I was exhilarated when she started talking about us in a very bold way. Not us in the harem, but us women. Her father had given her a manuscript by the Andalusian Ibn Rushd, and she talked of him in a reverential tone. She told us of how Ibn Rushd had criticised the failure of our states to discover and utilise the ability of women. Instead, he argued, women were used exclusively for purposes of procreation, child-rearing and breast-feeding. I had never heard talk like this in my whole life and, judging by the expression on your face, nor have you, my dear scribe.
Jamila told us that many years ago in Cairo, one of the Caliphs of the Fatimids, Al-Hakim, had woken up one morning and decided that women were the well of all wickedness. He promptly passed a decree preventing women from walking in the streets and, in order to make sure they stayed at home, shoemakers were forbidden to make shoes for women. He had all the wives and concubines in his palace packed into crates and thrown into the river. Jamila said that though Al-Hakim had undoubtedly taken leave of his senses, it was interesting that his madness was directed exclusively against women.
Jamila and I have become close friends. We hide nothing from each other. My innermost secrets are hers and hers are mine. She has already borne Salah al-Din two sons, and now he rarely comes to her. At first, like me, she was upset, but now she sighs when he comes. It is not the other way round. How fickle our emotions can be! I wonder how I would have felt if the memory of Messud was not so strong in me. Jamila thinks that Messud is a fantasy that I nourish to keep myself sane. I know that the past loses power over the heart, but it hasn’t happened to me yet, and in the meantime Jamila lets me dream. Sometimes she encourages me in this, for she never had a Messud. She also encourages me to stop shaving the hair on my pudenda.
My only other friend was Ilmas the eunuch. He had been in the harem for a long time. Long before Salah al-Din came here. The stories he used to tell, Ibn Yakub. Allah protect me, I cannot bring myself to repeat them, even to you. Perhaps if you had been a eunuch, but that is foolish. Forgive me. I had no right to speak like this to you.
Ilmas was really a poet. I still don’t understand what devil possessed him. Why did he write that shadow-play? He was killed for telling the truth, for in the last act which you were too cowardly to watch — or was it your seventh sense that warned you it might be dangerous? — Ilmas described the love of one inmate of the harem for another. The love of a concubine for one of her maids. I think he had Mansoora in mind, because the lute figured prominently. He certainly could not have had me in his mind. I have not moved in that direction yet, though if I did it would be Jamila’s warm embrace that would comfort me. A sign to her that I was ready to take such a step would be to stop removing my body hair. I am close to a decision. Misery-laden days are about to end.
Look at your face. Do I detect disgust? Surely a man of the world like you, Ibn Yakub, is not shocked by such details. Cairo and Damascus, not to mention Baghdad, are full of male brothels where beardless youths satisfy every conceivable need and desire of those who visit them. This is tolerated, but mention women smelling the musk of each other’s bodies and it is as if the heavens were about to fall.
I think I should stop. You look as though you’re about to choke on your own anger, and your friend Ibn Maymun would never forgive me if I was responsible for making you ill.
I’m disappointed in you, scribe. I don’t think I shall summon you again.
Before I could reply, Mansoora had ushered me to the door and straight into the courtyard. I turned back to catch a last glimpse of Halima, but there was no sign of her. My last memory of her remained a strange, obstinate, half-contemptuous gaze which was her farewell.
I walked into the street, upset and disoriented.
Eleven
Shadhi and the story of the blind sheikh; Salah al-Din tells how he overcame his rivals
MY CLANDESTINE MEETING WITH Halima had shaken me to the core. I felt abused, though when I recalled her exact words there was nothing in them to upset me. I suppose I was taken aback by her decision that henceforth all men, except Messud, were out of bounds. My reaction was nothing personal. I was shocked on behalf of all males, or, at least, that is how I consoled myself.
Shadhi was not so easily convinced. He was waiting for me anxiously at the palace. The Sultan was back, but would not be able to see me till later in the afternoon. Shadhi wanted to hear of my meeting with Halima and so I obliged him. He was not in the least bit perturbed.
“I could tell you stories of harems which would make you die of shame on their behalf,” he chuckled. “Not that I ever died. I have lived long enough to know that of all Allah’s creations, we human beings are the least predictable. Do not plague your heart with the problems of women, Ibn Yakub. Leave Jamila and Halima to be happy. They will never be as free as you or me.”
I was astonished by Shadhi’s carefree attitude, but also relieved. I had told him everything. If the Sultan ever discovered our secret, both of us would share the blame. My fear, which had given me a sleepless night, evaporated and I became cheerful again. I saw Shadhi laughing to himself. When I inquired as to the cause of his merriment, he spat loudly before speaking.
“There is a blind sheikh, who preaches his nonsense a few miles outside the Bab-al-Zuweyla. He’s the sort who makes a living out of religion. He uses his blindness as a pretext to feel every part of the men with soft voices, all the time reciting the hadith. People leave him gifts of food, clothes, money and sometimes jewellery. Six months ago a trader brought him a beautiful shawl to keep him warm during the evenings. The sheikh loved this shawl. He would put one end of it through a tiny ring and then pull it out with one sharp tug, to show his disciples the unusual character of the wool. One evening, just after he had finished his prayers, a man entered his house. The sheikh was seated on a rug on the floor playing with his beads and muttering invocations and prayers and whatever else these charlatans mouth to gull the poor.
“The man who entered muttered a few prayers and placed a little bundle at the feet of the preacher. Pleased with his present, he asked the stranger’s name, but received no reply. For a while they prayed in silence. Then the stranger spoke.
“‘Tell me something, learned teacher. Are you really blind?’
“The sheikh nodded.
“‘Completely blind?’
“The sheikh nodded more vigorously, this time with a touch of irritation.
“‘So, if I were to remove the shawl from your shoulders,’ the man’s voice was gentle and reassuring, ‘you would never know who I was?’
“The sheikh was amused by the suggestion and smiled, while the enterprising young thief lifted the shawl and calmly walked from the house. The holy man rushed out after him with his stick. The mask disappeared as he began to scream abuse at the thief. Mother-fucker. Sister-fucker. Twice-born-camel-cunted-son-of-a-whore. And worse, Ibn Yakub, words that I would not want to repeat to you. Later it was discovered that the bundle which the thief had left for the sheikh consisted of three layers of pigeon shit covered with straw!”