Around midday cries rang out, mingling with the calls to prayer. A word was uttered near me, Bab Zuwaila. It was towards that gate that thousands of citizens were hurrying, men and women, old and young. I did likewise. There was a crowd there, continually increasing in size, and the more impressive because it was almost silent. Suddenly it parted to allow an Ottoman column to pass through, of a hundred or so cavalrymen and twice as many infantrymen. With backs to the crowd, they formed three concentric circles, with a man on horseback in the middle. It was not easy to recognize Tumanbay from this silhouette. His head bare and his beard shaggy, he was dressed only in scraps of red cloth ill concealed by a white cloak. On his feet he had only a bulky wrapping of blue material.
At the command of an Ottoman officer, the deposed emperor dismounted. Someone untied his hands, but twelve soldiers surrounded him immediately, sabres at the ready. However, he was clearly not considering flight. He waved with his free hands to the crowd, which cheered him bravely. All eyes, including his own, then turned towards the famous gate where a hangman was in the process of fixing a rope.
Tumanbay appeared surprised, but the smile did not leave his lips. Only his gaze lost its sharpness. His only cry to the crowd was:
‘Recite the Fatiha three times for me!’
Thousands of murmurs could be heard, a rumbling which became more vibrant each moment.
‘Praise be to God, Lord of the Universe, the Compassionate, the Merciful, Master of the Day of Judgement…’
The last Amin was a long drawn out cry, furious, rebellious. Then nothing more, silence. The Ottomans themselves seemed taken aback, and it was Tumanbay who shook them:
‘Hangman, do your job!’
The rope was tied round the condemned man’s neck. Someone pulled at the other end. The sultan rose a foot, then fell back to the ground. The rope had broken. The rope was tied once more, pulled again by the hangman and his assistants, and broke once more. The tension became unbearable. Only Tumanbay maintained his amused manner, as if he felt himself elsewhere already, in a world where courage receives quite a different reward. The hangman tied the rope for the third time. It did not break. A clamour broke out, sobbing, moaning and prayers. The last Emperor of Egypt had expired, the bravest man ever to have governed the valley of the Nile, hung at the Zuwaila gate like a vulgar horse thief.
All night, the vision of the condemned man remained fixed before my eyes. But in the morning, emboldened by bitterness and insomnia and insensitive to danger, I took the road to the pyramids.
Without being aware of it, I had chosen the best moment to escape; the Ottomans, put at ease by the execution of their enemy, had relaxed their vigilance, while the associates of Tumanbay, stunned by their defeat, had taken flight. Of course, we had to stop five or six times to answer various suspicious questions. But we were neither molested nor robbed, and night found us lying peacefully once more at Khadra’s house, in the cottage of our first loves.
There, several months of simple and unexpected happiness passed by. Too small and too poor to attract covetous eyes, the nurse’s village existed cut off from wars and disturbances. But this quiet existence could only serve for me as a shady oasis between two long stages. Noises from afar were calling me, and it was written that I should not remain deaf to their temptations.
The Year of the Abduction
924 A.H.
13 January 1518 — 2 January 1519
I emerged with no certainties from my long rural retreat, studded with contemplations and silent walks. All cities were perishable; all empires devouring, Providence unfathomable. The only things which comforted me were the Nile flood, the movement of the stars, and the seasonal births of the buffaloes.
When the hour to leave arrived, it was towards Mecca that I turned my face. A pilgrimage was a necessity for my life. As Nur was apprehensive about the journey with two children, one aged one year and the other four, I asked Khadra to come with us, which gave her great joy, swearing that she awaited no other reward than the privilege of expiring in the Holy Places. A sailing ship took us from the African shore of the river, half a day from Giza, towards the south. It belonged to a rich manufacturer of sesame oil, who was taking his merchandise to Upper Egypt, stopping a day or two in every town of any importance. Thus we visited Bani Su waif, al-Minya, then Manfalut, where an old man joined us. That same night, taking advantage of the silence and the fact that the children were asleep, I was beginning to write, by the light of a candle, when this new passenger called out to me:
‘Hey, you! Go and wake one of the sailors! I can see a big piece of wood in the water which will be very useful for cooking tomorrow!’
I did not like his janissary tone, nor his hoarse voice, nor his suggestion in the middle of the night. However, out of consideration for his age I replied to him without any disrespect:
‘It’s midnight, it would be better not wake anyone. But I can probably help you myself.’
I put my pen down reluctantly, and went a few steps towards him. But he called out touchily:
‘I don’t need anyone. I’ll manage fine on my own!’
He was leaning overboard, holding a rope in his hand with which he was trying to catch the floating plank, when suddenly a long tail shot up from the water, coiled around him and threw him into the Nile. I began to shout, rousing passengers and crewmen savagely from their sleep. The sail was struck in order to stop the craft, which was moored for a whole hour on the bank, while the brave sailors threw themselves into the water. But to no avail. Everyone agreed that the unfortunate man had been eaten by a crocodile.
Throughout the rest of the voyage I heard the most extraordinary tales about these enormous lizards which terrorize Upper Egypt. It seems that at the time of the pharaohs, then of the Romans, and even at the beginning of the Muslim conquest, the crocodiles did relatively little damage. But in the third century of the hijra a most strange event occurred. In a cave near Manfalut a life-size statue cast in lead representing one of these animals was found, covered with pharaonic inscriptions. Thinking that it was some sort of ungodly idol, the governor of Egypt at the time, a certain Ibn Tulun, ordered that it should be destroyed. From one day to the next the crocodiles unleashed their fury, attacking men with hatred and sowing terror and death. It was then understood that the statue had been put up under certain astrological conjunctions in order to tame these animals. Most fortunately, the curse was confined to Upper Egypt; below Cairo, the crocodiles never eat human flesh, probably because the statue which inhibits them has never been found again.
After Manfalut we passed by Assyut, but did not stop there, because of a further epidemic of plague that had been reported there. Our next port of call was al-Munshiya, where I visited the Berber ruler who governed it. Next was al-Khiam, a little town whose population was entirely Christian, with the exception of the chief of police. Two days later we were at Qina, a large market town surrounded by a wall of mud brick from which the heads of three hundred crocodiles were hanging triumphantly. It was there that we took the land route to go to the port of al-Qusayr, on the Red Sea, equipped with full goatskins for the journey, because there is not a single watering place between the Nile and the Red Sea. We did not take more than a week to reach Yanbu‘, the port of Arabia Deserta, where we berthed at the appearance of the crescent moon of Rabi‘ al-Thani, when the annual pilgrimage season was almost reaching its end. Six days later, we were in Jidda.