by Amin Maalouf
In fact, two hundred days precisely after his success at Zahara, Abu’l-Hasan was removed from power. The revolution took place on the 27th of the month of Jumada al-Ula 887, 14 July 1482. On that very day Ferdinand was at the head of the royal host on the banks of the river Genii, under the walls of the town of Loja, which he had besieged for five days, when he was attacked unexpectedly by a Muslim detachment commanded by ‘Ali al-‘Attar, one of the most experienced officers of Granada. This was a memorable day, of which Abu’l-Hasan could have been proud, especially as the hero of the hour, acting under his orders, had succeeded in sowing confusion and panic in the camp of the Christian king, who fled towards Cordoba, leaving cannons and ammunition behind him, as well as a great quantity of flour and hundreds of dead and captives. But it was too late. When the great news reached Granada, the revolt was already under way; Boabdil, the son of Fatima, had succeeded in escaping from the tower of Comares, it was said, by sliding down a rope. He was immediately acclaimed in the quarter of al-Baisin, and the next day his sympathizers enabled him to enter the Alhambra.
‘God had ordained that Abu’l-Hasan should be overthrown on the very day of his victory, just as He sent down the flood on the day of the Parade, to make him bend his knee before his Creator,’ observed Salma.
But the old sultan refused to acknowledge defeat. He took refuge in Malaga, rallied his supporters around him, and prepared to avenge himself upon his son. The kingdom was thenceforth divided into two principalities which proceeded to destroy each other under the amused gaze of the Castilians.
‘Seven years of civil war,’ mused my mother. ‘Seven years of a war in which sons killed fathers and brothers strangled brothers, in which neighbours suspected and betrayed each other, seven years in which men from our quarter of al-Baisin could not venture alongside the Great Mosque without being jeered, maltreated, assaulted, or sometimes even having their throats cut.’
Her thoughts wandered far away from the circumcision ceremony taking place a few steps away from her, far from the voices and the clinking of cups which seemed strangely muffled, as in a dream. She found herself repeating ‘That accursed Parade!’ She sighed to herself, half asleep.
‘Silma, my sister, still daydreaming?’
The harsh voice of Khali transformed my mother into a little girl again. She fell on her elder brother’s neck and covered his forehead, his shoulders, and then his arms and hands with hot and furtive kisses. Touched but somewhat embarrassed by these demonstrations of affection which threatened to upset his grave demeanour, he remained standing, stiff in his long silk jubba with its flowing sleeves, his scarf, the taylassan, draped elegantly around his shoulders, his face only revealing the ghost of a protective smile as the sign of his happiness. But this apparent coolness did not discourage Salma in the slightest. She had always known that a man of quality could not reveal his feelings without giving an impression of levity which was not appropriate to his status.
‘What were you thinking about?’
If the question had been asked by my father, Salma would have given an evasive answer, but Khali was the only man to whom she would reveal her heart as well as uncovering her head.
‘I was thinking of the evils of our time, of the day of the Parade, of this endless war, of our divided city, of the people who die every day.’
With the flat of his thumb he wiped a solitary tear from his sister’s cheek.
‘These should not be the thoughts of a mother who has just given birth to her first son,’ he declared without conviction, adding in a solemn but more sincere voice, ‘ “You will have the rulers you deserve,” says the Prophet.’
She repeated the words after him: ‘Kama takunu yuwalla alaikum.’
Then, artlessly: ‘What are you trying to tell me? Weren’t you one of the foremost supporters of the present sultan? Didn’t you raise al-Baisin in support of him? Aren’t you highly respected in the Alhambra?’
Stung to the quick, Khali prepared to defend himself with a violent diatribe, but suddenly realized that his interlocutor was only his little sister, tired and ill, whom, in addition, he loved more than anyone else in the world.
‘You haven’t changed, Silma, I think I’m talking to a simple girl, but in fact it’s the daughter of Sulaiman the bookseller that I’m dealing with, may God add to your age what He subtracted from his. And may He shorten your tongue as He lengthened his.’
