LEO THE AFRICAN - Book review

Amin Maalouf’s Leo the African was published in 1986 and translated into English by Peter Sluglett in 1988. This paperback copy was published in 1994.  The book is based on the true-life story of Hasan al-Wazzan, the sixteenth century traveller and writer who came to be known as Leo Africanus. It is told in the first person, and covers his first forty years.

He begins his narration when he was born – not as absurd as it first appears: we’re privy to second-hand details from his father and mother about their time in Granada in the late fourteen hundreds. His mother Salma befriends a Jewish pedlar-clairvoyant and healer, Gaudy Sarah, and ‘began to read my palm like the crumpled page of an open book’ (p6). Sarah’s prediction – and her elixir of orgeat syrup – result in Salma’s pregnancy (with Hasan).  Sarah also ‘doubled, when necessary, as midwife, masseuse, hairdresser and plucker of unwanted hair’ (p8).

The days of Islamic Andalusia are numbered. ‘And did not Andalusia flourish in the days when the vizier Abd al-Rahman used to say jokingly: “O you who cry ‘Hasten to the prayer!’ You would do better to cry: “Hasten to the bottle!” The Muslims only became weak when silence, fear and conformity darkened their spirits”.’ (p38).

The Arabs were evicted from Spain in 1492, among them the ineffectual ruler Boabdil, who lingered on the last ridge that afforded him a view of Granada – a place the Castilians thereafter called ‘The Moor’s last sigh’. It was said that the fallen sultan had shed tears there, of shame and remorse. ‘You weep like a woman for the kingdom you did not defend like a man’ (p57). At this time of expulsion of his family, Hasan was three years old. After eight centuries, no more would the voice of the muezzin be heard to call the faithful to prayer.

Hasan grew up in Fez, alongside Jews and Christians as well as Muslims. It is during this time that he learned about the philosophy of life and death: ‘… thank God for having made us this gift of death, so that life is to have meaning; of night, that day is to have meaning; silence, that speech is to have meaning; illness, that health is to have meaning; war, that peace is to have meaning…’ (p103)

Hasan’s friend Harun the Ferret got a job as a porter: ‘Three hundred men, simple, poor, almost all of the illiterate, but who had nevertheless managed to become the most respected, most fraternal and best organised of all the guilds of the city’ (p108). This guild takes care of its members; ‘when any of their number dies, they take over the responsibility for his family, help his widow to find a news husband and take care of his children until they are of an age to have a professions. The son of one is the son of all’ (p108).

The families would hang on the walls of their adopted homes the keys of their homes they left behind, hoping one day to return to Granada. Hasan was a quick learner and soon became successful in trading.

One of the most powerful men in Fez was the Zarwali, an ex-bandit and murderer who ‘had built the largest palace in the city, the largest, that is, after that of the ruler, a piece of elementary common sense for anyone who wanted to make sure that his head remained attached to his body’ (p131).

Harun the Ferret had learned about Zarwali’s past and his behaviour. Zarwali was ‘always convinced that his wives are trying to betray him, particularly the youngest and most beautiful ones. A denunciation, a slander, an insinuation on the part of one of her rivals is enough for the poor unfortunate to be strangled. The Zarwali’s eunuchs then make the crime look like an accident, a drowning, a fatal fall, an acute tonsillitis…’ (p137). Hasan and the Zarwali will clash – and there will be dire repercussions…

There are several amusing and even apt sayings scattered about the book, for example: ‘Destiny is more changeable than the skin of a chameleon, as one of the poets of Denia used to say’ (p57); and ‘If anyone tells you that avarice is the daughter of necessity, tell him that he is mistaken. It is taxation which has begotten avarice!’ (p154); and ‘I had become very susceptible to magic and superstitions… This is probably the fate of rich and powerful men: aware that their wealth owes less to their merits than to luck, they begin to court the latter like a mistress and venerate it like an idol’ (p196); and, finally, ‘in the face of adversity, women bend and men break…’ (p250).

Hasan ventures to Egypt and witnesses the Ottoman conquest there; he is abducted and becomes a prisoner in Renaissance Rome under the Medicis, and yet remarkably finds himself being a confidant of the Pope, and converts briefly to Christianity, and ultimately witnesses the horrendous sack of Rome in 1527.

The book possibly suffers from too much barely digestible religion and politics, yet these were the driving forces that impelled Hasan to wander.

