The Lame One had let his eyes wander round the room, as if taking note of every smile, every grin, and then came to sit down next to me, whether because it was the nearest place for him to sit or because he had seen that I was looking at him differently. He shook me vigorously by the hand, but his words were not a simple greeting:
‘Like me, you are a foreigner in this accursed city.’
His tone was not questioning, his voice not low. I looked round with embarrassment. He started again:
‘Don’t be afraid of the Fassis, they are too crammed with knowledge to retain a drop of courage.’
He was almost shouting. I felt that I was becoming involved unwillingly in a dispute that had nothing to do with me. I tried to extricate myself, saying light-heartedly:
‘How can you say that, if you are coming to seek knowledge in one of the madrasas of Fez?’
He gave me a condescending smile.
‘I do not seek knowledge, because it weighs the hands down more certainly than a chain. Have you ever seen a doctor of the Law command an army, or found a kingdom?’
While he was talking, the professor came into the room, his gait dignified, his silhouette imposing. As a mark of respect, the whole class stood up.
‘How do you expect a man to fight with that thing wobbling on his head?’
I was already regretting that Ahmad had come and sat next to me. I looked at him in horror.
‘Lower your voice, I beg you, the master will hear.’
He gave me a fatherly slap on the back.
‘Don’t be so timid! When you were a child, didn’t you speak out the truth that the oldest ones kept secret? Well, you were right then. You must find the time of innocence in yourself again, because that was also the time of courage.’
As if to illustrate what he had just said, he got up, limped towards the professor’s raised chair and addressed him without respect, in a manner which silenced the slightest noise in the room:
‘My name is Ahmad, son of Sharif Sa‘di, descendant of the House of the Prophet, on whom be prayers and peace! If you see me limp, it is because I was wounded last year fighting the Portuguese when they invaded the territories of the Sous.’
I don’t know if he was more closely related to the Messenger of God than I am; as far as his deformity was concerned, he had been lame since birth, as I was to learn later from one of his friends. Two lies, then, but they intimidated everyone present, including the professor.
Ahmad went back to his seat, his head high. From his first day at the college, he became the most respected and admired of all the students. He always went about surrounded by a host of devoted fellow students, who laughed at his jokes, trembled at his rages, and shared all his enmities.
And these were very tenacious. One day, one of our teachers, a Fassi from an old family, had dared to cast doubt on the ancestry to which the Lame One laid claim. This opinion could not be disregarded lightly, since this professor was the most famous in the college, and had recently obtained the honour of giving the weekly sermon in the Great Mosque. At the time, Ahmad did not reply, and simply smiled enigmatically at the students’ questioning looks. The following Friday, the whole class took itself off to hear the preacher. He had hardly uttered the first words when the Lame One was seized with an interminable fit of coughing. Gradually, other coughers took over, and after a minute or so thousands of throats were being noisily cleared in unison, a strange infection which lasted to the end of the sermon, to the extent that the faithful went back to their homes without having understood so much as a word. Henceforth the professor took care not to speak of Ahmad, nor of his noble but doubtful ancestry.
I myself never followed in the Lame One’s wake, and he certainly respected me for it. We only saw each other alone, sometimes at my house and sometimes at his quarters in the madrasa itself, where there were rooms reserved for students whose families did not live in Fez; his people lived on the edges of the kingdom of Marrakesh.
I must say that even when we were alone together, some of his attitudes repelled me, bothered me, even sometimes frightened me. But he could also appear generous and faithful, and that was how he seemed to me that year, attentive in my periods of dejection, always finding the right tone to get me back on my feet again.
I greatly needed his company, and that of Harun, even if they both seemed unable to save Mariam. Only my uncle seemed in a position to take the necessary steps. He met lawyers, amirs of the army, the dignitaries of the kingdom; some were reassuring, others embarrassed, still others promised a solution before the next feast. We only let go of one hopeful possibility to cling on to another, equally in vain.
Until, that is, Khali succeeded, after a thousand intercessions, in approaching the sovereign’s eldest son, Prince Muhammad, called the Portuguese, because he had been taken prisoner at the age of seven in the town of Arzila and led away to captivity in Portugal for many years. He was now forty, the same age as my uncle, and they stayed a long time together, discussing poetry and the misfortunes of Andalus. And when, after two hours, Khali brought up the problem of Mariam, the prince seemed very indignant and promised to bring the matter to the ears of his father.
He had no time to do so, for, by a strange coincidence, the sultan died the very next day after my uncle’s visit to the palace.
To say that my relations wept for long over the old monarch would be a pure lie, not only because the Zarwali was his friend, but also because the connections just established between his son and Khali seemed to augur well for us.
The Year of the Caravan
910 A.H.
14 June 1504 — 3 June 1505
That year was the occasion of my first long journey, which was to take me across the Atlas, Sijilmassa and Numidia, towards the Saharan expanse, and then towards Timbuktu, mysterious city of the land of the Blacks.
Khali had been commanded by the new Sultan of Fez to take a message to the powerful sovereign of the Soudan, Askia Muhammad Touré, announcing his accession and promising to establish the most cordial relations between their two kingdoms. As he had promised me five years earlier, at the time of his journey to the Orient, my uncle invited me to come with him; I had discussed it with my father, who, out of consideration for my beard, which was silky but already thick, no longer thought of standing in my way.
The caravan had set off in the first cool days of autumn, two hundred animals strong, carrying men, provisions and presents. We had camel guards to protect us for the whole length of the journey, as well as cavalrymen who would return when we reached the Sahara. There were also camel drivers and experienced guides, as well as enough servants to make the embassy appear important in the eyes of our hosts. To the official procession were also attached, with my uncle’s permission, several merchants with their wares, intending to take advantage both of the royal protection for the duration of the journey and of the favourable treatment which we would surely receive at Timbuktu.
The preparations had been too meticulous, too long drawn out for my liking. During the last days before departure, I could neither sleep nor read. My breathing was difficult and heavy. I needed to leave at once, to hold on tightly high up on the camel’s hump, to be engulfed in the vast wastes where men, animals, water, sand and gold all have the same colour, the same worth, the same irreplaceable futility.