Blessing the memory of their father, they burst out in peals of frank laughter. They were now accomplices, as they had always been. Khali hitched up the front of his jubba and sat cross-legged on a woven straw mat at the entrance to his sister’s bedroom.
‘Your questions pierce me with their softness like the snow of Mount Cholair, which burns even more surely than the desert sun.’
Suddenly confident and a little mischievous, Salma asked him bluntly:
‘And what do you say?’
With a gesture which was not at all spontaneous she lowered her head, seized the edge of her brother’s taylassan and hid her red eyes within it. Then, her face still hidden, she pronounced, like the sentence of a qadi:
‘Tell me everything!’
Khali’s words were few:
‘This city is protected by those who seek to despoil it, and governed by those who are its enemies. Soon, my sister, we shall have to take refuge beyond the sea.’
His voice cracked, and so as not to betray his emotion he tore himself away from Salma and disappeared.
Devastated, she did not attempt to detain him. She did not even notice that he had gone. No further noise, no sound of voices, no laughter, no clinking of glasses came to her from the patio; no shaft of light.
The feast had ended.
The Year of the Amulets
895 A.H.
25 November 1489 – 13 November 1490
That year, for the sake of a smile, my maternal uncle took the path of exile. It was thus that he explained his decision to me many years later, while our caravan was traversing the vast Sahara, south of Sijilmassa, during a fresh and peaceful night which was lulled rather than disturbed by the far-off howling of jackals. A slight breeze obliged Khali to tell his tale in a loud voice, and his tone was so reassuring that it made me breathe once more the odours of the Granada of my birth, and his prose was so bewitching that my camel seemed to move forwards in time with the rise and fall of its rhythms.
I would have wished to report each one of his words, but my memory is short and my eloquence feeble, so that many of the illuminations of his story will never, alas, appear in any book.
‘The first day of that year, I went up early to the Alhambra, not, as I usually did, to start work in the small office of the diwan where I drafted the sultan’s letters, but, in company with various notables of my family, to offer New Year greetings. The majlis, the sultan’s court, which was being held on this occasion in the Hall of the Ambassadors, was thronged with turbaned qadis, dignitaries wearing high felt skull caps, coloured red or green, and rich merchants with hair tinted with henna and separated, like my own, with a carefully drawn parting.
‘After bowing before Boabdil, most of the guests withdrew to the Myrtle Court, where they wandered around the pool for some time dispensing their salam alaikums. The more senior notables sat on couches covered with carpets, backed against the walls of the immense room, edging their way forwards to get as close as possible to the sultan or his ministers to present them with some request, or simply to show their presence at court.
‘As letter writer and calligrapher at the state secretariat, as the traces of red ink on my fingers bore witness, I had some small privileges, including that of sauntering as I wished between the majlis and the pool, and to stroll about with those who seemed most interesting, then going back to sit down before finding a new prey. This was an excellent way of collecting news and opinions about matters of immediate concern, the more so as people could speak freely under Boabdil, while in the time of his father they would look around seven times before
voicing the least criticism, which would be expressed in ambiguous terms, in verses and proverbs, which could easily be retracted if they were denounced later. The sense of feeling freer and less spied upon only made the people of Granada more severe towards the sultan, even when they found themselves under his roof, even when they were there to wish him long life, health and victories. Our people are merciless towards sovereigns who do not behave towards them as sovereigns.
‘On this autumn day, the yellowing leaves were more securely attached to the trees than the notables of Granada to their monarch. The city was divided, as it had been for years, between the peace party and the war party, neither of which called upon the sultan.
‘Those who wanted peace with Castile said: We are weak and the Rumis are strong; we have been abandoned by our brothers in Egypt and the Maghrib, while our enemies have the support of Rome and all the Christians; we have lost Gibraltar, Alhama, Ronda, Marbella, Malaga, and so many other places, and as long as peace is not restored, the list will continue to increase; the orchards have been laid waste by the troops, and the peasants complain; the roads are no longer safe, the merchants cannot lay in their stocks, the qaisariyya and the suqs are empty, and the price of foodstuffs is rising, except that of meat, which is being sold at one dirham the pound, because thousands of animals have been slaughtered to prevent them being carried off by the enemy; Boabdil should do everything to silence the warmongers and reach a lasting peace with Castile, before Granada itself falls under siege.
