The Apprentice's Masterpiece (9 page)

Will anyone notice one more?

Call to Prayer

No muezzin calls
from a tall minaret.

No matter.
All the men know it.
It is time for prayer.

They stream from all over.
Carpenters, masons,
even men without work.
They make for the mosque
with sure, silent steps.

Many come from outside the quarter.
It is like watching birds
converge for a flight.

I don't join them yet. Instead,
I crouch in an alley
between two slender homes.

I don't want to be seen.
I'm afraid of more blows or, worse, jail.
I fear kindness too.

I must be alone. I must think.
But it gives me a glimmer of comfort
to witness these men and their small,
frequent journey to talk
to our God.

Stir

Black night.
Nothing stirs here.
Wait—that
was
something.

Was it? Was that deepened shadow,
so fleeting, a person?
Does someone look down
from that window up there?

If I'm seen, I must go.
That Christian—the villain who beat me,
and grinned—will say
I
menaced him.
With a weapon, no less.
I know how it goes.
That is more than enough
to earn death, for a Moor.

No, there is no one.
It was only a bird.

Bird

The bird
is an angel.

When I wake, I am under
a soft woolen blanket.
A bowl of clear water
is here by my head.
My brow is still damp
from the kiss of a cloth.

There is also a loaf of warm bread
and—praise Allah—a single boiled egg.

I look at the window.
I notice, in this light, that it's covered up
by a cunning black screen.
The person inside can see out—
but no one outside can see in.

Such screens are used
by young girls in books—
girls too pretty to be gazed upon.
Well, this is no time
for romantic tales.
I'm no ass like Ramon!

I must bathe my wounds
and move on.

Sanctuary

If ever I've needed to pray,
it is now.

I want to be pure for my God,
but the ablution baths
are up three large steps.
I'm too weak to climb.
Allah, I decide, will understand.
That bowl of clear water
I bathed my wounds with
will serve Him this time.

I pray, then I lie in a dark, quiet spot.
No one looks twice.
This mosque is our place, as Muslims,
to meet, and to pray, and to act
like the free men the Crown
says we are.

But it's locked at night.
There have been problems.
I've heard this before.

Some Christians can't manage
to hold their strong wine.

They come here to take out their anger
on what we hold dear.
Last year, a part of the
mihrab
—the holiest
spot in the mosque, facing Mecca—
was smashed into bits.

So at night I return
to the alley.

I know I am seen.
But I'm weak.

Each morning,
the loaf, and the egg,
and the cool, refilled bowl.

Each midday, I say
to myself: Move on.

But each evening,
I answer:
Just one night more.

Christians and Moors

This morning my bowl is knocked over,
stopping a dream of a boot
to my head.

An army has come to the quarter.
But this army is not one to fear—
except as a sign of times soon to be here.

It's merely a pageant of war—
an annual game of the Christians.
Young boys fierce as puppies skitter about.
The ones dressed as Muslims have tin scimitars
and beards scrawled on chins with burnt cork.

Of course it's the cross that carries the day.
The boys playing Christians thrust swords
at the sky, one foot on the backs of the
quick-vanquished Moors.

It's not always like that in life.
Remember the rout in the Axarquia?
We're harder to conquer
than children at play.
(Children instructed to lose!)

Last month, Ramon and I watched
as the army filed out of Cordoba,
off to fight the Muslims in the South.
There were twelve thousand men
riding on horses; behind them, on foot,
five times that.

They clearly know that their task will be hard!

Friend

This morning, the door closes just
as I turn round to look.
Missed him again.
Or, missed her.
Each night, I've tried to sit up
so I'll see who it is.
But my head and my heart
are too heavy.
I sleep.

I dream
of our Cordoban courtyard.
The soul-soothing shade
of its one lemon tree.

Mama is there.
We trade stories about
our darkest hours.
Our finest ones too.

When I wake here
on this patch of ground,
I can't recall one single thing
that we said in my dream.

