Abu Jaafar spent the day in his bedroom, sitting and standing, pacing between the four walls. Had he been wrong, like all the citizens of Albaicin, to help Abu Abdallah take control of the country? They came to his assistance and engaged in skirmishes with the Granadans on account of that miserable pubescent. At the time the young man appeared to be neither a scoundrel nor an evil omen, but rather a ray of hope who would save them from the abuses of his father, who was up to his ears in vice. They sided with the son of La Horra,[8] and slammed the gates of Albaicin in the face of his tyrant father who pulled out from the walls of the city, defeated and dethroned. Did they commit a serious error in siding with a prince who was wronged, they being wronged themselves? Did they err in holding a just prince to a promise? So what befell the young prince? Was it his capture in the hands of the Castilians that destroyed him? Did defeat defeat him, or is it merely preordained on the Preserved Tablet?[9] Does God jot down on His tablet the defeat of His pious servants? It’s too late for help. It’s too late. But it will come from our people in Egypt, Syria, and North Africa. They will come, by the command and will of God… But what if they don’t?
Abu Jaafar looked out from a small opening in the wall to the sky. There’s no earth without a heaven. O, Wisest of rulers, Lord of the highest skies, O Promise of truth, O God.
As daylight came to an end and everything grew quiet, nighttime fell and settled in, and the people remained in their homes, depressed. Just as no one ventured out to work that day, no one took to his bed that night. Silence had imposed itself on the city, and silent it remained day and night. Yet no one slept, not even little Hasan who had been spanked by his mother for reasons he could not understand. He had gone out into the alley to play with his friends, but finding no one, he went to see the two little brothers who lived nearby. Their mother insisted they all play indoors. Unaware of his going out or of his absence, Hasan’s mother panicked when she realized he was gone. She looked for him on all the streets and alleys of the quarter. When he finally came home she walloped him severely. The little boy cried and yelled out for help to his grandmother who rushed over and pulled him away from his mother as she scolded him hysterically. Hasan spent the rest of the day curled up in a corner of the house. He refused to play with his sister Saleema and sat sulking silently in his corner, wiping the tears from his eyes and the mucous from his nose with the sleeve of his shirt.
What had gotten into his mother? he wondered. Has she gone stark raving mad like the crazy man who lives over in the next lane and who makes the kids shudder in fear and run away? She had never laid a hand on him, even when he broke a vase or lost money. This time she gave him a good thrashing and for no apparent reason! When his grandmother pulled him away, his mother just stood there sobbing. He was afraid of her and for her at the same time. He was crying because she hit him and because she was crying herself. His grandmother wiped his eyes and gave him a piece of candy. “The Castilians came into Granada today. Your mother got scared. She thought they kidnapped you to sell you in the market.” Had Hasan heard such a thing at any other time he would have laughed at the very idea of selling children in the market like donkeys. Did she honestly think he was a donkey?
When his grandmother called him for supper he didn’t respond, and when she didn’t call him again, he retreated to his bed where he lay wide awake thinking about his mother’s odd behavior, and his grandfather’s as well. While his mother was sobbing and spanking him and he was yelling at the top of his lungs, Abu Jaafar was inside the house, but he didn’t budge at all, as though he hadn’t heard a sound. What was going on with his family today? he wondered.
Hasan never found the answer to his question, neither that night nor the many that followed. Even when he turned seven years old and his grandfather took him to a faqeeh for his schooling, the memory of that night remained a mystery to him. He learned that it had been a sad day indeed for all Granadans and that the Castilians took women, children, and men as well from the neighboring villages and sold them as slaves. But he still couldn’t understand why his mother had spanked him so harshly, nor could he understand how one man could sell another man, or a child or a woman. Nor did he see anything especially frightening about the Castilian soldiers. They were just like any other men with nothing to distinguish them from the Arabs except for their fairer complexions and their spectacular uniforms, with their waistline jackets, form-fitting trousers, and feathered caps. They looked especially grand when they mounted their horses and trotted in parades with colorful banners, while some men beat drums and others blew bugles, and the streets were as festive as a holiday. So, what was all the sadness that surrounded their entrance into the city?
4
Had the people of Granada been bestowed with the gift of predicting the future, would the few years that followed the loss of their country appear as the ultimate extent of degradation and defeat? They lived the misery of each day, made no easier by what was decreed in the new Treaty of Capitulation, which was supposed to guarantee their right to worship and trade, and to live their lives as they saw fit. Nor was this misery at all alleviated by the fact that their new governor, Count Tendilla, ruled with a velvet glove and that the archbishop of Granada, De Talavera, exerted considerable effort, in spite of his advanced years, to make contact with them, even going so far as to learn Arabic and instruct his missionaries to follow suit. But occupation was nonetheless occupation, and the Granadans were burdened with even more worries that hovered over them like the huge silver cross that hung above the towers of Alhambra.
The secret matter of the treaty concluded by Abu Abdallah Muhammad and the king and queen of Castile and Aragon was soon exposed, and the news spread like wildfire far and wide. The young prince turned over the keys of Alhambra and was compensated thirty thousand Castilian pounds, along with the right to maintain in perpetuity ownership of his personal castles and farmlands, as well as all other family possessions. “The scoundrel got eternal rights to his own property and ran,” people said.
They lived the misery of each day with the bitter discovery that they had been sold like chattel. They witnessed the flight of entire families among the nobility and elite, who, in a state of utter chaos and panic, sold everything they owned, and undoubtedly everything was bought. Houses, estates, orchards, precious manuscripts, and swords, heirlooms of their grandfathers and great grandfathers. “Buy, Abu Jaafar, the price is right and buying is profitable.” But Abu Jaafar was as stubborn as a mule, and he didn’t want to buy nor sell. He was furious at the sight of the departing ships that he viewed as nothing more than floating coffins.
The Granadans watched as their princes converted to Christianity. Saad and Nasr, the sons of Sultan Abu Hasan, now called themselves Duke Fernando de Granada and Duke Juan de Granada. Saad went even one step further by joining the Castilian army as an ordinary conscript. “Rest in peace in your grave, Abu Hasan,” thought Abu Jaafar. “Sleep content, and may the breezes of Paradise blow over you. Your offspring have been leased in a rare business. They’ve certainly risen to the occasion!” The vizier, Yusuf Ibn Kumasha, who negotiated in the name of the nation and who prepared both the secret and public texts of the treaty, crowned his achievements by converting to Christianity and entering a monastery.
Abu Jaafar, now in his seventies, was becoming more taciturn as he shielded from those closest to him the inner turmoil he was suffering. He barely slept, and when he did it was never more than an hour or two. He would sit up and at the first crack of dawn leave the house and pace around the quarter until its doors were opened. At the moment when they did, he would leave.
9
The preserved tablet,