"Next imagine your wedding night, along with all the festivities connected with it that remind you of similar occasions in Murcia during your childhoodfood, dancing, and singing. How wonderful, oh how wonderful; the women have all been at organizing the rituals involved and keeping the fires burning in their own quarters, sounds of which have wafted all the way to the men's section. All the men have put on their finest clothes, and they have been eating, drinking, and sharing anecdotes and jokes, wishing you well and a life of happiness. The very thought of that future has wreathed your face in smiles of joy and gratitude. Once the hour has come for you to be alone with your bride, a group of sturdy young men has heaved you up on to a raised platform and carried you on their shoulders. Singing and praising God, they have paraded you in triumph around the men's quarters to the accompaniment of drumbeats. After that a group of old women has accompanied you with peals of joy to the private quarters of your beloved. The door has been locked behind you and the blinds have been lowered. However, when it has come to describing your wife's beauty and the delights of that particular night, you have commanded your soul to remain silent and discreet in order to keep such things secret and in accordance with proper decorum. The phase of life that you have now entered is no longer one of reckless behavior and idle talk. Now it is a matter of a concentration on monotheistic faith and marriage to a single woman."
When I woke up next morning, my mind was still preoccupied with the sweet memories of these musings of mine. They may have already been speaking to me before I actually fell asleep and when I was dreaming, so the strands became tangled. Daydreams and nighttime visions commingled till the dividing lines became blurred and then disappeared. So how could I not assume that life's succession of days was not itself merely an aggregation of dreams?
I got out of bed to purge myself of ritual impurities and conduct the necessary ablutions before performing the obligatory prayers. That done, I ate a modicum of food. Going outside to check on my horse, I found the warden hurrying toward me as though he either had something urgent to tell me or wanted me to do something for him. After greeting him, I asked him what was the matter. He was panting so hard that he could not initially reply, so I took him for a stroll till he could recover his breath.
"Yesterday," I told him, "I didn't leave my house. It felt so good to remain in seclusion!"
"That's why I didn't want to disturb you," he replied once he could talk again.
"Is anything wrong?" I asked.
"No, no," he replied, "I just wanted to give you back the deposit you left with me. You may need to spend some money on your forthcoming marriage."
"You're right, my dear `Abd al-Barr," I said. "Let me have half of it, but keep the rest in trust. Is there something else?"
He paused for a moment, then shook his head in a way that was almost invisible. It seemed that he preferred not to comment, so I did not push him. I thought about inviting him to the wedding, but decided to leave that to a more appropriate moment. I asked him how things were going at the zawiya and its facilities, and he told me everything was fine, albeit in very curt terms.
Just as he was about to ask my permission to leave so he could continue with his duties, the bath attendant came over.
"God bless you and your famous fatwa, my fine master!" he yelled in a gruff tone. "Let the lunatics enter the bath one by one,' you said. You seem to have forgotten that a single madman is still utterly confused. How come you didn't think about that, 0 learned sage?"
"Shut your mouth, you rogue," said the warden in a harsh rebuke. "Do you know who you're talking to?"
"I'm talking to the person who's made a bad situation even worse, who apparently can't even see straight…"
"Keep your mouth shut, or else I'm going to complain to your boss!"
"He's the one who's annulled the fatwa by refusing to allow lunatics to enter the baths, even if it means using fists and canes."
That said, he went off guffawing. I then told `Abd al-Barr the whole story about the baths and the lunatics.
"Many, 0 how many, are the weird and amazing things I've witnessed on this mountain," he said, rubbing his hands together. "If I told you even one of the least complicated tales, it would soon make you forget all about this particular problem. 0 God, I ask for your forgiveness and protection!"
Saying farewell, he promised to return soon. With that he departed.
When the time for the engagement and wedding finally arrived, almost everything went according to plan, just as I had imagined it. There were only a few changes and refinements as demanded by the actual situation. The most significant differences were that her representative was her own uncle on her mother's side, Hajj Hamza al-Sarraj, a wealthy merchant from Tangier; the two witnesses were `Abd al-Barr al-Baradi'i, my friend the warden, and `Ukasha al-Khalti, the supervisor of the lunatics! The guest of honor at the wedding banquet was the governor of Sabta, Al-Husayn ibn Khalas, but the person who really got the party swinging was Al-Ghulam Ghazlan; neither of them had featured in my imaginings. The governor offered me his congratulations and gave me his warmest good wishes, so I exchanged compliments and affectionate greetings with him. As for the second, his mellifluous voice could be heard singing in the women's quarters and sometimes in the men's as well. He was egged on in his performance by the accompaniment provided by a group of Sudanese musicians. As he danced, he would say, "OK, you men, warm up the ambiance for me! Here we are at the wedding of Lalla Fayha' and Master `Abd al-Haqq. So sing along with me:
This risque young man only interrupted his song when he wanted the troupe to join with him, as they accompanied him in a muwashshah poem (by Abu alHasan al-Shushtari,* I think):
10
SO NOW HERE I AM living with my bride under a single roof, like butter and honey. We have been spending many wonderful hours in each other's company, chatting and sharing the sweet delights of married life. As a way of adjusting to life in my new home with all its facilities, I take the trouble to talk to the house staff. I often go up to a room on the roof where on one side I can look out at the sea and on the other at the mountain with its meadows and forests. I have also been taking a look at the archive of my late father-in-law, its shelves loaded with works on accounting, commentary, and law. The roof room and the archive are connected by a staircase that leads to the prayer-cell that my beloved promised to provide for me. The whole thing was built in short order, and, in spite of its small size (as I had requested), it nevertheless provides its occupant with an ideal space for seclusion and profound cogitation, the very acme of serenity and peace: no more furniture than necessary, windows open to the sky, and luxuriant gardens from which, night and day, it receives just enough light.
In leisure moments I took to searching the archive's library for useful works that I had not read before and organizing in my mind sections of a new book whose purposes and contents I had been carrying around in my head ever since my period in Spain had come to an end. I decided to put it into written form and polish it, all under a title that meant a great deal to me: Escape of the Gnostic. For me the word escape [budd] implies a number of notions: a line of poetry, the fulcrum of a millstone, a firm principle, or you might even say that it and its synonyms all blend together to produce a single meaning, namely the loftiest ideal, with no equal, the first and last, the perceived and hidden; the only path toward it involves uncovering its signs and secrets in the persona of an ever-striving humanity. Whoever knows himself knows his Lord, as the prophetic hadith puts it. The "gnostic" of my title is one who realizes that adjuncts and additions are mere coincidentals, or rather fantasies. Time consists of periods and moments; place mere sectors and partialities; and all of them collapse into something inferior to both unity and genuine cognizance. The gnostic person is someone who realizes all this and has experienced it, as a consequence of which he has demolished the normal icons of habit and instead adopted a posture whereby he strives for the essence of essences, the quality of qualities, and the perfection of perfections. That is all made possible by virtue of a lofty and cogent motivational force that such a gnostic can foster and strengthen by dint of his own efforts and abilities. By my own life, here resides the true significance of the struggle, one aimed at achieving a conception of divine abundance, an experience of the ever-present opaque eternity, a conjunction of the possible and Necessary Existent, one that results in a transcendent state through a permanent residence beneath its glory and beauty. Is it not God Himself who has said, "To Him shall you be gathered"; "Verily to your Lord is the return"; "Verily with your Lord is the final resort." If you are able to comprehend this clear divine discourse, then my commentary will be of help to you; if I become too complex, then it will make things easier.