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It is never easy to hold a conversation with a woman such as she, one who has wounds of both body and spirit. The tongue may utter things that only manage to scrape the wounds, or the phrases may turn out to bear a variety of viewpoints and modes of interpretation. For that reason my tack with her involved concision and a resort to fleeting illusions. I can still recall what I told her:

"As you can see for yourself, Balqis, this is a period that brings tears to the eyes and agony to the heart. The catastrophes and disasters are enormous in both their impact and their dimensions, dragging everything down into their vortex. All of us are being tested, you included. Some of us can endure it and carry on, while others grow weak and fade away. You are in no way like the latter, rather much closer to the former. It is one struggle after another, until like discarded skin you find yourself gradually liberated from your former dishonor and able to move beyond your scandalous conduct through a whole series of subtle moves. True and enduring beauty is acquired and constructed on the basis of hard work and knowledge, especially when you have yet to reach the stage of total self-devotion to the loftier realms…"

I recall that at this point my interlocutor turned toward me. The look on her face suggested both severe doubts and considerable perplexity regarding what I had suggested to her. She described some of her statuary to me and then asked why I had not upbraided her for having them. I answered that, just as was the case with the great sage Ibn al-Arabi,* my heart too was now open to every kind of image. "Even a house of idols?" she asked, to which I nodded a positive reply. She now talked about holy texts, to the effect that the God of the Gospels did not create such idols in his own image, while the God of the Qur'an did not release them from the state they were already in. I got the impression that this lonely woman only had minor deities to compensate for the fire that burned within her and the lack of relationship with the Most High. Those deities were visible and near, so that she was able to converse with them at close range, chide them, and even find fault with them occasionally. As a result, when her illusions vanished and she was granted a sudden clarity of vision, they would connect her, if only for a moment, to their Lord on high, genuflecting and uttering words of praise as they did so. For her part she would be in her own special prayer-room, candles lit and tongue mouthing paeans of praise.

Were a chaste level of shyness to be an actual person, then it might well fall victim to those people who fire themselves up in a competition to yell out in public-each one on his own terms: "I'm the unluckiest person alive!"

I know people who have longed to have such a pronouncement recorded as a final confession ex post facto. Balqis was one of them. Before she disappeared, she left me the following note:

"Ibn Sabin, my relationships with other people and the world in general can be likened to food that's hard to swallow. I am unloved and truly barren. You can say that I'm a purse of coins, a strait with no exit. Do you hear me? A strait with no exit! My individuality and yours no longer share warm, friendly greetings, as used to be the case in a wonderful period that has now passed. So I bid you a final farewell. Now I leave in order to disappear completely, intoxicated by oblivion, fumigated, shattered in spirit, fractured in body. By the truth of my Lord and yours, paradise will never really be paradise unless a time comes when those who enter its doors are like me."

Ah, such sterility, such despair!

Balqis, this polytheist in some compelling metaphorical sense, would not be one to steal my manuscript; she would have had neither control over it nor need of it. Any dream I might have of finding this lost love from the past-even supposing I had left my attachment to it extending behind me-was clearly useless. Any quest for Balqis would be a waste of time, a fading mirage.

6

SALMAN!

Salman was by origin a Visigoth, but he converted to Islam and learned Arabic. He married a Muslim woman, then lost her, leaving him childless. Thereafter he chose a life of asceticism and self-denial and entered my own service.

He was a devout and charitable person, someone who kept me in touch with the poor and indigent population. He would tell me about their situation and choose the neediest among them to receive my help, going to enormous lengths to ensure that such help indeed reached them. Apart from times when he was either asleep or praying, you would see him going about his daily chores, whether routine or urgent. He used to focus his entire attention on such things, to such an extent that he gave the impression of trying to avoid thinking about those major issues that, as he could see for himself, were keeping me fully preoccupied. Another of his qualities consisted in his uncanny ability to make himself scarce whenever I chose to spend some time studying in seclusion. Whenever he came back after fetching what I needed from the city, you would see him making every effort to ensure that I would not be disturbed, only talking to me when I asked him for something or else when something else happened that made it impossible to remain silent.

Salman!

Tall and skinny, he looked just like a sprite residing in the walls.

"A group of students came to see you, Sir," he would say in his gruff voice. "They were asking after your health and sending you their greetings. I responded on your behalf and sent them away. I've heated the water for the ritual washing, and lunch is ready."

"God reward you! Bring me the water and a bowl. If the students come back tomorrow, let them in."

"Tomorrow, not before?"

"Yes, tomorrow. After lunch, get my horse ready."

I made my way through the city's alleyways and squares on foot, leading my horse behind me. The expressions on the faces of those Muslims who were fully aware of the current situation looked more and more gloomy and depressed; it was almost as though some kind of mourning process, one with no limit or end, were weighing them all down. It was the Muslim defeat at the Battle of al-'Iqab that had started it all, and the loss of Cordoba and Valencia had only made things that much worse. The Almohads* were weak and at odds with each other, and each year brought still more disasters and calamities.

In the alleys and streets people would make their way to taverns, mosques, or houses in quest of refuge. They were in a permanent state of panic, dizzy with fear, as though perched on the edge of a precipice and faced with the prospect of inevitable destruction. In order to plan for the worst and find some sort of relief, a number of stratagems had been developed, including regular indulgence in pleasures, both public and private, hoarding goods and being niggardly about sharing them, and lastly devotion to a life of seclusion and prayer.

Once I had traversed the inhabited parts of the city and reached the desert area that extended all the way to the mountains of the west, I prepared to mount my horse. Just then a group of young men came up and surrounded me. Some of them I already knew, including Abd al and al-Sadiq. They greeted me with considerable emotion, and I returned their greeting, making it obvious at the same time how surprised I was that they had suddenly appeared. I invited them all to sit down with me by an aging oak tree. I asked them what was on their minds. It was the eldest among them, al-Sadiq al-Shatibi, who spoke up.

"This morning, Sir, we all came to your house," he said. "Salman sent us away. If the situation weren't so bad, we would not have come without an appointment."

"I am aware of it, al-Sadiq. Get to the point."

"Yesterday we were in the mosque, reading books that you had recommended that we study carefully. A jurist named `Abd al-Qadir al-Qabri invited someone we know well to join his circle of students. No sooner had a group gathered around him than he pronounced the bismillah* and hawqala*; then he started ranting and raving, claiming that philosophers and mystics were not real Muslims, but were committing all kinds of heresy and blasphemy. He kept adducing all manner of Qur'anic verses and prophetic hadith in the process. He prayed to God to root them out of al-Andalus and purge the Islamic religion of their poison and filth. By way of proof of what he was claiming, the only name he cited was yours, Sir, although the text he quoted from was clearly a forgery. He told the group that the text was written in your own hand. He took the text out of his sleeve and read it out in ringing tones: `Their leader, Ibn Sabin, says, "In stating that there is no prophet after me, Ibn Amina, the Prophet Muhammad, has exaggerated." I ask God's forgiveness for citing such gross heresy. God have mercy, have mercy, have mercy.'