"But where can we hide?"
"Holy man of God," he replied, "your hiding place is right under your feet. Come with me, and I'll show you."
We both stood up, and my companion lowered the tent flap. He pulled my bed board back a little and removed some soil with his powerful hands. An iron door appeared, which he lifted up and put to one side.
"This is our underground storeroom," he said as he lit a candle, "so here's your hiding place. Come with me."
Following in his footsteps I descended a ladder leading to a wide cellar. When he lit some lamps, I could see bedding, floor covers, and furniture in the middle, while in the various corners were piles of sacks that, he told me, contained foodstuffs stored here for use during drought years. He showed me where the bathroom was and a hidden opening with a tunnel that led to another cellar with an exit into the desert.
The cellar had enough light to see by, and the air was breathable; there was certainly enough food to last for a while. On the back wall I noticed some weapons hanging, along with baskets of onions and garlic. Turning away, I offered words of admiration for this remarkable place. I then followed my guide back up the ladder. While he was replacing the soil and bed board, I declared myself completely satisfied with the plans. With that, he said his farewells and departed, assuring me all the while that only his very closest aides were aware of the cellar's existence.
Someone who is totally accustomed to spending time alone will never find disappearing for a while all that difficult. The slogan adopted by Shaykh Ibn al'Arabi was mine as welclass="underline" "Seclusion brings with it knowledge of this world of ours." But how was I going to explain to my wife, Umama, what I would have to do in order to avoid imminent danger?
At night I allowed her to recount to me what she had been doing that day and what she proposed to do with the Maghribi women the next day. When she had finished, I decided that I had to tell her what the situation was with me and what I had to face. I whispered to her a brief but frank summary of things. When I finished, I was delighted to see how easily she had understood and how readily she agreed.
"A good wife sticks with her husband through thick and thin," she told me.
I was as pleased and relieved to hear it as I was when she told me that we had to be steadfast in resisting such trials and tribulations. Just before we gave ourselves up to slumber, she swore to me that what I had told her would remain a secret buried deep inside her heart.
In the ensuing days I stayed inside my tent, only leaving it when it proved really necessary. Umama busied herself with the usual chores and continued that way. When the first day of the pilgrimage month arrived, I was awakened by someone calling my name at the door of the tent. I had no doubt that it was my host, so my wife told me to hurry up and get ready. I went outside to check, and there was Hammuda, the head of the tribe, holding a huge basket full of food. He told me that Sultan Baybars had arrived in Mecca and urged me to go down into the cellar. He asked my permission to open it up, then proceeded to do so with great skill, apologizing to my wife all the while and urging her to grin and bear it. Just a few moments later, my wife and I, along with our belongings, were safely ensconced in our new abode. Our guardian had already lit the lamps and proceeded to hand over the basket, sacks of dates, dried fruit, a pitcher of water, oil, and honey. Before retracing his steps, he assured us that we would only have to stay down there for the pilgrimage season, no longer-God willing.
Umama now went to explore the place and its various corners and checked on the sacks and pitcher. She came back smiling. I decided to see how satisfied and happy she actually was.
"It's a cave," I said, "with no daylight and no sky above!"
"You proponent of seclusion and the ascetic life," she replied firmly, "do you really need those kinds of things? All you need to do is to close your eyes. In your mind's eye you can see light to envelop you and skies to give you shade. So now we can both close our eyes down here and seek peace and contentment."
0 God, grant us both a sleep of reason, not like that of the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus* or that of the dead!
God answered my prayer. When I opened my eyes, it was to see Umama cooking food in a corner that she had turned into a kitchen. When she brought over the dishes, I asked her if this was breakfast or lunch. "Neither," she replied, "it's almost dinnertime." I checked my astrolabe and found that it was not working. That may have been because the cellar was too deep; I estimated about fifteen meters. Our stay in this cellar was going to be something the like of which I had never experienced before: no way of telling the time; only candlelight; and no heavens above. But, praise be to God, we had enough food, water, and air. My wife made me relax, and I enjoyed both keeping her company and drawing close to the Necessary Existent, invoking to the extent possible His blessed beautiful names.
I did my ablutions and washed, and then sat around a low table with Umama. I ate her food and praised her cooking-with its authentic Egyptian touch, but suggested that it was lacking certain necessary spices. She thanked me for my compliments.
"My dear husband," she asked me in amazement once she had finished eating, "you are clearly gifted in the realms of learning and Sufism, incredibly so. But I also observe that you are equally skillful in matters of politics and government. Otherwise why would the Mamluk Sultan Baybars resent you so much that he wants to catch you?"
I was aware that my interrogator already knew a few details about Sultan Baybars's life and admired him, as did I.
"My dear lady," I replied as briefly as possible, "major politicians and rulers are never happy simply to control the reins of authority. They've always wanted religious scholars to do their will as a way of enhancing their prestige and efficacy. If any religious scholar chooses to object to the process, their enforcers proceed to bully the scholar in question until he changes his stance and does what he is told; either that, or else he is exiled or murdered. The vast majority of religious scholars give up and go along. Only a tiny minority ever hold fast and stick to their beliefs. Through God's power and will, I'm one of that tiny minority. I've used outright rejection as my strategy, but without needing to die for it. That's why I'm now in hiding, the idea being that Baybars won't be able to do to me what Salah al-din the Ayyubid did to Al-Suhrawardi, for example (and there are many others as well)."
"So, my dear heart," she said, "you are refusing to die a grisly death! Here you are with me in this cellar, enjoying our legitimate pleasures and eating myful mudammas* and other dishes! This is a boon from God that the Mamluk Sultan cannot even imagine."
I laughed, and she laughed with me.
"Now our God has a claim against us!" I said in a more sober tone.
"Indeed he does," she replied. "But what prayer are we supposed to pray, when we don't even know what time of day it is? What is your opinion in view of this unusual situation?"
"No, you tell me what you think."
For a moment she stared at me in amazement. "Women have no role in such things," she said.
"Yes, they do," I replied. "You have knowledge, intelligence, and sincerity, even though our scholar-pedants may hate the very idea. Don't you remember the hadith of our noble Prophet concerning `A'ishah,* mother of the believers: `Take half of your religious beliefs from this Himyari woman!'?"
She paused for thought, then bashfully expressed her opinion with lowered eyes.
"In view of the requirements of this situation, you most just of people," she said, "we should combine the five daily prayers into one late at night, just before we begin to feel sleepy."
"By God, that's the correct answer," I said. "With a little bit more study and effort, I can give you a certificate in Mecca as an interpreter of religious doctrine. Now get up and wash, then finish the other things you want to do."