The Hand of Fatima

by Ildefonso Falcones

  The threat of expulsion cast its shadow over their home. From that day on, Hernando paid closer attention to Rafaela’s movements around the house, her conversations with the children. He could hear her crying when she was alone. One night, when he took her in his arms, she pushed him away.

  ‘Leave me, I beg you,’ she said as he started to caress her.

  ‘Now more than ever, we need to be united, Rafaela.’

  ‘No, for the love of God!’ she sobbed.

  ‘But—’

  ‘What if I become pregnant? Have you thought of that? What would we do with another child?’ she murmured bitterly. ‘Only to see you expelled in a few months’ time, and having to leave me here pregnant?’

  Soon after this Hernando, ashen-faced and prematurely aged, decided to make one last effort: he would go to Granada, talk to Don Pedro and the others – to the archbishop himself if necessary.

  The next morning he told Miguel of his decision. As soon as he had learnt of the failure of his master’s petition, the groom had moved into their house in Córdoba, but Hernando had not heard him telling any of his stories, even to the children. The little ones could sense that something awful was about to happen, and went around sadly and silently. That morning, Miguel opened the doors for him to ride out on one of the colts, a fast, strong young animal. Hernando was ready to gallop all the way to Granada and ruin the horse’s health if necessary. As it was, he got no further than the street outside his house.

  ‘Where do you think you’re going?’ one of Gil’s soldiers said, stepping in front of him.

  ‘To Granada,’ Hernando replied, reining in his horse. ‘To see the archbishop.’

  ‘On whose authority?’

  Hernando handed him the safe conduct. The soldier glanced at it dismissively. ‘You don’t even know how to read!’ Hernando felt like shouting at him. Instead he tried to explain: ‘It’s a permit signed by the archbishop of—’

  ‘It’s not valid,’ the soldier cut in, tearing it up in front of him.

  ‘What are you doing?’ It was his last hope! Hernando could feel his blood boil. ‘You dog!’

  Hernando instinctively spurred the horse at the man, and then leapt off to pick up the pieces of the document. Before he had even touched the ground, the other soldier was threatening him with his sword.

  ‘Just try it!’ the soldier challenged him.

  Hernando wavered. The first soldier had recovered from the horse’s charge and was standing alongside him, also with a drawn sword. The colt was tugging at its reins. Hernando realized there was nothing to be done.

  ‘I only . . . I only wanted to pick up the pieces . . .’

  ‘I’ve already told you; it’s no use to you. You are not to leave Córdoba.’ He trampled on the archbishop’s safe conduct.

  ‘Go back inside,’ the other soldier ordered him, waving his sword in the direction of the house.

  Hernando walked slowly back, leading the horse. Miguel was waiting for him by the still-open doors. He had seen the whole thing.

  Hernando tried to send a letter to Granada but could not find a way to do so. All the muleteers from Valencia had been expelled; so too had the ones from Castile, La Mancha and Extremadura. The mule-drivers in the other kingdoms were forbidden to make any journeys.

  ‘They stop and search me whenever I leave the house,’ a sorrowful Miguel confessed. ‘And Rafaela is followed all the time. It’s impossible . . .’

  ‘Why don’t they get in touch with me?’ Hernando complained out loud. There was a note of desperation in his voice. ‘They must know my petition was rejected.’

  ‘No one can come anywhere near the house without passing through the cordon of the magistrate’s men,’ Miguel explained, trying to calm him. ‘They might have tried and been turned back.’

  Hernando knew that neither Don Pedro nor any of the translators would dare come to Córdoba in person. He was aware that the year before a book had been published, entitled The Antiquity and Excellences of Granada. In it the lineage of the Granada Venegas family was outlined, claiming that its members could trace their Christian roots back to the time of the Goths. And they were one of the most important families in the Muslim nobility! How ironic! The book, which had escaped the royal censorship, maintained that following the capture of Granada by the Catholic monarchs, Don Pedro’s ancestor Cidiyaya had seen a vision of Jesus Christ in the form of a miraculous cross in mid-air. The vision had called upon him to embrace the religion of his Goth forefathers. The Granada Venegas family renounced the Nasrid wa la galib ilallah (‘There is no victor but God’), which until then had been their motto, and instead substituted the extremely Christian ‘Servire Deo regnare est’. Who was going to call into question the purity of the blood of a family that, like Saint Paul, had been singled out by a divine hand?

  ‘They have already ensured their salvation,’ Hernando muttered. ‘Why should they be worried about a simple Morisco like me?’

  Hernando and his family had run out of money. Their larder was bare: the tenant farmers did not bring any provisions, and Rafaela was finding it difficult to buy food. Nobody would offer her credit, neither the Christians nor the Moriscos. And yet these daily hardships and the fact that her children were going hungry seemed to have given her the strength her husband increasingly lacked.

  ‘Sell the horses. At any price!’ Hernando ordered Miguel one day, after hearing Muqla complain in tears that he was hungry.

  ‘I’ve already tried,’ the groom replied to his surprise. ‘No one will buy them. A dealer whose word I trust has told me I wouldn’t even be able to sell them for a handful of coppers. The Duke of Monterreal has forbidden it. Nobody wants to get into difficulties with a councillor and a Spanish grandee.’

  Hernando shook his head dejectedly. ‘Perhaps they’ll recover their value once all this is over,’ he said to console himself. ‘Then Rafaela will be able to sell them at a fair price.’

  ‘I doubt it,’ said the other man. Hernando spread his palms in a gesture of helplessness. What further misfortunes could befall them?

  Miguel went on: ‘My lord, we have not been able to pay for the straw or the barley, the blacksmith or the saddler for some time now. And we can’t pay the wages of the day labourers and the grooms. The day you’re no longer here – if not before – all our debtors will come running, and a woman alone . . . well, you can imagine what will happen.’

  Hernando did not reply. What could he do? How were they going to survive?

  Miguel looked away. How did his master think he was keeping the farms and the horses going if not by getting into debt? It was Hernando himself who had ordered him to transfer the horses in the stables out to the stud, because they could not feed them any more.

  *

  They tried to sell the furniture and Hernando’s books for whatever they could get in a Córdoba that had become one vast market place. Thousands of Morisco families were trying to auction off their possessions in the streets, surrounded by old Christians who amused themselves by under-bidding each other. They laughed at men and women who had to contain their anger while they waited to see if any Christian would buy a piece of furniture they had bought with so much effort and hope a few years earlier, or beds where they had slept and dreamt of a better life. The Morisco artisans and merchants, cobblers and food-sellers begged their Christian competitors to buy their tools and machinery. Not a single Christian even turned up to look at the books and furniture Hernando brought out of his house, which Rafaela and the children kept a close eye on so that at least they would not be stolen.

  One night in despair Hernando went to try to find Pablo Coca. He was hoping he might at least win something at gambling, but his old friend was dead. As a last resort, even though he did not have a permit, Miguel went on to the streets to beg. The soldiers on guard outside the house laughed and joked when they saw him return each evening hopping along on his crutches with a few rotten vegetables stuffed into the satchel on his back. For his part, Hernando tr
ied every day to gain an audience with the bishop, the dean, or any of the prebends who were part of the Córdoba cathedral council. The bishop could save him if he endorsed the fact that he was a Christian: after all, he had done a lot of work for them, hadn’t he?

  He stood waiting for days in the courtyard at the entrance to the great building, together with many other Moriscos who had gathered for the same reason.

  Day after day the cathedral attendants snapped at them: ‘You won’t get anyone to see you.’

  Hernando knew this was true, that none of the priests who passed by would pay the Moriscos the slightest attention. Some looked straight through them; others scurried across the courtyard to avoid them. But what else could he do apart from wait for a show of the mercy that the Christians were so proud of? He could not think of any other solution. There was none! Rumours about the date for the expulsion grew more fervent day by day, and unless he received the backing of the Church, Hernando was condemned to leave Spain with Amin and Laila.

  What would happen to the rest of his family? That was the question he asked himself every night as he returned crestfallen to his house, piling up in the doorway the same pieces of furniture and the same books he had taken out that morning with Rafaela’s help.

