4. Map of the World, 1: The Tale of El-Edrisi
I have prepared myself a writing table: a wardrobe door, unhinged from its body, laid horizontal and supported at each corner with pillars of books — yellowing volumes of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1911, whose pages come apart like pressed flowers in my hands. Upon the desk sits my laptop computer. Purring, it emits a bluish haze, faintly lighting the darkness. It is the brightest colour in the attic. Everything else is dulled by dust, moth-eaten, mildewed, encrusted with grime, carious, verdigris, flaking. The most decrepit item in the attic is also the largest. It hangs on the far wall via a single hook attached to its top left corner. It is an early example of cartographic dreaming. A mappa mundi.
Stolen from Waltham Abbey late in the fourteenth century, it was acquired by Sir Henry Wrecksham in 1448 for his collection of unica, later sold to an unknown German, who, during the Thirty Years’ War, buried it then died; it lay four feet under earth for the next three hundred years, outlasting countless conflicts, including two World Wars, until it was discovered in 1948 by an American soldier in a field outside Nuremberg. Unsure of what it was, but perceiving its great age, the soldier brought it back with him to America. He showed it to an expert at the Metropolitan Museum, who verified its authenticity. This is the story my father chose to believe on purchasing the fake in 1963, not long after returning from Nigeria. He was suffering because the British had been ousted from the country. Half crazed on account of the loss of his illusions, he spent almost two-thirds of his inheritance on another kind of fantasy. Since then the mappa mundi has hung in the attic.
Although it depicts continents and seas, nations and towers, it is not only a map but a decorative altarpiece, an object of desire among collectors and unscrupulous cheats. Painted on vellum, it measures three feet high and two feet six inches wide. The map itself is almost perfectly round. Asia occupies the upper half, Europe the bottom left-hand quarter, and Africa the lower right of the world disk. This scheme, the tripartite division of the earth, is based on the biblical story of Noah. After one hundred and fifty days at sea, Noah sent his three sons to repopulate the land, giving a continent to each. Japheth received Europe, Shem received Asia, and Ham Africa. The continents (only three are depicted on the map), are named accordingly. Diverse images embellish the mappa mundi. Christ is nailed to the cross. The Apocalypse is revealed to St John at Patmos. The Sphinx, the elephant and the pelican are portrayed inhabiting the western region of the African continent. Of these, it is the fearsome image of the pelican which my mind returns to most often: she is perched on the edge of her nest teeming with her offspring, who feed from a gaping wound in her side. Ragged gaps, where the moths have feasted, disfigure the map: an elliptical fissure in the Dead Sea, a growing tear enveloping Edinburgh, a hole east of Syria where the Garden of Eden formerly lay. The Mediterranean covers almost one-third of the work’s surface. It is mottled with islands, notably Crete with its Labyrinth, and Sicily in flames. The rivers Don and Nile, which flow into the Mediterranean, mark the boundaries of Europe, Asia and Africa. Europe is dotted with cities and familiar landmarks. The greater parts of Africa and Asia are filled with pictures of fabulous cities and mythical beings. Africa, east of the Nile, is populated by a bestiary of monstrous races arranged in alphabetical order.
AMYCTYRAE·
I have a bottom lip that protrudes far from my face. It serves as an umbrella against the sun. I live on raw meat and am unsociable.
ANDROGINI·
I am a man-woman. My people make sacrifices to Osiris and the Moon.
ANTHROPOPHAGI·
I eat my parents when they are old, or anyone else I can find.
ASTOMI·
…
BLEMMYAE·
I am one whose head grows beneath the shoulders. I curse the sun and never dream.
CYCLOPS·
Round-eye, I am mistaken for treachery. Son of Cain.
DONESTRE·
I speak the language of any traveller I meet and claim to know his wife. Then I kill him and mourn over his head.
ETHIOPIAN·
I am named by Greeks. My face is burned black by the sun.
GORGADES·
I am a hairy woman. I will not tell you how I survived the Flood.
PANOTII·
My ears reach the ground and serve as blankets. Should I meet a traveller, I’ll unfurl them and fly away.
PANPHAGI·
I devour anything and everything.
PYGMIE·
I am but two cubits tall, as are my cows.
SCIOPOD·
I am one-legged but uncommonly swift. In summer I lie on my back and shade myself with my giant foot.
SCIRITAE·
I am a noseless flat-faced man. I belong to the uninhabitable city.
TROGLODYTE·
Grrioeejubarbaraesdrthsjkslah.
WIFE-GIVER·
I honour travellers with wives.
Examining the mappa mundi in recent days, I have come to understand both its beauty and its menace, in a way that was not apparent to me when my fascination for the map was born.
The mappa mundi is like a travelogue, which reflects not the material world, but the fantasies of the traveller’s mind; as if the mapmaker projected his desires on to vellum. It is a spatial imagining of the world, just as an encyclopaedia is an alphabetical imagining of the world, or a chronicle is an arrangement of common happenings in temporal order. But forgetting for the moment the mappa mundi — and turning to an earlier map — I skip back through centuries.
…
to another island in Europe, smaller than Britain and warmer, where the Norman King Roger II has lately established an uneasy empire, a merging of three religions, four cultures and diverse sensibilities, where splendid cathedrals vie for space in the skyline with palaces and mosques.
…
to an airy courtyard in Palermo, where scholars and courtesans gather beneath bronze cupolas and towering fountains, shaded by date palms, cooled by eunuchs wielding peacock-feather fans.
…
where one man, taller than the rest, strolls among his attendants, impatient, tugging at his beard, a man whose eyes bear the feral mark of storms — the sandstorms of the Sahara. A man for whom a crisis is approaching.
Who is this man, so tall and thin-lipped?
El-Edrisi — geographer, beekeeper, savant, lover, tyrant, philanthropist, maker of maps.
Lean and sun-black, El-Edrisi is a man fashioned by weather. He has travelled in Europe, North Africa, Asia Minor and the Mediterranean. For twelve years Edrisi has been on the move. But now he is still, a city-dweller, residing in Palermo, where he is Chief Vizier to King Roger II.
I am getting ahead of myself, because this is not my story, or not entirely my own. I can tell it; punch the keys of my computer so as to arrange the letters on the screen. To record Edrisi’s tale, however, is to distort it, because he cannot wholly be captured in words. He is, rather, a voice, a pursing of lips, the narrowing of eyes, sudden jerky hand movements — most of all a voice. Edrisi’s story first came to me via Father, who would lecture Mother’s belly, which was where I first heard the tale. Years later, sitting at the foot of my bed in Lagos, he would retell the story so that Edrisi became familiar again.