‘Those who wanted war said: The enemy has decided once and for all to annihilate us, and it is not by submitting that we will force them to withdraw. See how the people of Malaga have been forced into slavery after their surrender! See how the Inquisition has raised pyres for the Jews of Seville, of Saragossa, of Valencia, of Teruel, of Toledo! Tomorrow the pyres will be raised in Granada, not just for the people of the Sabbath but for the Muslims as well! How can we stop this, except by resistance, mobilization, and jihad? Each time we have fought with a will, we have managed to check the advance of the Castilians, but after our victories traitors appear among us, who seek only to conciliate the enemy of God, pay him tribute, and open the gates of our cities to him. Has Boabdil himself not promised one day to hand over Granada to Ferdinand? It is more than three years since he signed a document to that effect at Loja. This sultan is a traitor, he must be replaced by a true Muslim who is determined to wage the holy war and to restore confidence to our army.
‘It would have been difficult to find a soldier, an officer, the commander of a platoon of ten, or of a hundred or of a thousand, still less a man of religion, a qadi, a lawyer, an ‘alim or the imam of a mosque who would not share the latter point of view, while the merchants and cultivators for the most part opted for peace. The court of Boabdil was itself divided. Left to himself, Boabdil would have made any truce at whatever price, because he was born a vassal and did not hope to do more than die as one; but he could not ignore the inclinations of his army, which regarded the heroic forays made by the other princes of the Nasrid house with ill-concealed impatience.
‘A particularly telling example was always mentioned by the war party: that of Basta, a Muslim city to the east of Granada, encircled and bombarded by the Rumis for more than five months. The Christian kings – may the Most High demolish what they have built, and rebuild what they have demolished – had raised wooden towers which faced the outer walls and dug a ditch to prevent the inhabitants of the besieged city from communicating with the outside world. However, in spite of their overwhelming superiority in numbers and armaments, and in spite of the presence of Ferdinand himself, the Castilians were unable to prevail against the town, and the garrison was able to make bloody raids each night. Thus the relentless resistance of the defenders of Basta, commanded by the Nasrid amir Yahya al-Najjar, excited the passions of the people of Granada and inflamed their imagination.
‘Boabdil was not particularly pleased at this, because Yahya, the hero of Basta, was one of his most bitter enemies. He even laid claim to the throne of Granada, which his grandfather had once occupied, and considered the present sultan a usurper.’
‘The very evening before New Year’s Day, a new exploit of the defenders of Basta reached the ears of the people of Granada. The Castilians, it was said, had got wind of the fact that foodstuffs were beginning to be in short supply in Basta. To persuade them that the opposite was the case, Yahya had devised a form of deception: to collect together all the remaining provisions, to display them prominently in the stalls of the suq, and then invite a delegation of Christians to come and negotiate with him. Entering the city, Ferdinand’s envoys were amazed to see such a wealth of all kinds of goods, and hastened to report the fact to their king, recommending that he should not continue to try to starve out the inhabitants of Basta, but instead to propose an honourable settlement to the city’s defenders.
‘Within a few hours, at least ten people joyfully told me the same story, at the hammam, at the mosque, and in the corridors of the Alhambra; each time, I pretended not to have heard the story before so as not to offend the speaker, to give him the pleasure of adding his own embellishment. I smiled too, but a little less each time, because anxiety gnawed at my breast. I kept asking myself why Yahya had allowed Ferdinand’s envoys to enter the besieged city, and above all how he could have hoped to conceal from them the penury which gripped the city, if everyone in Granada, and probably elsewhere, knew the truth and was laughing at the deception.
