The Father of Locks

by Andrew Killeen

  I had been living on a ship for almost two years, and had become a capable swimmer. However the shore was a long way off. I struggled through the heaving water, choking and gasping while the waves slapped my face and dunked my head, but seemed to get no closer. My sodden clothes weighed me down, and I shed them as I went. Even so I could feel my strength ebbing. My last thought as I slipped beneath the surface was that this was a kinder fate than life as a pirate’s catamite.

  That I survived was a miracle. Certainly I seemed wondrous to the villagers on whose beach I was washed up, white skinned and naked. Some thought I was a marid, a water spirit, and wanted to throw me back. Then I began to mutter unconsciously, and they decided instead to take me in.

  I had come to the coast of Ifriqiya, and fallen among Berbers. They were simple people, but practised Islam after their own fashion, and the headman spoke Arabic. After they had nursed me back to health, I told him of my adventures. He nodded solemnly, and said he knew of someone who could help me.

  A week later a tall man in black robes came into the hut where the villagers had placed me. He was a Badawi, an Arab of the desert. He looked me over but said nothing, ignoring my greeting and questions. Then he reached down, and, with strong hands, bound my arms and legs together. I was a slave once more.

  Three

  Concluding The Marvellous Adventures of Ismail al-Rawiya, And, The Tale of the Eunuch, the Wazir and the Chief of Police

  The Badawi handed over gold to the villagers, and took me away with him. He rode a magnificent black stallion, but I was tied to the back of a mule. Our progress was slow, therefore, as we trekked eastward along the coast. He was so oblivious to my voice that I wondered whether he was deaf; until, at last, he acknowledged my increasingly desperate pleas to be allowed to relieve myself.

  So we continued, until I lost count of the days. I tried to engage the Badawi with songs, stories and conversation, but he ignored all my efforts, and in the end I settled into the same sullen silence as my owner. All day we travelled, and every night he bound and gagged me before setting camp. At least he abstained from the foul practices of the pirate captain. Whether this was a matter of morality or of taste, I could not say. Perhaps the villagers had told him of my revenge on my violator.

  Finally we arrived at the city of Tiaret. I had visited the ports of western Andalus during my time with the brothers, but never before had I seen a place of such wealth and splendour. The great ramparts seemed to reach to the sky – although, of course, they are nothing to the walls of the City of Peace. As we passed through the streets I was stunned by the clamour of voices, babbling in a hundred different tongues. There were turbaned Muslims, Jews in skullcaps and bare headed Christians. I saw not only camels for the first time, but also elephants, and, in cages, lions.

  Our destination was the slave market. The Badawi spoke to several dealers, and I was poked, pushed and probed by rough fingers. At last an agreement was reached, and money changed hands. The Badawi shoved me onto a bench, next to a dozen bedraggled women and children, and walked away. I never even knew his name.

  I had already learned the bitter lesson, that life can be hellish for the slave of a cruel master. I therefore decided to take a hand in choosing my fate. Since leaving the village I had eaten only the Badawi’s scraps, and my wrists and ankles were covered in sores where I had been bound. As a succession of scowling villains examined me, it was easy to let my tongue loll stupidly, to squint and drool, and generally make myself into a very unappealing specimen.

  I am not sure what it was about Hermes that made me choose him. Despite common prejudice, it is not possible to discern sexual preference from physical appearance. I could not be certain he was not a pederast, or a violent bully. He was old, and physically frail, which reassured me. However I think there was a glint of intelligence in his eyes, and an air of innocence in his demeanour, and it was on these that I staked my future.

  As he came near, peering myopically at the slaves, I called out the only Latin phrase I could remember from my father’s rituals:

  “Miserere mei, et exaudi orationem meam …”

  “Have pity on me, and hear my prayer …”

  He looked over in my direction, then shook his head as if hearing things. I called out again:

  “Miserere mei, et exaudi orationem meam!”

