The Book of Saladin (28 page)

“On the third day my host informed me that his twenty-year-old son was seriously ill and asked me to take a look at him. I had met this boy once before and had taken a strong dislike to him. As the only son he was greatly overindulged by his parents. He used his position as the son and heir of the Lord of Afqah to have his way with any wench who caught his eye. Several months ago he had killed two peasant boys who attempted to protect the honour of their twelve-year-old sister. To say that he was loathed by his father’s tenants would be an understatement. Perhaps some of the stories about him that travelled from village to village were exaggerated during the journey. Perhaps not. It is difficult for me to say.

“Yet I could not turn down the request of my friend to look at the boy. I was not a trained physician, but I had studied all the medical formularies and my closest friends had been celebrated practitioners. After their deaths I was often consulted on medical matters and surprised myself by my own knowledge and prescriptions, which were often successful. My reputation had grown.

“I ordered the sheets to be removed and inspected the bare body of this boy. There were abscesses in both legs, which had spread and could kill him within a few weeks unless drastic measures were taken. It was too late for poultices and a severe diet. I told the father that the only way of saving the boy was to sever both legs from the thighs. My friend wept. His wife’s anguished screams softened even the hardest heart present in the boy’s chamber.

“Finally the father gave his approval, and I supervised the removal of the legs. The boy, not unnaturally, fainted. I knew from past experience that once he returned to awareness he would not realise his legs had been removed. This is an illusion which remains for a few days after an organ has been cut off. His father told me to ask the poor boy what his greatest wish was in this world, and he would do all in his power to make sure it was granted. We waited for him to recover. We waited for over an hour. When he opened his eyes, he smiled because the old pain had gone. I whispered in his ear: ‘Tell me, son, what would you like the most in this world?’ He smiled, and a chilling, lecherous grin disfigured his face. I bent down so he could whisper back in my ear. ‘Grandad,’ he said mockingly, and I was surprised that even in this state his voice was marked by viciousness. ‘What I really want more than anything else is a penis that is larger than my leg!’

“‘You have it, my boy,’ I replied, slightly ashamed at my own pleasure. ‘You have it.’”

At first, the Sultan looked at Usamah in horror. Then he began to laugh. I could see that the story was not yet finished. Usamah’s body movements indicated that a few embellishments, last-minute treats, still awaited us, but the Sultan’s laughter became uncontrollable and began to take on a character of its own. He would stop. Usamah would make as if to continue, but the Sultan would be overcome by a new fit of laughter. I had caught the infection and joined him, discarding a time-honoured court ritual. At this juncture, Usamah, deciding that his isolation was now complete and that his story was destined to remain unfinished, decided to forgo the ending and joined in the merriment.

The Sultan, having recovered his composure, smiled.

“What a marvellous storyteller you are, Usamah ibn Munqidh! Even Shadhi, may he rest in peace, would not have been able to resist a laugh. I understand now that humour only amuses when it is twinned to something else. Have you anything else for us this evening?”

The Sultan’s praise pleased Usamah. The lines on his face multiplied as he smiled to show his pleasure. The old man took a deep breath and his eyes became distant as he recalled another episode from his long life.

“Many years ago, some time before you were born, O Sultan, I found myself one evening in a tavern in the Christian quarter of Damascus where only lofty subjects were discussed on the day of the Christian Sabbath. I was nineteen or twenty years of age. All I wanted was to enjoy a flask of wine and think again of a Christian girl who had been occupying my mind for several months.

“I had come to this quarter on that particular day for one reason alone. I wanted to catch sight of her coming out of church with her family. We would exchange glances, but that was not the sole reason for my journey to this quarter. If the scarf was white it was bad news, and meant we could not meet later that day.

“If, however, she was wearing a coloured headscarf it was a sign that we would meet later that evening, at the house of one of her married friends. There we might hold hands in tender silence. Any attempt by me to stroke her face or kiss her lips had been firmly rebuffed. Last week she had taken me by surprise, by responding warmly to my lukewarm effort to go beyond holding hands. She had not merely kissed me, but guided my hand to feel her warm and trembling breasts. Having set me on fire, she had refused to put out the flames, leaving me frustrated and in a state of considerable despair.

