Leo Africanus

by Amin Maalouf

  While I was talking to the Copt, the boatmen were standing in the background, gesticulating animatedly. When my benefactor had gone away, they came to tell me, in solemn tones, that they had decided to leave the next day for the capital. Although they were all Muslims, they knew that the plague would not go away before Mesori. But other reasons impelled them:

  ‘The man said that the price of food has risen suddenly. Now is the time to go to the old port, sell the cargo and return to our homes.’

  I did not think of protesting. I myself was like a lover weary of sleeping night after night a few strides away from the object of his desires.

  Cairo at last!

  In no other city does one forget so quickly that one is a foreigner. The traveller has scarcely arrived before he is caught up in a whirlwind of rumours, trivialities, gossips. A hundred strangers accost him, whisper in his ear, call him to witness, jostle his shoulder the better to provoke him to the curses or the laughter which they await. From then on he is let into the secret. He has got hold of one end of a fantastic story, he has to know the sequel even if it means staying until the next caravan, until the next feast day, until the next flood. But, already, another story has begun.

  That year, when I disembarked, worn out and haggard a mile from my new home, the whole town, although scarred by the plague, was poking fun without restraint at the ‘noble eye’, meaning that of the monarch. The first syrup seller, guessing my ignorance and delighting in it, took it upon himself to tell me about it forthwith, pushing away his thirsty clients with a disdainful air. The account which merchants and notables gave me later on was no different from that of this man.

  ‘It all began,’ he told me, ‘with a stormy interview between Sultan Qansuh and the caliph.’

  The caliph was a blameless old man who lived peacefully in his harem. The sultan had treated him harshly and insisted that he should abdicate, on the pretext that his sight was failing, that he was already almost blind in his left eye and that his signature on the decrees was just a scrawl. Apparently Qansuh wanted to frighten the Commander of the Faithful in order to extort a few tens of thousands of dinars from him in exchange for keeping him in office. But the old man did not go along with this game. He took a piece of glazed paper and without trembling wrote out a deed of abdication in favour of his son.

  The whole matter would have gone no further, merely another act of injustice that would have been soon forgotten, had the sultan himself one morning not felt pain in his left eye. This had happened two months before my arrival, when the plague was at its most deadly. But the sovereign was losing interest in the plague. His eyelid kept closing. Soon it would close so firmly that he had to hold it open with his finger to be able to see at all. His doctor diagnosed ptosis and recommended an incision.

  My informant offered me a goblet of rose syrup and suggested that I should sit down on a wooden box, which I did. There was no longer a crowd around us.

  ‘When the monarch refused categorically, his doctor brought before him a senior officer, the commander of a thousand, who had the same disease, and operated on him forthwith. The man returned a week later with his eye completely restored.’

  It was useless. The sultan, said my narrator, preferred to have recourse to a female Turkish healer, who promised to cure him without surgery, only applying an ointment based on powdered steel. After three days of treatment the disease spread to the right eye. The old sultan no longer went out, no longer dealt with any business, did not even manage to carry his noria on his head, the heavy long horned headdress which had been adopted by the last Mameluke rulers of Egypt. To such an extent that his own officers, convinced that he was going to lose his sight, began to look around for a successor.

  The very evening before my arrival in Cairo, rumours of a plot were spreading through the city. They had naturally reached the ears of the sultan, who decreed a curfew from dusk to dawn.

  ‘Which is why,’ finished the syrup vendor, pointing out the position of the sun on the horizon, ‘if your house is far off, you really ought to run, because in seven degrees anyone caught in the streets will be flogged in public until the blood runs.’

  Seven degrees was less than half an hour. I looked around me; there was no one there except soldiers, on every street corner, peering nervously at the setting sun. Not daring either to run or to ask the way for fear of being suspected, I merely walked along the river bank, quickening my pace and hoping that the house would be easily recognizable.

  Two soldiers were coming towards me, with enquiring steps and looks, when I saw a path on my right. I turned into it without hesitation, with the strange impression of having done so every day of my life.

