The Islam Quintet

by Tariq Ali

  Unaware that they were being observed, Hind and Ibn Daud had now reached a stage where certain crucial decisions had to be made. His hands had wandered underneath her tunic and felt her breasts, but retreated immediately.

  ‘Two full moons upon a slender bough,’ he muttered in a voice which she imagined was choked with passion.

  Hind was not to be outdone. Her hands found a path from above his waist to the unexplored regions below which were covered by baggy silk trousers. She felt him underneath the silk. She began to stroke his thighs. ‘Soft like dunes of sand, but where is the palm-tree?’ she whispered as her fingers gently brushed the dates and felt the rising of the sap.

  If any further advances were made, they would undoubtedly pre-empt the rites of the first night. But, Hind thought, if we stop now, the frustration, not to mention the long wait till our passion is finally consummated, will make life unbearable. Hind did not wish to stop. She had discarded every sense of propriety. With all her being, she wanted to make love to this man. She had taken so much vicarious pleasure from the unending descriptions supplied by maid-servants and giggling cousins in Gharnata and Ishbiliya, but now she wanted to know the real thing.

  It was Ibn Daud who, realizing this, organized a hasty retreat. He withdrew his hands from her body and gently removed hers from inside his trousers.

  ‘Why?’ she asked in a hoarse whisper.

  ‘I am your father’s guest, Hind!’ His voice sounded resigned and emotionless. ‘Tomorrow I will ask to see him alone and request his permission to make you my wife. Any other course would be dishonourable.’

  Hind felt the passion draining away.

  ‘I felt I was on the edge of something. Something which is more than just pleasure. Something indefinably pure. Now I feel on the threshold of despair. I think I have misjudged you.’

  A torrent of reassurances followed. Repeated declarations of his undying love. The high regard in which he held her intelligence. He had never met another woman like her, and all the while he was talking he was also kissing every toe on her feet and muttering a special endearment to each and every one.

  She did not speak. It was a silence more expressive than anything she could have said, for the truth was that having lost her temporarily, he had won her back. And yet her instinct that she had misread him was not as remote from the truth as his gestures suggested.

  Ibn Daud had never been with a woman before. His decision to disrupt the lovemaking was only partly explicable by his status in the household. He was surprised at how much Hind had succeeded in inflaming him, but the real reason he had pulled back was a fear of the unknown.

  Till now there had been only one great passion in the life of Ibn Daud, and that was a fellow student in al-Qahira. Mansur was the son of a family of prosperous and long-established jewellers in the port-town of Iskanderiya. He had travelled so extensively and to so many cities, including a boat journey to Cochin in southern India, that his stories had Ibn Daud in a state of perpetual enchantment. Add to that the love they both felt for good poetry and the flute, and that each had striking features and a questioning mind, and the friendship which grew up between them seems inevitable. For three years the two men lived in close proximity. They shared a room in the riwaq overlooking the mosque of al-Azhar.

  It soon became a triune relationship which concurrently fed their intellects, their religious emotions—they were disciples of the same Sufi shaykh—and, finally their sexual appetites. They had written poetry for each other in rhymed prose. This was composed in a language in which no pleasure was veiled from the other reader’s sight. During the summer months, when they were separated from each other by the necessity of spending time with their families, they both kept diaries in which they recorded every detail of their daily lives as well as the effects of sexual abstinence.

  Mansur had died in a shipwreck while accompanying his father on a trading mission to Istanbul. The inconsolable survivor could not bear the thought of living in al-Qahira any longer. It was this, more than any desire to study the works of Ibn Khaldun, that had brought him to Gharnata. He was drawn intellectually to al-Zindiq, but after several conversations felt that, while the crafty old fox was full of genius and learning, there was a lack of scruple in the stratagems he employed to outwit an opponent. At the end of one discussion of the poetry of Ibn Hazm, Ibn Daud had remembered a similar talk with Mansur. The memory had overpowered him. He had given way to unfeigned emotion. Naturally, he had not told al-Zindiq everything, but the old man was no fool. He had guessed. It was this that was worrying Ibn Daud. Al-Zindiq was a friend of this family. What if he confided his suspicions to Hind’s parents?

