When Astaghfirullah held up the rich to public obloquy, he was often alluding to Abu Khamr, and it was the picture of the pot-bellied doctor dressed in silk that the poor people would call to mind. Because even those who benefited from his generosity without giving him a penny sensed a certain unease in his presence, either because some of his activities seemed to relate to magic, or because of the language of his discourse, so embroidered with learned words that it was often incomprehensible, except to a little group of learned idlers who spent their days and nights drinking with him and discussing mithridate, the astrolabe and metempsychosis. Princes of the royal family were often to be found among them, and Boabdil himself occasionally frequented their sessions, at least until the atmosphere created in the city by Astaghfirullah obliged the sultan to be more circumspect in his choice of companions.
‘They were men of science and recklessness,’ recalled my father. ‘They often said sensible things when they were not in their cups, but in a way which exasperated ordinary people, because of its obscurity as much as its ungodliness. When a man is rich, whether in gold or in knowledge, he must treat the poverty of others with consideration.’
Then, in a confiding tone:
‘Your maternal grandfather, Sulaiman the bookseller, may God have mercy upon him, occasionally went with these people. It was not of course for their wine, but for their conversation. And indeed the doctor was his best customer. He used to order rare books for him from Cairo, Baghdad or Isfahan, and sometimes even from Rome, Venice or Barcelona. Besides Abu Khamr used to complain that the Muslim lands produced fewer books than they used to, and that they were mostly repetitions or summaries of older books. On that your grandfather always agreed; in the first centuries of Islam, he would say bitterly, one could hardly count the treatises on philosophy, mathematics, medicine or astronomy. The poets themselves were far more numerous and innovative, both in style and in content.
‘In Andalus too intellectual activity was flourishing, and its fruits were the books which were patiently copied and circulated among learned men from China to the far West. And then came the drying up of the spirit and of the pen. To defend themselves against the ideas and customs of the Franks, men turned Tradition into a citadel in which they shut themselves up. Granada could only produce imitators without talent or boldness.
‘Abu Khamr lamented this, but Astaghfirullah accepted it. For him, searching for new ideas at all costs was simply a vice; what was important was to follow the teachings of the Most High as they had been understood and commented upon by the ancients. “Who dares to pretend that he is closer to the Truth than the Prophet and his companions? It is because they have stepped aside from the path of righteousness and because they have allowed morals and ideas to become corrupt that the Muslims have become weak in the face of their enemies.” For the doctor, on the other hand, the lessons of History were quite otherwise. “The greatest epoch of Islam,” he would say, “was when the caliphs would distribute their gold to wise men and translators, and would spend their evenings discussing philosophy and medicine in the company of half-drunk poets. And did not Andalusia flourish in the days when the vizier ‘Abd al-Rahman used to say jokingly: ‘O you who cry “Hasten to the prayer!” You would do better to cry: “Hasten to the bottle!” ’ The Muslims only became weak when silence, fear and conformity darkened their spirits.” ’
It seemed to me that my father had closely followed all these discussions, but without ever having made a definite judgement upon them. Ten years later, his words were still uncertain.
‘Few people followed the doctor’s godless ways, but some of his ideas swayed them. As witness the business of the cannon. Did I ever tell you about it?
‘This happened towards the end of the year 896. All the roads leading to the Vega were in the hands of the Castilians, and supplies were becoming scarce. In Granada the hours of daylight were marked only by the whistling of bullets and fragments of rock raining down on the houses, and by the lamentations of weeping women; in the public gardens, hundreds of destitute people in rags, impoverished at the beginning of a winter which promised to be long and hard, fought over the last branches of the last withered tree; the shaikh’s followers, unleashed and distraught, roamed the streets looking for some mischief-maker to punish.
‘Around the besieged city, the fighting was less intense, even less violent. The horsemen and footsoldiers of Granada, decimated by the Castilian artillery each time they sallied forth, no longer dared to venture in a body far from the ramparts. They were content with small operations at night, ambushing an enemy squadron, stealing some arms or rustling some cattle, bold but essentially pointless acts, because they were not sufficient to loosen the noose, nor provision the city, nor even to put new heart into it.
‘Suddenly, there was a rumour. Not one of those which scattered like fine rain from a thick cloud, but one which poured down like a summer shower, covering the misery of daily noises with its deafening tumult. A rumour which brought to our city that element of absurdity from which no drama can escape.
‘ “Abu Khamr has just got hold of a cannon, seized from the enemy by a handful of reckless soldiers who agreed to drag it to his garden for ten gold pieces!” ’
My father drew a cup of orgeat syrup to his lips and swallowed several mouthfuls slowly before continuing his story, unaware of my total incomprehension:
‘The citizens of Granada had never possessed a cannon, and, as Astaghfirullah never ceased to repeat to them that this devilish invention made more noise than it did harm, they were resigned to the notion that only the enemy could have such a new and complicated piece of apparatus. Hence the doctor’s initiative plunged them into considerable confusion. A continual procession of young and old filed past “the thing”, keeping a respectful distance from it and remarking in subdued voices about its well-rounded contours and its menacing jaw. As for Abu Khamr, he was there, with his own roundness, savouring his revenge. “Tell the shaikh to come here rather than passing his days in prayer! Ask him if he knows how to light a fuse as well as he knows how to burn books!” The more pious distanced themselves immediately, murmuring some oath or other under their breath, while the others persistently questioned the doctor about how the cannon worked, and the effects it would have if it was used against Santa Fé. Of course he himself had no idea, and his explanations were all the more impressive.