  I was at home. The gardener was sitting on the ground in front of the door, his face immobile. I greeted him with a wave and made a great show of taking out my keys. Without a word, he drew aside to let me in, not appearing at all surprised to see a stranger going into his master’s house. My self-assurance reassured him. However, feeling obliged to explain the reason for my presence, I took out of my pocket the deed signed by the Copt. The man did not look at it. He could not read, but trusted me, resumed his place and did not move.

  The next day, when I went out, he was still there, so that I did not know whether he had spent the night there or whether he had resumed his post at dawn. I walked about in my street, which seemed extremely busy. But all the passers-by looked at me. Although I was used to this annoyance which afflicts all travellers, I felt the sensation particularly strongly, and put it down to my Maghribi clothing. But it was not that. A greengrocer stepped out of his shop to come over and give me advice:

  ‘People are astonished to see a man of your rank walking about humbly on foot in the dust.’

  Without waiting for my reply, he hailed a donkey-driver, who offered me a sumptuous beast, equipped with a fine blanket, and left me a young boy as an orderly.

  So mounted, I made a tour of the old city, stopping especially at the famous mosque of Amr and at the textile market, before pushing on towards New Cairo, from which I returned with my head full of murmurings. Henceforth this excursion would take place every day, taking a longer or shorter time according to my mood and what there was for me to do, but always fruitful. I used to meet various notables, officers, palace officials and do business. Already in the first month I arranged to have a load of Indian crepe and spices for the benefit of a Jewish merchant in Tlemcen conveyed in a camel caravan chartered by some Maghribi traders. At my request, he sent back a casket of amber from Massa.

  Between two deals, people confided in me. In this way I learned a week after my arrival that the sultan was now in a better mood. Persuaded that his illness was a chastisement from the Most High, he had summoned the four Grand Qadis of Egypt, representing the four rites of the Faith, to reproach them for having let him commit so many crimes without reprimanding him. He had, it was said, burst into tears before the judges, who were dumbfounded by the sight; the sultan was indeed a stately man, very tall and very stout, with an imposing rounded beard. Swearing that he bitterly regretted his treatment of the old caliph, he had promised that he would immediately make amends for the wrong he had done. And he had dictated forthwith a message for the deposed pontiff which he had had conveyed at once by the commander of the citadel. The note was worded thus: ‘I bring you the greetings of the sultan, who commends himself to your prayers. He acknowledges his responsibility for his behaviour towards you and his wish not to incur your reproach. He was unable to resist an evil impulse.’

  That very day the provost of the merchants came down from the citadel, preceded by torch-bearers who went around the city announcing: ‘According to a decree of His Royal Majesty the Sultan, all monthly and weekly taxes and all indirect taxes without exception are abolished, including the rights upon the flour mills of Cairo.’

  The sultan had decided, whatever the cost, to attract the Compassion of the Most High towards his eye. He ordered that all the unemployed of the capital, both men an
d women, should be assembled in the hippodrome, and gave each of them two half-fadda pieces as alms, which cost four hundred dinars altogether. He also distributed three thousand dinars to the poor, particularly those who lived in the mosque of al-Azhar and in the funerary monuments of Karafa.

  After having done all this Qansuh summoned the qadis once more and asked them to have fervent prayers for the healing of his noble eye said in all the mosques. Only three of the judges could answer his call; the fourth, the Maliki qadi, had to bury that day two of his young children who had fallen victim to the plague.

  The reason why the sultan set such store by these prayers was that he had eventually accepted that he should be operated on, and this took place, at his request, on a Friday just after the midday prayer. He kept to his room until the following Friday. Then he went to the stands of Ashrafiyya, had the prisoners kept in the four remand prisons, in the keep of the citadel and in the Arkana, the prison of the royal palace, brought forth, and signed a large number of releases, particularly of favourites who had fallen in disgrace. The most famous beneficiary of the noble clemency was Kamal al-Din, the master barber, whose name quickly went the rounds of Cairo, provoking several ironical comments.

