It was just two months later that I heard that the husband had contracted syphilis; not much later I learned that he had died. When I went to see his widow to convey my condolences with a few sparse words, all she did was to stare back at me, her expression full of joy and affection. Once her waiting period was over, she came to visit me, after exchanging her mourning garb for something with much brighter colors. By now her body had been released from all the violence and suffering that it had gone through and revealed itself in all its beauty. As she sat down next to me and sipped from a cup of milk, her face looked fresh and bright.
"How is it possible, Ibn Dara," she asked me in her tuneful voice, "for two people, male and female, who are so diametrically opposite to each other in every way, to become man and wife? Tell me!"
For my own part, I too was invoking both memory and mind and setting them to work.
"That's a great mystery," I replied, "or rather you can say that it's one of those enormous and painful existential ironies in life. God knows best; the reason is that people cannot understand the truth and choose to ignore customary practice. The Greek philosophers noted that harmony undoubtedly exists within the system of the universe. However, when human beings are involved, there are so many terrible and unforeseeable coincidences. How often we hear about such tragic and violent unions!"
"That's one of those burning issues that I'll definitely be raising on the Day of judgment, assuming that I am destined for such things…"
"Oh, you will be reborn as a virgin houri, your beauty forever renewed. God willing, I will be one of your lucky companions in the gardens of eternity."
What prevented me from keeping up my contact with Qatr al-Nada was the way people kept bad-mouthing me and raising a fuss. Even so, the way she arranged our meetings and shrouded them in absolute secrecy was a very model of its kind. Something else that bothered me were the doubts I had about the real reasons for my strong attachment to my missing manuscript. In fact, I even began to suspect that my decision to search for it among my suspect former girlfriends was simply an excuse for renewing my relationships with them. However I managed to ignore all such sentiments so that I could close the final gap in the circle, it being for me the last word on the fixed and sublime, the most precious of quests.
When I went to visit Qatr al-Nada, she welcomed me with great warmth and affection. She scolded me for staying away so long, then asked why I was visiting her now after such a long time.
"Dear lady," I replied, my tears betraying my sorrow and affection, "people are saying nasty things about me. Eyes are keeping permanent watch on me. But all the time you have been in my heart and secluded under my very eyelids."
"And you, dear Sir, were like a loyal son to my father-God have mercy on his soul! Now my relatives and friends have all gone to Granada or even farther, while I am stuck here, a pawn to two jailers: a house that is empty but for an aged and infirm mother, and a time that is a tissue of sorrows and disasters. I have no idea what the fates have in mind for me: will they leave me here to squat until I die or will they carry me away heaven knows where…?"
"Dear sweet lady," I replied, "all of us who are living in our ancestors' land are now threatened with evacuation, unless some miracle happens or we receive reinforcements and supplies from some new Muslim power."
"My only dear friend," she said, "whether it's in bathhouses or elsewhere, I keep hearing women talking in crushed, tearful tones about their calamities and the loved ones they've lost. Some of them keep begging for an answer to their question: `0 Lord, what is my sin that You should vent Your anger in this way and abandon us? Have You created us just so that we can endure such torture?' And what about You? Isn't it the dreadful calamity that has struck us and the corrupt era we live in that has kept You apart from me?"
"Dear lady, that very calamity has kept me apart from my own self. What has made things worse is that I have lost my manuscript whose pages have been my major source of inspiration, an outpouring of spiritual ecstasy. Its exalted words, expressed in the loftiest of terms, were of a sort that mind and soul will only encounter once. No indeed, they come from a single, extraordinary moment."
Qatr al-Nada was intelligent enough to realize that she should not in any way belittle my sense of loss over the manuscript, even in the context of the prospective loss of the whole of Muslim Spain and the way it was being carved up into bleeding chunks before our weary, grief-stricken eyes. She did not say a single word or make any gesture, nor did she ask me about the contents of my manuscript, clearly aware that any question of that kind was liable to make things ever harder for me.
"There's one part of the manuscript," I told her in order to reassure her somewhat, "the content of which I can still recall, if not the format. It talked about our beloved Spain and the way it was bleeding to death and considered ways in which we might be able to escape the disasters that are afflicting us."
"If I had come across your manuscript," she said, "I would certainly have kept it safe and sound, close to my own heart and all those things that are dearest to me. Even so, your manuscript may have disappeared, but your inspirational mind remains in place, still developing and radiating its light. Be patient and forget, and you'll produce yet greater things."
Those precious words of hers fell on me like a cool breeze and a dose of tranquility. I used them as not merely a good omen but also as a prelude to a night of hugs and kisses, one of intense and happy intercourse till dawn broke and the cock crowed. Just then a loud knocking interrupted my pleasure. I arranged with my hostess a time when I would be at the graveyard where most of our beloved forebears were buried, then made my exit by a back way that I knew.
I went to the graveyard almost as soon as it opened. I gave the gatekeeper a large donation, and he thanked me profusely. I headed for the grave of Qatr al-Nada's father, read some intercessions for him, and prayed that he be granted forgiveness and mercy. No sooner had I finished than my companion was standing right behind me, her feminine perfume wafting over me. Without turning around I asked her who had been knocking on her door. Her response completely ruined my mood.
"It was the police chief with his team, coming to arrest you on a charge of fornication. I lost my temper and told them they could search my house inch by inch. They went away, duly chastened."
"God alone provides safety. Didn't I tell you, Qatr al-Nada, that now I'm surrounded by spies? Go home at once before some disaster strikes. Go home, and I'll try to work things out."
I turned around and looked at her, urging her to leave. Just at that moment a clown came over and grabbed the hem of her gown. She gave him some money and freed herself from his grip. Adjusting her veil, she gave me a sad look as though to say one final farewell, then rushed away.
I lowered the top of my burnous over my forehead, then made my way to the grave of my own father and others as well. I prayed over my relatives' graves and begged God to be merciful to them. Once that was done, I made my way out, taking all due care as I did so. Just as I was approaching the gate, a middle-aged woman who was both elegant and beautiful begged me to pray over two other graves that were close by. She told me they belonged to her husband and only son, both of whom had fallen victim to Castilian fire less than a month earlier. I responded to her request as best as I could given the circumstances. When I had finished, she offered me some money, but I told her to give it to someone else. Then I left.