“‘One citadel at a time, Usamah. Why are you so impatient?’ Having whispered these words in my ear she had fled, leaving me alone to cool myself. It was this change in her attitude that had given this particular day its importance. I was dreaming of conquering the citadel that lay hidden under that perfumed forest of hair between her legs.

“She emerged from the church, wearing a coloured scarf. We exchanged smiles and I walked away, surprised at my own self-control. I wanted to jump up and down and shout to all the other people on the street that exquisite raptures awaited me that afternoon. Happy is the one who has experienced the torments, tempests and passions of everyday life, for only he can truly enjoy the fragile and tender delights of love.

“I waited for her at the house of her friend, but she did not arrive. After two hours a servant-boy came with a letter addressed to her friend. She had made the mistake of confiding her growing love for me to her older sister, who, overcome by jealousy, had informed their mother. She was worried that her parents would now hasten her marriage to the son of a local merchant. She pleaded with me not to act rashly, but to await a message from her.

“I was desolate. I wandered the streets like a lost soul and wandered into the tavern of lofty thoughts with only one thought, namely to drown my sorrows. To my amazement they were not serving wine that day. The innkeeper informed me that they never served wine in his establishment on the Sabbath. I found this odd, since alcohol had always been part of their pagan church ritual, symbolising as it did, the blood of Isa.

“I protested and was informed in a cold voice that the prohibition had nothing to do with religion. It was simply the day designated for lofty thoughts. I was welcome to repair to a neighbouring tavern. I looked around and realised that the clientele, too, was unusual. There were over fifty people, mainly men, but a dozen women. Most of them were old. I think, leaving me aside, the youngest person present must have been forty years of age.

“The arrogance of these people attracted me to them while simultaneously distracting me from my more immediate concerns. I asked whether I could participate in their discussion and was answered by a few affirmative nods of the head, mainly from the women present. The others looked at me with cold indifference, almost as if I were a stray dog desperate for a bone.

“It became a matter of pride. I decided to stay, to melt their coldness and pierce the cloud of aloofness that surrounded them like a halo. From their expressions I could see that they saw me as a shallow youth with nothing to teach them. They were probably correct, but it annoyed me and I became desperate to prove them wrong. This whole business had begun to distract me from the blow I had suffered earlier that afternoon, and for that I was immensely grateful.

“I took my seat on the floor. The subject for that evening’s discussion seemed relevant enough to my problems: ‘The escape from anxiety.’ The speaker was Ibn Zayd, a traveller and a historian from Valencia in Andalus.

“I should have known. Only the Andalusians were capable of dissecting the meanings of concepts and words that we took for granted. The distance from Mecca had given their minds a freedom greatly envied by our own scholars.

“The Sultan may frown, but what I say is acknowledged by all our scholars. Even our great Imad al-Din, who disapproves of my habits and way of life, would confirm this well-known fact. It is true we have had our share of sceptics, and one was even executed on the orders of the Sultan, but not on the scale of Andalus. We can discuss scepticism another day.

“With the Sultan’s permission, I will continue the sad story of my youth. Ibn Zayd must have been in his late forties. Only a few grey hairs were visible in his raven-black beard. He spoke our language with an Andalusian lilt, but despite the strangeness of his accent, his voice was like that of the singer-boatmen of the Nile, both soft and deep at the same time.

“He began by informing us that the talk he was about to give us was not original, but based on the
Philosophy of Character and Conduct,
by Ibn Hazm, in front of whom even the greatest intellect is abashed. He, Ibn Zayd, had his own criticisms of the master-work, but without it nothing could have been possible.

“He spoke of how Ibn Hazm wrote that all human beings are guided by one aim. The desire to escape anxiety. This applied equally to rich and poor, to Sultan and mamluk, to scholars and illiterates, to women and eunuchs, to those who crave sensuality and dark delights as well as ascetics. They all seek freedom from worry. Few follow the same path in achieving this aim, but the wish to escape from anxiety has been the common purpose of humanity since it appeared on this earth.

