A Sultan in Palermo

by Tariq Ali

  ‘I’ll repeat these wise words to my husband. Perhaps he will find use for them at the feast.’

  ‘And if you permit me, I would like to find use for you tonight.’

  And Balkis became pregnant for the second time.

  Idrisi would look back on these eight months on the estate as the happiest of his life. Uthman surprised him each day. His bad moments became fewer and fewer and his health improved considerably. His limp vanished altogether and the marks of deprivation on his skin disappeared. Elinore confided to her father that although he still loved sheep, she felt he was ready for marriage with a woman and perhaps her aunt could help. Possibly, her father replied, Balkis can find someone who is intelligent but who also resembled a sheep.

  Idrisi had realised that Uthman was secretly reading his book, but far from being angry he was thrilled. Once it was acknowledged, the two would discuss various sections and he would ask Uthman to compare al-Kindi with Hippokrates on a specific cure. Uthman knew every book in the library. Without the three hundred new additions, he had counted three thousand, four hundred and twenty-one volumes.

  And there was Balkis, whose visits to the estate became more and more frequent, the larger she grew. He had never loved a woman like this before, not even Mayya. He would see Balkis and Elinore, both heavy with child, walking together and comparing their stomachs. It pleased him to see them like this and once Uthman had wondered aloud whether his nephew or his brother would be born first. What if it was a niece and a sister, his father asked him. He had shrugged his shoulders. It did not matter to him at all. While Hamdis was left behind at the palace in the care of a wet-nurse, Afdal was growing up on the estate. Even when Balkis had to return to Siracusa, she left him in the safe hands of Eudoxia. But the grown-up Afdal adored was his uncle Uthman who spent a great deal of time with him and spoke to him as he would to a peer. The result was that the first words spoken by Afdal were beautifully expressed: friend, sheep, book, butter, goat, flute and Simeon.

  The book was finished two months before the new children were due and Idrisi became irritable. It was Balkis who suggested he and Uthman go and see Walid in Venice. The mere suggestion sent Uthman scurrying to his tree and he stayed there till Balkis and Elinore arrived to comfort him and apologise for the suggestion. ‘Please don’t get rid of me,’ was all he said to them. Balkis was mortified.

  Unlike his son, Idrisi was ready to travel again. He missed the sea, but he also knew that if he did not go to Walid now it might soon be too late. From there he would go to Alexandria and Cairo and renew long-forgotten friendships. He, who had been lost in his work for so long, now felt the need to be in a city where Believers ruled, but not any city. The barbarians are bad enough, he thought, but we have our own barbarians who burn books by our greatest philosophers and punish poets. If the real barbarians and ours ever got together, Allah alone would not be sufficient to help us.

  His mind was made up. He asked Uthman to read the whole manuscript carefully and iron out the inconsistencies. When he came back he would prepare the final draft.

  ‘When will that be, Abu?’

  ‘A few months at most. Look after Afdal for me.’

  This was the most painful farewell for they had become strongly attached to each other. After embracing his father, Uthman retreated to the tree once again. He did not like people leaving the estate.

  Idrisi wished Elinore and Simeon well and asked if they had thought of a name in case it was a boy.

  ‘Thawdor,’ replied Elinore.

  ‘Original,’ replied her father.

  Balkis had sworn to herself she would not weep and her eyes remained dry.

  ‘If our child is a girl and Elinore has a boy, I will call our daughter Mayya. Agreed?’

  ‘Agreed. And if it is a boy?’

  ‘Nuwas! Agreed.’

  ‘Agreed. And what if you both have girls?’

  ‘I hadn’t thought of that possibility.’

  ‘Let there be two Mayyas.’

  ‘I will. Muhammad I need to know the truth. Could you put a price on our love?’

  ‘How could I? It’s priceless.’

  ‘Then make sure you return to me. I don’t want to think of you as a beggar in a foreign land. This island is your home regardless of everything. And the elixir that cures your cough is not of the same quality elsewhere.’

  He kissed her eyes and then her lips.