But I feel refreshed.
And the cool morning air
seems to carry the scent
of a lemon tree.

Slaves

There is a feast in the mosque's small courtyard.
A cluster of African Muslims are honored guests.
They were captured by pirates and brought to Castile
for quick sale—in the very slave markets
I know too well.

But the good Mudejares of Cordoba
have saved them. They have pooled
their resources to buy the men free.

The African Muslims make speeches. Their words,
to me, sound more like Chinese
than Arabic. Are their accents strange?
Or has it just been so long
since I've heard my own tongue?

I do catch some. They speak of the tactics
of Fernando's army.
The Crown's soldiers pillage and kill without mercy.
Not only that—they raze and destroy
the very land they would have for their own!
They burn fields, smash down dams.
Leave nothing alive.

I lurk. My belly, amid these fine smells, does whirligigs.
When I think I can no longer stand it
I look at the ground.
A dish of meat stew steams by my knee.
Smells of cinnamon, garlic, and lamb.
And another scent too.

Just what a beautiful dove
of a woman would wear.

Friend (2)

This quarter has its own sheriff, a fat Mudejar
employed by the Queen.

Still, later that night, it's a Christian official
who comes to disperse us.

Muslims are breaking the law of the land
if they meet for longer than pleases the Queen.

So we go our own ways.
But when I get back

to my square of earth,
a man is there. I can see

that he's waiting for me. I stop.
He holds out his hand.

“Don't be afraid, son,” he says.
“I'm a friend.”
A round, perfect egg
lies there in his palm.

Free

I'm having a good laugh at myself.
Beautiful dove of a woman
, indeed! It seems
I'm not so above Ramon after all—
concocting a lithe young protectress
instead of this solemn old bear of a man.

Then I see her.

Only her eyes are uncovered.
But their light shines brighter
than seven boatloads of yellow
Bea hair.

“My daughter says she has fed you,
my friend,” the man says. “For a week!
You are lucky my daughter is fond
of defying the rules of her parents.”

Her eyes smile.
It's too sweet to endure.
But that is not why
I must look away.

It is as if I'm a small boy again, no more
than three. And I sit at a table with my
dear mother.
Time stands still, for a breath, in its glass.

We are, both of us, in this instant, here.
And both of us free.

Free (2)

It doesn't take long—talk turns to war
and shatters the spell.

“We want only peace,” this man says.
“To be left to ourselves.”

“But you are not free.” I shouldn't insult them.
Not when I owe them my life.
Yet, after so many days of unbroken silence,
my tongue yearns to talk.
“With all respect, sir, you belong to the Queen.
You pay extra taxes so you may exist.
This, in the place where we once
ruled as caliphs and emirs!”

The man is not angered.
He, too, wants to talk.
“You are young,” he tells me,
shaking his head.

“Maybe so. But sages deem
slave years are ten times as long
as ones spent in freedom,” I say.
“In those, I'm afraid, I'm old enough.
And I'm tired.”

My next words are more
for myself than for him.
“I want the rest of my years
to be free.”

Normal

As I walk to the mosque the next morning,
a crier stops me—stops us all—
in our tracks. What does he care
that it's time for our prayers?

A Moor, shouts the crier,
is wanted by the alcalde—the sheriff of the Queen.
He is sought for intent to murder a Christian,
and for consorting with a Christian girl.

All that is known are his age—
around seventeen—and initials, R.B.
Anyone knowing a Moor who fits
this description should report him at once
to the sheriff.

Ramon Benveniste
. The sheath from his knife…
it fell, I remember. I didn't retrieve it.
It must have worn his initials.

How much of what happened did Bea see?
No matter, I think.
She failed to stop it, or even
to try—I surely can't trust
that she'd vouch for me now!

For a moment, last night,
I dreamed of a life that was normal.
A father (well, father-in-law). A tall house.
A wife.

Leave off dreaming, Amir.
It is time to go home.

Leave-taking

I look round in vain
for a pen and some ink.

