The Book of Saladin (19 page)

“Amalric, King of Jerusalem, had died and had been succeeded by his fourteen-year-old son Baldwin, a poor boy afflicted with leprosy. Bertrand of Toulouse had given us information about Raymond, the boy’s uncle, the Count of Tripoli. He became the real power in the Kingdom of the Franj. Salah al-Din concluded a two-year peace with Baldwin. He did not want to be outflanked in Misr while he was shoring up Syria.

“The Sultan’s brother, Turan Shah, was left in charge of Damascus, and the Sultan, myself and his bodyguards returned to Cairo. We had been away for two whole years, but there were no problems. The Kadi al-Fadil had administered the state in the Sultan’s absence.

“He had done it so well that Salah al-Din, congratulating him, asked: ‘Al-Fadil, tell me something. Is there a real need for a Sultan? It seems to me that this state runs perfectly well without a ruler!’ The Kadi bowed with pleasure, but reassured the Sultan that without his authority and prestige he, the Kadi, could not have managed anything.

“As for me, Ibn Yakub, I think they were both right. You know something? In the mountains of Armenia, the father of Ayyub and Shirkuh commanded the loyalty of people because they knew he was one of them. He would defend them and their sheep and cattle against raiders from neighbouring villages.

“I know I’m getting very old and I may be simple-minded, but it seems to me that if you can maintain peace and defend your people, what title you give yourself is of no great importance.”

I looked at this old man closely. The wrinkles on his face seemed to have multiplied since I had first met him. He had only eight or nine teeth left in his mouth and was totally deaf in his left ear. Yet in his head lay decades of unsuspected wisdom, truths he had learnt through the rich experience which life had brought him. His tongue was always out of control and respected neither Sultan nor mamluk.

It was this capacity to speak whatever came into his mouth that made him indispensable to Salah al-Din, and before him to Ayyub and Shirkuh. It is often assumed that people in positions of power prefer sycophants and flatterers to those who speak unpleasant truths. This only applies to weak rulers, men incapable of understanding themselves, leave alone the needs of their subjects. Good rulers, strong sultans, need men like Shadhi who fear nothing.

As I observed him slowly chewing nuts in the winter sunshine, I felt a surge of affection for him sweep through my whole being. All of a sudden I wanted to know more about him. I knew his pedigree, but had he ever married? Did he have children? Or was he one of those men who always prefer their own sort to the presence of any female? I had wondered about this in the past, but my interest had waned and I had never questioned the old man. Today, for some reason unconnected with him, my curiosity had been aroused.

“Shadhi,” I said, speaking to him in a soft voice, “was there ever a woman in your life?”

His face, relaxed in the sun, acquired an alertness. The question startled him. He glared at me, a frown casting a giant shadow across his face. For a few minutes there was an oppressive silence. Then he growled:

“Has anyone been telling you stories about me? Who?”

I shook my head.

“Dear, dear friend. Nobody has spoken to me of you except with affection. I asked you a question because I wondered why someone as alive and wise as you are never built a family. If the subject is painful, forgive my intrusion. I will leave you alone.”

He smiled.

“It is painful, scribe. What happened took place seventy years ago, but I still feel the pain, right here in my heart. The past is fragile. It must be handled carefully, like burning coals. I have never spoken about what happened all those years ago to anyone, but you asked me with such affection in your voice that I will tell you my story, even though it is of interest to only me and affects nothing. Shirkuh was the only one who knew. I must warn you, it is not an unusual tale. It is simply that what happened burnt my heart and it never recovered. Are you sure you still want to hear me?”

I nodded and pressed his withered hand.

“I was nineteen years old. Every spring my sap would rise and I would find a village wench on whom to satisfy my lust. I was no different from anyone else, except, of course, for those lads who had difficulty in finding women and went up the mountains in search of sheep and goats. You look shocked, Ibn Yakub. Recover your composure. You asked for my story and it is coming, but in my own fashion. When we were children we used to tell each other that if you fucked a sheep your penis grew thick and fat, but if you went up a goat it became thin and long!