  The old man stood in front of me, staring as if a dog had just spoken. He addressed me in Latin, then in what I guessed must be Greek. I shook my head desperately, and he made to move away. I did not want to lose this fish now that I had hooked him, and called out in Arabic:

  “Please, master, buy me. I can read and write, sing songs and tell stories. You will not regret the purchase!”

  The slaver smacked my head so that my ears rang, but the old man said:

  “I don’t know why you punish him. He does a better job of selling himself than you do of marketing your wares. How much is this one?”

  Having heard me boast of my literacy, the slaver had doubled my price, but the old man haggled like a veteran of the suq. Before long, he took hold of the rope that bound me and led me back to his home.

  My luck had turned again. Hermes the Kritan was a gentle soul. He had been a slave himself, taken as a child when the island of Kriti was invaded by Muslim exiles from Andalus. For most of his life he had worked as scribe and secretary to a merchant in Alexandria, until he was given his freedom on his master’s death.

  However, my good fortune went beyond having a benevolent master. For Hermes had a plan, by which he hoped to earn enough to end his days in comfort. His idea was to purchase promising young slaves, teach them to read and write, and sell them on for the higher price that educated boys attracted. I was to be his first subject.

  At first he was annoyed when he discovered my promised literacy consisted only of a basic knowledge of the Latin alphabet. However I learned quickly, and he soon regained his enthusiasm for the project. He taught me both Arabic and Greek letters, and when we were not studying I served him, cooked for him and ran his errands.

  I had never been so happy. Although I had enjoyed sailing with the brothers, their lives were narrow and dull. The long days on the cramped dhow were only varied by visits to drab fishing ports to barter with barbarians. Tiaret, on the other hand, was a cosmopolitan city. The Amir promoted a policy of religious tolerance, cannily recognizing the economic benefits this brought. The city was a regional nexus for both trade and intellectual thought.

  It was the latter that thrilled me, even more than the colourful riches of the suqs. The written word opened doors onto the whole world, and other, infinite, imagined worlds. I devoured learning like a caterpillar in a cabbage patch. But it was poetry that was my greatest passion. Poetry was the philosopher’s stone, which transmuted cruel reality into something strange and beautiful.

  Cruel reality was to reassert itself, however, and show me a different side of kindly Hermes. My fellow pupils never appeared, as had been the plan. Then there were the occasions when we had to lie on the floor in silence until the creditors went away. Gradually I realized that the Kritan, for all his intelligence, was an idle dreamer who was hopeless with money. One evening, after I had been with him for three years, he called me to him.

  “My son,” (for so he had taken to addressing me), “the evil day is upon us, when I have to sell you. A pity, for I have come to rely on you, and we have only just started on the Epigrams of Agathias Scholasticus, which I was looking forward to reading with you. However, money is short, and I have no choice. Unless, that is, you would perform a service for me …”

  I did not understand why he would ask this of me, his slave, nor why he tugged on his beard so nervously.

  “Master, I will do anything you require of me.”

  “Good, good. Then come with me.”

  We headed out into the twilit streets. The fear had begun to grow in me that he planned to pimp me to a deviant for sex, but it seemed out of character in the old man. Instead we arrived at
an impressive house on a quiet street. Hermes spoke again.

  “A friend promised to lend me some gold, but he has had to leave town on business. He will not mind if you hop over this wall and bring his strongbox to me. You will find it in the room with the yellow door. Here is the key.”

  I nodded, but Hermes grabbed my arm.

  “And mind you make no noise. His wife is ill, and if you disturb her, he will be very angry with me. Go only to the room with the yellow door.”

  Clambering over the wall presented no difficulty. I found myself in a courtyard, where rows of washing hung to dry. Ducking through the sheets and robes I came to a portico which sheltered a wall with three doors. Identifying the yellow one was tricky in the half-light, but the key slid easily into the lock. The room was bare inside, but for a small chest in the corner. I picked it up and headed back.