  A handsome youth, Kamal al-Din had long been the sultan’s favourite. In the afternoons, he used to massage the soles of his feet to make him sleep. Until the day when the sultan had been afflicted by an inflammation of the scrotum which had necessitated bleeding, and this barber had spread the news across the city with graphic details, incurring the ire of his master.

  Now, he was pardoned, and not only pardoned but the sultan even excused himself for having ill-treated him, and asked him, since this was his particular vice, that he should go about and tell the whole city that the august eye had been cured. In fact the eyelids were still covered with a bandage, but the sovereign felt sufficiently strong to have his audience once more. The more so since a series of events of exceptional gravity had come to pass. He had just received, one after the other, an envoy from the Sharif of Mecca and a Hindu ambassador who had arrived in the capital a few days earlier to discuss the same problem: the Portuguese had just occupied the island of Kamaran, they were in control of the entrance to the Red Sea and had landed troops on the coast of Yemen. The sharif was afraid that they would attack the convoys of Egyptian pilgrims who usually passed through the ports of Yanbu‘ and Jidda, which were now directly threatened. As for the Hindu emissary, he had come in great pomp, accompanied by two huge elephants caparisoned in red velvet; he was particularly concerned about the sudden interruption of trade between the Indies and the Mameluke Empire brought about by the Portuguese invasion.

  The sultan pronounced himself most concerned, observing that the stars must have been particularly unfavourable for the Muslims that year, since the plague, the threat to the Holy Places and his own illness had all occurred at the same time. He ordered the inspector of granaries, the Amir Kuchkhadam, to accompany the Hindu ambassador in procession back as far as Jidda, and then to stay there in order to organize an intelligence service to report on the intentions of the Portuguese. He also promised to arm a fleet and command it himself if God granted him health.

  It was not before the month of Sha‘ban that Qansuh was seen wearing his heavy noria again. It was then understood that he was definitively cured, and the city received the order to rejoice. A procession was organized, at the head of which walked the four royal doctors, dressed in red velvet pelisses trimmed with sable, the gift of a grateful sovereign. The great officers of state all had yellow silk scarves, and cloths of the same colour were hanging from the windows of the streets where the procession passed as a sign of rejoicing. The grand qadis had decorated their doors with brocaded muslin dotted with specks of amber, and the kettledrums resounded in the citadel. As the curfew had been lifted, music and singing could be heard at sunset in every corner of the city. Then, when the night became really dark, fireworks sprang forth on the water’s edge, accompanied by frenzied cheering.

  On that occasion, in the general rejoicing, I suddenly had an overwhelming urge to dress in the Egyptian fashion. So I left my Fassi clothes, which I put away carefully against the day when I would leave, and then put on a narrow gown with green stripes, stitched at the chest and then flared to the ground. On my feet I wore old-fashioned sandals. On my head I wrapped a broad turban in Indian crepe. And it was thus accoutred that I called for a donkey, on which I enthroned myself in the middle of my street, surrounded by a thousand neighbours, to follow the celebrations.

  I felt that this city was mine and it gave me a great sense of well-being. Within a few months I had become a real Cairene notable. I had my donkey-man, my greengrocer, my perfumer, my goldsmith, my paper-maker, prosperous business dealings, relations with the palace and a house on the Nile.

  I believed that I had reached the oasis of the clear springs.

  The Year of the Circassian

  920 A.H.

  26 February 1514 – 14 February 1515

  I would have slumbered for ever in the delights and the torments of Cairo if a woman had not chosen, in that year, to make me share her secret, the most dangerous that there was, since it could have deprived me of life and of the beyond at the same time.

  The day that I met her began in the most horrible manner. My donkey-boy had strayed from our usual route a little before entering the new city. Thinking that he wanted to avoid some obstacle, I let him do so. But he led me into the middle of a crowd, and then, putting the reins into my hand, muttered an excuse and ran off, without my even being able to question him. He had never behaved like this before, and I resolved to speak to his master.