“I see that none of this amuses you, but life in the mountains is very different from Cairo and Damascus. The very function of these big cities is to curb our spontaneity and impose a set of rules on our behaviour. The mountains are free. Near our village there were three mountains. We could just lose ourselves there and lie back and watch the sun set, and permit nature to overpower us.

“One day my real father, your Sultan’s grandfather, raided a passing caravan and brought the plunder home. Part of what he had pillaged were a group of young slaves, three brothers aged eight, ten and twelve, and their seventeen-year-old sister.

“They were Jews from Burgos in Andalus. They had been travelling with their family near Damascus, and had been captured by bounty-hunters. The father, uncle and mother had been killed on the road, their gold taken by the traders. The children were being brought to the market in Basra to be sold.

“The sadness in the girl’s eyes moved me as nothing had done before, or has done since. She had clasped her brothers to her bosom and was awaiting her destiny. They were clothed, fed and put to bed. Our clan adopted them and the boys grew up as Kurds and fought many of our battles. As for the girl, Ibn Yakub, what can I say? I still see her before me: her dark hair which reached her waist, her face as pale as the desert sand, her sad eyes like those of a doe which realises that it is trapped. Yet she could smile, and when she smiled her whole face changed and lit the hearts of all those fortunate enough to be close to her.

“At first I worshipped her from a distance, but then we began to talk and, after a while, we became close friends. We would sit near the stream, near where the lilies with the fragrant scent grew, and tell each other stories. She would often start weeping as she remembered how her parents were murdered by the bandits. I could think of nothing else, Ibn Yakub. I asked her to become my wife, but she would smile and resist. She would say it was too soon to make such important decisions. She would say she needed to be free before she could decide anything. She would say she had to look after her brothers. She would say everything except that she loved me.

“I knew she cared for me, but I was annoyed by her resistance. I often became cold and distant, ignoring her when she came up to me and attempted to talk, ignoring her when she brought me a glass of juice made from apricots. I could see her pleading with her eyes for more time, but my response remained cruel. It was hurt pride on my part, and for us men of the mountains, dear scribe, our pride was the most important thing in the world.

“All my friends were aware that I was losing my head over her. They could see me going crazy with love, like characters we used to sing about on moonlit summer nights when we talked of conquering the world. My friends began to mock me and her. This made me even more determined to hurt her and offend her sensitivities and her feelings.

“How many times have I cursed this sky, this earth, this head, this heart, this ugly, misshapen body of mine, for not having understood that she was a delicate flower that had to be nurtured and protected. My passion frightened her. Soon her delight on seeing me turned to melancholy. As I approached, her face would fill with pain. She had become a bird of sorrow. Even though I was only twenty years old myself, I began to feel that I was fatal for all those who are tender and young.

“All this happened a long time ago, my friend, but have you noticed how my hand trembles as I speak of her? There is a tremor in my heart and I am beginning to lose my strength. I want to sink into the ground and die, for which the time cannot be too far away, Allah willing. You are waiting patiently for me to reach the end, but I am not sure if I can today. Now you look really worried. Let me finish then, Ibn Yakub.

“One evening a group of us young men had been drinking
tamr,
date wine, and singing the
khamriyya
and becoming more and more drunk and, in my case, unhappy. It was a really warm summer’s night. The sky was glittering with stars and the dull light of a waning moon was reflected in the water. I walked away from my group to the edge of the stream where she and I used to meet and talk. At first I thought I was imagining her presence. But my eyes had not deceived me. Feeling the heat of the evening, she had discarded her clothes. There she was, naked as the day she was born, bathing in the moonlight. The sight turned my head. I felt my senses taking leave of me, Ibn Yakub. May Allah never forgive me for what I did that night.

