Shadows of the Pomegranate Tree (5 page)

Over half the villagers work on the land, either for themselves or directly for the Banu Hudayl. The rest are weavers, who work at home or on the estate, the men cultivating the worm and the women producing the famous Hudayl silk, for which there is a demand even in the market at Samarkand. Add to these a few shopkeepers, a blacksmith, a cobbler, a tailor, a carpenter, and the village is complete. The retainers on the family estate, with the exception of the Dwarf, Ama and the tribe of gardeners, all return to their families in the village every night.

Zuhayr bin Umar woke early feeling completely refreshed, his wound forgotten, but the cause of it still burning in his head. He looked out of the window and marvelled at the colours of the sky. Half a mile from the village there was a hillock with a large cavity marking the rocks at the summit. Everybody referred to it as the old man’s cave. On that hill, set in the cave, was a tiny, whitewashed room. In that room there lived a man, a mystic, who recited verses in rhymed prose and whose company Zuhayr had begun to value greatly ever since the fall of Gharnata.

No one knew where he had come from or how old he was or when he had arrived. That is what Zuhayr believed. Umar recollected the cave, but insisted that it had been empty when he was a boy and, had, in fact, been used as a trysting place by the peasants. The old man enjoyed enhancing the mystery of his presence in the cave. Whenever Zuhayr asked him any personal questions, he would parry the thrust by bursting into poetry. Despite it all, Zuhayr felt that the old fraud was genuine.

This morning he felt an urgent desire to converse with the dweller in the cave. He left his room and entered the hammam. As he lay in the bath he wished Yazid would wake up and come and talk to him. The brothers enjoyed their bath conversations a great deal, Yazid because he knew that in the bath Zuhayr was a captive for twenty minutes and could not escape, Zuhayr because it was the only opportunity to observe the young hawk at close quarters.

‘Who’s in the bath?’

The voice belonged to Ama. The tone was peremptory.

‘It’s me, Ama.’

‘May Allah bless you. Are you up already? Has the wound ... ?’

Zuhayr’s laughter stopped her in her tracks. He got out of the bath, robed himself and stepped out into the courtyard.

‘Wound! Let us not joke, Ama. A Christian fool attacked me with a pen-knife and for you I am already on the edge of martyrdom.’

‘The Dwarf is not yet in the kitchen. Should I make you some breakfast?’

‘Yes, but when I return. I’m off to the old man’s cave.’

‘But who will saddle your horse?’

‘You’ve known me since I was born. Do you think I can’t ride a horse bareback?’

‘Give that Iblis a message from me. Tell him I know full well that it was he who stole three hens from us. Tell him if he does so again, I will bring a few young men from the house and have him whipped publicly in the village.’

Zuhayr laughed indulgently and patted her on the head. The old man a common thief? How ridiculous Ama was in her stupid prejudices.

‘You know what I’d love for breakfast today?’

‘What?’

‘The heavenly mixture.’

‘Only if you promise to threaten that Iblis in my name.’

‘I will.’

Fifteen minutes later Zuhayr was galloping towards the old man’s cave on his favourite mount, Khalid. He waved to villagers on their way to the fields, their midday meal packed in a large handkerchief, attached to a staff. Some nodded politely and kept on walking. Others stopped and saluted him cheerfully. News of his confrontation in Gharnata had reached the whole village, and even the sceptics had been forced to utter the odd word of praise. There is no doubt that Zuhayr al-Fahl, Zuhayr the Stallion, as he was known, cut a very fine figure as he raced out of the village. Soon he was a tiny silhouette, now disappearing, now restored to view, as the topography dictated.

The old man saw horse and rider walking up the hill and smiled. The son of Umar bin Abdallah had come for advice once again. The frequency of his visits must displease his parents. What could he want this time?

‘Peace be upon you, old man.’

‘And upon you, Ibn Umar. What brings you here?’

‘I was in Gharnata last night.’

‘I heard.’

‘And ... ?’

The old man shrugged his shoulders.

‘Was I right or wrong?’

To Zuhayr’s great delight the old man replied in verse:

‘Falsehood hath so corrupted all the world

That wrangling sects each other’s gospel chide;

But were not hate Man’s natural element,

Churches and mosques had risen side by side.’

