‘Two hundred dinars!’ he called out proudly to the assembled company.
I could not believe my eyes, but in the evening, as I was lying down in the room where the chief had invited me to spend the night, Hiba came to see me with the entire amount, more than one thousand eight hundred dinars:
‘By the God which has made you so beautiful, Hiba, explain it to me! What on earth is this game? How can the people of this village have so much money? And furthermore, why should they give it to me?’
‘To buy me back!’
‘You know very well that they could obtain your freedom without handing over the smallest copper coin.’
‘To make amends as well.’
When I continued to show the most utter incomprehension, she finally condescended to explain:
‘For generations, my tribe were nomads on the west of the Sahara, until the time when my grandfather, enticed by the prospect of profit, began to cultivate indigo and sell it. Hence this village earns far more money than it needs to spend, and there is more gold buried in the ground under each little hut than in the finest residence in Fez. But, in choosing the sedentary life, my relatives lost all their warrior virtues. One day, when I was just coming to maturity . . .’
She sat down beside me, leaning her head back, before continuing:
‘A large number of us, young and old, men and women, had gone to make a pilgrimage to the tomb of a wali about a day’s journey from here. Suddenly, some riders from the guard of the lord of Ouarzazate swooped down upon us. There were four of them, while there were about fifty of us, including more than twenty men bearing arms. But none of my companions thought of using them. All of them ran away without exception, giving each of the four horsemen the opportunity to carry off the girl of his choice. During the strange ceremony in which you have just taken part, the elders of the tribe have done no more than pay their debt, atoning for the shame of themselves and their sons.’
She rested her head on my shoulder:
‘You can take this money without shame or remorse. No other man deserves it as much as my beloved master.’
So saying, she had brought her lips close to mine. If my heart was thumping, my eyes glanced uneasily towards the thin curtain which separated us from the adjoining room where her uncle was.
Without the slightest embarrassment Hiba undid her dress; offering her carved ebony body to my gaze and my caresses, she whispered:
‘Until now, you have taken me as a slave. Today, take me as a free woman! For one last time.’
When I left Hiba, I had only one object in view: to find some memory of her in Timbuktu, perhaps even to find some trace of her in that room which witnessed our first kiss. The building was still there. Although it belonged to the ruler of the city who kept it for important visitors, a dinar served to open its doors for me. So that on the evening of my arrival I was leaning out of the same window, inhaling the air from outside to recapture the ambergris which had once perfumed it, waiting for the rhythms of the negro orchestra, which I was certain would soon be resounding in the street. Then I would turn round to face the middle of the room, where I would see the shadow of my Hiba dancing once again. A strong gust of wind lifted the curtain which began to flutter and whirl round gracefully.
Outside, the sound of running feet and cries drifted closer. The orchestra of my memories, perhaps? But why was it making such a noise? My bewilderment was alas short-lived; the market place suddenly became alive as if it was broad daylight, invaded by a crazed and motley crowd which filled the heavens with its cries. How could I not be overwhelmed with fear? I called down from my window to an old man who was running more slowly than the others. He stopped and uttered a few breathless words in the language of the country. Seeing that I had not understood him at all, he ran off again, making a sign that I should follow him. I was still hesitating to do so when I saw the first glows of the blaze in the sky. Making sure that my gold was securely about me I jumped out of the window and ran.
I spent at least three hours wandering in this fashion, submitting to the moods of the panic-stricken crowd, picking up news of the disaster more from gestures than from words. More than half Timbuktu had burnt down, and it seemed that nothing could stop the fire, fanned by the wind, from spreading across the countless thatched huts, each dangerously close to the other. I had to get away as quickly as possible from this gigantic inferno.
I had heard the previous evening that a caravan of merchants of diverse origins had collected outside the city, ready to leave at dawn. I caught up with it. The forty of us travellers spent the whole night standing up on a hillock, fascinated by the sight of the fire and by the fearful clamour that rose from the flames, in which we could faintly discern the terrible screams of people burning to death.
I shall never recall Timbuktu without that image of hell coming back to me. When we were about to leave, a cloud of mourning veiled its face, and its body was racked with endless crackling. My most treasured memory was consumed in flames.
When our geographers of old spoke of the land of the Blacks, they only mentioned Ghana and the oases of the Libyan desert. Then came the conquerors with veiled faces, the preachers, the merchants. And I myself, who am only the last of the travellers, know the names of sixty black kingdoms, fifteen of which I crossed one after the other that year, from the Niger to the Nile. Some have never appeared in any book, but I would not be telling the truth if I would claim to have discovered them myself, since I only followed the ordinary route of the caravans which left from Jenne, Mali, Walata or Timbuktu for Cairo.
It took us no more than twelve days, following the course of the Niger, to reach the town of Gao. It had no defensive wall, but no enemy dared to go near it, so great was the renown of its sovereign, Askia Muhammad, the most powerful man in all the land of the Blacks. The merchants in the caravan were delighted to stop there. They explained that the citizens of Gao had so much gold that the most mediocre cloth from Europe or from Barbary could be sold there for fifteen or twenty times its value. On the other hand, meat, bread, rice and marrows were available in such quantities that one could purchase them extremely cheaply.
