‘How could you possibly love my father?’ Zahra had asked her some years later, just before Meekal was born and after they had become close friends. The old woman smiled as she remembered the peals of tinkling laughter which had greeted this question. Asma’s face, creased with dimples, had finally returned to its normal flawless posture. ‘Do you want to know how it was?’ she had asked. ‘Yes! Yes!’ Zahra had shouted, imagining some fantastically erotic description. ‘It was the way he farted. It reminded me of the kitchen where my mother worked. I felt I was at home again and loved him for that reason.’ Zahra’s shock had given way to incredulous laughter. Without realizing it, Asma had humanized the huge and brooding figure of Ibn Farid.
Zahra pulled the quilt, stuffed with sheep’s wool and covered with her favourite silk, over herself. Sleep would not come. It was as if the final act of expelling Ibn Zaydun from her memory had cleared some space for everyone else. Her father appeared before her now. Not in the guise of the haughty lord with a despotic temperament, ordering her to bend to his will and abandon her lover or suffer his punishment, but as a friendly giant, full of fun, teaching her to ride a horse so that she could race against Abdallah. How patient he had been and how she had worshipped him. In the same week he had taught her to shoot at a mark. Her shoulders had ached for a whole week after that, which had made him laugh. Then Miguel had come and Ibn Farid, delighted with the child of his love, had left Abdallah and Zahra to their own devices. Who knows, she thought, if he had not ignored us so completely, I might not have fallen under the spell of Ibn Zaydun and Abdallah might not have become so obsessed with racing horses.
Suddenly her mind pictures a young woman. Zahra does not remember her at all, but she is very familiar. She has Abdallah’s forehead and her own eyes. It must be their mother. Zahra screams to Death: ‘I have been waiting for you a long time. You’re going to come soon. Why not now? I can’t bear the agony of waiting much longer.’
‘Aunt Zahra! Aunt Zahra!’
She opened her eyes and saw Zubayda’s worried face.
‘Can I get you something?’
Zahra smiled weakly and shook her head. Then recalling something, she lifted her diamond brooch and handed it to Zubayda.
‘I am dying. This is for your daughter Hind. Make sure that boy from al-Qahira loves her. Then let them be wed. Tell Umar it was his dying aunt’s last wish.’
‘Should I fetch Uncle Miguel?’ asked Zubayda, wiping the tears off her face.
‘Let him sleep in peace. He would only try and give me the last rites, and I insist on dying a Muslim. Tell Amira to bathe me properly as she used to do in the old days.’
Zubayda was pressing Zahra’s legs and feet.
‘You’re not dying, Aunt Zahra. Your feet are as warm as burning embers. Whoever heard of anyone dying with warm feet?’
‘What a child you are, Zubayda,’ replied her aunt in a weak voice. ‘Have you never heard of the poor innocents who are being burnt at the stake?’
The shock on Zubayda’s face made Zahra laugh. The mirth was infectious and Zubayda joined her. Without warning the laughter disappeared and the life ebbed away from her. Zubayda clutched the old lady to her bosom and hugged her.
‘Not yet, Aunt Zahra. Do not leave us so soon.’
There was no reply.
Chapter 9
ZAHRA WAS BURIED THE very next day. Her body had been carefully and lovingly bathed by Ama long before the sun rose. As the early morning breezes danced to welcome the first rays of the sun, the job was finished.
‘Why did you want me to do this, Zahra? My last punishment? Or was it a final gesture of friendship? If it hadn’t been for you, my lady, I would have married that man on the mountain who now gives himself airs and calls himself al-Zindiq. Borne him three children. Perhaps four! Made him happy. I’m talking like an old fool. Forgive me. I suppose God meant us to live apart. There! You’re all ready now for the last journey. I’m so glad you came back here. In Gharnata they would have put you in a wooden box and stuck a cross over your grave. What would Ibn Farid have said when you met him in the first heaven? Eh?’
Dressed in a pure white shroud, Zahra’s body lay on the bed, waiting for burial. News of her demise had travelled to the village and, such had been her reputation amongst the weavers and peasants, who saw in her a noblewoman prepared to marry one of them for love, that they had rushed to the house, before they began their day’s work, to pay their last respects and help lay the old woman’s body to rest.
Slowly four pairs of hands lifted the bed and placed it gently on four sets of sturdy shoulders. Umar and Zuhayr lifted the head, while Ibn Daud and the Dwarf’s strapping twenty-year-old son brought up the rear. Al-Zindiq and Miguel were in the centre, too old to offer their shoulders, but too close to the dead woman to leave her exclusively to a younger generation. Yazid followed closely behind his father. He had liked the old woman, but since he barely knew her, he could not grieve like Hind.
The women had mourned earlier. Early that morning Ama’s wails as she sang the praises of Zahra had woken every section of the household. Streams of sorrow had poured out of Hind’s eyes as she sought the comfort of Zubayda’s lap. They had all spoken about her human qualities. How she had been as a child, a young woman, and then there had been silence. Nobody wished to discuss what had befallen her in Qurtuba, or to mention that the bulk of her life had been lived in the maristan in Gharnata.
The funeral procession was moving very slowly on purpose. The family cemetery was situated just outside the perimeter of the high stone walls which guarded the house. Zahra would be buried with her family. A space had been reserved for her next to her mother, Lady Najma, who had died sixty-nine years ago, a few days after Zahra’s birth. She lay buried underneath a palm-tree. On the other side of her was Ibn Farid, the father she had loved and hated so much. The hadiths had insisted that followers of the Prophet should be buried simply and, in strict accordance with this tradition, none of the graves were marked. The Banu Hudayl claimed descent from one of the Companions of the Prophet and, regardless of whether this was true or pure invention, even the most irreligious members of the clan had insisted on the tradition of a simple mound of mud over their graves. Nothing more. The tiny, hand-made hillocks were covered with carefully tended grass and a dazzling array of wild flowers.
Zahra was lifted from the bed and laid in the freshly dug grave. Then Miguel, thinking he was Meekal, scooped up a handful of mud and threw it on his sister’s corpse and cupped his hands together to offer prayers to Allah. Everyone followed suit. Then each of the mourners embraced Umar bin Abdallah in turn and departed. It was only when Miguel saw Juan the carpenter crossing himself that he was reminded of his own ecclesiastical identity. He dutifully fell on his knees and prayed.
The Bishop of Qurtuba must have been in that posture for several minutes, for when he opened his eyes he found himself alone by the freshly built mound. It was at this moment that his powers of self-control seemed to desert him. He broke down and wept. A pain, long suppressed, had welled up inside him. Two little waterfalls poured down his cheeks and sought refuge in his beard. Miguel knew perfectly well that whoever is born must die. Zahra had reached her sixty-ninth year. All complaints to the Almighty were out of order.
It was the suddenness of his sister’s departure that had shaken him, just like the time, all those years ago, when she had left the house without saying goodbye to him. He had wanted so much to tell her all that had happened to him after that fateful day of shame; to describe the explosion of passions which had propelled him into an unknown space to defy the time-honoured taboo, and the horrendous aftermath; to discuss for the first time the death of Asma, a death which had deprived him of someone to blame for his own inner torment and unhappiness; the layers of guilt which still lay congealed somewhere in his mind; the disintegration of the old household and the birth of its successor. For the last three days he had been thinking of nothing else. Miguel now realized that he himself would die without one last conversation with the only member of the family who had belonged to the same vanished world. It was an unbearable thought.