With that I too stood up and indicated to the group that they should calm down and make their way to the ablutions section. That is precisely what they did.
I sat down on the mat with my quartet of students around me, all of us coming to terms with what had just happened.
"It won't be difficult for me to obtain a license to teach," I told them. "If I make the request, Ibn Khalas the governor will be only too glad to give me one. But I'm afraid that such a move is bound to involve some kind of trap."
Khalid's eyes were gleaming. "The request to Ibn Khalas for a license won't be coming from you," he said in the tone of someone who has just made a discovery. "It'll come from us, in the form of a petition signed only by the students from Sabta, not others. They'll take it to the governor. That at least is my suggestion, although I'm not sure what the outcome will be."
"It would be better for the three of us not to be involved in the application," said Al-Sadiq to underline what Khalid had just said. "Then we can't be accused of sedition and incitement, something that would get us expelled. That's something we couldn't tolerate."
We all agreed to Khalid's plan and his generous offer to implement it. That settled, we all made ready to perform our ablutions before praying the sunset prayer. That completed, my companions all suggested that my best plan was to return home. They escorted me as far as the door. I offered them some dinner, but they declined, said farewell, and went their own way.
When I went inside, I had fully intended to keep what had transpired in the mosque a secret from my wife, but Hafsa informed me with a habitual frown that her mistress was going to spend the night with her aunt, who had suddenly been taken ill. I asked her about `Abla, and it was obvious that my question surprised and offended her.
"Did she go with your mistress?" I asked in order to clarify my intentions.
"Oh, `Abla's sound asleep!" she replied mockingly. "Shall I wake her up and have her bring you your meal?"
I shook my head and hurried away to my prayer-room.
15
MY SLEEP PATTERNS that night were much disturbed, and I spent several hours wide awake or else dozing off for a while. Whichever of the two states I was in, I kept on dreaming of spoken confrontations with different faces: Khalid and 'Abla, King Frederic, Ibn Khalas the governor, 'Abd al-Barr al-Baradi`i, `Ukasha al-Khalti, the warden of the insane, Fayha' and her aunt and uncle. While I could remember snippets of the conversations I had with them, they dissipated as soon as I woke up or became aware of my surroundings.
Very early in the morning I decided to put a definitive end to my tossings and turnings. I got out of bed and proceeded to perform my ablutions and prayers before reading some texts of the ancients. I decided to resort to a walk around the house garden, in the hope that the earliness of the hour might refresh my senses and whet my distracted mind. Then I might feel more relaxed and be able to go back to the process of writing and revising my book, Escape of the Gnostic. As I was walking along a hallway leading to my destination, I happened to hear some groans coming from the room of Hafsa, the maid. If it were not for the sighs of pleasure and delight I would have assumed that someone had been wounded. For a while I stayed rooted to the spot, but, when it was a little lighter, I took a peep through the aperture. What a horrendous sight did I behold!! There was Hafsa, stark naked and behaving like some wild animal; beneath her lay `Abla, spreadeagled like some piece of prey. Without the slightest doubt, they were engaging in lesbian sex, thrashing around and grabbing each other for all they were worth, not to mention the snorts, grunts, and gasps they kept making. The whole thing appalled me, but I decided not to stop them and reprimand them both severely for fear of consequences that I could not even envisage. No, I told myself, better to wait; definitely better to wait. With that I hurried back to my closet in order to think things over. I had heard before about lesbianism, but had never actually witnessed the kind of thing I had just seen. I now recalled that 'Abla had alluded to the fact that someone else was keeping her constrained, but she had kept it a secret. Now this very morning I had discovered it for myself. Obviously Hafsa hated men, but `Abla was clearly being forced to do something she did not like. If not, then why had she asked me on several occasions to get her married? So now things were a lot clearer, and my earlier intuitions had proved to be correct. From now on I would have to sever this bond between the wild female beast and the young gazelle, indeed to save the gazelle from the wild beast's clutches. The entire operation would require a good deal of secrecy, skill, and careful management. As the saying has it, success comes only from God!
I spent at least half the day trying to overcome my lack of sleep, sometimes by writing and at others by walking around my quarters. All the while I kept praying to God that he would find `Abla a good husband. At noontime I summoned her and told her to go to her mistress and help her take care of her aunt; she should not return unless it was with her mistress. 'Abla did what I told her, but Hafsa was there in the blink of an eye, her expression a tissue of anger as she glared in fury at both of us. Once `Abla had left, this squint-eyed harpy came over and gave me a blank stare as if to make it clear that she was fully aware of what I had found out. Then all of a sudden she let out a laugh, and her attitude softened. She asked me if I needed her for anything, and I asked her nicely to bring me some food to the misriyya.* I decided that, from now on, I would not eat anything she had prepared and cooked, even if I was starving.
Late in the afternoon I left the house to perform the prayers in the Zaghlu Mosque close by the place where the legal counselors used to sit. There I found all my friends except Khalid waiting for me. As I performed my ablutions, I found myself surrounded by an ever-increasing number of young men. 'Ali told me that the petition requesting permission for me to teach was being prepared. When I asked him about Khalid, he replied that he had gone off to do something that he had not described any further.
After evening prayers, I spent a few moments in silent contemplation while all around me gathered a large crowd of young people, obviously eager to hear what I would have to say.
"May I request your opinion, Sir," Al-Sadiq asked, "regarding a young man who right up to yesterday was cursing marriage in all its aspects, but purely on the basis of choice and thought rather than experience. In the briefest time imaginable he's become just like someone who's fallen in love at the very first glance. He shows all the signs of love as described by Ibn Hazm of Cordoba-what a truly wonderful scholar! — so much so that the words of the poet can apply to him in every way:
I did my best to look neither nonplussed nor amazed by this question. "Tell me," I said, "did this young man of yours fall in love with his beloved while dreaming, or did he actually set eyes on her?"
"He has seen her in flesh and blood. He has learned that she lives in a household endowed with honor and prestige, but, I assure you by God, he has never spoken to her or even made the slightest gesture in her direction."
By this point I had begun to develop a certain intuition. "This lover," I asked, "what exactly are his intentions and desires?"
"As he has lain on his bed in an agony of frustrated passion, I have heard him express a unique desire: to pronounce the threefold terminal divorce on his bachelorhood and marry his beloved without delay."
"Well then, Al-Sadiq, my legal opinion is that your friend should seek the beloved's hand from her family. If they accept, then he should trust in God and bind his life to hers."