  Two days sailing and Siracusa already seemed far away. Idrisi did not know it, but he had passed a merchant ship carrying Walid to Siqilliya. He wondered if they could ever take the island back from the Franks and get rid of the Lombards. But if we did succeed, what would we do this time that was different from the last? Would we be able to work together? Give the people something that they would die for without too much urging? The Trusted One had useful ideas, but the big problem was to break from tribal modes of thought and rise to the level of the culture we have created. But these are all golden dreams. How can one deal with hundreds of thousands of people who ignore their own interests and head proudly towards one disaster, then another?

  Perhaps he would not visit Alexandria this time. He would go to the city of the caliphs and mingle with the poets and philosophers and search for new books in the House of Wisdom. He would go to Baghdad, the city that will always be ours. The city that will never fall. The city that will never fall.

  LUCERA

  1250–1300

  EPILOGUE

  IDRISI MET WALID ON his return to Siqilliya and lived on his estate till his death eleven years after that of Rujari. His Medical Formulary was published in Baghdad, but did not contain the remedy for coughs. Uthman and Walid never married. Balkis’s son Nuwas became a wandering poet, leaving Siracusa when he was eighteen and moving from one city to another in al-Andalus. None of his poems have survived. Elinore’s daughter, Mayya, and her three brothers and their children continued to live on the estate where a larger church had to be constructed to accommodate the new flock. The Trusted One, after teaching philosophy and history to Khalid and his children, died peacefully at the age of eighty-four. The village he helped to re-found still exists and venerates his memory—though he is now regarded as a Christian saint.

  In the hundred years that elapsed after Idrisi’s death, members of his family fought in every single rebellion. While the Franks were fighting each other for the throne in Palermo, armed bands under the command of Khalid ibn Umar and Afdal ibn Muhammad had liberated large parts of western Siqilliya. The Franks sent expeditions to crush them, but were content to keep them confined to their strongholds. An uprising in Palermo had shaken Frankish self-confidence and severe restrictions had been imposed. The Friday khutba was forbidden and attendance of any mehfil was punished with death.

  Khalid died at the age of sixty as church bells were ringing to mark twelve hundred years of the Nazarene religion. His son Muhammad joined Afdal and for many years they harassed and destroyed many legions despatched by Palermo to crush them.

  It was Rujari’s grandson, Frederick, who finally destroyed the last remaining strongholds of the rebellion in Siqilliya. His love of Arabic culture and his own palaces and harems had led some Believers to hope that the golden age might return. But they had forgotten that young Frederick was also the grandson of Barbarossa. The two strains in him often led to compromises. He did not wish to massacre the Muslims, but simply to remove them and thus purify the island. In the twelve hundred and twenty-fourth year of the Christian era, those who refused to convert were asked to pack their belongings and were taken to large enclosures in all the key ports of the island. For twelve months, over fifty thousand Siqilliyans who refused to surrender spiritually were transported in ships to the mainland. Among them were Idrisi’s grandchildren, Muhammad ibn Afdal, Muhammad ibn Khalid and their families.

  In the region of Apulia, near an ancient Roman town where once Caesar had battled Pompey, there was a tiny village, Lucera, virtually uninhabited. This is where they were transported. Within two
years, Lucera had become one of the most prosperous towns of the south. The land surrounding the settlement was cultivated after years of lying fallow, workshops sprang up to produce arms and clothes and skilled craftsmen produced wooden inlays and ceramics that were no longer being made in Noto and Siracusa. Frederick built a castle for himself with its own harem. The settlers built a beautiful mosque with a large library, not far from the castle. The Pope excommunicated Frederick for permitting the construction of buildings where ‘cursed Muhammad is adored’. It is said that when the excommunication was read to him in his palace at Lucera, he was in his cups, surrounded by concubines and listening to music. Extremely annoyed by what the Pope had done, he responded in the time-honoured tradition of the Siqilliyan side of his family. He farted.

  Within the settlement, three young men began to organise secret mehfils. They would meet each Friday night and discuss the future of their people. Slowly more and more people, young and old, men and women, began to listen. Ibn Afdal would tell them that Lucera appeared peaceful and they were not persecuted, even though too many young men had been killed fighting Frederick’s war against other Nazarenes.

