Shadows of the Pomegranate Tree (22 page)

Suddenly her mind pictures a young woman. Zahra does not remember her at all, but she is very familiar. She has Abdallah’s forehead and her own eyes. It must be their mother. Zahra screams to Death: ‘I have been waiting for you a long time. You’re going to come soon. Why not now? I can’t bear the agony of waiting much longer.’

‘Aunt Zahra! Aunt Zahra!’

She opened her eyes and saw Zubayda’s worried face.

‘Can I get you something?’

Zahra smiled weakly and shook her head. Then recalling something, she lifted her diamond brooch and handed it to Zubayda.

‘I am dying. This is for your daughter Hind. Make sure that boy from al-Qahira loves her. Then let them be wed. Tell Umar it was his dying aunt’s last wish.’

‘Should I fetch Uncle Miguel?’ asked Zubayda, wiping the tears off her face.

‘Let him sleep in peace. He would only try and give me the last rites, and I insist on dying a Muslim. Tell Amira to bathe me properly as she used to do in the old days.’

Zubayda was pressing Zahra’s legs and feet.

‘You’re not dying, Aunt Zahra. Your feet are as warm as burning embers. Whoever heard of anyone dying with warm feet?’

‘What a child you are, Zubayda,’ replied her aunt in a weak voice. ‘Have you never heard of the poor innocents who are being burnt at the stake?’

The shock on Zubayda’s face made Zahra laugh. The mirth was infectious and Zubayda joined her. Without warning the laughter disappeared and the life ebbed away from her. Zubayda clutched the old lady to her bosom and hugged her.

‘Not yet, Aunt Zahra. Do not leave us so soon.’

There was no reply.

Z
AHRA WAS BURIED THE
very next day. Her body had been carefully and lovingly bathed by Ama long before the sun rose. As the early morning breezes danced to welcome the first rays of the sun, the job was finished.

‘Why did you want
me
to do this, Zahra? My last punishment? Or was it a final gesture of friendship? If it hadn’t been for you, my lady, I would have married that man on the mountain who now gives himself airs and calls himself al-Zindiq. Borne him three children. Perhaps four! Made him happy. I’m talking like an old fool. Forgive me. I suppose God meant us to live apart. There! You’re all ready now for the last journey. I’m so glad you came back here. In Gharnata they would have put you in a wooden box and stuck a cross over your grave. What would Ibn Farid have said when you met him in the first heaven? Eh?’

Dressed in a pure white shroud, Zahra’s body lay on the bed, waiting for burial. News of her demise had travelled to the village and, such had been her reputation amongst the weavers and peasants, who saw in her a noblewoman prepared to marry one of them for love, that they had rushed to the house, before they began their day’s work, to pay their last respects and help lay the old woman’s body to rest.

Slowly four pairs of hands lifted the bed and placed it gently on four sets of sturdy shoulders. Umar and Zuhayr lifted the head, while Ibn Daud and the Dwarf’s strapping twenty-year-old son brought up the rear. Al-Zindiq and Miguel were in the centre, too old to offer their shoulders, but too close to the dead woman to leave her exclusively to a younger generation. Yazid followed closely behind his father. He had liked the old woman, but since he barely knew her, he could not grieve like Hind.

The women had mourned earlier. Early that morning Ama’s wails as she sang the praises of Zahra had woken every section of the household. Streams of sorrow had poured out of Hind’s eyes as she sought the comfort of Zubayda’s lap. They had all spoken about her human qualities. How she had been as a child, a young woman, and then there had been silence. Nobody wished to discuss what had befallen her in Qurtuba, or to mention that the bulk of her life had been lived in the maristan in Gharnata.

The funeral procession was moving very slowly on purpose. The family cemetery was situated just outside the perimeter of the high stone walls which guarded the house. Zahra would be buried with her family. A space had been reserved for her next to her mother, Lady Najma, who had died sixty-nine years ago, a few days after Zahra’s birth. She lay buried underneath a palm-tree. On the other side of her was Ibn Farid, the father she had loved and hated so much. The
hadiths
had insisted that followers of the Prophet should be buried simply and, in strict accordance with this tradition, none of the graves were marked. The Banu Hudayl claimed descent from one of the Companions of the Prophet and, regardless of whether this was true or pure invention, even the most irreligious members of the clan had insisted on the tradition of a simple mound of mud over their graves. Nothing more. The tiny, hand-made hillocks were covered with carefully tended grass and a dazzling array of wild flowers.

