He walked on until he reached the outskirts of a village he didn’t recognize. But he had a good feeling about it, and he assumed he could ask the inhabitants for directions. He also hoped he could find some safe haven to spend the night, drink some water, and perhaps get a bite to eat. When he went into the village, he was taken by surprise by an unusual clamor and a great deal of nervous commotion, and he wondered what was going on. When he made inquiries, Saad learned that the rebellious Brotherhood of Germania were approaching the village and that their leader had just scored a victory in a neighboring village. He knew he had to leave the place as quickly as possible, but where could he go, and in which direction? He stood confused, fearing that his feet would lead him back to the village where they discovered the gunpowder, or to a village where the Germania were in control, men more vicious toward Arabs than the military authorities. Saad finally sought directions from an old man who was preoccupied with organizing people rushing toward the citadel for protection. The old man directed Saad to the safest road and indicated to him those controlled by the brotherhood.
Saad walked along a road that would bring him down to the valley and beyond the village. Every so often he would lift up his eyes and stare at an ascending winding road the villagers were rushing toward with their children and a few provisions on their way to the citadel. The road was jam-packed with throngs of people forcing their way up along the side of an old stone wall.
Throughout the following few months Saad often recalled those moments, not of his running in panic, or his confused steps on mountain passes he was unfamiliar with, and on which he stumbled frightened and hungry, not even of his arrest four days later. What he did recall was that human wave rolling alongside the stone wall of the citadel, first ascending then descending. He actually saw them go up, and he assumed they came down. He only knew for sure when he heard the Castilian soldiers who arrested him and brought him to the interrogator at the Office of Inquisition talking about it. Then he saw through the eyes of his imagination the villagers coming down from that very road, waving in terror the white shreds of their garments to signal their submission as they headed toward the church to seek the waters of baptism and save their lives.
Was the past repeating itself? Saad wondered every time he thought about that scene. Whenever the image of that day came to mind, he couldn’t help but recall al-Thaghri and his men, among whom was his own father. They stationed themselves in the Citadel of Malaga where they mounted a brave and steadfast resistance until the enemy got the upper hand. Since al-Thaghri and his men were well armed, they continued to put up a fight. But the inhabitants of the village were defenseless. They were poor farmers whose hands only knew how to operate plows and sickles. And so they sought the refuge of the old stones of a fortress, and for a while they were sheltered. But when the steady pounding brought down the fortress and the people in it, they raised the white shreds of cloth and they departed. Was the past repeating itself?
But reflection does not last long in the thick of torture, and terror mangles images and thoughts into pieces when the body is inflicted with wounds and the soul convulses like a slaughtered bird. The inquisitors in their black cassocks surround you, and their eyes pierce your innermost being as they bombard you with questions and inflict upon you their instruments of torture. They chain you to a wooden staircase and squirt water into your body, water that quenches thirst, cool, sweet water from God, water that your soul savors, but then enters you like a burning fire. You fill up, you bloat, you suffocate, and you try to suppress a scream, but it insists and comes out like a rattle in the throat as though it is your soul exiting in pain. They stare at you. Their eyes are mute and their faces expressionless. Their hearts are armored with black cloaks. The hot iron prongs burn the bottoms of your feet. The scalding stone scorches your back, your stomach, and your buttocks. The wooden instrument, the essence of the pangs of hell, crushes your bones. You bellow like a slaughtered bull, and the heart inside of you is wrenched as though the hand of death is grabbing at it, and it dies. They stare at you without batting an eye. They throw you into a dungeon, into solitary confinement, where you can’t even cry. But when you do, the tears gush out in torrents, not because the body aches, but because you’re thinking about all those human shreds that you know you are. You cry for your own condition and for the abandonment of a Loved One in the highest heavens who left you alone to suffer excruciating pain never promised to His pious people. Alone in your dark prison, you are surrounded by solitude with no light but the pale flicker of a candle whose shadow dances on the wall next to the phantom of the inquisitor who haunts you even in his absence. A feverish imagination exaggerates the ascending shadow on the wall, tracing the lines of the colossal vampire that spreads its blackness against the cold stone wall. Alone in your prison shared by rats you befriend because they’re alive and they remind you of life. A few months later they remove you to a place where your loneliness dwindles, where you now have cell mates who share your nights and days. Sad hearts bond together, a source of light against the dark walls.
There were three of them. One was a Franciscan priest who, despite his advanced years, maintained his fiery eyes that scintillated with a vibrant deep blue like the waves of the sea. He spent long hours talking about Jesus as a young man, of his poverty, his beauty, and his suffering. He spoke about his mother who loved him deeply, and who carried him to faraway Egypt. He talked about his youthful days in Galilee, where he carried his message to a land that embraced him and denied him. He spoke about the cross he died on and his immortality. As the priest spoke, the blaze and purity of the sea gushed forth from the blueness of his eyes, and the dark dungeon opened up as though it were an open expanse along the seashore where the seagulls flew freely and the breeze of God softened the soul and warmed the heart. It wasn’t just his stories that compelled them to him but something deep within him that filled their souls and created a space in which they dwelt in tranquility and peace of mind.
Even Antonio Solinas, the young Lutheran whom torture made more volatile and violent, and who fought for a reason or no reason at all, sat calmly as he listened to Father Juan Martin’s stories. Antonio Solinas was as thin as a rail, ashen faced, and smiled rarely. He got into a fight practically every day with Muhammad BuSiddeeq, a young man yet to sprout hair on his face, who was accused by the inquisitors of practicing black magic and mastering sorcery that caused the death of his feudal master’s livestock. The young man had eyes that flashed with a mischievous intelligence, and they sparkled even more whenever he outwitted Solinas. He would laugh at him mockingly whenever Solinas flared up in anger, because that’s exactly what he wanted to do all along. When the fighting reached a high pitch, they would grab each other by the collar until Father Juan Martin or Saad intervened. Saad was quite fond of Muhammad. He enjoyed his sarcastic quips and his sense of humor. He was amazed by his emotional strength, which was not shattered by torture despite his tender age. He always reprimanded him in public for antagonizing Solinas, but in private he always apologized to him, saying that he only wanted to stop the fighting.