There was a time when mapmakers named the places through which they travelled after their lovers; for Edrisi, it’s the opposite. Each night, following the arrival of the Nubians, Edrisi calls a fresh concubine to his chamber. He looks her up and down, instructs her to turn around, then calls her by her new name.
There is Sala, so named because, like the peaceful province of Sala, a province rich in copper and seashells, she is, Edrisi thinks, calm, and her skin possesses the brilliance of copper.
There is Kaougha, a territory filled with mountain streams, from which prospectors sift gold dust, bit by bit, from the river bed; and Kaougha, named thus because Edrisi must tease from her silence her soft involvement.
Tonight, some five weeks since the celebration of the Five Hundred Maidens, Edrisi summons a new concubine. Inspecting her carefully, he is struck, not by her beauty, but by her gaze, which appears to him both serious and unyielding. He runs a gamut of names — cities, lands — through his mind, toying with each, trying to fit this bold maiden to a province. But he can’t think of any. She has something of the sea about her, he thinks, something sleepless.
‘I name you Abila,’ Edrisi says.
Abila says nothing.
‘Come, we’ll drink some wine.’
Abila pours wine into a cup, drinks, fills another cup and gives it to Edrisi. He drains it and thanks her.
‘You’re welcome,’ says Abila.
Edrisi fills his cup, drinks, pours wine into Abila’s cup and kisses her hand. Abila takes the cup, empties it and sits beside the bed.
They go on passing cup after cup until Edrisi begins to feel tipsy and is aroused. He kisses her hand, toys with her hair, plays little jokes, all the time feeding her sweets. They continue drinking until the wine gets the better of Edrisi, who begins to praise her beauty.
‘Abila, your forehead is like the new moon, your eyes like those of a deer or wild heifer, your eyebrows like the crescent in the month of Sha’ban; you have lips like carnelian, teeth like a row of pearls set in coral, breasts like a pair of pomegranates, and a navel like a cup that holds a pound of benzoin ointment.’
Abila says nothing.
‘You are like a dome of gold, as the poets say, a Queen bee, an unveiled bride, a splendid fish swimming in a fountain.’
Edrisi, in a fit of arousal, and all at once, takes off his clothes. He stands naked on the bed. Abila laughs.
‘Follow my example!’
Abila says nothing.
‘Reveal yourself.’
‘I won’t.’
‘You will pleasure me according to my desire.’
‘I will not.’
‘Undress and I shall take you.’
‘No!’
Edrisi covers his nakedness.
‘By god, you will!’
‘No!’
Each night it’s the same. Edrisi summons Abila to his chamber. They drink wine. He praises her beauty, then sheds his clothes. And, every night: ‘Undress and I shall take you.’
‘No!’
Edrisi doesn’t know what to do. He paces his room, the courtyard, the palace chapel, tugging at his beard. In between entreaties to Abila, he takes ever more concubines into his chamber. They satisfy him less, and less often. Spending increasing hours with his bees, but forgetting to wear his face-net and gloves, he is stung thirteen times. He arranges sprinting contests with the courtiers and wins without fail. He attempts to copy out Book XI from Pliny’s Natural History. Perhaps I am losing my charm, he thinks. It will be different tomorrow.
Night after night Abila remains indifferent. Edrisi’s desire for her increases. Why? he thinks. She is only one among many beauties. It is true, she is able to bend her limbs extravagantly; but so can Sahart, Galla, Shari, Nufii, Zallah, Kawar and Alura. She is voluptuous and, I imagine, forgiving; though no more so than Ozala and O Abu’I-Bilma. Her legs rise from the round bulbs of her heels and stretch as far as Mount Etna. But Afno, Anbiya, Zayla and Sahart each have longer legs.
The nights of rejection continue. Edrisi begins to fear the day he might possess Abila almost as much as he longs for it. He doesn’t know what his feelings will be on that day, forever deferred. He buys her presents, displays his skills on the racetrack. Nothing works. Abila turns her back, laughs even. Edrisi, in a fit of ardour, decides to build her a silver map of the world. He reads the great works of cartography — Al-Mas’udi, Ibn Hauqal, Orosius, Ptolemy — combining his own experiences as a traveller with the universal scheme of the seven climes. He orders pure unalloyed silver from Germany, contracts metal smiths and an army of engravers.
‘The world is a ball floating in the clouds of Heaven, like the yolk of an egg,’ he tells the engravers. ‘We’ll produce a silver orb which will represent the world on a round surface. It will weigh forty thousand dirhams,’ Edrisi instructs them, ‘and when it is ready you’ll engrave on it a map of the seven climes with their lands and regions, their shorelines and hinterlands, gulfs and seas, watercourses and rivers, their inhabited and uninhabited parts, their known harbours and the distances between each locality.’
This is done. Edrisi summons Abila to his chamber and unveils the planisphere.
‘I present to you this silver globe.’
Abila says nothing.
‘What do you think?’
‘I think, sir, it’s a plaything.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘It tells me nothing.’
‘But here is Sicily,’ implores Edrisi. ‘And here the Mediterranean is charted. Look, here is Africa, Egypt, Nubia.’
‘Where are the people?’
‘They are too small to depict, even on a map such as this.’
‘There are no stories.’
She leaves his chamber.
Edrisi despairs. Lying in his chamber by day, pacing the courtyard by night, he tugs ever harder at his beard.
Only when Milus, the travelling storyteller, arrives at court does Edrisi conceive his next plan. Abila wants stories, he thinks. By god, she’ll have a story!
It was late afternoon when Edrisi approached Milus’ chamber. The air was growing cold, pierced by the shiver-rustling of trees, catcalls, trumpets announcing sunset. He seized Milus, fixing his fist around his gaunt neck.
‘Teach me your storyteller’s art!’
Edrisi raised his eyes to the diminishing sky. Visible in the half-light were the masts of ships unhurriedly swaying to and fro, the cathedral spire, the barred windows of the leprosarium, railed parapets to which kites clung by their tails. Edrisi noticed none of the signs of the city. Instead he saw a crease in the sky, a faint and gauzy tear through which appeared a small though perfectly proportioned simulacrum of his Ceutan backyard. A shiver ran up from his toes, expanding in his chest to a tearing pain. He held the storyteller’s neck.
‘Teach me your storyteller’s art,’ he repeated without taking his eyes from the tear in the sky above Palermo, which now revealed the fascia of his favourite childhood sweetshop. He pictured the shopkeeper’s hairy arms and his fat fingers which nevertheless yielded wonderful sugar-beaded sweets. Milus rocked back and forward, his mouth drawn wide, gums as pink as a kitten’s. And Edrisi recalled the particular technique that as a child he had developed to eat sweetmeats, dropping one into his yawning mouth, then two, four, eight, sixteen if he could manage, until his tongue was forced against his palate and he spat the gummy sweetness on to the street, where one of the ragged dogs would gulp it down. The pain in his chest subsided, and Edrisi relaxed his hand. The storyteller collapsed on the ground. He was shaking violently and gasping for breath. Edrisi nudged him with his foot.