  As if guessing his thoughts, Hind fondled his hand and enquired innocently: ‘What was the name of the woman you loved in al-Qahira? I want to know everything about you.’

  Ibn Daud was startled. Before he could reply there was a scream and shouts of laughter as the maid-servants pounced on a mortified Yazid and dragged him into the glade.

  ‘Look who we found, Lady Hind!’ said Umayma, grinning shamelessly.

  ‘Let me go!’ shouted Yazid, the tears pouring down his face.

  Hind could not bear the sight of her brother upset in this fashion. She ran to Yazid and hugged him, but he kept his hands firmly at his side. Hind dried his tears with her hands and kissed his cheeks.

  ‘Why were you spying on me?’

  Yazid wanted to embrace and kiss her, tell her of his fears and worries. He had heard how Great-Aunt Zahra had run away and never come back again. He did not want his Hind to do the same. If they had been alone he would have blurted all this out, but the smile on Ibn Daud’s face stopped him. He turned his back and ran to the house, leaving behind him a bemused and bewildered sister.

  Slowly it was beginning to dawn on Hind that Yazid’s strange behaviour could only be explained in relation to her own state of mind. She had been so bewitched by those eyes, greener than the sea, that everything else had become secondary, even the voice of a lute. It was her carelessness that had upset her brother. She felt guilty. The intoxication of the embrace was all but forgotten.

  The sight of a distraught Yazid reminded her of her own irritation with Ibn Daud.

  ‘The truth is,’ she told herself, ‘that his honourable behaviour was nothing more or less than a refusal to recognize the beauty of our passion.’

  This annoyed her so much that she, who had almost burnt him with her flame, now resolved to teach Ibn Daud a few elementary lessons. He would soon discover that she could be colder than ice. She still wanted him, but on her terms. For the moment her main concern was to repair the breach with Yazid.

  The subject of Hind’s thoughts was lying with his head buried in his mother’s lap. He had burst in on Zubayda with the words: ‘That man was playing with Hind’s breasts. I saw them.’ Yazid had thought his mother would be horrified. She would rush to the scene of the crime and instruct the male servants of the house to whip Ibn Daud. The upstart from al-Qahira would be sent home in disgrace, and on his way to the village to find transport to Gharnata he might even be attacked by wild dogs. Instead Zubayda smiled.

  ‘Your sister is a grown woman now, Ibn Umar. Soon she will be married and will have children and you will be their uncle.’

  ‘Married to him?’ Yazid was incredulous.

  Zubayda nodded and stroked her son’s light brown hair.

  ‘But, but, he owns nothing. He is ...’

  ‘A learned man, my Yazid, and what he owns is in his head. My father always used to say that the weight of a man’s brains is more important than the weight of his purse.’

  ‘Mother,’ said Yazid with a frown. His eyes were like unsheathed swords and his voice reminded her so much of her husband at his most official that she could barely keep a straight face. ‘Have you forgotten that we cannot harvest grapes from prickly pears?’

  ‘True my brother,’ said Hind, who had entered the room unseen just in time to hear Yazid’s last remark, ‘but you know as wel
l as I that a rose is always accompanied by the thorn.’

  Yazid hid his head behind his mother’s back, but Hind, laughing and very much her old self again, dragged him away and imprinted dozens of kisses on his head, neck, shoulders and cheeks.

  ‘I will always love you, Yazid and more than any man I happen to marry. It is my future husband who should worry. Not you.’

  ‘But for the last month ...’ began Yazid.

  ‘I know, I know and I am truly very sorry. I did not realize that we had not spent time together, but all that is in the past. Let’s be friends again.’

  Yazid’s arms went round her neck and she lifted him off the ground. His eyes were shining as she put him down.

  ‘Go and ask the Dwarf what he’s cooking for supper tonight,’ instructed Hind. ‘I must talk to our mother on my own.’

  As Yazid scampered out of the room, mother and daughter smiled at each other.