The smells, the colours and the feeling for the period are well-conveyed and indeed instructive for anyone interested in these historic times. 

THE LUTE AND THE PEN - Book review

 This is Jennifer Morton’s second book and both are romantic adventures set in Spain. Her first, The Wells Are Dry was a contemporary novel; The Lute and the Pen is a historical story primarily set in Al-Andalus in 960AD.

Orphaned nineteen-year-old Qamira is accompanying Talha, her grandfather on his journey to Cordoba, where they plan to start a new life away from Baghdad. The Spanish city promises much, as it is a centre of learning and religious tolerance where Qamira hopes to pursue her twin passions of music and writing. She has also learned a great deal about herbal medicines and ointments from her learned grandfather.

Talha is the guest of his old friend Solomon, a Hebrew. Here, Qamira meets his wife Rebekah, Yuhana, Mirza and Tabitha, his daughters. Their neighbour is Urvan, a Muslim, who is widowed. Urvan has two sons, Izmael and Tariq, and two daughters, Shira and Dafna. Izmael’s best friend is Zayd, a swordsman, teacher and poet from El-Maghreb.

Into the mix is another household which is run by Vevian, a Christian, a trader and friend of Solomon.

Qamira settles down and takes in the delectable sights, smells and sounds of the place and her writing and lute-playing flourish. However, she is soon aware that Urvan begins to make unwelcome advances upon her during her grandfather’s absence on medical business. Fortunately, Qamira befriends Yuhana and Dafna, and gradually falls under the thrall of the handsome Zayd. Yet the relationships are not smooth as Shira is wilfully jealous of Qamira and, plotting with Nadim, Urvan’s personal bodyguard, they intend to have Qamira spirited away.

Qamira’s abrupt absence cannot be explained. Zayd is crestfallen and, after a fruitless search, he volunteers to sail off to contend with several raiding corsairs that threaten Urvan’s trading ships. After a while, word returns that he is missing, presumed dead.

Unaware of Zayd’s fate, Qamira wakes up in an Emir’s harem!

Throughout the narrative we are treated to exotic scents and images, capturing the period and its people. There is poetry both poignant and amusing, and personal conflict between several characters. Suspense, misunderstandings, betrayal and swordplay figure in the tale as well.

The author brings alive her characters and their emotional turmoil, and I was sorry to come to the end of her heartfelt tale.

Recommended.

Saturday Story - 'Always the Innocent'

Since WWII, in excess of 20 million people have died in wars and lesser conflicts. Today there are more than 15 million refugees in the world, all as a result of war. At any day, there are wars, in which people are killing other people – and often it’s usually the innocent who suffer.

Let us hope that the Ukraine doesn't become yet another statistic...

 

ALWAYS THE INNOCENT

 

Nik Morton

 

Sarajevo, ruins near the Vrbanja bridge - Wikipedia commons

 

May, 1993, Sarajevo

I had thought it would be cold in the chill wind of Sarajevo's Bogomil cemetery, but I didn't feel a thing. Standing quite alone amidst the pockmarked once-fine tombstones, I looked down at the fresh grave, bereft of flowers because not even weeds survived long here. A surprising mixture of emotions coursed through me: anger, hate, despair, and great sadness: all these manifestations of humanity racked me as I looked upon her name carved in the simple wooden cross. But most of all I experienced an abiding love, for what we had shared and been to each other.

When only eight, we had watched the 1984 Winter Olympics, enjoying the bequest to our school by a Bosnian philanthropist.

Marta was Bosnian; I'm Rihad, a Croatian Muslim. We played in the streets, oblivious of our country's tragic future. Boy and girl, in love, the same the world over.

We were book-lovers, and enjoyed reading to each other from the world's classics. Our favourites were Dickens, Cervantes, Hasek, Kumicic, Bozic, Virgil, Popa and Shakespeare.

We both liked history at school. Marta and I grew up with this sense of a new order emerging, throwing off the shackles of the doctrinaire past. Our future seemed so full of promise, so bright.

We had hoped that one day Sarajevo's name would no longer be linked with the start of the first world war - the assassination of the arch-duke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and his consort: the place, Princip Bridge, is marked by the student assassin's footprints in the pavement; now, there are so many assassins around, it would be pointless to mark their footprints.

