Exhausted and disorientated, almost at breaking point, Salma and Warda, for once united, collapsed on to the same bed, the servant’s bed, since al-hurra was unable to struggle up the stairs to her own. My father went back to the hostelry, quite unaware that he could have caused the loss of both his future children at the same time, hurrying, no doubt, according to my mother, to bask in his friends’ admiration and in expectation of their good wishes for the birth of two fine sons, and to challenge our neighbour Hamza the barber to a game of chess.
When they heard the key turned in the lock, the two women burst out into in a fit of spontaneous laughter and it was a long time before they recovered their composure. Recalling the incident fifteen years later, my mother blushed at such childishness, drawing my attention somewhat shamefacedly to the fact that while Warda was barely sixteen, she herself was already twenty-one. After this a certain bond developed which softened the rivalry between them, so that when Gaudy Sarah paid Salma her monthly visit the next day, she asked the servant girl to come and have her stomach palpated by the pedlar-clairvoyant, who also doubled, when necessary, as midwife, masseuse, hairdresser and plucker of unwanted hair; she could also tell stories to her countless customers, shut up in their harems, of the thousand and one scandals of the city and the kingdom. Sarah swore to my mother that she had become exceedingly ugly, which made her very happy, since this was an unmistakable sign that she was carrying a boy, and complimented Warda pityingly on the exquisite freshness of her complexion.
Salma was so sure of the accuracy of this diagnosis that she was unable to refrain from telling Muhammad about it that very evening. She also felt she could bring up another rather more embarrassing notion of Sarah’s, namely that a man should not come near either of his wives during pregnancy for fear of damaging the foetus or causing a premature birth. Even though obscured by circumlocutions and interspersed with long hesitations, the message was sufficiently direct to cause my father to flare up like a dry stick and launch into a stream of barely intelligible invective in which the words ‘rubbish’, ‘old witches’, ‘she-devil’ kept being repeated like the blows of a pestle in the hollow of a mortar, as well as a number of other generally uncomplimentary remarks about medicine, Jews and women’s brains. Salma thought that he would have beaten her if she had not been pregnant, but also told herself that in that case the argument would of course not have taken place. To console herself, she concluded wisely to herself that the advantages of motherhood outweighed these passing inconveniences.
As a kind of punishment Muhammad strictly forbade her to receive ‘that poisonous Sirah’ in his house, hissing her name with the characteristic Granada accent which he was to retain all his life, which made him call my mother Silma, his concubine Wirda, the door ‘bib’ instead of ‘bab’, his town Ghirnata and the sultan’s palace ‘the Alhimra’. He remained in an extremely bad temper for several days, but with equal measures of prudence and vexation kept away from both his wives’ bedrooms until after their confinements.
These took place within two days of each other. Warda was the first to feel the contractions, which then became less frequent in the evening and only became more intense at dawn; it was only then that she began to cry out loudly enough to be heard. My father ran to our neighbour Hamza, beat on his door and begged him to tell his mother, a worthy old lady of extreme piety and great skill, that the confinement was imminent. She appeared a few minutes later, wrapped in a white veil, carrying a broad-brimmed bowl, a towel and a piece of soap. She was said to have a lucky hand, and to have brought more boys into the world than girls.
My sister Mariam was born around noon; my father hardly looked at her. He had eyes only for Salma, who swore to him ‘I shall not disappoint you!’ But she was not so sure, in spite of Sarah’s infallible prescriptions and her repeated promises. She had to endure two further interminable days of anguish and suffering before her dearest wish was granted, to hear her cousin address her as Umm al-Hasan, the mother of Hasan.
On the seventh day after I was born my father called Hamza the barber to circumcise me, and invited all his friends to a banquet. Because of my mother’s and Warda’s condition, my two grandmothers and their servants took charge of the preparation of the meal. My mother did not take part in the ceremony, but she confessed to me that she slipped quietly out of her bedroom to see the guests and hear what they had to say. Her emotion was so great on that day that the most minute details became engraved upon her memory.
Gathered in the courtyard, around the carved white marble fountain, whose water refreshed the atmosphere with the noise of its splashing and with the thousands of droplets which it scattered, the guests ate with appetites made particularly healthy because it was the beginning of Ramadan, which meant that they were breaking their fast at the same time as celebrating my entry into the community of the believers. According to my mother, who had to be content with the left-overs the following day, the meal was a feast fit for a king. The main dish was maruziya, lamb prepared with honey, coriander, starch, almonds, and pears, and walnuts, as the season was just beginning. There was also green tafaya, goat’s meat mixed with a bouquet of fresh coriander, and white tafaya, made with dried coriander. Not to mention the chickens, the young pigeons, and the larks, in garlic and cheese sauce, the baked hare, coated with saffron and vinegar, and dozens of other dishes which my mother so often enumerated, recalling the last great feast which took place in her house before the fury of Heaven rained down upon her and her own. Listening to her as a child, I always waited impatiently for her to reach the mujabbanat, hot pies made of soft white cheese, dusted with cinnamon and dripping with honey, cakes made of dates or almond paste, and pastries filled with pine kernels and nuts, and perfumed with rose water.
At this feast, my mother swore piously, the guests drank only orgeat syrup. She forbore to add that if no wine was poured, it was only out of respect for the holy month. In Andalus, the circumcision ceremony was always the excuse for celebrations whose original religious purpose was often entirely forgotten. The most sumptuous of all these occasions was still remembered in our day, the feast organized by the Amir Dhu’l-Nun of Toledo to celebrate the circumcision of his grandson, a feast which all the world sought to imitate but never managed to do. Wine and liqueur flowed like water, while hundreds of beautiful slave girls danced to the orchestra of Dany the Jew.
But at my circumcision too, my mother declared, there were also musicians and poets. She even remembered the verses which were recited in my father’s honour:
By this circumcision your son’s light glows more brilliant,
As the light of the candle increases when the wick is trimmed.
Recited and sung in every key by the barber himself, this couplet by an early poet of Saragossa marked the end of the meal and the beginning of the ceremony itself. My father went up on to the terrace to snatch me in his arms, while the guests gathered in silence around the barber and his assistant, a young beardless boy. Hamza made a sign to his assistant, who began to go round the courtyard, lantern in hand, stopping in front of each guest. A small present had to be offered to the barber, and according to custom everyone pressed the coins he gave on to the face of the boy, who announced the donor’s name in a high voice and thanked him before passing on to his neighbour. When the money had all been collected, the barber asked for two powerful lamps, unsheathed his knife, recited some appropriate Qur’anic verses and leant towards me. My mother always said that the cry which I let out rang out over the whole quarter like a sign of precocious valour, and then, while I continued to scream with the whole of my tiny body, as if I had seen all the evils that were to come pass before my eyes, the celebrations began again with the sound of the lute, the flute, the rebeck and the tambourine until the suhur, the meal just before sunrise in Ramadan.