“Who could be absolutely sure? Who?” Saad looked up and saw the tall thin man passing in front of him, pacing back and forth muttering these words to himself. As he walked he raised his shoulders so high that they almost reached his ears. One of the two men sitting down yelled out to him, “You’re making us dizzy. Why don’t you calm down and sit like everyone else?” But the man paid no attention and kept pacing and muttering to himself.
The inside room of the bathhouse was packed with clients. Some were seated on the tile bench next to the furnace sweating in the thick steam; others went into the pool to purify themselves before bathing. There were men lying down, on their stomachs and on their backs, submitting themselves to a servant or a bath attendant who busily groomed them, massaged them, or simply poured hot water over their heads. All of the men were engaged in some kind of conversation as their voices cut across both ends of the bath. Even those in the private rooms for hair-removal contributed to the banter from behind a curtain that shielded the others from their stark nakedness. Saad and his master sat cross-legged in their usual spot next to one of the water heaters. His master stretched out his arms while Saad poured water and lathered the washcloth, then he began to scrub his right hand and arm, then the underarm, before moving over to the left. Someone yelled out: “Abu Jaafar, may God be pleased with you! We don’t have the privilege of choosing one thing or another. It’s our fate! We’re defeated, so how can we choose?”
Another bather interrupted. “I’m with you! The agreement is evil, there’s no doubt about it. Our leader was in a difficult situation, and the resistance that Ibn Abi Ghassan wanted to launch was doomed from the start. So what could he do, and what can we do in the face of their awesome army and their new Italian artillery?”
“We can fight them. I swear by the God of the Kaaba,[7] we can fight them,” responded Abu Jaafar.
Saad was following the conversation, straining to listen since he wasn’t able to see who was speaking because he was seated facing his master, and all that was in his view was the wall and the water heater to his left.
“Why should we fight them? Aren’t ten years of war enough? Do you want us to end up like the people of Malaga eating our own mules and the leaves off the trees?”
“After submission, they’ll teach us a lesson we’ll never forget. The treaty is nothing but a worthless piece of paper. If we surrender Granada to them, they’ll force us to drop to our knees whenever a clerical procession passes by. They’ll force us to live in separate quarters with only one gate, and they’ll put the sword of expulsion to our throats. What will prevent them from doing all of this once they take control of our country?”
The master stretched out on his back while Saad worked on his knees. He massaged his upper body, stomach, and legs before the master turned over and Saad massaged his back.
“Surrender will prevent them from doing any further damage to us, and it will allow us to maintain some of our rights.”
“How so?”
Other voices followed in repetition, in piercing tones that came close to screeching. The master pulled away his hand and sat upright.
“The treaty stipulates that we be treated honorably, and that our religion, customs, and traditions be respected, and that we be free to buy and sell, and that we preserve our rights to our property, our arms and horses, and that we have legal recourse to our judges in arbitrating matters of dispute. Even our prisoners shall be returned to us, pardoned and free.”
“Merely ink on paper,” retorted Abu Jaafar.
Saad went back to work grooming his master, and when he finished he stretched out his hand to show him the dirt stains that came from his body, the living proof that Saad had done a thorough job in scrubbing him clean. Saad then took the basin and ladled out hot water and poured it over his master’s head as he soaped and rinsed.
“If we reject the treaty and hold our ground, then help will come to us from the shores of North Africa, from Egypt, and even from the Ottoman Turks.”
“Nothing of the sort will come!”
“Never! They won’t leave us alone to defend ourselves.”
“I agree with Abu Jaafar, and Ibn Abi Ghassan did not die as the gossip-mongers are claiming. The Castilians will not have their way. We will stand up to them while Ibn Abi Ghassan’s men are breathing down their backs. The Egyptian, North African, and Ottoman fleets have them blockaded, and their only way out is to die.”
The master motioned him to stop pouring the hot water on his head, and he continued to speak, enunciating every word with the utmost emphasis. “Granada has fallen, there’s no doubt about it. Ibn Abi Ghassan was a fool who wanted us to plunge into a battle we couldn’t sustain. Thank God he’s dead! And now we can relax and he can rest in peace.”
Saad was at a loss as to what happened next when his master suddenly jumped up and hurriedly dashed away. He looked around and in a Mash caught sight of Abu Mansour with a thick stick in his hand and running amok. When had Abu Mansour come inside the bath, he wondered, and where did the stick come from? All he could think was, What happened? Abu Mansour was howling one threat after another.
“Ibn Abi Ghassan s riding mule is more honorable than you and a thousand like you put together, you dog, you son of a dog!”
The master’s loincloth fell off as he ran away, terrified of the stick Abu Mansour was brandishing as he chased him. Abu Mansour then screamed out, “It’s your mother who has fallen, not Granada, you raven of evil omen. Get out of my bathhouse or I’ll kill you.”
The bathers all jumped up and stood between Abu Mansour and the man he was about to strike. Men from inside the baths poured out naked as the day they were born, and those sitting or resting on the benches lost their towels in their forward rush to see what was happening. Saad stood there frozen in a state of shock, aware that he should go and help his master but unable to move a muscle, as though his feet were plastered to the floor.
His mind drifted. To wander aimlessly about in the daytime and greet the night sitting in the corner of a mosque reeling from the pangs of hunger that only sleep could relieve, wrapped in a coarse woolen cloak, what’s new about that?
That was not the first time Saad found himself without any source of sustenance, as he thought about the days when his future appeared to him like a winter morning enveloped in a thick fog in which you could hardly see your own footsteps. Those days he used to ruminate over his past, the distant past when the branch grew freely, and the not-so-distant past when it was snapped off the tree, blown about by the stormy winds. And the more he tried to recall what had happened, the more the details came back to him, ones that had slipped his mind. He was astonished that he could forget, but more astonished that these memories came back to him with a sudden new clarity, and after thinking about it somewhat, he became certain that nothing was lost, that the human mind was a wondrous treasure chest, and that however deeply lodged in the head, it preserved things that couldn’t be counted or weighed: the scent of the sea, his mother’s face, pale shafts of sun that filtered through the green vine leaves moistened by drops of rain, threads of silk on his father’s loom, his grandfather’s hacking morning cough, the laugh of the little girl, the taste of a fresh green almond, a broken jar seeping olive oil, or a solitary rosary bead that had rolled behind the chest of drawers where he used to hide.