 
Our two families were close. Inevitably, we married - about a year before the fighting broke out - and honeymooned in the once-beautiful old walled city of Dubrovnik, a city founded thirteen hundred years ago by - irony of ironies! - refugees fleeing the destruction of their Greco-Roman city. Here, too, as early as the fourteenth century, an old people's home was built and slavery was abolished. An enlightened place, then, where we spent blissful days and nights.
 
Marta and I strolled Dubrovnik's old narrow steep streets, with their shadows, overhanging lanterns and flowers, and gazed at the seemingly immutable old Sveta Klara convent where Europe's first orphanage was founded in 1432.
 
We prayed in the small Renaissance chapel of Sveti Spas and visited the monastery's library of old manuscripts and pictures; here, we viewed a painting of the city before the great earthquake of 1667, not appreciating an equally devastating future awaiting us and this city. The statue of the city's patron saint, Sveti Blasius, held a model of the city in his hand - ‘until,’ Sanala, an evacuated friend said, ‘it was blown off...’
 
Sometimes we made love in the wheat-fields, breathing in the fragrance of oleander, camellias, orange trees and each other. At Dubrovnik we felt invincible in our love.
 
We had no idea how it all went so very very wrong. Greedy men in power grasping more land and power, perhaps. Whatever their reasons, they seem totally inadequate to explain the horrors inflicted.
 
With growing unease on our return to the village, Marta and I watched the newsreels until the fighting was too close.
 
Then, our families packed their most precious belongings and fled with so many others into Sarajevo.

For the first few weeks, the city could support us; but the flow of frightened refugees continued to fill the city's streets. Food became scarce, and the black market flourished.

 
Electricity interruptions were commonplace.
 
Then the siege began.
 
Street fighting started as various factions formed, even neighbour against neighbour, some groups composed of looters - sadly, there are always those who will profit from the misfortune of others.
 
Now, the city's survivors scrabble in the wreckage of a once-proud and beautiful city. Everything about this civil war is prefaced with once-, it seems. The people walk as if drugged, lacking sleep, sanitation and even hope.
 
We earnestly hoped the European Community would help us, that they would enforce a 'cessation of hostilities' - euphemistic jargon for 'stop the killing'.
 
Through the countless worthless cease-fires, we never gave up hope that one day we would be rescued. The humanitarian convoys bolstered our repeatedly dashed hopes. We could see the shame and frustration in the young UN soldiers' faces. They were simply feeding us until the inevitable end.
 
Marta and I had been foraging for wood and food - the rest of our family were too ill or too scared to venture out. Returning, we had pockets crammed with grass and an armful of books each.
 
Marta's red-rimmed eyes still managed tears, even after shedding so many, at the thought of burning books to survive: we had to sterilise the water retrieved from the drains. The Miljacka River was the only moving thing that could enter and leave Sarajevo with impunity; but tackling its muddy banks was often too dangerous.
 
When we turned the corner and saw the devastation of our friend's home, we were shaken. A mortar bomb had destroyed our families, huddled together, Moslem and Bosnian, in a friend's cellar.
 
I find it difficult to relive those awful moments of realisation, when those you love dear are gone, snatched from you before their time, by the will of some military man.
 
Of course the fact the perpetrators were Serbian is of less relevance than the fact that people of any kind could commit these acts. There are no victors in a war, this is a universal axiom, yet the people who direct their military men seem to ignore this truth. And the innocent suffer; it's always the innocent!
 
Later, in the ruins, we listened to the car radio hooked up to an old battery. Soldier of Happiness is the most popular song: ‘I don't like bullets, You can kill my summer but my spring will survive. If a bullet should shoot me, please don't cry.’
 
We cried over our lost friends and family. Alagic the sublime pianist died from shrapnel wounds, Sanala of the shining eyes and tender heart from gangrene; and Alan, Muhamed and Rosa were mortared as they tended wounded children. Good loving people with talents to share, to bring happiness into other lives, all gone.
 
Afterwards, we burned our books in the roofless kitchen, and heated water and grass. We shared the grass soup. We shared everything we could.
 
When we had finished, our stomachs still rumbled.
 
Marta looked wan, cupping the chipped mug in her thin hands, her dark hair straggly and her brown eyes lacking the old lustre. My heart ached, though I wondered what state I presented to her: no better, I felt sure.
 
We didn't speak much now. As one, we stood up. The meagre fire spat sparks - the cover of Thomas Paine's The Rights of Man crinkled and curled in the embers, then it was gone, blackened beyond recognition, like our homeland.
 
Gripping our cherished copy of Shakespeare to my chest, I held Marta's hand and we strode over the rubble and across the street.
 
Often in the last few weeks we had spoken about the poor demented souls who had had enough, who decided to commit suicide by simply strolling outside in broad daylight, down streets once tree-lined and bustling with life, echoing with the sounds of leather- and copper-ware vendors, of sellers of filigree work and linen cloth sewn with fine gold and silver thread; streets vibrant with the songs of birds and the discord of vehicles.
 
The Begova Dzamija mosque is silent now, its forecourt's covered fountain is dry and no worshippers perform their ritual washing. Water is a luxury, to be hoarded.

Everywhere you look, there are buckets, guarded by old men and children, under drain-spouts, ready to catch any rain.
 
Instead of the city's usual sounds there is the staccato report of automatic weapons, the crump of mortar shells, and the crying and moaning of an abandoned people.
 
As we boldly walked the wide street of Obala Marsala Tita that runs alongside the municipal park now stripped of its bark and firewood, I quoted from the Serbian poet, Vasco Popa, his words resembling so many menacing signals of despair in a seemingly empty universe,
 
‘We danced the sun dance,
 
Around the lime in the midst of the heart.’
 
And Marta looked up and smiled, adding,
 
‘The miserable have no other medicine but only hope; I have hope to live.’
 
She was ever hopeful, ever cheerful, and I ached with love for her and dismissed the rest of the quotation from Measure for measure - ‘...and am prepared to die.’
 
At that blessed moment of togetherness we kissed amidst the rubble. The bullet-scored smoke-blackened buildings shimmered, transformed into waves of wheat, the debris-strewn cracked paving-slabs became warm earth under our feet, our bodies revelled in the heat of a glorious summer sun, and the fragrance of oleander was in the air: we were shot by a sniper. A single bullet - we even shared that - killed us both.
 
The picture of us lying in each other's embrace was sent round the world, courtesy of satellite technology. For a day and a night, we lay there, and my lonely ethereal self hovered watchful over us, waiting for someone to defy the snipers and retrieve our earthly vessels, to accord them some last ritual of remembrance and thanks for our all too brief lives.
 
Eventually, two brave UN soldiers dodged bullets to carry us into shelter. That evening, under cover of darkness, we were buried.
 
As I gaze down at Marta's cross, I smile. She must have been uncertain about her incorporeal state, for only now has she been able to take on her old form. The stresses and privations of the last year have washed away from her features: she rises from the mound of fresh soil smiling and beautiful.
 
I take her hands in mine and kiss her.
 
As one, floating a little above the cemetery, we turn and stare at the orange halo over our strife-torn city. We feel sad, not only for the dead and dying, the bereaved and injured; we feel sorrow for all the men - and some women - responsible for death and destruction throughout the world. Perhaps if they too had enjoyed love like ours they would not commit such heinous crimes. They cannot comprehend that whatever they do, they cannot vanquish love.
 
I hold Marta tenderly and feel tears.
 
We laugh, not appreciating until now that ghosts could cry.
 
There are many ghosts crying in this once-beautiful land.
 
And Marta remembers another quotation, from Virgil, ‘Love conquers all things: let us too give in to Love.’

***

Dedicated to Bosko Brckic, Admira Ismic, little Marza and all the other dead, wounded, maimed, and bereaved in former Yugoslavia – and indeed in all war-torn lands…

Wikipedia commons

This is the Suada and Olga bridge (previously Vrbanja bridge) of Sarajevo, named after Suada Dilberovic and Olga Sucic, the first victims shot a the beginning of the Siege of Sarajevo.

***

Obviously, this is a fictional treatment inspired by a real event. The real victims were left on the Vrbanja bridge for eight days for fear of snipers. They were reburied in 1996.

Previously published in The New Coastal Press, 2010, and in the now out-of-print collection, When the Flowers are in Bloom (2011).

Copyright Nik Morton, 2014.

 

My short story collection Spanish Eye,

featuring Leon Cazador, private eye in 22 cases is  published by Crooked Cat Publishing and can be obtained from

Amazon UK here

Amazon COM here

 

Moor about Spain

Today, I’m discussing in brief a 2004 non-fiction book entitled Andalus by Jason Webster. The sub-heading of this book is Unlocking the secrets of Moorish Spain and it’s a follow-up of his first book Duende: a journey in search of flamenco which became an acclaimed big seller. Having studied Arabic in Oxford, Webster lived for several years in Italy and Egypt then went to Spain to learn to play the flamenco guitar; he now lives in Valencia with his Spanish wife.