Zahra was lifted from the bed and laid in the freshly dug grave. Then Miguel, thinking he was Meekal, scooped up a handful of mud and threw it on his sister’s corpse and cupped his hands together to offer prayers to Allah. Everyone followed suit. Then each of the mourners embraced Umar bin Abdallah in turn and departed. It was only when Miguel saw Juan the carpenter crossing himself that he was reminded of his own ecclesiastical identity. He dutifully fell on his knees and prayed.

The Bishop of Qurtuba must have been in that posture for several minutes, for when he opened his eyes he found himself alone by the freshly built mound. It was at this moment that his powers of self-control seemed to desert him. He broke down and wept. A pain, long suppressed, had welled up inside him. Two little waterfalls poured down his cheeks and sought refuge in his beard. Miguel knew perfectly well that whoever is born must die. Zahra had reached her sixty-ninth year. All complaints to the Almighty were out of order.

It was the suddenness of his sister’s departure that had shaken him, just like the time, all those years ago, when she had left the house without saying goodbye to him. He had wanted so much to tell her all that had happened to him after that fateful day of shame; to describe the explosion of passions which had propelled him into an unknown space to defy the time-honoured taboo, and the horrendous aftermath; to discuss for the first time the death of Asma, a death which had deprived him of someone to blame for his own inner torment and unhappiness; the layers of guilt which still lay congealed somewhere in his mind; the disintegration of the old household and the birth of its successor. For the last three days he had been thinking of nothing else. Miguel now realized that he himself would die without one last conversation with the only member of the family who had belonged to the same vanished world. It was an unbearable thought.

‘All of it happened after you had left us in disgrace, Zahra,’ Miguel moaned in a soft voice. ‘If you had stayed everything might have been different. You took truth and generosity with you. We were left with fear and sorrow and malice. Your absence disfigured us all. I think our father really died of grief. He missed you more than he would ever admit. Almost half a century has now passed and I have not been able to talk about any of this with even a single human being. This failing heart of mine was preparing to unburden itself to you. On the day I was ready to talk, you, my sister, went and died. Peace be upon you.’

As he rose and looked one more time at the piece of earth that covered his dead sister, a familiar voice disturbed his solitude and startled him.

‘I did talk to her, Your Excellency!’

‘Ibn Zaydun!’

‘I was weeping on the other side of the grave. You did not see me.’

The two men embraced. Al-Zindiq told Miguel of how he had finally been rejected by Zahra; how the pride of the Hudayl clan had at long last reclaimed its prodigal daughter; how the real kernel had been thoroughly camouflaged; how, in the weeks before her death, she had actually suffered at the memory of their love; how she had come to feel that the worst of her injuries had been self-inflicted, and how she had begun to regret the break with Ibn Farid and her family, for which she accepted sole responsibility.

‘I always knew,’ Miguel commented, ‘that our father was the most important thing in her life.’

The happiness Miguel felt on hearing this news was as great as the sadness it had caused al-Zindiq. Bishop and sceptic, for a moment they remained motionless, facing each other. They had once belonged to the same sunken civilization, but the universe which each inhabited had been separated by an invisible sea. The woman who had tried to bridge the gap between their two worlds, and had been punished for her pains, lay buried a few yards from where they stood.

The fact that, during her last days on this earth, she had, in her heart, returned to the family, consoled her brother. For al-Zindiq, sad, embittered al-Zindiq, it was but another example of the deep-rooted divisions in al-Andalus, which had torn the children of the Prophet asunder. They had failed to build a lasting monument to their early achievements.

‘All that is left,’ al-Zindiq whispered to himself, ‘is for us to be inquisitioned. Yes! And to the very marrow of our sorry bones!’

Miguel heard, but kept silent.