  When I reached the wall I faced the problem of how to get the chest, which was heavy for its size, over. In the end I managed by leaping up, hooking one hand over the edge, and swinging the box up to rest it on the top. I then climbed up myself, dropped the chest into Hermes’ arms, and slipped down after it. We scurried away into the night.

  The loan was a generous one, and for several months we lived well. Eventually, though, the creditors came back, and we had to seek further assistance. In fact, over the ensuing years, we received a steady stream of loans and gifts from Hermes’ charitable friends, of coin and carpets and jewellery. Unfortunately, they were very busy people, and I never met any of them in person. Collecting the bounty always necessitated a night-time visit to their homes.

  After the first such visit, they were too busy to remember to leave keys, so the Kritan, with some embarrassment, taught me how to pick a lock using crooked needles. They were also very unfortunate in their sickly wives. On the few occasions when I accidentally disturbed the household, they were quite annoyed, and we had to leave in a considerable hurry.

  I was not a fool. Nor was I naive; in my eleven years, I had seen more than most see in a lifetime. I knew what was really going on. But the air of innocence that had first drawn me to the old man was compelling. We carefully maintained the fiction of the beneficent friends throughout a crime spree that was discussed everywhere in Tiaret, except between the two people responsible for it.

  Hermes had forgotten his plan of educating slaves. His talk now was all of Baghdad. Word of the wonders of the new city had reached Ifriqiya, and the idea was irresistible to a dreamer like the Kritan. I had begun to write poetry of my own, and he hoped that I would find a wealthy patron among the aristocracy of the Khalifate.

  However, we continued to live from hand to mouth. No money was set aside, no arrangements were made that would carry us through Egypt, across Sinai and beyond Palestine to our Eden in Iraq. The generosity of Hermes’ friends became increasingly hard to access, their wives increasingly restive and irritable.

  It could not last. But then, what can? We were in the suq. Hermes was negotiating the sale of a silver goblet, which had been donated by a nephew of the Amir. I was examining my reflection in the back of a shiny copper pan hanging on the stall. I had become very concerned about my beard. This growth, although invisible to the casual observer, occupied a great deal of my time, as if I could encourage its development by staring at it from different angles and counting the hairs. Then a voice rang out:

  “Thief ! Thief ! That goblet belongs to my master!”

  Sometimes, when I remember that afternoon, Hermes ran too. He was slow, and old, and had been increasingly unwell, but I grabbed his hand and dragged him after me. We ducked down an alley, but he knew that they would soon be upon us.

  “Leave me. There is no sense in both of us being caught. You have been like a son to me, Ismail. I give you your freedom and appoint you my heir. Take anything you can carry from my house, and leave the city. Go to Baghdad. Live the life of which we dreamed.”

  I hesitated, but he nodded, and I fled.

  Other times I recall running alone. When I remember it that way, I do not feel bad. There really was no point in both of us losing our lives, and I had more of it to lose than the old man. I am sure he would have said those things, that it was what he was thinking. But it was a very long speech to give when being pursued by an angry mob.

  Ransacking the house is very clear in my memory. My heart was pounding and my ears straining for the first sounds of approaching vengeance. I knew where the treasure was hidden, but in the end I took only food and a couple of scrolls. Manuscripts in those days were more expensive than jewels or carpets. Each work we had read together had to be sold for the next to be bought. However, I had copied out some of my favourite passages to practise writing, and it was with these, and the Satires of al-Nabighah, that I headed east.

  It took me a thousand days to reach Baghdad. I walked most of the way, although occasionally I begged a ride with a camel train, or on a cart. I sang for coppers, told stories and jokes, and wrote letters for the illiterate. At other times I stole, when I had no other way to eat. I was given the name al-Rawiya, the Teller of Tales. And as I grew closer to the city, the rumours grew more enticing. They told of the wise and cultured Khalifah, of the unimaginable luxury of his court, of the fabulous rewards to be won by poets who find favour there.