“He then took out from his little bag a book with a gilded cover, but which must have been read many times, for it was faded. Ibn Yakub and Imad al-Din will understand that nothing affords a book greater delight than being passed from hand to hand. This was one such book, the
Philosophy
of Ibn Hazm. He had marked a passage which he now read to us in his quaint Arabic.

“Subsequently I, too, obtained a copy of the book and read that passage many times, with the result that, like passages from our own divine Book, it is now imprinted on my mind:

“‘Those who crave riches seek them only in order to drive the fear of poverty out of their spirits; others seek for glory to free themselves from the fear of being scorned; some seek sensual delights to escape the pain of privations; some seek knowledge to cast out the uncertainty of ignorance; others delight in hearing news and conversation because they seek by these means to dispel the sorrow of solitude and isolation. In brief, man eats, drinks, marries, watches, plays, lives under a roof, rides, walks, or remains still with the sole aim of driving out their contraries and, in general, all other anxieties. Yet each of these actions is in turn an inescapable hotbed of new anxieties.’

“That is all I can recall today, though some years ago I could recite the entire passage. Our traveller from Andalus developed Ibn Hazm’s argument further, and the more we heard the more entranced we became. Before this I had never been exposed to philosophy, and suddenly I could see why the theologians regarded it as pure poison.

“It soon became obvious that Ibn Zayd’s criticisms of Ibn Hazm’s philosophy would never come to light, for the simple reason that he had none. He worshipped the works of Ibn Hazm but thought it prudent to dissociate himself from them, just in case the Kadi had sent a few spies to report on the meeting. The essence of Ibn Hazm’s philosophy lay in his belief that man could, through his own actions alone, rid himself of all anxieties. He did not need any help.”

“Heresy! Blasphemy!” shouted the Sultan. “Where is Allah and his Prophet in this philosophy?”

“Exactly so, my Sultan,” replied Usamah. “That is what the theologians asked as they burnt Ibn Hazm’s books outside the mosques. But that was many years ago, before the Franj polluted our soil. Our knowledge is much more advanced now, and I am sure our great scholars like Imad al-Din would prove Ibn Hazm wrong in the space of a few minutes.”

Imad al-Din glowed with anger, and stared at Usamah with undisguised hatred. He did not speak.

“What was the point of this story, Usamah?” asked the Sultan. “Did you finally get the Christian girl?”

The old man chuckled. He had put the choicest morsels of Arab philosophy before the Sultan, and all he wanted was the story of the girl.

“I did not get the girl, Commander of the Ingenious, but the ending of that day in the tavern of lofty thoughts took me by surprise, as it will you if I have permission to finish.”

The Sultan nodded his approval.

“At the conclusion of the meeting I asked several questions, partially because the Andalusian had aroused my genuine interest, and partially to show the others present that I was not an ignorant fool intent simply on hedonism. It would be too wearisome to recount my own triumph and, unlike Imad al-Din, I rarely make notes of all my encounters. But let it be said that my remarks made a deep impression on Ibn Zayd. He became more and more animated and soon we repaired to a tavern which served a brew more potent than lofty thoughts. We talked throughout the night. We were both in a state of modest inebriety. At this stage he extended his hand and clasped my penis. The expression on my face surprised him.

“‘You seem anxious, my young friend. Do we not agree that anxiety should be expelled from our spirit?’

“I replied: ‘My anxiety will only be dispelled if you ungrasp my penis immediately.’ He did not persist, but began to weep.

“Out of pity I guided him out of the Christian quarter and back into ours. There I left him, happily occupied in that male brothel which is frequented by many from the citadel. Do you remember the street where it is situated, Imad al-Din? My memory escapes me again. The price of old age.”

Once again Imad al-Din did not reply, but once again the Sultan began to laugh as he congratulated Usamah.

“I think the moral of your story is how easily even men with the most lofty thoughts can degenerate into a debased sensuality. Am I correct, Usamah ibn Munqidh?”