,” I trembled with fear—not of the person arriving, but for fear that I had lost the capacity to speak.
It was my boy, Ma‘in. When he saw my tattered clothing and emaciated body, my bones sticking out, he wept, and I with him. We did not speak long, sobbing the length of his visit. Before he left, he told me that he had come to Cordoba and searched far and wide for me, following the news of me until he found out that I was here; if the warden of the prison, he said, had not been a Sanhaji from his tribe, he would not have been permitted to see me. On the way out, he murmured, “With hardship there shall be ease,” and “The Lord’s deliverance is nigh,” and told me that the Hammudid Dynasty ruled Cordoba now, and that they were descendants of the Prophet’s house and known for justice and wisdom. “At their hands, you shall be released, God willing.” He left, looking back at me and weeping.
Ma‘in kept visiting, bringing me the food I loved, and small books to which the Sanhaji guard turned a blind eye, and papers and pens and inks with which to gather my life that had been wasted on the wandering roads and in the Agate Cities. This was my torch, my antidote, my lantern in the depths of my cell. Without these, I would have died.
There is not much left in my empty heart but the seventh commandment of the Voyagers.
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 floweth on and taketh all withal. Everything leaveth its place; nothing remaineth forever.
The desire for learning is the mother of all virtues. Burn these commandments and start anew.
I am Mazid al-Hanafi, and I come from Najd. It is a land of plenty, filled with lush vegetation, rich herds, freely flowing springs, and great blessings. I am the secret crane, for whom the nets of darkness have lain in wait and taken me to a cell whose ponderous stones lament every night as they recount the sorrows of those who have passed through.
I must burn everything, and rise again from the ashes.
I am the embryo in the darkness, trapped in eternal labor, passing my time and history lying in wait for the game of light and shadow, awaiting the breath of morning, through the narrow window at the top of my dungeon.