Zuhayr had not heard this one before and he applauded. ‘One of yours?’

‘Oh foolish boy. Oh ignorant creature. Can you not recognize the voice of a great master? Abu’l Ala al-Ma’ari.’

‘But they say he was an infidel.’

‘They say, they say. Who dares to say that? I defy them to say it in my presence!’

‘Our religious scholars. Men of learning ...’

At this point the old man stood up, left his room, followed by a mystified Zuhayr, and adopted a martial pose as he recited from the hill-top in the loudest voice he could muster:

‘What is Religion? A maid kept so close that no eye may view her;

The price of her wedding-gifts and dowry baffles the wooer.

Of all the goodly doctrine that from the pulpit I have heard

My heart has never accepted so much as a single word!’

Zuhayr grinned.

‘Al-Ma’ari again?’

The old man nodded and smiled.

‘I have learnt more from one of his poems than from all the books of religion. And I mean
all
the books.’

‘Blasphemy!’

‘Just the simple truth.’

Zuhayr was not really surprised by this display of scepticism. He always pretended to be slightly shocked. He did not wish the old man to think that he had won over a new disciple so easily. There was a group of young men in Gharnata, all of them known to Zuhayr and one of them a childhood friend, who rode over twenty miles to this cave at least once a month for lengthy discussions on philosophy, history, the present crisis and the future. Yes, always the future!

The mellow wisdom they imbibed enabled them to dominate the discussion amongst their peers back in Gharnata, and occasionally to surprise their elders with a remark so perceptive that it was repeated in every mosque on the following Friday. It was from his friend Ibn Basit, the recognized leader of the philosopher’s cavalry, that Zuhayr had first heard about the intellectual capacities of the mystic who wrote poetry under the name of al-Zindiq, the Sceptic.

Before that he had unquestioningly accepted the gossip according to which the old man was an eccentric outcast, fed by the shepherds out of kindness. Ama often went further and insisted that he was no longer in full possession of his mind and, for that very reason, should be left to himself and his satanic devices. If she had been right, thought Zuhayr, I would be confronting a primal idiot instead of this quick-witted sage. But why and how had this hostility developed? He smiled.

The old man had been skinning almonds, which lay soaked in a bowl of water, when Zuhayr arrived. Now he began to grind them into a smooth paste, adding a few drops of milk when the mixture became too hard. He looked up and caught the smile.

‘Pleased with yourself, are you? What you did in the city was thoughtless. A deliberate provocation. Fortunately your father is less foolish. If your retainers had killed that Christian, all of you would have been ambushed and killed on the way back.’

‘In Heaven’s name, how do you know?’

The old man did not reply, but transferred the paste from a stone bowl into a cooking pan containing milk. To this concoction he added some wild honey, cardamoms and a stick of cinnamon. He blew on the embers. Within minutes the mixture was bubbling. He reduced the fire by pouring ash on the embers and let it simmer. Zuhayr watched in silence as his senses were overpowered by the aroma. Then the pan was lifted and the old man stirred it vigorously with a well-seasoned wooden spoon and sprinkled some thinly sliced almonds on the liquid. Only then was it poured into two earthenware goblets, one of which was promptly presented to Zuhayr.

The young man sipped it and made ecstatic noises.

‘Pure nectar. This is what they must drink in heaven all the time!’

‘I think once they are up there,’ muttered al-Zindiq, pleased with his success, ‘they are permitted something much stronger.’

‘But I have never tasted anything like this ...’

He stopped in mid-sentence and put the goblet down on the ground in front of him. He had tasted this drink somewhere once before, but where? Where? Zuhayr stared at the old man, who withstood the scrutiny.

‘What is the matter now? Too few almonds? Too much honey? These mistakes can ruin the drink, I know, but I have perfected the mixture. Drink it up my young friend. This is not the nectar which the Rumi gods consumed. It is brain juice of the purest kind. It feeds the cells. Ibn Sina it was, I think, who first insisted that almonds stimulated our thought-processes.’