  ‘Having forced us to leave Siqilliya, he can be kind, but this same King who permitted us to build the Great Mosque here is destroying all our mosques in Palermo and the rest of the island. We have been discussing our future for many months now. I would suggest that we prepare to leave this place. It will not be safe after Frederick dies. I am not suggesting that we leave at once. They would kill us before we travelled too far. But each month one family should leave.’

  ‘Where should we go, Ibn Afdal? Is there anywhere left for us?’

  Fifteen men rose from the ground and stood on their feet in different parts of the mehfil.

  ‘Yes. If you wish to go you will speak to one of these men. Look at them carefully. If you know them try and forget their names. Go and talk with them.’

  Few wanted to leave and of these most wished to remain as close as possible to Siqilliya. One day, they thought, we will go back. We were born there. We built those cities. Why should we not return? They chose to go to Ifriqiya, to the cities of Mahdia and Bone which, Allah be praised, had been taken back by our people. If these towns could be won back, why not Palermo and Atrabanashi?

  When Frederick died in 1250, panic spread in the city, but it was already late. The first massacre took place some months later. By that time Ibn Afdal was dead. And Lucera, too, was about to perish. Not long after Frederick’s death, most of its people were massacred. A few thousand, mainly women, were forcibly converted. The mosque was burnt. Like the bright star that crosses the sky and is watched by all, but quickly disappears, the flourishing city vanished, the few traces buried beneath the ground. Frederick’s castle was left untouched.

  On the day that Frederick died, Ibn Afdal’s son Uthman and his cousins Umar and Muhammad decided it was foolish to wait any longer. They had long prepared for this day and they took advantage of the confusion. Their horses were ready for the journey. Umar and Muhammad left Lucera in the afternoon. They were headed for the coast from where they boarded a merchant ship to Ifriqiya.

  Uthman did not go with them. As a child his imagination had been fired by the stories his father had told him about the Trusted One and how they had organised different forms of resistance on the island, but the story he had liked the best was far from this world. He loved hearing of how the Franks had been defeated by Salah al-din and driven out of al-Quds and how the Great Mosque had been cleaned and made ready to thank Allah for the victory they had won. For many months Uthman had agonised over his destination. The more he thought, the more he realised he did not wish to die before his eyes had seen the dome on the mosque of al-Aqsa and kissed the earth where his people had triumphed over the barbarians. He took his family to Palestine.

  Ragusa-Palermo-Byron Bay-San Felice dei Circe-Lahore

  August 2001-August 2004

  Glossary

  Al-Andalus Islamic Spain

  Amir Commander

  Amir al-kitab Commander of the Book

  Amir al-bahr Commander of the Sea and from which ‘Admiral’ is derived

  Allahu Akbar God is Great

  Atrabanashi Trapani

  Balansiya Valencia

  Djirdjent Agrigento

  Gharnata Granada

  Habibi my love; from which ‘hey, baby!’ is not derived

  Hammam public or private baths

  Ifriqiya North Africa

  Ishbilia Seville

  Jiddu granddad

  Khutba the Friday sermon at the mosque

  Lanbadusha Lampedusa

  Malaka Malaga

  Marsa Ali Marsala

  mehfil a meeting/assembly, often by invitation; from which ‘mafia’ is not derived

  qadi/kadi the Chief Law Officer of a Muslim city with extraordinary powers to preserve order

  Qurlun Corleone

  Qurtuba Cordoba

  Shakka Sciacca

  Siqilliya Sicily

  About the Author

  Tariq Ali is a novelist, journalist, and filmmaker. His many books include The Clash of Fundamentalisms: Crusades, Jihads and Modernity; Bush in Babylon: The Recolonization of Iraq; Conversations with Edward Said; Street Fighting Years: An Autobiography of the Sixties; and the novels of the Islam Quintet. He is the coauthor of On History: Tariq Ali and Oliver Stone in Conversation and an editor of the New Left Review, and he writes for the London Review of Books and the Guardian. Ali lives in London.

  Turn the page to continue reading from the Islam Quintet

  ONE

  FORTY-FIVE YEARS AGO, when I lived in Lahore, I had an older friend called Plato, who once did me a favour. In a fit of youthful generosity, I promised to return it with interest if and whenever he needed my help. Plato taught mathematics at a posh school, but hated some of his pupils, the ones he said were there only to learn the fine art of debauchery. And being a Punjabi Plato, he asked whether I would repay his favour with compound interest. Foolishly, I agreed.

  I was in love, much to Plato’s annoyance. In his eyes love was simply an excuse for juvenile lechery and, by its very nature, could never be eternal. A chaste friendship was much more important and could last a lifetime. I wasn’t in the mood for this type of philosophy at the time and would have signed any piece of paper he laid in front of me.

  For a man whose judgements were usually strong and clear, Plato’s dislikes could be irrational and the border that separated his irony from his hatred was always blurred. He would, for instance, be deeply offended by students who clipped their fountain pens to the front pockets of their nylon shirts during the summer months. When asked why, he did not respond, but when pressed would mutter that if these were their aesthetic values while in the flower and heat of their youth, he feared to think what values they would espouse when they grew older. Even though this is not a good example of it, it was his wit that first drew one to him, long before he became known as a painter.

  Once, a friend of ours who had recently graduated and had been inducted into the foreign service sat down at our table, only to be confronted by Plato: ‘I’m going to change my name to Diogenes so I can light a lantern in the daylight and go in search of honest civil servants.’ Nobody laughed, and Plato, accustomed to being the hero of every conversation, left us for a while; the target of his barb asked how we could mingle with such a foul creature. We turned on him: How dare he speak in this fashion, especially as we had defended him? And anyway, muttered my friend Zahid, Plato was worth ten foreign-office catamites like him. A few more reflections along similar lines and the figure rapidly escalated to ‘at least a hundred foreign-service catamites and braggarts like him.’ That got rid of ‘him’. Then Plato returned and sat pensively for the rest of the afternoon, tugging at his black moustache at regular intervals, always a sign of anger.

  The manner in which Plato discussed his amorous conquests with close friends was nev
er totally convincing. His sexuality had always remained a mystery. He was often withdrawn and secretive and it was obvious that he had depths that we, a generation younger, could never hope to penetrate. There is much about him that I still do not know, though for almost a decade I was probably his closest friend. If only mirrors could reflect more than a clear and unwavering image. If we could also see the innermost character of the person gazing at his own reflection, the task of writers and analysts would become much easier, if not redundant.

  Plato never projected any extravagant self-image, and he always made a big deal of avoiding publicity, but in a fashion that sometimes led him to step right back into the limelight. When in windy phrases one of the older and highly respected Urdu poets who regularly assembled in the Pak Tea House on the Mall exceeded the limits of self-praise, Plato would mock him without mercy, hurling epithets and Punjabi proverbs that amused us greatly but made the poets nervous. When the poet under attack suddenly turned hard and contemptuous and denounced Plato as a mediocrity, jealous of his superiors, Plato would become extremely cheerful and insist on a test so that all assembled could determine which of his opponent’s poems were second-and third-rate. He would begin to recite one of the more obscure verses in a hilariously hideous fashion, and when the poet and his sycophants left, Plato applauded loudly. He never really believed that the poet in question was a bad poet, not even for a moment, but he was annoyed by the narcissism and mutual-admiration sessions that took place in the teahouse every day. He hated the vacant expressions that marked the faces of the sycophants who shouted ‘wonderful’ to each and every line that was recited. Like many of us, he did not fully appreciate what some of them had gone through in the preceding decades. Disappointments had worn many of them down, drained their strength, and some were now broken reeds, frittering away their energies in cafes and acting as cheerleaders for those who had acquired reputations in the literary world. Plato was well aware of this, but his own central core, a wiry steel rod, had remained unbent, and this made him intolerant towards others less strong than he was.