As a leading noble of the Kingdom, Umar had been present when the treaty was signed. He would never forget the last farewell of the last Sultan, Abu Abdullah, the one the Castilians called Boabdil, to the al-Pujarras where a palace awaited him. The Sultan had turned and looked for the last time towards the city, smiled at the al-Hamra and sighed. That was all. Nothing was said. What was there to say? They had reached the terminus of their history in al-Andalus. They had spoken to each other with their eyes. Umar and his fellow nobles were prepared to accept this defeat. After all, as Zubayda never ceased to remind him, was not Islamic history replete with the rise and fall of kingdoms? Had not Baghdad itself fallen to an army of Tatar illiterates? The curse of the desert. Nomadic destinies. The cruelty of fate. The words of the prophet. Islam is either universal or it is nothing.
He suddenly saw the gaunt features of his uncle’s face. His uncle! Meekal al-Malek. His uncle! The Bishop of Qurtuba. Miguel el Malek. That gaunt face on which the pain was ever present and could not be concealed either by the beard or the false smiles. Ama’s stories of Meekal as a boy always contained the phrase, ‘he had the devil in him,’ or ‘he behaved like a tap turned on and off by Satan.’ It was always said with love and affection to stress what a naughty child Meekal had been. The youngest and favourite son, not unlike Yazid. So what had gone wrong? What had Meekal experienced that forced him to run away to Qurtuba and become Miguel?
The old uncle’s mocking voice was still resounding in Umar’s head. ‘You know the trouble with your religion, Umar? It was too easy for us. The Christians had to insert themselves into the pores of the Roman Empire. It forced them to work below the ground. The catacombs of Rome were their training-ground. When they finally won, they had already built a great deal of social solidarity with their people. Us? The Prophet, peace be upon him, sent Khalid bin Walid with a sword and he conquered. Oh yes, he conquered a great deal. We destroyed two empires. Everything fell into our lap. We kept the Arab lands and Persia and parts of Byzantium. Elsewhere it was difficult, wasn’t it? Look at us. We have been in al-Andalus for seven hundred years and still we could not build something that would last. It’s not just the Christians, is it Umar? The fault is in ourselves. It is in our blood.’
Yes, yes, Uncle Meekal, I mean Miguel. The fault is also in ourselves, but how can I even think about that now? All I see is that wall of fire and behind it the gloating face of that vulture, celebrating his triumph. The curse of Ximenes! That cursed monk dispatched to our Gharnata on the express instructions of Isabella. The she-devil’s confessor sent here to exorcise her demons. She must have known him well. He undoubtedly knew what she wanted. Can’t you hear her voice? Father, she whispers in her tone of false piety, Father, I am troubled by the unbelievers in Gharnata. I sometimes get the urge to crucify them into submission so that they can take the path of righteousness. Why did she send her Ximenes to Gharnata? If they were so confident of the superiority of their beliefs why not trust in the ultimate judgement of the believers?
Have you forgotten why they sent Ximenes de Cisneros to Gharnata? Because they did not think that Archbishop Talavera was going about things the right way. Talavera wanted to win us over by argument. He learnt Arabic to read our books of learning. He told his clergy to do the same. He translated their Bible and catechisms into Arabic. Some of our brethren were won over in this fashion, but not many. That’s why they sent Ximenes. I described it to you only last year my Bishop Uncle, but you have forgotten already. What would you have done if they had been really clever and appointed you Archbishop of Gharnata? How far would you have gone, Meekal? How far, Miguel?
I was present at the gathering when Ximenes tried to win over our qadis and learned men in theological dispute. You should have been there. One part of you would have been proud of our scholars. Ximenes is clever. He is intelligent, but he did not succeed that day.
When Zegri bin Musa replied point by point and was applauded even by some of Ximenes’ clergymen, the prelate lost his temper. He claimed that Zegri had insulted the Virgin Mary when all that our friend had done was to ask how she could have remained a virgin after the birth of Isa. Surely you can see that the question followed a certain logic, or does your theology prevent you from acknowledging all known facts?
Our Zegri was taken to the torture-chamber and treated so brutally that he agreed to convert. At that stage we left, but not before I had seen that glint in Ximenes’ eyes, as if he realized at that instant that his was the only way to convert the population.
The next day the entire population was ordered out on to the streets. Ximenes de Cisneros, may Allah punish him, declared war on our culture and our way of life. That day alone they emptied all our libraries and built a massive wall of books in the Bab al-Ramla. They set our culture on fire. They burnt two million manuscripts. The record of eight centuries was annihilated in a single day. They did not burn everything. They were not, after all, barbarians, but the carriers of a different culture which they wanted to plant in al-Andalus. Their own doctors pleaded with them to spare three hundred manuscripts, mainly concerned with medicine. To this Ximenes agreed, because even he knew that our knowledge of medicine was much more advanced than everything they knew in Christendom.
It is this wall of fire that I see all the time now, Uncle. It fills my heart with fear for our future. The fire which burnt our books will one day destroy everything we have created in al-Andalus, including this little village built by our forefathers, where you and I both played as little boys. What has all this got to do with the easy victories of our Prophet and the rapid spread of our religion? That was eight hundred years ago, Bishop. The wall of books was only set on fire last year.
Satisfied that he had won the argument, Umar bin Abdallah returned to the house and entered his wife’s bed-chamber. Zubayda had not yet gone to sleep.
‘The wall of fire, Umar?’
He sat down on the bed and nodded. She felt his shoulders and recoiled. ‘The tenseness in your body hurts me. Here, lie down and I will knead it out of you.’
Umar did as she asked and her hands, expert in the art, found the points in his body. They were as hard as little pebbles and her fingers worked round them till they began to melt and she felt the tense zones beginning to relax once again.
‘When will you reply to Miguel on the question of Hind?’
‘What does the girl say?’
‘She would rather be wed to a horse.’
Umar’s mood registered a sharp change. He roared with laughter. ‘She always did have good taste. Well there you have your answer.’
‘But what will you tell His Bishopness?’
‘I will tell Uncle Miguel that the only way Juan can be sure of finding a bed-partner is for him to become a priest and utilize the confessional!’