We rode for twenty-five days, following the paths of the old wadi to Akaba Eyla on the Red Sea. This was to be our longest stop before the march to Cairo.
It is not easy, Ibn Yakub, to march with over nine thousand men, and the same number of horses and camels, from Damascus to Cairo, avoiding marauding detachments of Franj. We could have defeated them, but it would have been a distraction that would have delayed our mission.
Our Bedouin guides knew all the routes through the desert; there were twenty-five of them attached to our army. They needed neither maps nor stars in the sky to guide them. They knew the location of every oasis and even the tiniest watering holes did not escape their notice. Without this knowledge, it would have been impossible to refill our goatskins. All soldiers rightly fear thirst more than the enemy. It is tedious now to recall or describe every detail, but it is during such marches that good commanders discover many truths about the men who will fight under them. The men even learn to detect the moods of their horses.
Shadhi it was who taught me how to look after horses. To this day he can tell when a horse gets dizzy, and sees the world whirling in strange circles before his dimmed eyes. Imagine if that happened in the heart of a battle! Why, the rider would become even more disoriented than the horse. It was the same Shadhi who taught me how to draw sweet and frothing milk in abundance from the firm teats of a mare.
During the night we would light a fire and sing songs to keep our spirits high. Like most of the men, I slept in a tent, but I envied the Bedouin guides and the soldiers under their influence, who covered themselves in blankets, lay on the sand, drank date wine from flasks made of camel hide, and told each other stories about the desert before the victories of our Prophet. They went to sleep with the starlight shining on their foreheads.
We had been on the march for fifteen days before we reached our target. The partisans of the Cairene vizir, Dirgham, were waiting for us at Tell Bastat, half a day’s march from Bilbais. My good uncle Shirkuh was always reluctant to lose the life of any of his men without good reason. He suggested to Shawar that since this was primarily a Misrian question, it should be Shawar and his followers — as the claimant — who should give battle. He, Shirkuh, would intervene only if it became necessary. Shawar won. The Caliph in Cairo abandoned Dirgham. Shawar entered the city through the Bab al-Zuweyla and was reinstalled as vizir. Only then did what Nur al-Din had shrewdly suspected begin to come true.
Once in power, Shawar grew nervous of our presence. He would have been better advised to fulfil his side of the bargain. This would have made it difficult for Nur al-Din not to recall us to Damascus. Instead, foolish and vain as a peacock, Shawar thought he could form an alliance with the Franj to defeat us. He sent a message to King Amalric of Jerusalem, a man who had previously been engaged in numerous intrigues with the ill-fated Dirgham. At the same time, he constructed a veritable pyramid of excuses to demonstrate why our forces should not enter Cairo. Shirkuh, compelled to kick his heels at Fustat, was livid.
His instinct was to defy military logic, to raid the city, and to capture Shawar. But the logistics of such an operation were daunting, and our casualties would be high. His emirs resisted the adventure. In desperation he looked at me.
“What do you think, Salah al-Din?” he asked me.
I was torn between family loyalty and good sense. I thought hard and finally came down against him. To my surprise, he was not angry at all. If anything, he was impressed with my reasoning. Even as we were talking, a messenger brought news that a Frankish force under the command of Amalric was heading towards Bilbais.
Like Nur al-Din, the Frankish King had understood that if he did not take Misr we would, and that would be the end of his Kingdom of Jerusalem. Of all our sultans and emirs the Franj feared no one as much as they did Nur al-Din. They were not wrong. He was single-minded in his resolve to drive the Franj out of our lands. The passion that raged in his heart almost made you feel that he regarded the occupation as a personal affront.
Shawar did not keep his side of the bargain. Shirkuh instructed me to take half our force and occupy Bilbais. I did as I was asked. Shawar appealed to Amalric for help, and Shirkuh joined me with the remainder of our army. For three whole months, Ibn Yakub, we kept the Franj outside the city. Three whole months in Bilbais. It was not my idea of a good life. Then Nur al-Din, realising we could not resist for much longer, took the Franj by surprise, and confronted them outside the fortress of Harim, near Antioch. It was a famous victory. The Franj were crushed, losing ten thousand men. Their leaders, Baldwin of Antioch and the Count of Tripoli, were captured. The news of this defeat frightened Amalric. He sued for peace. We did not lose face. The mountain lion led us back to Damascus.
Before this I had no idea of what a war entailed. Having observed Shirkuh in command of an army, I had learnt a great deal, but I was totally exhausted. For the first week after my return I spent most of my days in the baths, being rubbed with oils. In the evening I went to enjoy poetry and wine in the tavern. Then, you know, Ibn Yakub, something strange happened to me. I became restless. The aimlessness of my daily existence began to nauseate me, and I yearned for the comradeship of the battlefield. I had seen the Franj face to face, and now, suddenly, all the childhood stories I had heard of the time when they first invaded and occupied our lands came back to me. How fate had smashed us as if we were tiny pieces of glass. The shards had scattered.
I remembered Shadhi’s voice descending into a frightening whisper: “Sons of Ayyub, do you know what the Franj did in Ma’arra? They captured Believers and placed them in cooking-pots filled with boiling water. They roasted little children on spits and ate them grilled. These are the wild beasts who have devoured our country.”
To tell you the truth, I never really believed Shadhi. I thought he was making all of this up to frighten us, so that we never missed a riding lesson, but it was the truth. The pure truth, unadulterated by invention. I have read the manuscripts of the infidel chroniclers. You have as well? Good. Then you understand the anger that expanded my chest when I first caught sight of the Franj in Misr. This anger was not mollified by women rubbing oil on me or the joys of the Taif grape, not to mention the delights of fornication. I felt that all of this was as nothing compared with the tasks that lay ahead.
Before Nur al-Din took Damascus, there was no sultan who understood the burning need to drive out the Franj, to recover the Dome of the Rock and the Temple of Solomon for the People of the Book. Before Nur al-Din, our emirs and sultans were happy to make their peace with the enemy. “Kiss any arm you cannot break,” as they say, Ibn Yakub, “and pray to Allah to break it.” But that was not the attitude of our Prophet. Did he not say, “Pray to Allah, but make sure you have tied your camel first!”
Pleased with himself, the Sultan burst out laughing. Naturally, I had heard him laugh before, but always in a restrained fashion as befitted a prince. Now it was uncontrolled. The saying of the Prophet, at best mildly amusing to myself, made him laugh and laugh. Tears poured down his face. When he recovered, and had wiped away the tears from his face and beard, he explained himself.
“You look surprised, scribe. I just thought of what could have made the Prophet say such a thing, and an image flashed past my mind of the early Believers who had come to pray. Trusting in the power of Allah, they left their camels outside, only to discover that they had been stolen. This could not have enhanced their faith in Allah, could it, scribe? Enough for today. I have to discuss the late collection of the taxes with al-Fadil, who thinks that this could lead to a national calamity.”