Like many Hispanophiles, he’s had a long-lasting fascination with the Moorish past of this country, whether triggered by the sublime Alhambra in Granada, the dramatic and beautiful Great Mosque in Cordoba or the surprising number of Arabic root words in the Spanish language. Gibraltar which the Spanish vociferously and with inept politicians insist is theirs could realistically be claimed by Morocco or other North African countries – after all, it’s named after a Moor – jabal Tariq – the mountain of Tariq, the first Arab to conquer Spain.

For eight centuries Christians, Muslims and Jews lived and worked side by side. It was a period of great cultural and artistic blossoming. The Moors in Spain had the first universities, the first paper factories and the first street lighting in the whole of Europe. The Arabs learned paper-making from the Chinese artisans on capturing Samarkand. Indeed, the Moors first crossed the Strait to Spain in the Dark Ages, at about the same time as Bede was writing his History. At the time Spain was under Visigothic rule, the German tribes having moved in and taken over as the Roman Empire collapsed.

‘Moor’ was the term used to describe Muslims in Spain – Arabs, Berbers, Syrians, Persians and eventually Spaniards; it originated from the Latin maurus, which had been used to refer to North Africans.

Eventually the Christian Reconquest started to bite and in 1492 the Moors were expelled from what had become their country. What followed was religious intolerance, epitomised by the Inquisition. In modern Spain now annual ‘Moors and Christians’ fiestas occur in many towns and cities; these are noisy, colourful and quite spectacular events.

Two hundred years before the Reconquest, Arabic scholars translated great medical and mathematical works from the original Greek. By way of the Reconquest many of these works were translated into Latin, notably in Toledo. It could even be argued that the Arabic learning laid the foundations of the later Renaissance.

Webster was curious to see how the Moorish influence persisted even to this day, beyond these fiestas – ironically at a time when the Spanish government is having difficulty stemming the tide of illegal immigrants from Morocco and North African ports.

He read an old legend about Musa the Moor, the richest, strongest and most powerful caliph in ancient Spain. As the Christian armies were advancing, Musa asked his friendly jinn to safeguard his riches – which he did by turning them into stone in a special cave; but Musa’s daughter Zoraida didn’t want to flee, so she was turned into a tree outside the cave. But for one day in every year, as spring arrives, Princess Zoraida comes back to life and all the Caliph’s riches gleam and shine again. Only for one day the spell is broken. Webster was enchanted by this tale and wondered if, like the Caliph’s riches, much of the Moorish heritage was hidden from view, only waiting to be discovered.

The book begins with Webster incognito under the plastic sheeting of a fruit farm, doing some journalistic research on the illegal immigrants working in appalling conditions. Because they’re illegal, the immigrants are locked up at night and monitored by guards; they get no pay, only food and cramped sleeping quarters. Slavery was alive and well, it seemed. Then he was discovered and had to flee, aided by a young Moroccan called Zine. They got away but Webster now felt beholden to Zine and attempted to find work for him – a difficult task when he had no papers. [This short episode inspired me for a sequence in my Blood of the Dragon Trees].

Amazon.co.uk - http://goo.gl/fsLk3X

Amazon.com - http://goo.gl/wHQpQp

 

Accompanied by his own modern-day Moor for most of his journey of discovery, Webster meets a number of fascinating characters in Cordoba, Murcia, Almeria and Seville, among other southern Spain and Portugeuse towns. There’s an amusing visit to a clinica de enfermedades sexuales in Seville; however, I could have done without the over-long surreal Christmas party in a Valencia disco. On the way he reminds us of the Moorish legacy in the language – many words beginning with ‘a’ or ‘al’ have Arabic roots, whether English or Spanish: ‘Cotton’ – algodon in Spanish – comes from the Arabic al-qutun, for example.

Webster has an observant eye and a deceptively easy writing style which enliven a fascinating quick tour round the Moorish history via modern-day towns and cities of Spain.

Since writing Andalus, Webster has produced three detective novels featuring Chief Inspector Max Camara in Valencia: Or the Bulls Kill You, A Death in Valencia, and The Anarchist Detective.