The next stages of the journey took us across several kingdoms, among which I will mention those of Wangara, Zagzag and Kano, as well as Bornu, which was far more important than the others, but where we did not linger. In fact, as we entered the capital city, we met another group of foreign merchants who hastened to tell us of their misfortunes, as I have reported in my Description of Africa. The king of this country had some extremely strange habits. He took such pleasure in displaying his wealth that all the harnesses of his horses were made of gold, as well as all the dishes in his palace. The leashes of his dogs were all made of fine gold, I have confirmed it with my own eyes! Having been attracted by so much luxuriousness, and, to their misfortune, having confused generosity and ostentation, these merchants had come from Fez, Sous, Genoa and Naples, with finely chased swords encrusted with jewels, tapestries, thoroughbreds and all kinds of precious goods.
‘The king seemed delighted,’ one of these unfortunates told me. ‘He took everything immediately without even discussing the price. We were overjoyed. Since then, we have waited to be paid. We have now been at Bornu for more than a year, and every day we go to the palace to complain. We are answered with promises, and when we insist we are answered with threats.’
That was not the behaviour of the sovereign whom we visited next, the master of Gaoga. I was in his palace paying my respects to him when an Egyptian merchant from the town of Damietta came and presented the king with a fine horse, a Turkish sabre, a coat of mail, a blunderbuss, several mirrors, some coral beads and some chased knives, worth altogether some fifty dinars. The sovereign accepted this gift politely, but in return he gave the man five slaves, five camels, about a hundred huge elephants’ tusks, and, as if all this were not enough, he added the equivalent of five hundred gold dinars in the money of his country.
After leaving this generous princ
e, we came to the kingdom of Nubia, where the great city of Dongola is situated, standing on the bank of the Nile. I was considering hiring a boat to take me to Cairo, but I was told that the river was not navigable at this point, and that I should follow the river bank as far as Aswan.
The very day of my arrival in that town, a sailor offered to take me on his jarm. He was already taking a large quantity of grain and livestock in this flat-bottomed vessel, but he could still manage to clear a very comfortable place for me.
Before going on board I lay down on my stomach on the bank and plunged my face deeply into the waters of the Nile. As I stood up, I was suddenly certain that after the tempest which had destroyed my fortune a new life was awaiting me in this land of Egypt, a life of passion, danger and honour.
I hastened to seize hold of it.
III
The Book of Cairo
When I arrived in Cairo, my son, it had already been for centuries the renowned capital of an empire, and the seat of a caliphate. When I left it, it was no more than a provincial capital. No doubt it will never regain its former glory.
God has ordained that I should be witness to this decline, as well as to the calamities that preceded it. I was still floating on the Nile, dreaming of adventures and joyful conquests, when misfortune presented itself. But I had not yet learned to respect it, nor to decipher its messages.
Stretched out lazily on the wide jarm, my head slightly raised on a wooden bolster, lulled by the chatter of the boatmen which mingled harmoniously with the lapping of the water, I was looking up at the sun, already reddening, which would disappear in three hours’ time over the African bank.
‘We shall be in Old Cairo at dawn tomorrow,’ a negro crewman shouted to me.
I replied with a smile as wide as his own. Henceforth, no obstacle would separate me from Cairo. I had only to let myself be borne along by the inexorable flow of time and the Nile.
I was on the point of dozing off to sleep when the voice of the boatmen rose, and their conversation became more animated. As I stood up I saw a jarm which was going up the river and was just arriving at our level. It took me some time to see what was peculiar about this craft, which I had not seen approaching. A number of beautiful women, richly apparelled, were crammed aboard it, with their children, a vacant air about them, in the middle of hundreds of sheep whose odour was now reaching me. Some had strings of jewels on their foreheads, and high narrow fluted caps on their heads.
Sometimes a drama springs from a single strange sight. The boatmen came up to me in procession, with long faces and their palms turned towards heaven. There was a long silence. Then, out of the lips of the oldest crawled a single word:
‘Plague!’
The Year of the Noble Eye
919 A.H.
9 March 1513 – 25 February 1514
The epidemic had broken out at the beginning of that year, on the morrow of a violent storm and torrential rains, manifest portents to the Cairenes of the anger of God and the imminence of chastisement. The children had been affected first, and the notables had hastened to evacuate their families, some to Tur, at the south of Sinai, where the air is healthy, and some to Upper Egypt if they had residences there. Soon countless boatloads passed us, carrying pitiful clusters of fugitives.
