Outside, the sound of running feet and cries drifted closer. The orchestra of my memories, perhaps? But why was it making such a noise? My bewilderment was alas short-lived; the market place suddenly became alive as if it was broad daylight, invaded by a crazed and motley crowd which filled the heavens with its cries. How could I not be overwhelmed with fear? I called down from my window to an old man who was running more slowly than the others. He stopped and uttered a few breathless words in the language of the country. Seeing that I had not understood him at all, he ran off again, making a sign that I should follow him. I was still hesitating to do so when I saw the first glows of the blaze in the sky. Making sure that my gold was securely about me I jumped out of the window and ran.
I spent at least three hours wandering in this fashion, submitting to the moods of the panic-stricken crowd, picking up news of the disaster more from gestures than from words. More than half Timbuktu had burnt down, and it seemed that nothing could stop the fire, fanned by the wind, from spreading across the countless thatched huts, each dangerously close to the other. I had to get away as quickly as possible from this gigantic inferno.
I had heard the previous evening that a caravan of merchants of diverse origins had collected outside the city, ready to leave at dawn. I caught up with it. The forty of us travellers spent the whole night standing up on a hillock, fascinated by the sight of the fire and by the fearful clamour that rose from the flames, in which we could faintly discern the terrible screams of people burning to death.
I shall never recall Timbuktu without that image of hell coming back to me. When we were about to leave, a cloud of mourning veiled its face, and its body was racked with endless crackling. My most treasured memory was consumed in flames.
When our geographers of old spoke of the land of the Blacks, they only mentioned Ghana and the oases of the Libyan desert. Then came the conquerors with veiled faces, the preachers, the merchants. And I myself, who am only the last of the travellers, know the names of sixty black kingdoms, fifteen of which I crossed one after the other that year, from the Niger to the Nile. Some have never appeared in any book, but I would not be telling the truth if I would claim to have discovered them myself, since I only followed the ordinary route of the caravans which left from Jenne, Mali, Walata or Timbuktu for Cairo.
It took us no more than twelve days, following the course of the Niger, to reach the town of Gao. It had no defensive wall, but no enemy dared to go near it, so great was the renown of its sovereign, Askia Muhammad, the most powerful man in all the land of the Blacks. The merchants in the caravan were delighted to stop there. They explained that the citizens of Gao had so much gold that the most mediocre cloth from Europe or from Barbary could be sold there for fifteen or twenty times its value. On the other hand, meat, bread, rice and marrows were available in such quantities that one could purchase them extremely cheaply.
The next stages of the journey took us across several kingdoms, among which I will mention those of Wangara, Zagzag and Kano, as well as Bornu, which was far more important than the others, but where we did not linger. In fact, as we entered the capital city, we met another group of foreign merchants who hastened to tell us of their misfortunes, as I have reported in my Description of Africa. The king of this country had some extremely strange habits. He took such pleasure in displaying his wealth that all the harnesses of his horses were made of gold, as well as all the dishes in his palace. The leashes of his dogs were all made of fine gold, I have confirmed it with my own eyes! Having been attracted by so much luxuriousness, and, to their misfortune, having confused generosity and ostentation, these merchants had come from Fez, Sous, Genoa and Naples, with finely chased swords encrusted with jewels, tapestries, thoroughbreds and all kinds of precious goods.
‘The king seemed delighted,’ one of these unfortunates told me. ‘He took everything immediately without even discussing the price. We were overjoyed. Since then, we have waited to be paid. We have now been at Bornu for more than a year, and every day we go to the palace to complain. We are answered with promises, and when we insist we are answered with threats.’
That was not the behaviour of the sovereign whom we visited next, the master of Gaoga. I was in his palace paying my respects to him when an Egyptian merchant from the town of Damietta came and presented the king with a fine horse, a Turkish sabre, a coat of mail, a blunderbuss, several mirrors, some coral beads and some chased knives, worth altogether some fifty dinars. The sovereign accepted this gift politely, but in return he gave the man five slaves, five camels, about a hundred huge elephants’ tusks, and, as if all this were not enough, he added the equivalent of five hundred gold dinars in the money of his country.
After leaving this generous prince, we came to the kingdom of Nubia, where the great city of Dongola is situated, standing on the bank of the Nile. I was considering hiring a boat to take me to Cairo, but I was told that the river was not navigable at this point, and that I should follow the river bank as far as Aswan.
The very day of my arrival in that town, a sailor offered to take me on his jarm. He was already taking a large quantity of grain and livestock in this flat-bottomed vessel, but he could still manage to clear a very comfortable place for me.
Before going on board I lay down on my stomach on the bank and plunged my face deeply into the waters of the Nile. As I stood up, I was suddenly certain that after the tempest which had destroyed my fortune a new life was awaiting me in this land of Egypt, a life of passion, danger and honour.
I hastened to seize hold of it.
III. The Book of Cairo
~ ~ ~
When I arrived in Cairo, my son, it had already been for centuries the renowned capital of an empire, and the seat of a caliphate. When I left it, it was no more than a provincial capital. No doubt it will never regain its former glory.
God has ordained that I should be witness to this decline, as well as to the calamities that preceded it. I was still floating on the Nile, dreaming of adventures and joyful conquests, when misfortune presented itself. But I had not yet learned to respect it, nor to decipher its messages.
Stretched out lazily on the wide jarm, my head slightly raised on a wooden bolster, lulled by the chatter of the boatmen which mingled harmoniously with the lapping of the water, I was looking up at the sun, already reddening, which would disappear in three hours’ time over the African bank.
‘We shall be in Old Cairo at dawn tomorrow,’ a negro crewman shouted to me.
I replied with a smile as wide as his own. Henceforth, no obstacle would separate me from Cairo. I had only to let myself be borne along by the inexorable flow of time and the Nile.
I was on the point of dozing off to sleep when the voice of the boatmen rose, and their conversation became more animated. As I stood up I saw a jarm which was going up the river and was just arriving at our level. It took me some time to see what was peculiar about this craft, which I had not seen approaching. A number of beautiful women, richly apparelled, were crammed aboard it, with their children, a vacant air about them, in the middle of hundreds of sheep whose odour was now reaching me. Some had strings of jewels on their foreheads, and high narrow fluted caps on their heads.