‘My worst fears,’ my uncle continued, ‘were realized on New Year’s Day, in the course of my conversations with visitors to the Alhambra. I then learned that Yahya, Fighter for the Faith, Sword of Islam, had not only decided to hand Basta over to the infidels, but even to join the Castilian troops to open the way to the other towns of the kingdom, especially Guadix and Almeria, and finally Granada. The particular skill of this prince had been to distract the Muslims by means of his pretended stratagem, to conceal the real purpose of his negotiations with Ferdinand. He had taken his decision, some said, in exchange for a substantial sum of money, and the promise that his soldiers and the citizens of the town would be spared. But he had obtained even more than this; converting to Christianity himself, this amir of the royal family, this grandson of the sultan, was to become a high-ranking notable of Castile. I shall speak of him to you again.
‘At the beginning of the year 895, it was clear that no one suspected that such a metamorphosis would be possible. But, from the first days of the month of Muharram, the most alarming news reached us. Basta fell, followed by Purcena, and then Guadix. All the eastern part of the kingdom, where the war party was strongest, fell into the hands of the Castilians without a blow being exchanged.
‘The war party had lost its hero, and Boabdil had got rid of an inconvenient rival; however, the Castilians’ victories had reduced his kingdom to very little, to Granada and its immediate surroundings, and this area was also subject to regular attacks. Was this a matter for rejoicing for the sultan, or lamentation?
‘It is on such occasions,’ said my uncle, ‘that great-heartedness or small-mindedness reveals itself. And it was the latter that I perceived so clearly on the face of Boabdil on the first day of the year, in the Hall of the Ambassadors. I had just heard the cruel truth about Basta from a young Berber officer of the guard who had relatives in the besieged city. He often came to see me in the state secretariat, and he came to me because he did not dare to address the sultan directly, especially as the bearer of evil tidings. I led him straight to Boabdil, who commanded him to make his report to him in a low voice. Bending over towards the monarch’s ear he stammered out the news he had received.
‘But, while the officer was speaking, the sultan’s face swelled into a broad, indecent and hideous smile. I can still see those fleshy lips opening in front of me, those hairy cheeks which seemed to stretch to his ears, those teeth, spaced wide apart to crunch up the victory, those eyes which closed slowly as if he was expecting the warm k
iss of a lover, and that head which nodded with delight, backwards and forwards and forwards and backwards, as if he was listening to the most languorous of songs. As long as I live, I shall have the image of that smile before me, that terrible smile of pettiness and small-mindedness.’
Khali stopped. The night hid his face from me, but I heard him breathe deeply, sigh, and then murmur a number of prayers which I repeated after him. The yappings of the jackals seemed closer.
‘Boabdil’s attitude did not surprise me,’ continued Khali, his equanimity restored. ‘I was not unaware of the fickleness of the master of the Alhambra, nor of the feebleness of his character, nor even of his ambiguous relations with the Castilians. I knew that our princes were corrupt, that they were not concerned to defend the kingdom, and that exile would soon be the fate of our people. But I had to see with my own eyes the bared soul of the last sultan of Andalus in order to feel myself forced to react. God shows to whom He will the right path, and to others the way to perdition.’
My uncle stayed only another three months in Granada, time to turn various goods and property discreetly into gold, which would be easy to carry. Then, one moonless night, he left with his mother, his wife, his four daughters and a servant, accompanied by a horse and several mules, for Almeria, where he obtained permission from the Castilians to sail to Tlemcen with other refugees. But he intended to set himself up at Fez, and it was there that my parents and I met him again, after the fall of Granada.
If my mother mourned Khali’s departure unceasingly all that year, my father Muhammad, may God keep his memory fragrant, did not think of following the example of his brother-in-law. There was no sense of despair in the city. Throughout the year there were particularly encouraging tales in circulation, frequently spread about, my mother told me, by the ineffable Sarah. ‘Each time Gaudy Sarah visited me, I knew that I would be able to tell your father tales which would make him happy and self-assured for a whole week. In the end it was he who asked me impatiently whether the juljul had tinkled in our house in his absence.’