But what words are there
to explain everything?

It's too soon. We've only
just met. It would be saying hello
and good-bye in one breath.

I search in my satchel
for something to give.
I can't leave the knife. It might
bring them trouble.

Then—what's this?
A white linen square—Bea's gift.
I've not yet looked inside.

I look now.
Nestled in there
is a tiny white tooth.
On one of its sides
is a nasty brown hole
in the shape of a heart.

I can't leave this!

Perhaps I'll drop it
in some pit I pass,
or the Guadalquivir.
The sooner the better.
The tooth seems to bite through my satchel,
saying, “Watch out, Amir!”

The Return

It seemed likely I'd find
a new boy—a new slave—
asleep in my bed. No, Amir,
don't be bitter. You must never forget
Papa's kindness to you.

Second father, I know.
But no less true for that fact.
How can I leave him?
I can't
, my heart says.
Yet how can I stay? Though I am
a free man, Ramon can't grasp it.
Nor can the rest of Castile.

I wait long at our door, listening.

At first, I hear nothing.
Then, finally—there.
The snotty, moist rattle I'd know anywhere.
Ramon sleeps.

And it's there, by my pillow, just as before.
Tell me, Hafiz, what should I do?

Come, for our hopes are no more than a broken-down house.
Bring wine. Life's foundations are rooted in wind
.

Well, there's no wine around
and no money to buy it.
But I know I'll take you.

A Broken Mouthful

I think of leaving
the knife for Ramon.
But after what's happened,
it feels like a curse.
I don't truly wish
any evil on him.

And, once again,
I play with the thought
of a note. I hate to imagine what
Mama and Papa are thinking.
That I've hated it here, so I've run away.
That I've found them cruel.
That I didn't believe
they loved me like a son.

There's not enough ink
in Castile to convey
the armies of thoughts
that clash in my brain.

I would like to make peace
with Ramon.
But there are times
when peace just becomes
a broken mouthful.
A word that no tongue in the world
can pronounce.

Whip

I head South.

My only companion, the sun.
By mid-morning, it's no longer welcome.

I have always loved its kiss on my back.
But today it's the bite of a whip that won't quit.

I daydream of water.
When the caliphs ruled here in al-Andalus
they tapped rivers' gifts the way Orpheus
could draw songs from a reed.
Wells and fountains bordered every path.

The Christians believe that bathing
too much is immoral. What's more,
so they say, it makes a man lesser.
Weakened in combat, unlikely to win.

What a stink those battlefields will be!
I almost laugh as I think it.

My mirth is short-lived.
A young wraith on a sweating horse
comes charging at me from out of nowhere.

He yanks the cantina from my sagging neck.
Its buckle catches the cloth on my head;
he wrenches it free and is gone.

That vessel was empty. The joke is on him.
But what will I fill when I find the next stream?

If ever I do?

Shades of Brown

I am walking so weary
I can't lift my head.

I play at analogies,
as I often did with Papa.
He loved to compare
two different things, to find
their shared ground.

So: a likeness for each separate shade—
there are many—of brown.

There's the brown of my feet peeking out
from their sandals, as brown, you might say,
as two sun-baked bricks.

There's the brown of a grouse in the thicket
just there, lighter, like oven-warmed bread.

And then there's the heartbreaking brown
of a bare riverbed, rusty red like dried blood.

There's the golden-hued brown of these endless wheat fields
—a sunset, maybe, that has fallen to Earth.

There is–—
I just about trip
right over the men.

A roar of laughter goes up, a lion of mirth.
They must have been watching me walk
for an age.

“What's the matter, young thinker?
Have we not enough gear to merit your gaze?”

What parched breath I have
dies quick in my throat.
I have never seen so much steel in one place.
Five—no, six—cartfuls of weapons.
Crossbows and maces and long, glinting swords.
Behind those, two pipes much the size of large bears,
things I've seen only in pictures, in books.
But I know full well what they are.
They spit fire.