The Zarwali had left on the pilgrimage to Mecca as he had been ordered, and was then going in the direction of the area where he was born, the Bani Zarwal mountains in the Rif, where he was to spend his two years of banishment. He did not return to the province where he had carried out so many exactions in the past without some apprehension, but he had made contact with the principal clan chiefs, distributed some purses, and had seen to it that he was accompanied on the journey by some forty armed guards and by a cousin of the ruler of Fez, an alcoholic and fairly impoverished prince whom he had invited to live with him for a while, hoping in this way to give the mountain people the impression that he was still well in at court.
In order to reach the Bani Zarwal, the caravan had to go through the territory of the Bani Walid. There, on a rocky route between two shepherd villages, the silhouette of an old woman was waiting, a dirty black mass, out of which all that emerged was a palm opened carelessly for the generosity of passers-by. When the Zarwali drew near, riding a horse with a harness, followed by a slave holding an immense umbrella over him, the beggar woman took a step towards him and began to mumble some pious entreaties in a voice that was barely audible. A guard called to her to go away, but his master made him be silent. He needed to re-establish his reputation in the land he had robbed. He took several pieces of gold from his purse and held them out in a conspicuous manner waiting for the old woman to cup her hands to receive them. In a second, the beggar woman gripped the Zarwali by the wrist and pulled him violently. He fell from his horse, with only his right foot staying in the stirrup, so that his body was upside down, his turban brushing the ground, and the point of a dagger at his neck.
‘Tell your men not to move!’ cried the sham beggar woman in a male voice.
The Zarwali complied.
‘Order them to go off as far as the next village!’
A few minutes later only an impatient horse, two motionless men and a curved dagger remained on the mountain road. Slowly, very slowly, they began to move. The highwayman helped the Zarwali to his feet, and then led him, on foot, far off the road, between the rocks like a beast dragging his prey in his jaw, and then disappeared with him. It was only then that the aggressor revealed himself to his trembling victim.
Harun the Ferret had lived for three years in the mountain of the Bani Walid, who protected him as if he was one of their own. Was it only the desire for vengeance which prompted him to act like a bandit, or the fear of seeing his enemy established in the neighbourhood, once more hounding himself, Mariam and the two boys she had already given him? In any case, his method was that of an avenger.
Harun dragged his victim towards the house. Seeing them arrive, my sister was more terrified than the Zarwali; her husband had told her nothing of his plan, nor of the arrival of her former fiancé in the Rif. Besides, she herself had never seen the old man and could not understand what was happening.
‘Leave the children here and follow me,’ ordered Harun.
He went into the bedroom with his prisoner. Having rejoined them, Mariam pulled back the woollen hanging which was used to close the room.
‘Look at this woman, Zarwali!’
Hearing this name, my sister let out an oath. The old man felt the blade of the dagger pressing against his jaw. He flinched imperceptibly, without opening his mouth.
‘Undress, Mariam!’
She looked at the Ferret, her eyes unbelieving, horrified. He shouted again:
‘It is I, Harun, your husband, who order you to undress! Obey!’
The poor girl uncovered her cheeks and her lips, and then her hair, with clumsy and halting movements. The Zarwali closed his eyes and visibly lowered his head. If he were to see the naked body of this woman, he knew what fate would await him.
‘Stand up and open your eyes!’
Harun’s order was accompanied by an abrupt movement of the dagger. The Zarwali straightened up, but kept his eyes hermetically sealed.
‘Look!’ commanded Harun, while Mariam was undoing her clothes with one hand and wiping her tears with the other.
Her dress fell to the ground.
‘Look at that body! Do you see any trace of leprosy? Go and examine her more closely!’
Harun began to shake the Zarwali, pushing him towards Mariam, then pulling him back, before pushing him violently again and then letting go of him. The old man collapsed at the feet of my sister, who cried out.
‘That’s enough, Harun, I implore you!’
She looked with a mixture of fear and compassion at the evil wreck of a man stretched out at her feet. The Zarwali’s eyes were half open, but he no longer moved. Harun went up to him suspiciously, felt his pulse, touched his eyelids, and then stood up, unperturbed.
‘This man deserved to die like a dog at the feet of the most innocent of his victims.’
Before nightfall, Harun had buried the Zarwali under a fig tree, without removing his clothes, his shoes or his jewels.
The Year of the Storm
918 A.H.
19 March 1512 — 8 March 1513
That year, my wife Fatima died in childbirth. For three days I wept more intensely for her death than I had ever loved her in life. The child, a boy, did not live.
A little before the condolence ceremonies of the fortieth day I was summoned urgently to the palace. The sultan had just come back from his latest summer campaign against the Portuguese, and although he had indeed suffered only reverses, I could not understand the impassive faces which greeted me as soon as I had stepped through the main entrance.
The monarch himself showed me no sign of hostility, but his welcome lacked warmth and his voice was sententious.
‘Two years ago you asked for a pardon for your brother-in-law Harun the porter. We granted it. But instead of mending his ways, instead of showing his gratitude, this man never returned to Fez, preferring to live beyond the law in the Rif, waiting for the chance to avenge himself on the old Zarwali.’
‘But there is no proof, Majesty, that Harun was the assailant. The mountains are full of highway robb—’
The chancellor interrupted me, his tone louder than that of the sovereign.
‘The Zarwali’s corpse has just been found. He was buried near a house where your sister and her husband used to live. The soldiers recognized the victim; his jewels had not been taken. Is that the crime of an ordinary highwayman?’
I must say that since the first news of the disappearance of the Zarwali, which had reached Fez four months earlier, although I did not know the slightest compromising detail, the possibility of Harun taking vengeance had crossed my mind. I knew that the Ferret was capable of pursuing his hatreds to the end, and I was not unaware that he had chosen to live in that part of the Rif. Thus it was not easy for me to declare his innocence. However I had to defend him because, coming from me, the least hesitation would have condemned him.
‘His Majesty has too keen a sense of justice to agree to condemn a man without him being able to plead his own case. Particularly when it concerns a respected member of the porters’ guild.’
The sultan seemed irritated:
‘It does not concern your brother-in-law any more, but you, Hasan. It was you who asked for the Zarwali to be banished, it was at your insistence that he was ordered to go into exile in his village, and it was while going there that he was attacked and assassinated. You bear a heavy responsibility.’