The Years of Rice and Salt

by Robinson, Kim Stanley

  'It does not seem like new land,' Bistami noted, sipping blissfully.

  'It was Muslim land for many centuries. The Umayyads ruled here from the second century until the Christians took the region, and the plague killed them.'

  'People of the Book,' Bistami murmured.

  'Yes, but corrupt. Cruel taskmasters to free men or slave. And always fighting among themselves. It was chaos then.'

  'As in Arabia before the Prophet.'

  'Yes, exactly the same, even thought the Christians had the idea of one God. They were strange that way, contentious. They even tried to split God himself in three. So Islam prevailed. But then after a few centuries, life here was so easy that even Muslims grew corrupt. The Umayyads; were defeated, and no strong dynasty replaced them. The taifa states numbered more than thirty, and they fought constantly. Then the Almoravids invaded from Africa, in the fifth century, and in the sixth century the Almohads from Morocco ousted the Almoravids, and made Sevilla their capital. The Christians meanwhile had continued to fight in the north, in Catalonia and over the mountains in Navarre and Firanja, and they came back and retook most of al‑Andalus. But never the southernmost part, the Nasrid kingdom, including Malaga and Granada. These lands remained Islam to the very end.'

  'And yet they too died,' Bistami said.

  'Yes. Everyone died.'

  'I don't understand that. They say Allah punished the infidels for their persecution of Islam, but if that were true, why would He kill the Muslims here as well?'

  Ibn Ezra shook his head decisively. 'Allah did not kill the Christians. People are wrong about that.'

  Bistami said, 'But even if He didn't, He allowed it to happen. He didn't protect them. And yet Allah is all‑powerful. 1 don't understand that.'

  Ibn Ezra shrugged. 'Well, this is another manifestation of the problem of death and evil in the world. This world is not Paradise, and Allah, when he created us, gave us free will. This world is ours to prove ourselves devout or corrupt. This is very clear, because even more than Allah is powerful, He is good. He cannot create evil. And yet evil exists in the world. So clearly we create that ourselves. Therefore our destinies cannot have been fixed or predetermined by Allah. We must work them

  out for ourselves. And sometimes we create evil, out of fear, or greed, or laziness. That's our fault.'

  'But the plague,' Zeya said.

  'That wasn't us or Allah. Look, all living things cat each other, and often the smaller eats the larger. The dynasty ends and the little warriors cat it up. This fungus, for instance, eating this fallen orange. The fungus is like a field of a million small mushrooms. I can show you in a magni‑ fying glass 1 have. And see the orange ‑it's a blood orange, see, dark red inside. You people must have bred them for that, right?'

  Zeya nodded.

  'You get hybrids, like mules. Then with plants you can do it again, and again, until you've bred a new orange. That's just how Allah made us. The two parents mix their stock in the offspring. All traits are mixed, 1 suspect, though only some show. Some are carried unseen to a later generation. Anyway, say some mould like this, in their bread, or even living in their water, bred with another mould, and made some new creature that was poison. It spread, and being stronger than its parents, supplanted them. And so the people died. Maybe it drifted through the air like pollen in spring, maybe it lived inside the people it poisoned for weeks before it killed them, and passed on their breath, or at the touch. And then it was such a poison that in the end it killed off all its food, in effect, and then died out itself, for lack of sustenance.'

  Bistami stared at the segments of blood‑red orange still in his hand, feeling faintly sick. The red‑fleshed segments were like wedges of bright death.

  Zeya laughed at him. 'Come now, eat up! We can't live like angels! All that happened over a hundred years ago, and people have been coming back and living here without any problems for a long time. Now we are as free from the plague as any other country. I've lived here all my life. So finish your orange.'

  Bistami did so, thinking it over. 'So it was all an accident.'

  'Yes,' Ibn Ezra said. 'I think so.'

  'It doesn't seem like Allah should allow it.'

  'All living things are free in this world. Besides, it could be that it was not entirely accident. The Quran teaches us to live cleanly, and it could be that the Christians ignored the laws at their peril. They ate pigs, they kept dogs, they drank wine ‑'

  'We here don't believe that wine was the problem,' Zeya said with another laugh.

  ibn Ezra smiled. 'But if they lived in their sewage, among the tanneries and shambles, and ate pork and touched dogs, and killed each other like the barbarians of the cast, and tortured each other, and had their way with boys, and left the dead bodies of their enemies hanging at the gates ‑ and they did all these things ‑ then perhaps they made their own plague, do you see what I mean? They created the conditions that killed them.'

  'But were they so different than anyone else?' Bistami asked, thinking of the crowds and filth in Cairo, or Agra.

  Ibn Ezra shrugged. 'They were cruel.'

  'More cruel than Temur the Lame?'

  'I don't know.'

  'Did they conquer cities and put every person to the sword?'

  'I don't know.'

  'The Mongols did that, and they became Muslim. Temur was a Muslim.'

  'So they changed their ways. 1 don't know. But the Christians were torturers. Maybe it mattered, maybe it didn't. All living things are free. Anyway they're gone now, and we're here.'