“I see from your frightened eyes that you have guessed. Yes, you are right, my friend. I was in the grip of an animal frenzy, though most animals are kinder to each other. I forced her against her will. She did not scream, but I could never forget the look on her face, a mixture of fear and surprise. I left her there by the stream, and made my way back to the village. She never returned. A few days later they found her body. She had drowned herself. You would have thought that an animal like me would have recovered, found other women, married and produced fine sons. Yet perhaps with her death the animal in me also died. My heart certainly did, and I think of it as buried near that little stream in the mountains of Armenia. I had discovered and lost a priceless treasure. I never looked at or touched another woman again. Alcohol, too, was banished from my life. Allah has his own ways of punishing us.”

Usually after one of his stories, Shadhi would wait for my reaction, discuss further details, and answer questions. Often we would share a glass of hot water or milk with crushed almonds, but not today. Today he slowly raised himself to his feet and limped away, probably cursing me inwardly for having compelled him to recall painful memories. He had said that the past was always fragile, and as I saw his back recede as he walked away, I thought of how he symbolised those very words in his own person.

I was stunned by his story. Forcing women was not an uncommon occurrence, but the punishment Shadhi had inflicted on himself was truly exceptional. This old man, to whom I was already greatly attached, now grew further in my estimation.

A
S WAS MY HABIT
, I entered the palace library to browse while I awaited my call from the Sultan. To my surprise, the person who came to fetch me today was the great scholar and historian Imad al-Din himself. Even though he was approaching his sixtieth year, there were not many white hairs on his head or in his beard. He was an imposing man, a good measure taller than both the Sultan and myself. One of his books,
Kharidat al-kasr wa-djaridat ahl al-asr,
an enlightening anthology of contemporary Arab poetry, had just been published, to great acclaim.

Usually he preferred to live in Damascus, but the Sultan had summoned him to Cairo, to help in the final preparations of the new jihad. Imad al-Din was regarded as a great stylist. When he recited poetry or read an essay, his reading was punctuated by appreciative remarks or exclamations. I respected his work greatly, but for myself, I prefer the simplicity of the scriptures. Imad al-Din’s constructions were too flowery, too elaborate, too precious and too lacking in spontaneity, to appeal to my slightly primitive tastes.

As we walked through several chambers, he told me that he had heard much good said about me. He hoped, one day, to have the time to read my transcription of the Sultan’s words.

“I hope you improve our ruler’s words even as you take them down, Ibn Yakub. Salah al-Din, may he reign for ever, does not pay much attention to style. That is your job, my friend. If you need my help, please do not hesitate to ask.”

I acknowledged his kind offer with a smile and a nod. Inwardly I was angry. Imad al-Din was a great scholar. Of this there could be no doubt. Yet what right had he to impose his will on the Sultan’s own very personal project, with which only I and no one else had been entrusted? We had reached the Sultan’s chamber, but only Shadhi was present.

“Please sit and relax,” said the old man as he shrugged his shoulders. “Salah al-Din has been called to the harem. It seems that Jamila has created a crisis of some sort.”

There was an awkward silence. Imad al-Din’s inhibiting presence meant that I would not ask and Shadhi would not volunteer any information regarding Jamila. It was well known that Imad al-Din did not care for women in any way. For him true satisfaction, intellectual and emotional, could only be derived from the company of men.

As if aware that we were both tense, Imad al-Din cleared his throat, which I took as indicating that he required the attention due to a person of his standing. Shadhi, no respecter of persons at the best of times, broke wind loudly and deliberately as he left the room, and I was alone with the great master.

As I racked my brains for a way to open a conversation with this illustrious scholar, I felt embarrassed and intimidated. It was said of Imad al-Din that he only need see or hear something once for him never to forget. If one had told him a story several years ago and, forgetting that fact, began to repeat it in his presence, he would remember the original so perfectly that he would immediately point out the discrepancies between the two versions—to the great embarrassment of the story-teller.

He could recall not only the time of day or night when a particular incident had taken place, but all the circumstances as well. Once the Sultan had asked him how he could remember so much. He explained that his method was first to recall details such as the tree under whose shade the listeners were resting when the story was told, or the boat trip they were taking, the sea-shore and the time of day: then everything would become clear. I had been present during this discussion several months before, but had been unable to write it down. I had become so fascinated by Imad al-Din’s way of talking and his soft, enticing voice that I had forgotten all else.