Leo Africanus (37 page)

‘The pyramids can't be far from here.'

‘Exactly.'

Encouraged by this information I continued:

‘Is that where we're going?'

‘Exactly.'

‘Do you come here each week to see those round buildings?'

She was overcome by a frank and devastating laugh at which I could only feel offended. To show my disapproval, I got down to the ground and hobbled my camel. She hastened to come back towards me.

‘I'm sorry that I laughed. It was because you said that they were round.'

‘I didn't invent it. Ibn Batuta, the great traveller, says exactly that they have a “circular shape”.'

‘That was because he never saw them. Or perhaps from very far off, or at night, may God forgive him! But do not blame him. When a traveller tells of his exploits, he becomes a prisoner of the admiring chuckles of those who listen to him. He no longer dares to say “I don't know”, or “I haven't seen” for fear of losing face. There are lies of which the ears are more guilty than the mouth.'

We had recommenced our progress. She went on:

‘And what else did he say about the pyramids, this Ibn Batuta?'

‘That they were built by a sage who was well acquainted with the movements of the stars, and who had foreseen the Flood; that was why he built the pyramids, on which he depicted all the arts and
sciences, to preserve them from destruction and oblivion.'

Fearing further sarcasms, I hastened to add:

‘In any case Ibn Batuta stated that these were only suppositions, and that no one really knows what these strange structures were built for.'

‘For me, the pyramids have been built only to be beautiful and imposing, to be the first of the wonders of the world. They must certainly have had some function, but that was only a pretext provided by the prince of the time.'

We were just reaching the summit of a hill, and the pyramids stood out clearly on the horizon. She held back her camel and stretched out her hand to the east, in a gesture which was so touched with emotion that it became solemn.

‘Long after our houses, our palaces and ourselves have disappeared, these pyramids will still be there. Does that not mean, in the eyes of the Eternal One, that they are the most useful?'

I put my hand on hers.

‘For the time being, we are alive. And together. And alone with each other.'

Casting a look around her, she suddenly adopted a mischievous tone:

‘It's true that we are alone!'

She pushed her mount up against mine, and, lifting her veil, kissed me on the lips. God, I could have stayed thus until the Day of Judgement!

It was not I who left her lips; nor was it she who separated herself from me. It was the fault of our camels who went away from each other too soon, threatening to overbalance us.

‘It's getting late. What if we were to have a rest?'

‘On the pyramids?'

‘No, a little further on. A few miles from here there is a little village where the nurse who brought me up lives. She waits for me every Monday evening.'

A little to the side of the village there was a fellah cottage, covered in mud, at the end of a little raised path which Nur took, begging me not to follow her. She disappeared into the house. I waited for her, leaning against a palm tree. It was almost dark when she returned, accompanied by a stout easygoing old peasant woman.

‘Khadra, this is my new husband.'

I jumped. My staring eyes encountered a frown on Nur's face,
while the nurse was beseeching Heaven:

‘Widowed at eighteen! I hope that my princess will have better luck this time.'

‘I hope so too!' I cried spontaneously.

Nur smiled and Khadra mumbled an invocation, before leading us towards an earthen building near her own, and even more cramped.

‘It isn't a palace here, but you will be dry and no one will disturb you. If you need me, call me through the window.'

There was only one rectangular room, lit by a flickering candle. A faint smell of incense floated around us. Through the unshuttered window came a long lowing of buffaloes. My Circassian put the door on the latch and leaned against it.

Her tousled hair fell first, then her dress. Around her bare neck lay a ruby necklace, the central stone hanging proudly between her breasts. Around her bare waist, a slender belt in plaited golden thread. My eyes had never looked upon a woman so richly undressed. She came up and whispered in my ear:

‘Other women would have sold off their intimate jewellery first. But I keep them. Houses and furniture can be sold, but not the body, not its ornaments.'

I held her to me:

‘Since this morning I have resigned myself to one surprise after another. The pyramids, your kiss, this village, the announcement of our marriage, and now this room, this night, your jewels, your body, your lips . . .'

I kissed her passionately. Which dispensed her from confessing that as far as surprises went I had only heard the ‘
Bismillah
' and the rest of the prayer was to follow.

But that did not come to pass before the end of the night, which was deliciously endless. We were lying down beside one another, so close that my lips trembled at her whisperings. Her legs formed a pyramid; her knees were the summit, each pressed close to the other. I touched them, they separated, as if they had just been quarrelling.

My Circassian! My hands sometimes still sculpt the shape of her body. And my lips have forgotten nothing.

When I awoke, Nur was standing up, leaning against the door as she had been at the beginning of the night. But her arms were heavy and her eyes had a false smile.

‘Here is my son Bayazid whom I conceal as though he were a child of shame!'

She came forward and placed him, like an offering, on my hands which were open in resignation.

921 A.H.
15 February 1515 – 4 February 1516

This son was not of my blood, but he had appeared to bless or to punish the deeds of my flesh. He was thus mine, and I would have needed the courage of Abraham to have sacrificed him in the name of the Faith. Is it not in the blade of a knife brandished by the Friend of God above a pyre that the revealed religions meet? I did not dare to commit this sacred crime, which I praise each year in the feast of al-Adha. However, that year, duty called me to do so straight away, because a Muslim empire was in the process of being born before my eyes, and this child was threatening it.

