Here is Father. He is sitting in my bedroom after supper. Ben — our cook — is washing up in the kitchen. Ade — Ben’s son, our servant-boy — is, I suspect, listening at the bedroom door. Mother is in the grave in Botley Cemetery, Oxford. Father begins, as he always begins, with a narrowing of his eyes, a half-grin and the single word: Well …
There was a young boy called El-Edrisi, who lived in the city of Ceuta on the North African coast. He was the son of a rich and prominent family of the Hammudid dynasty. When he was seven Edrisi found himself orphaned, and rich. He spent a wild and extravagant youth, eating and drinking freely, dressing flamboyantly, passing his days with friends. He believed this way of life would last for ever. But Edrisi woke, aged fourteen and a half, to find he’d lost almost everything. He’d spent his money on wine and women and bees.
Edrisi lay on his cool bed in the hot Moroccan summer. He was sad and listless, but all the time his cunning brain was at work. Eventually he thought of a plan. He sold all he had of clothes and property. Then this spoiled and ruined lad, this Moorish Sinbad, took himself to sea.
‘Who’s Sinbad?’ I ask.
‘I’ll tell you tomorrow.’
Edrisi travelled in vain. Spending months at sea only increased his desire for his boyhood home. Or, second best, a city, any city. Arriving in Córdoba or Baghdad or Timbuktu, Edrisi saw — in the blue domes and pleasure-gardens, in the sandalwood ashes glowing in the braziers — only what differed from his native Ceuta. He noted these differences meticulously. He drew maps of his city, trying to recreate as much detail as he could muster. But the further he travelled the more obscure Ceuta became. He forgot details: the precise length of his garden, the location of that tiny door, always locked, on Meedan Street. He began to associate his native town with loss: the loss of his parents, his fortune, the city he hadn’t seen for two, six, eleven, years. Edrisi attempted to fill this emptiness through movement.
He pictured the lands beyond as unmarked terrain. Suspended between a desire to keep moving and his fear of loss, Edrisi placed flags in cities and names on maps. In the North African desert he craved water so intensely he saw visions of paradise. Tall magnificent palm trees. A silver racetrack. Hordes of women. Beehives in perfect order. Edrisi babbled; ravaged, exhausted by thirst. He grabbed his goatskin flask and emptied the last drops of water. As he drank, feeling his thirst subside and the madness within him dying down, the dream-vista began to vanish. The water extended his life but took away his vision of paradise. In Ethiopia, during the rainy season, he saw a woman who became a man on her wedding-day. He learned that people struck by lightning when awake are found with their eyes closed, and, when asleep, with their eyes open. On the Sierra Nevada in Southern Spain, Edrisi was stupefied by snow. A miracle, he thought. How can something be at once so brilliant and cold?
…
There were details Father left out of the story, perhaps because he thought I was too young, perhaps because it changed with each telling. Sometimes, when it was late, the tale lasted five minutes. Other times Father talked for longer. The version I am relating now is, in a sense, a false rendering, since I am leaving nothing out. In fact, I realize that I am adding to the story even as I write.
Edrisi had a fearful temper. Yes, his temper was as changeable as the climates through which he had travelled. He was known among the courtiers of the Cappella Palatina — King Roger’s palace and chapel — as, variously, Procella, Al-Çáúçõyé, Cheimazô, La Tempesta.
His desires were as vigorous and variable as his temper. Edrisi had fifty-three wives. He had fathered sixty-two sons and seventy-eight daughters. In and around his chamber dwelt slave-girls, eunuchs, handmaidens and concubines.
He loved none.
At this point in the story Father switches to the present tense. He edges closer and slowly straightens his back.
Today in Palermo a ship has arrived. The cargo began its journey in Nubia, moving in a train of two hundred camels northward, following the River Nile up through Egypt, and to the sea-town of Alexandria; where it swung left, hugging the North African coast until it reached Benghazi. The cargo was loaded on to the ship, which for two days sailed up through the Gulf of Sirte and into the Mediterranean. Sailing through the channel between Scylla and Charybdis, it rounded the coast of Sicily and arrived, right on time, at Port Vieveria.
Palermo celebrates. From the port to the Cappella Palatina crowds of revellers throng the streets. There are jugglers, vaudeville shows, acrobats and fire-eaters. Belly dancers swing and ripple to the sound of flutes, pausing only when coins fail to drop at their feet. Every five years it is the same. There are sounds of caged birds warbling in various voices and tongues, turtledoves, nightingales, thrushes and curlews. There are gambling dens, clairaudients, beggars competing for alms. As the train of camels, each supporting a curtained palanquin, passes with its hidden cargo, the crowds hush. They know what the curtains conceaclass="underline" stolen virgins. Five hundred maidens from Nubia.
The camels walk unconcernedly on, through noise and perfume, passing La Ferria, beyond the blue domes of the Jami’ Mosque, and now, climbing to the highest point in the city, draw near the gates of the Cappella Palatina. Outside, the carnival will continue long into the night. Inside, the courtiers of Roger’s palace wait — emirs and viziers, ushers and giandars — in eager anticipation.
And here is Edrisi himself, impatient, tugging at his beard, standing by the side of his king.
Father leans forward, placing a hand on each knee. He fixes his eyes on a point above my head and, imitating Edrisi, speaks in a guttural voice.
‘I tell you, Caliph, these maidens are fine. I gave instructions specially.’
‘How were they chosen?’
‘There is a province inhabited by infidels who are called Nubian, which is also the name of their city. They are a good-looking race with fair complexions. They are unlike other savages which inhabit that part of the earth. Their women are of a great beauty. I sent emissaries to Nubia to select their most beautiful maidens.’
Roger claps his hands, moving to embrace Edrisi …
But Roger is cut short. For now the bronze gates open; camel after camel lumbers into the courtyard, forming a wide circle around Roger and Edrisi and the courtiers. Roger beams. Edrisi feels faint; his eyes roll. Quickly he recovers his composure. The five hundred maidens from Nubia step, tentatively, blinkingly, into the courtyard. They are travel-weary. They are angry. They appear, to Edrisi, beautiful.
And among the throng, there is one whose indifference will provoke a crisis in Edrisi, one who will arouse in him a strange and disturbing emotion.
I’ll call it by its proper name: Love.
Father stands up, opens the bedroom door, crosses the hallway and steps out on to the veranda. I hear his shoes like handclaps on the hardwood floor. It is dark outside. I do not feel tired. The insects sing. ‘Go on,’ I call out into the boisterous dark. There is no reply. ‘Tell me more.’ Father stops. I hear his footsteps growing louder as he approaches my room; they pause; the door swings open; and suddenly he is squatting beside my bed and we are looking directly at one another through the mosquito net. ‘You can’t stop there.’