As the two men returned to the house, one to join his family, the other to have breakfast in the kitchen, Zuhayr was on his way to Gharnata. He was riding at a fair pace, but his thoughts were on those whom he had left behind. The parting with his young brother had upset him the most. Yazid, as if guided by a mysterious instinct, had felt that he would not see his older brother ever again. He had hugged Zuhayr tight and wept, pleading with him not to go to Gharnata and certain death. The sight, witnessed by the entire household, had brought tears to the eyes of all, including the Dwarf, which had surprised Yazid and helped to distract him from the principal cause of his distress.

‘I will remember this red soil forever,’ thought Zuhayr, stroking Khalid’s mane as he rode away from the village. When he reached the top of a hill, he reined in the horse and turned round to look at al-Hudayl. The whitewashed houses were glistening in the light, and beyond them were the thick stone walls of the house where he had been born.

‘I will remember you forever: in the winter sun like today, in the spring when the fragrance of the blossoms makes our sap rise to the surface, and in the heat of the summer when the gentle sound of a single drop of water soothes the mind and cools the senses. Then, a few drops of rain to settle the dust, followed by the scent of jasmine.

‘I will remember the taste of the water from the mountain springs which flow through our house, the deep yellow of the wild flowers which crown the gorse, the heady mountain air filtered through the pines and the majesty of the palms as they dance to the breezes from heaven, the spicy breath of thyme, the fragrance of the wood fires in winter. And how on a clear summer’s day the blue sky is suddenly overpowered by darkness and little Yazid, clutching a piece of glass which belonged to our great-grandfather, waits patiently on the terrace outside the old tower for the stars to become visible once again. There he stands observing the universe till our mother or Ama drags him downstairs to bed.

‘All this,’ Zuhayr told himself, ‘will always be the passionate heart of my life.’

He pulled on the reins and, turning his back on al-Hudayl, gently pressed his heels on the horse’s belly, causing the animal to gallop towards the road which led to the gates of Gharnata.

Zuhayr had been brought up on a thousand and one tales of chivalry and knighthood. The example of Ibn Farid, whose sword he was carrying, weighed heavily on his young shoulders. He knew those days were over, but the romance of a last battle, of riding out into the unknown, taking the enemy by surprise and, who knows, perhaps even winning a victory, was deeply embedded in his psyche. It was this which had inspired his impulsive behaviour.

But, as he often told himself and his friends, his actions were not exclusively inspired by fantasies associated with the past or dreams of glory for the future. Zuhayr may not have been the most astute of Umar and Zubayda’s children, but he was, undoubtedly, the most sentimental.

When he had been half Yazid’s age news had come to the village of the destruction and capture of al-Hama by the Christians. Al-Hama, the city of baths, where he used to be taken to see his cousins once every six months. For them the baths and the hot-water springs were part of everyday life. For Zuhayr a visit to the famous springs, where the Sultan of Gharnata himself used to bathe, was a very special treat. They had all died. All the men, women and children had been massacred, and their bodies thrown to the dogs outside the city gates.

The Castilians had waded in blood and, if their own chroniclers were to be believed, they relished the experience. The entire kingdom of Gharnata, including many Christian monks, had been mortified by the scale of the massacre. A loud wail had been heard rising from the village as the citizens had rushed to the mosque to offer prayers for the dead and swear vengeance. All Zuhayr could think of that day was the cousins with whom he had played so often. The thought of two boys his own age and their three older sisters being killed without mercy had filled him with pain and hatred. His father’s sombre face as he announced the news: ‘They have destroyed our beautiful al-Hama. Ferdinand and Isabella now hold the key to Gharnata. It won’t be long before they take our city.’

Zuhayr had entered the deepest recesses of his memory and had begun to hear the old voices. Ibn Hasd was describing the reaction in Gharnata as news of the carnage in al-Hama reached the palace. Zuhayr pictured the old Sultan Abul Hassan. He had only seen him once, when he was two or three, but he could never forget that weather-beaten, scarred face and the trim white beard. It was this old man whose courageous but crazed attack and capture of the frontier town of Zahara had provoked the Christian response against al-Hama. He had rushed with his soldiers to save the town, but it was too late. The Christian knights had forced him to retreat. The Sultan had sent town-criers all over Gharnata, preceded by drummers and players of tambourines, whose loud but sombre music had alerted the citizens that a statement from the palace was on its way. People had crowded the streets, but the town-crier had uttered only one sentence: