Zubayda giggled in relief. Umar had recovered his spirits. Soon he would be back to normal. She was wrong. The wall of books was still on fire.
‘I am not sure that they will let us live in al-Andalus without converting to Christianity. Hind marrying Juan is a joke, but the future of the Banu Hudayl, of those who have lived with us, worked for us for centuries. That is what worries me deeply.’
‘Nobody knows better than you that I am not a religious person. That superstitious old wet-nurse of yours knows this only too well. She tells our Yazid that his mother is a blasphemer, even though I keep up a pretence. I fast during Ramadan. I…’
‘But we all know that you fast and pray to preserve your figure. Surely this is not a secret.’
‘Make fun of me, but what matters the most is the happiness of our children. And yet…’
Umar had become serious again. ‘Yes?’
‘And yet something in me rebels against the act of conversion. I begin to feel agitated, even violent, when I think about it. I would rather die than cross myself and pretend that I am eating human flesh and drinking human blood. The cannibalism in their ritual repels me. It goes very deep. Remember the shock of the Saracens when the Crusaders began to roast prisoners alive and eat their flesh. It makes me ill to even think of it, but it flows from their faith.’
‘What a contradictory woman you are, Zubayda bint Quddus. In one breath you say that what matters most to you is the well-being of our children, and in the same breath you exclude the only act which might guarantee them a future in their own ancestral home.’
‘What has that got to do with happiness? All your children, including little Yazid, are ready to take up arms against Isabella’s knights. Even if you allow your own sceptical mind to be crushed by Miguel, how will you convince your own children? For them your conversion would be as big a blow as the wall of fire.’
‘It is a political and not a spiritual matter. I will communicate with the Maker just as I have always done. It is simply a question of appearances.’
‘And when Christian nobles come on feast-days will you eat pork with them?’
‘Perhaps, but never with my right hand.’
Zubayda laughed, but she was also shocked. She felt that he was close to a decision. The wall of fire had affected his brain. Very soon he would follow in Miguel’s footsteps. Once again he surprised her.
‘Did I ever tell you what several hundred of us found ourselves chanting that night while they were destroying our inheritance?’
‘No. Have you forgotten that you were silent for a whole week after you returned from Gharnata? Not a word did you speak to anyone, not even Yazid. I pleaded, but you could not bring yourself to speak of it.’
‘No matter. We wept like children that night, Zubayda. If our tears had been properly channelled they would have extinguished the flames. But suddenly I found myself singing something I had learnt as a youth. Then I heard a roar and I realized I was not the only one who knew the words of the poet. That feeling of solidarity filled me with a strength which has never left me. I’m telling you this so that you understand once and forever that I will never convert voluntarily.’
Zubayda hugged her husband and kissed him gently on the eyes. ‘What were the words of the poet?’
Umar stifled a sigh and whispered by her side:
‘The paper ye may burn,
But what the paper holds ye cannot burn;
‘tis safe within my breast.
Where I remove, it goes with me;
Alights when I alight,
And in my tomb will lie.’
Zubayda remembered. Her private tutor, a born sceptic, had told her the story hundreds of times. The lines came from Ibn Hazm, born five hundred years before, just when the light of Islamic culture was beginning to illuminate some of the darkest crevices in the continent of Europe.
Ibn Hazm, the most eminent and courageous poet in the entire history of al-Andalus. A historian and biographer who had written four hundred volumes. A man who worshipped true knowledge, but was no respecter of persons. His caustic attacks on the preachers of orthodox Islam led to them excommunicating him after Friday prayers in the great mosque. The poet had spoken those words when the Muslim divines had publicly committed some of his works to the flames in Ishbiliya.
‘I learnt about him too, but he has been proved wrong, hasn’t he? The Inquisition goes one step further. Not content with burning ideas, they burn those who supply them. There is a logic. With every new century there are new advances.’
She heaved a sigh of relief, confident in the knowledge that her husband was not going to be rushed into a decision which he would regret for the rest of his life. She stroked his head as if to reassure him, but he was already asleep.
Despite her best efforts, Zubayda’s mind would not slow down and let her sleep. Her thoughts had now wandered to the fate of her eldest son, Zuhayr. Fortunately the wound had not been serious, not this time, but given his headstrong character and impetuosity, anything could happen. Gharnata was too dangerous. The best solution, thought Zubayda, would be for him to marry her favourite niece, Khadija, who lived with her family in Ishbiliya. It would be a good match. The village needed a celebration, and a big family wedding was the only way now to provide a diversion without provoking the authorities. And with these innocent plans for tomorrow’s pleasures the lady of the house lulled herself into sleep.
Chapter 2
HOW BEWITCHING, HOW MAGNIFICENT, is a September morning in al-Hudayl. The sun has not yet risen, but its rays have lit the sky and the horizon is painted in different shades of purplish orange. Every creature wallows in this light and the accompanying silence. Soon the birds will start chattering and the muezzin in the village will summon the faithful to prayer.
The two thousand or so people who live in the village are used to these noises. Even those who are not Muslims appreciate the clockwork skills of the muezzin. As for the rest, not all respond to the call. In the master’s house, it is Ama alone who stretches her mat in the courtyard and gets down to the business of the day.
Over half the villagers work on the land, either for themselves or directly for the Banu Hudayl. The rest are weavers, who work at home or on the estate, the men cultivating the worm and the women producing the famous Hudayl silk, for which there is a demand even in the market at Samarkand. Add to these a few shopkeepers, a blacksmith, a cobbler, a tailor, a carpenter, and the village is complete. The retainers on the family estate, with the exception of the Dwarf, Ama and the tribe of gardeners, all return to their families in the village every night.
Zuhayr bin Umar woke early feeling completely refreshed, his wound forgotten, but the cause of it still burning in his head. He looked out of the window and marvelled at the colours of the sky. Half a mile from the village there was a hillock with a large cavity marking the rocks at the summit. Everybody referred to it as the old man’s cave. On that hill, set in the cave, was a tiny, whitewashed room. In that room there lived a man, a mystic, who recited verses in rhymed prose and whose company Zuhayr had begun to value greatly ever since the fall of Gharnata.
No one knew where he had come from or how old he was or when he had arrived. That is what Zuhayr believed. Umar recollected the cave, but insisted that it had been empty when he was a boy and, had, in fact, been used as a trysting place by the peasants. The old man enjoyed enhancing the mystery of his presence in the cave. Whenever Zuhayr asked him any personal questions, he would parry the thrust by bursting into poetry. Despite it all, Zuhayr felt that the old fraud was genuine.