It was a feint. Zuhayr saw that at once. The old man had blundered. Zuhayr now remembered where he had last tasted a similar drink. In the house of Great-Uncle Miguel, near the Great Mosque, in Qurtuba. The old man must have some connection. He must. Zuhayr felt he was close to solving some mystery. What it was he did not know. The old man looked at the expression on the face in front of him and knew instinctively that one of his secrets was close to being uncovered. Before he could embark on a major diversion, his guest decided to go on the offensive.

‘I have a message for you from Ama.’

‘Ama? Ama? What Ama? Which Ama? I do not know any Ama.’

‘My father’s wet-nurse. She’s always been with our family. The whole village knows her. And you, who claim to know everything that goes on in the village, do not know her? It is unbelievable!’

‘Now that you explain it becomes clear. Of course I know who she is and how she always talks of matters which do not concern her. What about her?’

‘She instructed me to inform you that she knew who had stolen three of our egg-laying hens ...’

The old man began to roar with laughter at the preposterousness of such a notion. He, a thief?

‘She said that if you did it again she would have you punished in front of the whole village.’

‘Can you see any hens in this cave? Any eggs?’

‘I don’t really care. If you need anything from our house all you have to do is let me know. It will be here within the hour. I was just passing on a message.’

‘Finish your drink. Should I heat some more?’

Zuhayr lifted the goblet and drained it in one gulp. He inspected the old man closely. He could be any age above sixty or perhaps sixty-five. His head was shaved once a week. The snow-white stubble growing on it meant that he was late for his weekly visit to the village barber. He had a very sharp, but small nose, like the beak of a bird, a wrinkled face of olive-brown hues, whose colour varied with the seasons. His eyes dominated everything else. They were not large or striking in the traditional sense, but the very opposite. It was their narrowness which gave them a hypnotic aspect, especially in the middle of heated discussions, when they began to shine like bright lamps in the dark or, as his enemies often said, like those of a cat on heat.

His white beard was trimmed, too neatly trimmed for an ascetic—an indication perhaps of his past. Usually, he was dressed in loose white trousers and a matching shirt. When it was cold he added a dark-brown blanket to the ensemble. Today, as the sun poured into his one-room abode, he was sitting there without a shirt.

It was the wrinkles on his withered chest which gave the real indication of his age. He was, undoubtedly, an old man. But how old? And why that irritating, sphinx-like silence, which contrasted so strangely with his open-minded nature and the fluency of his speech, whenever Zuhayr queried his origins? Not really expecting an answer, the son of Umar bin Abdallah none the less decided to pose the question once again.

‘Who are you, old man?’

‘You mean you really don’t know?’

Zuhayr was taken aback.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Has that Ama of yours never told you? Clearly not. I can see the answer in your face. How incredible! So, they decided to keep quiet after all. Why don’t you ask your parents one day? They know everything there is to know about me. Your search for the truth might be over.’

Zuhayr felt vindicated. So his instincts had been right after all. There was some link with the family.

‘Does Great-Uncle Miguel know who you are?’

The old man’s features clouded. He was displeased. His gaze fixed itself on the remains of the almond drink, and he sunk deep in thought. Suddenly he looked up.

‘How old are you, Zuhayr al-Fahl?’

Zuhayr blushed. From al-Zindiq’s lips, the nickname he had acquired sounded more like an accusation.

‘I will be twenty-three next month.’

‘Good. And why do the villagers call you al-Fahl?’

‘I suppose because I love horse-riding. Even my father says that when he sees me riding Khalid he gets a feeling that the horse and I are one.’

‘Complete nonsense. Mystical rubbish! Do you ever get that feeling?’

‘Well, no. Not really, but it is true that I can get a horse, any horse you know, not just Khalid, to go faster than any of the men in the village.’

‘Ibn Umar, understand one thing. That is not the reason they call you al-Fahl.’

Zuhayr was embarrassed. Was the old devil launching yet another line of attack to protect his own flank?

‘Young master, you know what I’m talking about. It isn’t just riding horses, is it? You jump on their women whenever you get the chance. I am told that you have a taste for deflowering the village virgins. The truth now!’

Zuhayr stood up in a rage.

‘That is a lie. A gross calumny. I have never entered a wench against her will. Anyone who says otherwise I challenge to armed combat. This is not a joking matter.’