  His children waited for him as if by his mere presence he could resolve all the problems they had faced during the long, tedious day of trying in vain to sell their belongings. Hernando forced himself to smile and allow them to rush into his arms. He longed to break down in tears, but forced himself instead to utter words of encouragement and affection, and to listen closely to the urgent, innocent tales they gabbled to him. The older ones must know what was going on, he thought to himself amid all the disruption; they could not escape the tension and fraught atmosphere that filled the entire city, and yet they probably had little idea of the consequences of the expulsion decree for a family such as theirs. They all waited anxiously for whatever scraps Miguel had managed to beg for supper; then when the children were asleep and Miguel had discreetly left them to themselves, Hernando and Rafaela talked over the situation. Neither of them dared say what they really thought.

  ‘I’ll see someone tomorrow,’ Hernando assured her.

  ‘Of course you will,’ Rafaela replied, feeling for his hand.

  The next day dawned, and they once more dragged furniture and books out into the street. Clustered round their mother, the children watched the two men set off: Miguel to beg, Hernando heading for the bishop’s palace.

  ‘By the nails of the Holy Cross, help me!’

  Hernando sprang forward from the crowd of Moriscos and knelt on the ground as the cathedral dean went by. The prebend stopped and looked down at him. He could tell by Hernando’s clothes who he was; his problems with the city council were well known.

  ‘You are the one who sought to excuse the deaths of our martyrs in the Alpujarra, aren’t you? You’re the son of a heretic!’ the dean said dismissively.

  Hernando crawled on his knees with arms outstretched to try to get closer to the church official. The man drew back in horror. The cathedral attendants came running over.

  ‘I . . .’ is all Hernando managed to say before they grabbed him under the arms and pushed him back into the crowd.

  ‘Why don’t you ask your false prophet for help?’ he heard the dean shout behind him. ‘Why don’t you all try that? Heretics!’

  67

  ON SUNDAY 17 January 1610, the feast day of Saint Anthony, the decree expelling the Moriscos of Murcia, Granada, Jaén, Andalusia and the town of Hornachos was published and proclaimed. The King forbade the new Christians to take any money, gold or silver, jewels or bills of exchange out of the country, apart from what was needed for their journey to the port of Seville (for the Moriscos of Córdoba) and the cost of their sea transport, which they themselves had to pay. The wealthier deportees were supposed to help those without means. After selling what they could of their possessions and tools of their trades for next to nothing, the Moriscos rushed to buy any lightweight goods they could find – cloths, silks, or spices – at inflated prices.

  Hernando and his family were in their kitchen. Rafaela was trying to scrape the mould off some bits of unleavened bread, while he tried to find a way to tell his sons and daughters what would happen to them now that the expulsion was imminent.

  ‘Children . . .’

  His voice failed him. He looked at each of them in turn: Amin, Laila, Muqla, Musa and Salma. He tried again to speak, but the tension of the past few months proved too much for him. He buried his face in his hands and burst into tears. For a few moments none of the others moved: the children stared terrified at their weeping father. Laila and little Salma began to cry as well. Miguel struggled to his feet and made as though to take the two youngest out of the room.

  ‘No,’ Rafaela stopped him. She looked exhausted, but her voice was calm. ‘Sit down, all of you. You need to know’, she went on once Miguel had collapsed into his chair again, ‘that in a little while your father, Amin and Laila will be leaving Córdoba. The rest of you will be staying here, with me.’

  Rafaela reached deep inside herself to be able to raise a smile. Unable to understand what was going on, Salma smiled as well.

  ‘When will they be back?’ asked little Musa.

  Hernando finally looked up and caught Rafaela’s eye.

  ‘It’s going to be a very long journey,’ she told her son. ‘They’re travelling to somewhere far, far away . . .’

