The Year of Harun the Ferret
903 A.H.
30 August 1497 — 18 August 1498
It was in that year that Melilla fell into the hands of the Castilians. A fleet had been sent to attack it, but found it deserted, abandoned by its inhabitants, who had fled into the neighbouring hills, taking their possessions with them. The Christians seized the city and began to fortify it. God knows if they will leave it one day!
At Fez, the refugees from Granada became afraid. They had the sensation that the enemy was at their heels, that he would pursue them to the very heart of the lands of Islam, even to the ends of the earth.
My family’s worries increased, but I was still only slightly affected, absorbed in my studies and in my budding friendships.
When Harun came to my house for the first time, still very shy, and when I introduced him to my uncle, mentioning the guild to which his family belonged, Khali took my friend’s hands, more slender than his, but already more roughened, in his own, and pronounced these words, which made me smile at the time:
‘If the fair Scheherazade had known them, she would have devoted a long night to telling their story; she would have added jinns, flying carpets and magic lanterns, and before dawn, by some miraculous means, she would have changed their chief into a caliph, their hovels into palaces, and their penitential garb into ceremonial robes.’
These were the porters of Fez. Three hundred men, simple, poor, almost all of them illiterate, but who had nevertheless managed to become the most respected, most fraternal and best organized of all the guilds of the city.
Each year, until today, they appoint a leader, a consul, who regulates their activities down to the minutest detail. Each week he decides which of them will work and which will rest, according to the arrival of the caravans, the situation in the suqs, and the availability of his fellows. That which a porter earns for his day’s work he does not take home, but deposits the whole of it in a communal chest. At the end of the week the money is divided out equally among those who have worked, except for a part which is kept aside for the good works of the guild, which are both manifold and munificent; when any of their number dies, they take over the responsibility for his family, help his widow to find a new husband and take care of his children until they are of an age to have a profession. The son of one is the son of all. The money from the fund is also used for those who marry; all the members contribute to assure them of a sum which will enable them to set up house.
The consul of the porters negotiates on their behalf with the sultan and his advisers. In this way he has managed to secure their immunity both from tribute and the salt tax, and to ensure that their bread is baked for them free of charge in the municipal ovens. Furthermore, if any of them should by some misfortune commit a murder punishable by death, he is not executed in public like other criminals, in order not to bring the guild into disrepute. In exchange, the consul must make a rigorous and unbiased examination of the probity of each new candidate, to exclude anyone who might be suspect. In this way the reputation of the porters has become so high that the merchants are obliged to have recourse to them to clear their stock. Thus the vendors of oil, who arrive in the suqs from the countryside with containers of all sizes, resort to special porters who will themselves confirm the capacity of the containers as well as the quality of the contents, and even give guarantees for the purchasers. In the same way, when a merchant imports a new kind of cloth, he asks the criers among the porters to proclaim the high quality of the merchandise. The porters charge a fixed sum for each of these functions, according to a scale fixed by the consul.
No man, be he even a prince, ever dares to lay hands on any of their number, because he knows that he would have to fight against the entire company. Their motto is a sentence of the Prophet’s: ‘Assist your brother, whether he is the oppressor or the oppressed,’ but they interpret these words in the same way as the Messenger himself, when someone said to him, ‘We shall assist the oppressed, that goes without saying. But in what way should we come to the aid of the oppressor?’ And he replied: ‘By getting the upper hand over him and by preventing him from doing harm.’ Thus it was rare for a porter to start a fight in the suqs of Fez, and there was always a wise man among his brothers to reason with him.
Such were these men. Humble, yet proud, impoverished, yet generous. So far from palaces and citadels, yet so capable of running their affairs. Yes, this was the stock from which my best friend sprang.
Every day at first light Harun the Ferret would call for me to walk at my side the few hundred paces which separated Khali’s house from the school. Sometimes we told each other tall stories, sometimes we repeated the verses we had studied the previous evening. Often we said nothing at all, walking in companionable silence.
Opening my eyes one morning I saw him in my bedroom, sitting at the foot of the box bed on which I slept. Fearing that I was late for school, I jumped up, already thinking of the teacher’s cane about to whistle down across my calves. Harun reassured me with a smile.
‘It’s Friday, the school is closed, but the streets are open and the gardens too. Take a piece of bread and a banana and meet me on the corner.’
God alone knows the number of expeditions we made together after that. We often began our walks at the Square of Wonders. I do not know if that was its real name, but that was what Harun used to call it. There was nothing for us to buy there, or pick, or eat. We could only look around us, breathe in the air, and listen.
In particular, there were those pretending to be ill. Some pretended to be affected by epilepsy, holding their head in both hands and shaking it vigorously, letting their lips and jaws hang down, and then rolling around on the ground in such a practised fashion that they never even scratched themselves or upset the begging bowl by their side. Others pretended to be plagued with stones, and moaned incessantly, apparently in the most fearful pain, unless Harun and I were the only spectators. Still others displayed wounds and sores. From these I swiftly turned away, for I had been told that the mere sight of them was enough to become similarly afflicted oneself.
There were numerous tumblers on the square, who sang silly romances and sold little pieces of paper to the credulous, on which were written, so they claimed, magic spells to cure all manner of illnesses. There were itinerant quacks, who boasted of their miraculous medicines and took care not to appear twice in the same town. There were also monkey-keepers, who delighted in frightening pregnant women, and snake charmers who wound their creatures around their necks. Harun was not afraid to go up to them. But for my part I was as much frightened as disgusted.
On the feast days, there were story-tellers. I particularly remember a blind man whose stick danced to the rhythm of the adventures of Hallul, the hero of the wars of Andalus, and the renowned An tar ibn Shaddad, the most valorous of the Arabs. On one occasion, when he was telling the tale of the loves of black Antar and the fair Abla, he stopped to ask whether there were any women or children in the audience. Greatly disappointed, the women and children withdrew. I waited several moments to soothe my dignity. A hundred disapproving eyes were turned towards me. Unable to brazen it out, I was about to leave, when, with a glare, Harun signalled that there was no question of our doing so. He put one hand on my shoulder and the other on his hip and did not move an inch. The story-teller continued his tale, and we listened until the last embrace. Only after the crowd dispersed did we resume our walk.