  ‘How she takes after me,’ thought Zubayda. ‘I, too, was unhappy with love till I obtained permission to marry her father. In my case the delay was brought about by Umar’s mother, unsure of the blood that flowed through my veins. Hind must not go through all that just because the boy is an orphan.’

  Hind appeared to have divined her mother’s thoughts. ‘I could never wait as long as you did, while they discussed the impurities in your blood. It is something else that worries me. Be truthful now. What do you make of him?’

  ‘A very handsome boy, with a brain. He is more than a match for you, my child. What more could you want? Why the doubt?’

  Hind had always enjoyed a special relationship with her mother. The friendship that developed between them was due, in no small measure, to the relaxed atmosphere which prevailed in the house. Hind did not have to imagine what life could have been like had her father married again or kept the odd concubine in one of his houses in the village. She had visited her cousins in Qurtuba and Ishbiliya often enough to remember households in the grip of a permanently stifling atmosphere. Her cousins’ accounts of indiscriminate and casual lechery reminded her of descriptions of brothels; the accounts of infighting amongst the women filled her vision with images of a snake-pit. The contrast with life at al-Hudayl could not have been sharper.

  As she grew older, Hind found herself drawn closer to her mother. Zubayda, whose own upbringing, thanks to a freethinking father, had been unorthodox, was determined that the younger of her two daughters should not be subjected to the straitjacket of superstition or made to conform to any strictly defined role in the household. Kulthum, from her infancy, had been a willing prisoner of tradition. Hind—and even her father had noticed this when she was only two years old—was an iconoclast. Despite Ama’s numerous forebodings and oft-repeated warnings, Zubayda encouraged this side, of her daughter.

  Because of all this there was no doubt in Hind’s mind as to how she should respond to her mother’s question. She did not hesitate at all, but began to describe everything which had taken place that afternoon, making sure that not a single detail was excluded. When she had finished, her mother, who had been listening very intently, simply laughed. Yet the merriment masked a real concern. If Umar had been present he would at once have noticed the nervous edge to the laughter.

  Zubayda did not wish to alarm her daughter. Uncharacteristically, she embarked on an emollient course.

  ‘You’re worried because he would not let the juice of his palm-tree water your garden. Am I correct?’

  Hind nodded gravely.

  ‘Foolish girl! Ibn Daud behaved correctly. He is our guest, after all and seducing a daughter of the house while maidservants kept watch would not be a very dignified way of responding to your father’s kindness and hospitality.’

  ‘I know that! I know that!’ muttered Hind. ‘But there was something more which I can’t describe to you. Even when his hands were fondling me I felt the absence of passion in them. There was no urgency till I touched him. Even then he became frightened. Not of father, but of me. He has not known a woman before. That much is obvious. What I can’t understand is why. I mean when you and Abu defied his parents and went to ...’

  ‘Your father was not Ibn Daud! He was a knight of the Banu Hudayl. And when we went to Qurtuba we had already been married for several hours. Go and lie in the bath and let me try and solve this puzzle.’

  The sun was setting as Hind walked out into the courtyard. She stood still, hypnotized by the colours around her. The snow-covered peaks overlooking al-Hudayl were bathed in hues of light purple and orange; the small houses of the village looked as though they had been freshly painted. So engrossed was Hind by the beauty around her that her senses became oblivious to all else. A few moments ago she had felt cold and melancholy. Suddenly she was pleased to be alone.

  ‘Only yesterday,’ she thought, ‘if I had found myself like this in the sunset I would have pined for him, wanted him to be here by my side so that we could share the gifts of nature, yet today I am happy to be alone.’

  She was so deeply absorbed in her own thoughts that, as she began to walk slowly to the hammam she did not hear the sounds of merriment emanating from the kitchen.

  Yazid sat on a low stool as the Dwarf played the tambourine and sang a zajal. The servants had been drinking a potent brew which they had distilled from the leftovers in the casks near the al-Hudayl vineyards. The Dwarf was mildly drunk. His three assistants, and the two men whose sole task it was to transfer the food from the pots to the dishes and place it on the table, had imbibed too much of the devil’s piss. They were dancing in a circle while in the centre the Dwarf stood on a table and sang his song. Sitting on the steps outside the kitchen, a look of fierce disapproval on her face, was Ama. She had attempted to distract Yazid and drag him back to the house, but he was enjoying himself enormously and had refused to obey.