  ‘Mother?’ The voice of their eldest son broke the silence that had followed her words. Amin had listened closely to the proclamation and understood what it meant. He knew they were being expelled from Spain, and that this was not a journey they could come back from. ‘If the case should arise’, the crier had proclaimed, ‘that for whatever reason they do not carry out this order and are found in my realms and dominions beyond said date, they will face the pain of death and confiscation of all their possessions. They will be so punished for this simple fact without any possibility of trial, sentence, or declaration.’ They would be killed if they came back! He had understood perfectly: any Christian had the right to kill them if they returned, without the need for any trial or even any explanation. ‘Why can’t you come with us: you, Uncle Miguel and the little ones?’

  ‘That’s right! We’ll all go!’ Musa agreed.

  Rafaela sighed, touched by her little boy’s innocence. How could she explain it to them? She looked to her husband for help, but he was still sitting in silence, staring into space, almost as though he was not there.

  ‘Because that is what God has decided,’ she told Amin.

  ‘No! It was the King!’ Laila contradicted her.

  ‘No!’ They all turned to stare at Hernando. ‘It was God, as your mother says.’

  Rafaela thanked him with a smile.

  ‘Children,’ Hernando went on, recovering his composure, ‘God has decided we must go our separate ways. You little ones are to stay here in Córdoba with your mother and Uncle Miguel. The older ones will come with me to Barbary. Let us all pray,’ he said, staring at Rafaela. ‘Let us pray to the God of Abraham, the God who unites us, that one day in His kindness and mercy He allows us all to be together again. And pray to the Virgin Mary; always commend yourselves to her in your prayers.’

  As he finished speaking he felt Muqla’s blue eyes on him. The boy was only five, but seemed to understand.

  As dusk fell that afternoon he sat with Rafaela by the fountain in the centre of their courtyard. When the stars came out, he called the two eldest children over to explain further about the separation.

  ‘The Christians will not allow your mother, who is an old Christian, or your brother and sister who are younger than six, to go with us to Barbary. They think any children aged more than six cannot be saved for Christianity and must therefore be expelled with their parents. That is why we are being split up.’

  ‘Let’s all run away together!’ Amin insisted with tears in his eyes. ‘Come w
ith us, Mother,’ he begged her.

  ‘Your mother’s brother, the magistrate, will never allow it,’ said Hernando. ‘Oh, my son, there are things you cannot understand.’

  Amin said no more. Trying to hold back his tears because he was the eldest, he nevertheless went over to his mother so that she could comfort him. Laila had sat at her feet. Hernando looked at the three of them: Rafaela took her boy’s hand and stroked her daughter’s hair. It was a moment to treasure. How many similar ones had he missed over the years by being shut in his library studying, writing, fighting for the peaceful co-existence of the two warring religions? All at once he recalled the lullabies his mother sang on the rare occasions when she could openly show him her love. He started to sing the first notes. Surprised, Amin and Laila looked up at him; Rafaela tried to stop her lips quivering. Hernando smiled at his children and went on singing the lullabies, as the water splashed softly from the fountain.

  *

  Later, after they had got the children to bed, they sat there quietly, trying to hear each other’s breathing.

  ‘I’ll make sure you get enough money,’ Hernando promised after a lengthy silence. Rafaela was about to say something, but he cut her short with a gesture. ‘Our lands and this house will become the property of the King: you heard what the crier said. The horses will be seized to pay our debts. That’s all we have, and you will be here with three children to feed.’ The fact of saying it like that, out loud, made it more real, more tangible and more terrible.

  Rafaela sighed. She could not allow Hernando to lose heart now. ‘I’ll manage,’ she whispered, snuggling close to him. ‘How can you send me money? It will be difficult enough for you as it is trying to get by with our two eldest. What do you intend to do? Train horses? At your age?’

  ‘You mean you think I couldn’t do it?’ Hernando had stiffened, but tried to say the words lightly; Rafaela responded with a strained smile. ‘No. I don’t think I’ll work with horses. Those small Arab ponies: they might be fine for the desert, but they’re nothing like our Spanish thoroughbreds. I know classical Arabic and how to write it, Rafaela. I think I can do it very well, especially if our children’s lives are at stake . . . and yours. God will guide my pen, I’m sure of it. Muslims hold scribes in high esteem.’