  'And healthy, by and large,' said Zeya. 'Of course sometimes a child catches a fever and dies. And everyone dies eventually. But it's a sweet life here, while it lasts.'

  When the orange and grape harvests were over, the days grew short. Bistami had not felt such a chill in the air since his years in Isfahan. And yet in this very season, during the coldest nights, the orange trees blossomed, near the shortest day of the year: little white flowers all over the green round trees, fragrant with a smell reminiscent of their taste but heavier, and very sweet, almost cloying.

  Through this giddy air came a cavalry, leading a long caravan of camels and mules, and then, in the evening, slaves on foot.

  This was the Sultan of Carmona, near Sevilla, someone said; one Mawji Darya, and his travelling party. The Sultan was the youngest son of the new caliph, and had suffered a disagreement with his elder brothers in Sevilla and al‑Majriti, and had therefore decamped with his

  retainers with the intent of moving north across the Pyrenees, and establishing a new city. His father and elder brothers ruled in Cordoba, Sevilla and Toledo, and he planned to lead his group out of al‑Andalus, up the Mediterranean coast on the old road to Valencia, then inland to Saragossa, where there was a bridge, he said, over the River Ebro.

  At the outset of this 'hegira of the heart', as the Sultan called it, a dozen or more like‑minded nobles and their people had joined him. And it became clear as the motley crowd filed into the ribat yard, that along with the young Sevillan nobles' families, retainers, friends and dependants, they had been joined by many more followers from the villages and farms that had sprung up in the countryside between Sevilla and Malaga. Sufi dervishes, Armenian traders, Turks, Jews, Zott, Berbers, all were represented; it was like a trade caravan, or some dream haj in which all the wrong people were on their way to Mecca, all the people who would never become hajjis Here there were a pair of dwarves on ponies, behind them a group of one‑handed and handless ex‑criminals, then some musicians, then two men dressed as women; this caravan had them all.

  The Sultan spread a broad hand. 'They are calling us the Caravan of Fools, like the Ship of Fools. We will sail over the mountains to a land of grace, and be fools for God. God will guide us.'

  From among them appeared his sultana, riding a horse. She dismounted from it without regard for the big servant there to help her down, and joined the Sultan as he was greeted by the Zeya and the other members of the ribat. 'My wife,
the Sultana Katima, originally from al‑Majriti.'

  The Castilian woman was bare‑headed, short and slender‑armed, her riding skirts fringed with gold that swung through the dust, ber long black hair swept back in a glossy curve from her forehead, held by a string of pearls. Her face was slender and her eyes a pale blue, making her gaze odd. She smiled at Bistami when they were introduced, and later smiled at the farm, and the water wheels, and the orange groves. Small things amused her that no one else saw. The men there began to do what they could to accommodate the Sultan and stay by his side, so that they could remain in her presence. Bistami did it himself. She looked at him and said something inconsequential, her voice like a Turkish oboe, nasal and low, and hearing it he remembered what the

  vision of Akbar had said to him during his immersion in the light: the one you seek is elsewhere.

  ibn Ezra bowed low when he was introduced. 'I am a sufi pilgrim, Sultana, and a humble student of the world. 1 intend to make the haj, but 1 like the idea of your hegira very much; 1 would like to see Firanja for myself. I study the ancient ruins.'

  'Of the Christians?' the Sultana asked, fixing him with her look.

  'Yes, but also of the Romans, who came before them, in the time before the Prophet. Perhaps 1 can make my haj the wrong way around.'

  'All are welcome who have the spirit to join us,' she said.

  Bistami cleared his throat, and Ibn Ezra smoothly brought him forward. 'This is my young friend Bistami, a sufi scholar from Sind, who has been on the haj and is now continuing his studies in the west.'

  Sultana Katima looked at him closely for the first time, and stopped short, visibly startled. Her thick black eyebrows knitted together in concentration over her pale eyes, and suddenly Bistami saw that it was the birdwing mark that had crossed the forehead of his tiger, the mark that had always made the tigress look faintly surprised or perplexed, as it did with this woman.

  ' 1 am happy to meet you, Bistami. We always look forward to learning from scholars of the Quran.'

  Later that same day she sent a slave asking him to join her for a private audience, in the garden designated hers for the duration of her stay. Bistami went, plucking helplessly at his robe, grubby beyond all aid.

  It was sunset. Clouds shone in the western sky between the black silhouettes of cypresses. Lemon blossoms lent the air their fragrance, and seeing her standing alone by a gurgling fountain, Bistami felt as if he had entered a place he had been before; but everything here was turned around. Different in particulars, but more than anything, strangely, terribly familiar, like the feeling that had come over him briefly in Alexandria. She was not like Akbar, nor even the tigress, not really. But this had happened before. He became aware of his breathing.

  She saw him standing under the arabesqued arches of the entryway, and beckoned him to her. She smiled at him. People said she had suffered a serious illness some years before, and that when she had recovered, she had seemed different.