  The Dwarf stopped playing. He was tired. But his admirers wanted the performance to continue.

  ‘One last time,’ they shouted, ‘the song of Ibn Quzman. Sing it for our young master.’

  ‘Yes please, Dwarf,’ Yazid found himself joining in the chants. ‘Just one more song.’

  The Dwarf became very serious.

  ‘I will sing the ballad composed by Ibn Quzman over three hundred years ago, but I must insist that it is heard with the respect due a great master. There will never be a troubadour like him again. Any interruptions and I will pour this wine on your beards and set them alight. Is that clear, you boastful babblers?’

  The kitchen, which only a few seconds ago had resembled the scene of a drunken riot, became silent. Only the bubbling of a giant pan containing the evening meal could be heard. The Dwarf nodded to his assistant. The twelve-year-old kitchen boy produced a lute and began to test the strings. Then he nodded to his master and the tiny chef began to sing the zajal of Ibn Quzman in a voice so deep that it was overpowering.

  ‘Come fill it high with a golden sea,

  And hand the precious cup to me!

  Let the old wine circle from guest to guest,

  The bubbles gleaming like pearls on its breast,

  It were as if night is of darkness dispossessed.

  Wa Allah! Watch it foam and smile in a hundred jars!

  ’Tis drawn from the cluster of the stars.

  Pass it, to the melting music’s sound,

  Here on this flowery carpet round,

  Where gentle dews refresh the ground

  And bathe my limbs deliciously

  In their cool and balmy fragrancy.

  Alone with me in the garden green

  A singing girl enchants the scene:

  Her smile diffuses a radiant sheen,

  I cast off shame, for no spy can see,

  And ‘Wa Allah,’ I cry, ‘let us merry be!’

  Everyone cheered, and Yazid the loudest of all.

  ‘Dwarf,’ he cried in an excited voice, ‘you should leave the kitchen and become a troubadour. Your voice is beautiful.’

  The Dwarf hugged the boy and
kissed his head.

  ‘It’s too late for all that, Yazid bin Umar. Too late for singing. Too late for everything. I think you had better return with the information the Lady Zubayda asked you to bring back from the kitchen.’

  Yazid had forgotten all about his mother’s request.

  ‘What was it, Dwarf?’

  ‘You have already forgotten the contents of my sunset stew?’

  Yazid frowned and scratched his head but he could not remember a single ingredient. Bewitched by the wine song, he had forgotten the reason for his visit to the kitchen. The Dwarf began to remind him, but this time he made sure that the young boy’s memory would retain the information and so he declaimed the recipe in a rhythm and intonation which was very familiar to Yazid. The Dwarf’s sonorous voice was mimicking a recitation of the al-koran.

  ‘Listen carefully all ye eaters of my food. Tonight I have prepared my favourite stew which can only be consumed after the sun has set. In it you will find twenty-five large potatoes, quartered and diced. Twenty turnips, cleaned and sliced. Ten dasheens skinned till they gleam and ten breasts of lamb which add to the sheen. Four spring chickens, drained of all their blood, a potful of yoghurt, herbs and spices, giving it the colour of mud. Add to this mixture a cup of molasses and, wa Allah, it is done. But young master Yazid, one thing you must remember! The meat and vegetables must be fried separately, then brought together in a pan full of water in which the vegetables have been boiled. Let it all bubble slowly while we sing and make merry. When we come to the end of our fun, wa Allah, the stew is done. The rice is ready. The radishes and carrots, chillies and tomatoes, onions and cucumbers all washed and impatiently waiting their turn to join the stew on your silver plates. Can you remember all this, Yazid bin Umar?’

  ‘Yes!’ shouted Yazid as he ran out of the kitchen trying desperately to memorize the words and their music.

  The Dwarf watched the boy run through the garden to the house followed by Ama, and a sad smile appeared on his face.