The lawyer seemed embarrassed, and the guests as well. Until Nur intervened:
‘If it is not possible to take these objects down, nothing prevents them being covered.’
Without waiting for a reply she drew a damask screen up to the wall. Satisfied, the notary officiated.
We did not stay more than two nights in the house, which I left with regret. Chance had offered it to me, and left it with me for nearly two years; the Copt had never reappeared or given me any news of himself. I had only heard that an epidemic of plague had struck Assyut and its neighbourhood, decimating a large part of the population, and I imagined that my benefactor had probably fallen victim to it. May it please God that I may be wrong, but I see no other explanation for his absence, nor especially for his silence. Nevertheless, before leaving I handed the keys into the keeping of my goldsmith, Da’ud the Aleppine. As the brother of Ya‘qub, master of the Mint, a good friend of the sultan, he was better placed than anyone else to prevent some Mameluke from taking over the empty house.
Our voyage began in the month of Safar, on the eve of the Christian Easter. The first stop was Khadra’s cottage, near Giza, where we spent a night, before returning with Bayazid, then aged sixteen months, towards Bulaq, the great river port of Cairo. Thanks to a judicious bakshish, we were able to embark immediately on a jarm which was transporting a cargo of refined sugar from the sultan’s personal factory to Alexandria. There were numerous craft at Bulaq, and some were very comfortable, but I was anxious to arrive at the port of Alexandria under the sovereign’s flag, having been warned by friends of the difficulties encountered at the customs. Some travellers were searched down to their underclothes, on arrival and departure, by over-zealous officials who used to tax dinars as well as goods.
Avoiding this annoyance, I was better able to appreciate the grandeur of this ancient city, founded by Alexander the Great, a sovereign of whom the Qur’an speaks in laudatory terms, and whose tomb is a place of pilgrimage for the pious. It is true that the town is no more than the shadow of what it once was. The inhabitants still recall the time when hundreds of ships lay permanently to anchor in the harbour, from Flanders, England, Biscay, Portugal, Puglia, Sicily, and especially from Venice, Genoa, Ragusa and Turkish Greece. That year, only memories still crowded into the harbour.
In the middle of the town, facing the port, is a hill which did not exist, it is said, at the time of the Ancients, and has been formed only from the accumulation of ruins. Rummaging through it, vases and other objects of value can often be found. On the top a small tower has been built, where there lives a watchman all day and all night, whose job is to keep a watch for passing ships. Each time he signals one to the customs men he receives a bonus. In return, if he sleeps or leaves his post and a ship arrives without him having signalled it, he pays a fine equal to twice his bonus.
Outside the city, some imposing ruins can be seen, in the middle of which rises a very high and massive column which the ancient books say was built by a sage named Ptolemy. He had placed a great steel mirror at the top of it, which, it was said, used to burn all enemy boats which tried to approach the coast.
There were surely many other things to visit, but we were all eager to depart, promising ourselves to come back one day to Alexandria when our minds would be at peace. Then we embarked in an Egyptian vessel making for Tlemcen, where we rested a whole week before taking to the road.
I had put on my Maghribi clothes once more, and going through the walls of Fez I had covered my face with a taylassan. I did not want my arrival to be known until I had met my family, that is to say my father, my mother, Warda, Sarwat, my six-year-old daughter, as well as Harun and Mariam, whom I had no hope of seeing but of whom I expected to hear news.
However, I could not prevent myself from beginning by stopping in front of the site of my palace. It was exactly as it was when I had left it, except that the grass had grown, covering the unfinished walls. I turned my gaze away quickly as well as the drier gaze of my mule, which I directed towards Khali’s house, several paces away. I knocked. From inside a woman answered whose voice I did not recognize. I called my mother by her first name.
‘She doesn’t live here any more,’ said the voice.
Mine was too choked with emotion to ask further questions. I left for my father’s house.
Salma was standing in front of the door and duly clasped me to her bosom, as well as Nur and Bayazid, whom she covered with kisses, not without marvelling that I should have given my son such an uncommon name and such clear skin. She said nothing. Only her eyes spoke, and it was in them that I saw that my father had died. She confirmed it with a tear. But it was not there that she wanted to begin:
‘We do not have much time. You must listen to what I have to say to you before you go away again.’
‘But I have no intention of going away!’
‘Listen to me and you will understand.’
And thus she spoke for more than an hour, perhaps two, without hesitating or interrupting herself, as if she had already turned over in her mind a thousand times what she would say to me on the day when I returned.
‘I do not want to curse Harun, but his actions have cursed us all. No one at Fez has blamed him for the death of the Zarwali. Alas! he did not stop there.’
Shortly after my banishment, she explained, the sovereign had despatched two hundred soldiers to seize the Ferret, but the mountain people had taken up cudgels on his behalf. Sixteen soldiers were killed in an ambush. When the news became known, a proclamation was stuck up and read in the streets of Fez, announcing that there was a price on Harun’s head. Our houses were put under police guard; the police were there day and night, closely questioning each visitor, so much so that even very close friends hesitated to associate with the outlaw’s relatives. Ever since, a new proclamation had been read out each week, accusing Harun and his band of having attacked a convoy, robbed a caravan, or massacred travellers.
‘That’s not true!’ I exclaimed. ‘I know Harun. He might have killed in vengeance or self-defence, but not to steal!’
‘The truth is only important for God; what concerns us is what the people believe. Your father was thinking of emigrating again, to Tunis or some other city, when his heart stopped suddenly, in Ramadan last year.’
Salma breathed for a long time before continuing:
‘He had invited several people to come and break the fast in his company, but no one dared to enter the house. Life had become a heavy burden for him to bear. The next day, during the siesta, I was awoken by the sound of something falling. He was stretched out on the ground, in the courtyard where he had been pacing up and down since morning. His head had struck the edge of the pool. He had stopped breathing.’
A terrible heat filled my breast. I hid my face. My mother continued without looking at me:
‘In the face of adversity, women bend and men break. Your father was prisoner of his self-esteem. I had been taught to submit.’
‘And Warda?’
‘She left us after the death of Muhammad. Without her husband, without her daughter, she no longer had anyone in this country. I believe that she has returned to her village in Castile, to end her life among her own people.’
Then she added in a low voice:
‘We should never have left Granada!’
‘Perhaps we are going to go back there.’
She did not deign to reply. Her hand brushed at the wind before her eyes, as if chasing a persistent fly.