‘One day, Bayazid, son of ‘Ala al-Din, will make the throne of the Ottomans tremble. Only he, the last survivor of the princes of his line, will be able to raise the tribes of Anatolia. Only he will be able to reunite the Circassian Mamelukes and the Safavids of Persia around him and cut down the Grand Turk. Only he. Unless the agents of Sultan Salim strangle him.'

Nur was leaning above her son's cradle, without knowing what torture her words were inflicting upon me. This empire whose destruction she was thus predicting was the one which my prayers had been invoking even before I knew how to pray, since it was the instrument which I had always expected would bring about the deliverance of Granada.

Now this empire was there, in the process of moulding itself before my eyes. It had already conquered Constantinople, Serbia and Anatolia, it was preparing to invade Syria, Iraq, Arabia Deserta, Arabia Felix, Arabia Petraea as well as Egypt. Tomorrow it would be
master of Barbary, Andalusia, perhaps Sicily. All the Muslims would be reunited again, as in the time of the Umayyads, within a single caliphate, flourishing and formidable, which would impose its law on the nations of the unbelievers. Was I going to put myself at the service of this empire, dream of my dreams, hope of my hopes? Was I going to contribute to its emergence? Not at all. I was condemned to fight it or to flee. Facing Salim the Conqueror, who had just sacrificed, without the hand of God restraining him, his father, his brothers with their descendants, and who would soon sacrifice three of his own sons, facing this sword of the divine wrath, there was a child whom I was determined to protect, to nourish at my breast, until he became man, amir, destroyer of empire, and would kill according to the law of his race. Of all this I had chosen nothing; life had chosen for me, as well as my temperament.

Henceforth I had to leave Egypt, where Bayazid and his mother were in danger. Nur had kept her pregnancy secret, except from Khadra, who had helped her deliver the baby and had kept him since the first day. What if the nurse, already old, should die, and the child should be taken to Cairo, where his identity would be quickly discovered? He would then be at the mercy of Salim's agents, of whom there were many in Egypt; he might even be handed over by Sultan Qansuh himself who, while distrusting the Ottomans to the utmost, was too afraid of them to refuse them the head of a child.

My solution was easily found: to marry Nur and leave for Fez with the child, where I could produce him as my own, in order to return to Egypt when he was older and when his age would no longer betray his origin.

As Nur was a widow, the marriage was a simple one. Some friends and neighbours gathered in my house for a meal, among them an Andalusian lawyer. At the moment that the contract was being drawn up, he noticed the icon and the cross on the wall. He asked me to take them down.

‘I cannot,' I said. ‘I promised the owner of the house not to touch them until his return.'

The lawyer seemed embarrassed, and the guests as well. Until Nur intervened:

‘If it is not possible to take these objects down, nothing prevents them being covered.'

Without waiting for a reply she drew a damask screen up to the
wall. Satisfied, the notary officiated.

We did not stay more than two nights in the house, which I left with regret. Chance had offered it to me, and left it with me for nearly two years; the Copt had never reappeared or given me any news of himself. I had only heard that an epidemic of plague had struck Assyut and its neighbourhood, decimating a large part of the population, and I imagined that my benefactor had probably fallen victim to it. May it please God that I may be wrong, but I see no other explanation for his absence, nor especially for his silence. Nevertheless, before leaving I handed the keys into the keeping of my goldsmith, Da'ud the Aleppine. As the brother of Ya‘qub, master of the Mint, a good friend of the sultan, he was better placed than anyone else to prevent some Mameluke from taking over the empty house.

Our voyage began in the month of Safar, on the eve of the Christian Easter. The first stop was Khadra's cottage, near Giza, where we spent a night, before returning with Bayazid, then aged sixteen months, towards Bulaq, the great river port of Cairo. Thanks to a judicious bakshish, we were able to embark immediately on a
jarm
which was transporting a cargo of refined sugar from the sultan's personal factory to Alexandria. There were numerous craft at Bulaq, and some were very comfortable, but I was anxious to arrive at the port of Alexandria under the sovereign's flag, having been warned by friends of the difficulties encountered at the customs. Some travellers were searched down to their underclothes, on arrival and departure, by over-zealous officials who used to tax dinars as well as goods.

Avoiding this annoyance, I was better able to appreciate the grandeur of this ancient city, founded by Alexander the Great, a sovereign of whom the Qur'an speaks in laudatory terms, and whose tomb is a place of pilgrimage for the pious. It is true that the town is no more than the shadow of what it once was. The inhabitants still recall the time when hundreds of ships lay permanently to anchor in the harbour, from Flanders, England, Biscay, Portugal, Puglia, Sicily, and especially from Venice, Genoa, Ragusa and Turkish Greece. That year, only memories still crowded into the harbour.

In the middle of the town, facing the port, is a hill which did not exist, it is said, at the time of the Ancients, and has been formed only from the accumulation of ruins. Rummaging through it, vases and
other objects of value can often be found. On the top a small tower has been built, where there lives a watchman all day and all night, whose job is to keep a watch for passing ships. Each time he signals one to the customs men he receives a bonus. In return, if he sleeps or leaves his post and a ship arrives without him having signalled it, he pays a fine equal to twice his bonus.

Outside the city, some imposing ruins can be seen, in the middle of which rises a very high and massive column which the ancient books say was built by a sage named Ptolemy. He had placed a great steel mirror at the top of it, which, it was said, used to burn all enemy boats which tried to approach the coast.

There were surely many other things to visit, but we were all eager to depart, promising ourselves to come back one day to Alexandria when our minds would be at peace. Then we embarked in an Egyptian vessel making for Tlemcen, where we rested a whole week before taking to the road.