The assembly gave thanks in unison: ‘Al-hamd ul-illah, al-hamd ul-illah!’ I noticed that at least one man had remained silent; his lips cracked, his hands clenched together; it was Khali.
‘I was afraid,’ he told me later. ‘I thought to myself: “If only he can restrain himself!” Unfortunately I knew Astaghfirullah too well to nurture the least illusion in that direction.’
In fact, the sense of the allocution was beginning to change:
‘If God had offered me death as a gift, if He had called me to Him instead of letting me live through the agony of my city, would He have been cruel towards me? If God had spared me to see with my own eyes Granada falling into captivity and the believers into dishonour, would He have been cruel towards me?’
The shaikh raised his voice sharply, startling the company:
‘Am I the only one present to think that death is worth more than dishonour? Am I the only one to cry out: “O God, if I have failed in my duty towards the Community of the Believers, crush me with Your powerful hand, sweep me away from the surface of the earth like some baleful vermin. O God, judge me even today, for my conscience is too heavy to bear. You have entrusted me with the fairest of Your cities, You have put in my hands the life and honour of the Muslims; will You not summon me to render my accounts?” ’
Khali was bathed in sweat, as were all those seated near Boabdil. The latter was deathly pale, like a turmeric stalk. It might have been said that his royal blood had abandoned him so as not to share in his shame. If, acting on the advice of some counsellor, he had come to re-establish his links with his former subjects, in order to be in a position to ask them to contribute to the expenses of his court, the enterprise was ending in utter disaster. Another one. His eyes roamed desperately towards the way out, while his heavy body appeared to have collapsed.
Was it out of pity, or exhaustion or simply by chance, that Astaghfirullah suddenly decided to interrupt his accusations and to resume his prayers? My uncle regarded this, he said, as an intervention from Heaven. The moment that the shaikh pronounced the words ‘I bear witness that there is no other God but God, and that Muhammad is the Messenger of God’, Khali seized the opportunity literally to jump out of his place and to give the signal for the departure of the cortège to the cemetery. The women accompanied the shroud to the threshold of the gate, waving white handkerchiefs as a symbol of desolation and farewell. Boabdil slipped away through a side door. Henceforth the Granadans of Fez could die in peace; the flabby silhouette of the fallen sultan would appear no more to plague their final journey.
The condolence ceremonies continued for another six days. What better remedy is there than exhaustion for the pain caused by the death of a loved one? The first visitors would come at dawn, the last would leave after nightfall. After the third evening, the relatives had no more tears, and sometimes forgot themselves sufficiently to smile or to laugh, which those present did not fail to criticize. The only ones to behave properly were the hired mourners, who sought to increase their pay by intensifying their wailing. Forty days after the decease, the condolences resumed once more in the same fashion, for three further days.
These weeks of mourning gave opportunities for my father and my uncle to exchange various conciliatory words. It was not yet a reunion, far from it, and my mother took care not to cross the path of the man who had repudiated her. But, from the vantage point of my eight years, I believed I could discern a glimmer of hope on the horizon.
Among other matters, my father and my uncle had discussed my future. They had agreed that it was time for me to start school. Other children went to school later, but it seemed that I was already showing signs of precocious intelligence, and it was pointless to leave me at home all day in the company of women. I might grow soft, and my virility might suffer. They each came to me in turn to explain this, and one morning they both solemnly accompanied me to the local mosque.
The teacher, a young turbaned shaikh with a beard which was almost blond, asked me to recite the Fatiha, the first sura of the Book. I did this without a mistake, without the slightest hesitation. He appeared satisfied with this:
‘His elocution is good and his memory is precise. He will not need more than four or five years to memorize the Qur’an.’
I was not a little proud, since I knew that many pupils took six years, even seven. After having learned the Qur’an by heart, I would be able to enter the college, where the various sciences were taught.
‘I will also instruct him in the principles of orthography, grammar and calligraphy,’ the teacher explained.
When asked what payment he required, he took a step backwards:
‘My only payment comes from the Most High.’
However, he added that each parent gave what he could to the school on the various feast days, with a more substantial gift at the end of the final year, after the Great Recitation.
Promising myself to memorize the hundred and fourteen suras as soon as possible I began to attend the shaikh’s classes assiduously five days a week. There were no fewer than eighty boys in my class, aged between seven and fourteen. Each pupil came to school in whatever clothes he pleased, but no one would have thought of coming to school dressed in sumptuous garments, silk, or embroidery, except on special occasions. In any case, the sons of princes and of the grandees of the kingdom did not go to the mosque schools. They received the instruction of a shaikh in their own homes. But with that exception, the boys who attended the school came from a variety of backgrounds: sons of qadis, notaries, officers, royal and municipal functionaries, shopkeepers and artisans, even some sons of slaves sent by their masters.
The room was large, and arranged in tiers. The bigger boys sat at the back, the smaller ones in front, each with a little board on which he would write the day’s verses, taken down at the master’s dictation. The latter often had a rod in his hand, which he would not hesitate to use if one of us swore or made some serious mistake. But none of the pupils held it against him, and he himself never harboured a grudge from one day to the next.
On the day of my arrival at the school, I found a seat in the third row, I believe. Close enough to see and hear the teacher, but far enough away to protect myself from his questions and his inevitable outbursts of anger. Next to me sat the most mischievous of all the children of the quarter, Harun, known as the Ferret. He was my age, with a very brown complexion, with clothes that were worn and patched but always clean. After the first scuffle we became inseparable friends, bound together in life and death. No one who saw him would fail to ask him for news of me, and no one would see me without being astonished that he was not with me. At his side, I was to explore both Fez and my own adolescence. I felt an outsider; he knew the city was his, created for him, only for his eyes, for his limbs, for his heart. And he offered to share it with me.
It is true that he belonged, by birth, to the most generous of companies.