The fortuitous appearance of the Egyptian envoy added another element to the intricate symmetry of powers and obligations which Eastern potentates glory in manipulating. As it happened, the celebration Sahak mentioned was to mark the proposal of a peace treaty between Baghdad and Cairo. It was not until much later that I learned how the two powerful caliphates had been at each other's throats for many years-owing to differences over religious observance, mostly. The fall of Jerusalem had awakened them to the danger of a house divided; the Caliph of Cairo, a more far-thinking ruler than most, had, I would eventually discover, offered his extensive fleet for the use of a combined Arab army united against the common enemy. Together Cairo and Baghdad might drive out the invading foreigners.
This offer had been spurned by the arrogant and pride-bound Baghdad caliphate, which considered itself superior to Cairo in every way. Still, as the years passed and the crusaders established themselves as a continual threat and ever-present thorn in the side of the Arabs, Baghdad began to soften to the idea of uniting against the crusaders. With the fall of Antioch imminent, and the prospect of recapturing Jerusalem a genuine possibility for the first time in many years, the young Caliph al-Mutarshid decided it was time to make peace with Cairo. Towards that end, the Egyptian emissary, who was merely making a routine visit to Damascus, had been summoned and lavished with gifts by way of a peace offering.
The Arabs have long enjoyed a fantastically elaborate game played between two people on a wooden board with dozens of small carved pieces. I once observed this game, and though I failed to grasp any but the most rudimentary principles, it did seem to capture the essence of the intricate convolutions of the Eastern mind. For although the board is marked with fixed squares of alternating colour, red and white, each piece moves entirely at will-but only within certain tightly circumscribed limitations peculiar to its rank. And for each move there is a countermove, each power balanced by an equal and opposite power. A game of infinite possibility, it is nevertheless played out according to rules as immutable as the mountains and invariable as a sunrise.
I had become like one of the lesser pieces in this strange game, and when the emissary departed Damascus two days later, I went with him – and all the rest of the plunder amassed by Ghazi as well, to be given to the Egyptian caliph as tokens of reconciliation between the powerful rulers of Baghdad and Cairo. So, following a five-day march overland from Damascus to the port of Sidon on the coast, I was put aboard one of the sturdy ships of the Egyptian caliph's substantial fleet, and we sailed for Cairo, arriving five days later at Damietta on the wide, spreading, many-fingered delta of the river Nile.
We left the ship at the harbour of Damietta, a foul stink-hole of a town, and proceeded by sailing barge up the wide, muddy river to Cairo. I stood at the low rail and watched the graceful river boats with their single, fin-shaped sails and long steering oars, gliding slowly on the brown water. We passed tiny settlements built on the banks of the river with long, fields of green cultivated grain stretching in wide, generous bands behind. One after another, we passed them, so many that they seemed after awhile to merge into a single, endless strip of villages all the way to Cairo.
I stood on the deck of the barge and watched life along the river unfold like a vast, seamless tapestry unrolled before me to reveal the age-old images of the river realm: three boys riding a donkey piled high with palm branches; a girl with a willow switch in her hand, herding grey geese along the path; two women washing clothes at the riverside; men casting fishing nets from small, bobbing boats; a youth carrying a row of dried fish on a pole over his shoulder; a laughing bevy of girls with water jars on their heads, their mantles knotted around their slender hips; a farmer gathering rushes with a curved scythe, and another leading an ox-drawn cart mounded with yellow melons; naked brown children wading in the cool shallows.
From the moment we entered the river channel, all that had gone before seemed to fade away into the warm, heavy air of the valley lowland. The looming tribulations of the last days dwindled away to piddling insignificance in the face of an immense and all-pervading tranquillity. No mere human event could disturb the prodigious peace of that land; the great tempests of war and ruin that wreak such havoc among men are but fleeting squalls that arise and disappear, swallowed in a serenity as old as the earth. I stood on the deck of the barge, and felt myself being drawn down and down into the limitless depths of the most profound cakn I had ever known-as if the timeless sky with its bright spray of stars wheeling through its eternal round proclaimed: this, too, shall pass.
From the beginning, I was treated well by those charged with my captivity. Perhaps they were not told the circumstances of my imprisonment. Then again, as my little jailer, Wazim Kadi, told me when I was brought to the caliph's palace, 'The Seljuqs are barbarians. Everyone knows this. They are coarse ruffians from out of Rhum where they live like wandering beasts.'
Of all the many contending races in the turbulent East, the Saracens consider themselves the most civil and refined, with a duty to impart their singular virtues and qualities to those less enlightened than themselves. It may be that when they learned I had been a captive of the Seljuqs, the courtly and cultured Saracens took it upon themselves to demonstrate their courtesy.
Nevertheless, it was with no little trepidation that I disembarked on the wooden quay which serves the impossible sprawl that is al-Qahirah, as the Arabs call it – the Victorious, for it overwhelms all would-be conquerors, and vanquishes all with its inexhaustible wealth of seductions.
I looked out from the quay at the dizzying tumult, masses of bodies which seemed to ebb and flow like a mottled flood, shimmering with sweat in the midday swelter, and I quailed before the sight. My reprieve, as Sahak called it, merely exchanged one captivity for another. I did not know what manner of reception awaited me with the Saracens; I did not know whether I should be set free, or executed before the day was finished.
The Black Rood, still bound in the rug in which I had wrapped it, went with me. In this only was I content; the holy relic was my strength and my consolation as we made our way up from the river with a train of bearers and handlers hired from the quayside to carry the caliph's treasure. Passing through one squalid settlement after another, we made our slow way towards the massive iron gates that guard the inner city. The poor and wretched of the East have heard that the streets of Cairo are paved with bricks of gold, and the city cannot hold them all; so, they build their hovels between the banks of the Nile and the high city walls, and every spring the floods come and wash these pitiful dwellings away. Many are drowned and their corpses are eaten by crocodiles-ravenous dragon-like river monsters that bedevil the lower marshes of the river.
Another variety of fierce and loathsome creature infests the stinking waste heaps outside the walls, and throng the gates of Cairo, preying on the unwary: beggars. At first I was moved with Christian pity and charity at the appalling sight of them. God have mercy, there were so many- blind and dumb, halt and lame, leprous, maimed, deaf, starving, naked, and sick. My soul quailed before their misery. But the hostile and belligerent bearing of these unfortunates quickly drove out all compassion. Like jackals they prowl the crowds looking for victims, hobbling pathetically or dragging their wizened and mangled bodies along the streets, bleating out their pitiful, and practised, wails of woe.' Although I was a prisoner and had nothing at all to give, that did not stop them from descending upon me, grabbing and snatching at my clothes with their withered hands, mewling and bawling their pitiful cries. God forgive me, I soon learned to ignore them and, like the guards, moved quickly through the shabby ranks, pushing aside any who were stubborn enough to stand in the way, turning a deaf ear to their shrieks, and hurrying on.