  'I hope you do not mind me not wearing the veil. I will never do so. The Quran says nothing about the veil, except for an injunction to veil the bosom, which is obvious. As for the face, Mohammed's wife Khadijeh never wore the veil, nor did the other wives of the Prophet after Khadijeh died. While she lived he was faithful to her alone, you know. If she had not died he never would have married any other woman, he says so himself. So if she didn't wear the veil, 1 feel no need to. The veil began when the caliphs in Baghdad wore them, to separate themselves from the masses, and from any khajirites who might be among them. it was a sign of power in danger, a sign of fear. Certainly women are dangerous to men, but not so much so that they need hide their faces. Indeed when you see faces you understand better that we are all the same before God. No veils between us and God, this is what each Muslim has gained by his submission, don't you agree?'

  'I do,' Bistami said, still shocked by the sense of alreadyness that had overcome him. Even the shapes of the clouds in the west were familiar at this moment.

  'And I don't believe there is any sanction given in the Quran for the husband to beat his wife, do you? The only possible suggestion of such a thing is Sura 4:34, "As to those women on whose part you fear disloyalty and ill‑conduct, admonish them, next refuse to share their beds", how horrible that would be, "last beat them lightly". Daraba, not darraba, which is really the word "to beat" after all. Daraba is nudge, or even stroke with a feather, as in the poem, or even to provoke while love~ making, you know, daraba, daraba. Mohammed made it very clear.'

  Shocked, Bistami managed to nod. He could feel that there was an astonished look on his face.

  She saw it and smiled. 'This is what the Quran tells me,' she said. 'Sura 2:223 says that "your wives are as your farm to you, so treat her as you would your farm". The ulema have quoted this as if it meant you could treat women like the dirt under your feet, but these clerics, who stand as unneeded intercessors between us and God, are never farmers, and farmers read the Quran right, and see their wives are their food, their drink, their work, the bed they lie on at night, the very ground under their feet! Yes, of course you treat your wife as the ground under your feet! Give thanks to God for giving us the sacred Quran and all its wisdom.'

  'Thanks to God,' Bistami said.

  She looked at him and laughed out loud. 'You think 1 am forward.'

  'Not at all.'

  'Oh but 1 am forward, believe me. 1 am very forward. But don't you agree with my reading of the holy Quran? Have 1 not cleaved to its every phrase, as a good wife cleaves to her husband's every move?'

  'So it seems to me, Sultana. 1 think the Quran ... insists everywhere that all are equal before God. And thus, men and women. There are hierarchies in all things, but each member of the hierarchy has equal status before God, and this is the only status that really matters. So the high and the low in station here on Earth must have consideration for each other, as fellow members of the faith. Brothers and sisters in belief, no matter caliph or slave. And thus all the Quranic rules concerning treatment of others. Constraints, even of an emperor over his lowest slave, or the enemy he has captured.'

  'The Christians' holy book had very few rules,' she said obliquely, following her own train of thought.

  'I didn't know that. You have read it?'

  'An emperor over his slave, you said. There are rules even for that. But still, no one would choose to be a slave rather than an emperor. And the ulema have twisted the Quran with all their hadith, always twisting it towards those in power, until the message Mohammed laid out so clearly, straight from God, has been reversed, and good Muslim women are made like slaves again, or worse. Not cattle quite, but not like men, either. Wife to husband portrayed as slave to emperor, rather than feminine to masculine, power to power, equal to equal.'

  By now her cheeks were flushed, he could see their colour even in the dusk's poor light. Her eyes were so pale they seemed like little pools of the twilit sky. When servants brought out torches her blush was enhanced, and now there was a glitter in her pale eyes, the torchfire dancing in those windows to her soul. There was a lot of anger in there, hot anger, but Bistami had never seen such beauty. He stared at her, trying to fix the moment in his memory, thinking, You will never forget this, never forget this!

  After the silence had gone on a while, Bistami realized that if he did not say something, the conversation might come to an end.

  'The sufis,' he said, 1 speak often of the direct approach to God. It is

  a matter of illumination; 1 have . . . 1 have experienced it myself, in a time of extremity. To the senses it is like being filled with light; for the soul it is the state of baraka, divine grace. And this is available to all equally.'

  'But do the sufis mean women when they say "all"?'

  He thought it over. Sufis were men, it was true. They formed brotherhoods, they travelled alone and stayed in ribat or zawiya, the lodges where there were no women, nor women's quarters; if they were married they were sufis, and their wives were wives of sufis.

&n
bsp; 'It depends where you are,' he temporized, 'and which sufi teacher you follow.'

  She looked at him with a small smile, and he realized he had made a move without knowing he had done it, in this game to stay near her.

  'But the sufi teacher could not be a woman,' she said.

  'Well, no. They sometimes lead the prayers.'

  'And a woman could never lead prayers.'

  'Well,' Bistami said, shocked. 'I have never heard of such a thing happening.'

  'Just as a man has never given birth.'

  'Exactly.' Feeling relieved.

  'But men cannot give birth,' she pointed out. 'While women could very easily lead prayers. Within the harem 1 lead them every day.'

  Bistami didn't know what to say. He was still surprised at the idea.