  It was not long before I understood the reason for all the excitement. A detachment of soldiers was proceeding through Saliba Street, preceded by drummers and a torch-bearer. In the middle, a man was dragging himself along, his torso bare, his hands outstretched, attached to a rope pulled along by a horseman. A proclamation was read ordaining that the man, a servant accused of stealing turbans in the night, was condemned to be cleft in two. This form of execution was, I knew, generally reserved for murderers, but there had been a spate of thefts over the preceding days and the merchants were demanding an exemplary punishment.

  The unfortunate man did not cry out, but just moaned dully, nodding his head, when, all of a sudden, two soldiers threw themselves upon him, causing him to lose his balance. Before he was even stretched out on the ground, one of them seized him by the armpits while the other simultaneously grabbed hold of his feet. The executioner approached, carrying a heavy sword in both hands, and with a single blow cut the man in two across the waist. I turned my eyes away, feeling such a violent contraction in my stomach that my paralysed body almost fell to the ground in a heap. A helping hand rose towards me to support me, with an old man’s voice:

  ‘One should not gaze upon death from the back of one’s mount.’

  Rather than jump to the ground, which I did not feel capable of doing, I clung on to my donkey, turned back and went away, causing protest from those whom my manoeuvre prevented from seeing the next part of the spectacle: the upper part of the victim’s body was just being put on a pile of quicklime, raised upright facing the crowd where it remained delirious for several minutes before expiring.

  In an effort to forget, I decided to attend to my affairs, to go and inform myself about the departures and arrivals of the caravans, to listen to various gossip. But as I proceeded my head became heavier and heavier. It was as if I had been overcome by a fit of dizziness; I drifted this way and that, from one street to another, from one suq to another, half conscious, inhaling saffron and fried cheese, hearing as if from afar the din of the hawkers who were accosting me. Without his attendant, who was still watching the gruesome spectacle, my donkey began to roam about according to his moods and his habits. This lasted until a merchant, noticing that I was not well, took the reins and handed me a cup of sugared water, perfumed with jasmin which immediately relieved my stomach. I w
as in Khan al-Khalili, and my benefactor was one of the richest Persian traders there, a certain Akbar, may God extend His benefits to him! He made me sit down, swearing that he would not let me go until I had fully recovered.

  I had been there for at least an hour, my mind emerging slowly from the fog, when the Circassian made her entrance. I do not know what struck me about her first. Was it her face, so beautiful yet so uncovered, with only a black silk scarf holding back her blonde hair? Was it her waist, so slim in this city where only copiously nourished women were appreciated? Or perhaps the ambiguous manner, deferential but not over-zealous, with which Akbar said: ‘Highness!’

  Her retinue did not distinguish her from the simplest bourgeoise woman: a single servant, a peasant woman with stiff gestures, and an air of being constantly amused, who was carrying a flat object wrapped clumsily in an old worn-out sheet.

  My gaze was evidently too persistent, because the Circassian turned her face away with a conspicuous movement. Seeing this, Akbar confided in me in a deliberately ceremonious voice:

  ‘Her Royal Highness Princess Nur, widow of the Amir ‘Ala al-Din, nephew of the Grand Turk.’

  I forced myself to look elsewhere, but my curiosity was only stronger. Everyone in Cairo was aware of the drama of this ‘Ala al-Din. He had taken part in the fratricidal war which had set the heirs of Sultan Bayazid against one another. It even seemed at one point that he had triumphed, when he had seized the city of Bursa and had threatened to take Constantinople. But his uncle Salim had eventually gained the upper hand. A relentless man, the new Ottoman sultan had had his brothers strangled and their families decimated. However, ‘Ala al-Din managed to flee and take refuge in Cairo, where he was received with honour. A palace and servants were put at his disposal, and it was said that he was now preparing to encourage a rising against his uncle with the support of the Mameluke empire, the Sophy of Persia, and the powerful Turkish tribes in the very heart of Anatolia.