  And they told of the House of Wisdom, the most magnificent collection of manuscripts since the Great Library of Alexandria. They told, too, of the tower. They said it housed lost writings of the ancients, looted from the ashes of the Great Library itself. Some even said that there were books of the Athenian Aristutalis, who is called the Philosopher, the First Teacher, and who was tutor to al-Iskander the Great. I dared to dream that these might include the “Peri Poietikes”, his legendary work on the art of poetry.

  I came, great Wazir, as one besotted with love or hashish. I was drawn as the moth is drawn to the candle. And if God wills that I am burned by the brightness of the flame, then better that than to live in darkness. I do not beg for my life, great Wazir. That is yours to take, or to leave alone. I beg only that, if I am to die, I might have a few hours in the tower, to consume a last feast of learning before the end.

  ***

  After I had finished, there was a silence. When the Wazir spoke, he addressed not me, but the eunuch.

  “Well, what an entertaining sprite you have brought before us, Salam. It must be brave, to have scaled the tower of the House of Wisdom. It must be clever, to have unlocked the secrets of the Chamber of the Ancients. And it is a pretty one, too. So what do you say, Speckled One? Do we release this alien being, to run wild in the sewers of the city?”

  The eunuch licked his lips with a dry tongue. I realised in a flash of understanding that his position in society, his very life, depended on his ability to give the right answers to questions such as these. The Wazir knew that too, and clearly delighted in teasing him with ambiguous problems and conflicting hints.

  Salam drank noisily from his goblet, stealing time. However he was given respite from his dilemma by a servant, who came bowing his apologies, but urgently sought the ear of the Wazir. While the Persian walked away in muttered discussion with the newcomer, the Police Chief shifted irritably.

  “Chamber of Ancients! Load of nonsense, anyway. If Fadl ibn Rabi has his way, those books will be freely available to anybody who wants them, and I must say I agree with him.”

  The eunuch was glad to change the subject.

  “Because the Holy Quran commands us to penetrate the secrets of heaven and earth?”

  Ibn Zuhayr looked at him distastefully.

  “No, fool. Because the easiest way to prevent lawbreaking is not to make things illegal unless you have to.”

  The eunuch ignored the insult, and seized the opportunity to try out an argument before having to commit himself in front of the Wazir.

  “You must agree, though, that the boy cannot be pardoned. For if we allowed theft to go unpunished, order would collapse and we would be no better than beasts.”

 
“If I might remind you, esteemed master, there was no theft from the House of Wisdom.”

  Salam’s pimpled face purpled with his rage that I dared to interrupt him.

  “Do not offer me that false coin, boy! You have just stood there and admitted to a notorious career of burglary in front of three of the most important men in the land.”

  “But the Sharia states that the criminal who repents should not face mutilation.”

  Even the Police Chief smirked at this. Apparently he had been more riled by Salam’s presumption, in ranking the three of them as equals, than by my continued quoting of Holy Law. I did not sense he liked me any better, but he was amused by the eunuch’s discomfort.

  Whatever Salam’s final opinion might have been, it was no longer important when the Wazir returned to us.

  “Speckled One, I believe you owe me a thousand dinars. I would be grateful if you would fetch them immediately, in coin of gold.”

  It took no magic to read Salam’s thoughts, as he contemplated mentioning that the wager had not yet been settled, then realised it would be wiser to keep silent. Instead, he scuttled away to arrange the matter with his steward. The Wazir turned to me.

  “I have decided you may keep your hands, Ismail al-Rawiya. I have a job for them to do.”

  The household slaves seemed to be accustomed to rapid changes of status, and responded quickly to this new situation. They let me go and brought me a stool and a cup of water, although Ilig the Khazar sheathed his sword only reluctantly, and scowled at me as he did so. My arms had been stretched for so long that they stayed sticking out at my sides for several minutes. By the time I was able to put shaking hands around the cup Salam had returned with a leather bag. The Wazir took it from him.

  “So you like poetry, boy? Then I shall send you to visit a poet. We shall discover how long your enthusiasm lasts, when you encounter the real thing.”