It would have been unwise to go further without knowing the extent of the disease. We drew alongside the eastern bank of the river in a deserted place, resolving to stay there as long as was necessary, sustaining ourselves from the goods we were carrying, changing our mooring each night to put possible looters off the scent. We went out five or six times a day in search of news, rowing close up to those travelling up the Nile to question them. The epidemic was devastating the capital. Every day, fifty, sixty, a hundred deaths were recorded in the register of births and deaths, and it was known from experience that ten times more would have gone unrecorded. Each craft quoted a new figure, always an exact one, often accompanied by explanations which permitted no discussion. Thus, on the Monday after the Christian Easter, there were three earth tremors; on the following day two hundred and seventy-four deaths were recorded. The following Friday there was a hailstorm, unheard of at that time of year; on that very day there were three hundred and sixty-five deaths. On the advice of his doctor, the Sultan of Egypt, an old Circassian Mameluke named Qansuh, decided to wear two ruby rings on his fingers to protect himself from the plague. He also decreed a ban on wine and hashish and dealing with prostitutes. In all the quarters of the city new basins were fitted to wash the dead.
Of course the victims were no longer only children and servants. Soldiers and officers began to succumb by the hundred. And the sultan hastened to proclaim that he himself would inherit their equipment. He ordered that the widows of all the soldiers who had died should be arrested until they had handed over to the arsenal a sword encrusted with silver, a coat of mail, a helmet and a quiver, as well as two horses or the equivalent of their value. Furthermore, calculating that the population of Cairo had been considerably reduced by the epidemic, and would continue to drop, Qansuh decided to confiscate a substantial quantity of corn from the new harvest, which he sent immediately to Damascus and Aleppo, where he could sell it at a price three times higher. From one day to the next the price of bread and corn increased inordinately.
When, shortly after the announcement of these measures, the sultan left his citadel and crossed the city to inspect the costly reconstruction of the college which would bear his name, which he had designed himself and whose cupola had just cracked for the third time, the people of the capital shouted at him in derision. Cries reached his ears: ‘May God destroy those who starve the Muslims!’ On his return the sovereign avoided the popular quarter of Bab Zuwaila, preferring to reach the citadel through streets which were not swarming with people.
This news was conveyed to us by a rich and educated young merchant, fleeing the capital with his family on his private boat, who drew up alongside us for a few hours before continuing his journey. He took an immediate liking to me, asked about my country and my recent travels, and his questions were weightier with knowledge than my replies. When I brought back the conversation to Egypt, he said to me privately in a serene voice:
‘Thank goodness rulers sometimes go too far, otherwise they would never fall!’
Before adding, his eyes sparkling:
‘The folly of princes is the wisdom of Destiny.’
I believed I had understood.
‘Will there soon be a revolt, then?’
‘We would not use such a word. It is true that in times of epidemic the people of the streets show great courage, since the power of the sultan appears very weak in comparison to that of the Most High, who mows down whole regiments of soldiers. But not even the smallest weapon can be found in people’s houses, hardly even a knife to cut the cheese. When the time for an upheaval comes, it is always one Circassian Mameluke replacing another.’
Before continuing his journey, the merchant made me an unexpected proposition which I accepted with gratitude, although at the time I had no idea how generous it was.
‘I am going to live for some months in Assyut, the town where I was born, and I do not want my house in Cairo to stay unoccupied for such a long time. I should be honoured if you would live there while I am away.’
While I was making a combined gesture of gesture of gratitude and refusal, he took me by the wrist:
‘I am not doing you a favour, noble traveller, since, if my house remains without a master, it will be a prey for looters, especially in these difficult times. If you accept you will be obliging me, and you will solve a problem that has been bothering me.’
In these circumstances I could not but accept. He continued, in the confident tone of a man who has nurtured a decision for a long time:
‘I will write out a deed certifying that you can have free use of the property until my return.’
He went to get paper, pen and ink from his boat and then came back and squatted by my side.
As he was writing he asked me my name, my surnames and occupation, which seemed to satisfy him. As well as the document he gave me a bunch of keys, and told me the purpose of each of them. Then he explained very precisely how to find the house and how I should recognize it.
‘It is a white building, surrounded by palm trees and sycamores. It is on a slight rise, at the extreme north of the old city, directly on the Nile. I have left a gardener there who will be at your disposal.’
This made me even more impatient to reach my destination. I asked my interlocutor when the end of the plague might be expected.
‘The previous epidemics have all come to an end before the beginning of Mesori.’
I asked him to repeat the last word, because I thought I had misheard it. He smiled benevolently.
‘In the Coptic year Mesori is the month when the Nile floods reach their peak.’
I murmured:
‘Egypt has much merit to be Muslim when the Nile and the plague still follow the calendar of the Pharaohs.’
From the way he lowered his eyes and from his confused smile I understood that he himself was not a Muslim. He busied himself immediately:
‘It’s getting late. I think we must hoist up the sails.’
Addressing one of his children, who was running incessantly around a palm tree, he called out:
‘Sesostris, get back into the boat, we’re leaving!’
He shook my hand for the last time, adding in an embarrassed voice:
‘There is a cross and an icon in the house. If they offend you, you can take them down and put them in a coffer until my return.’
I promised him that on the contrary nothing would be moved and thanked him for his extreme thoughtfulness.