With that Abu Rakwa paused for a moment, as though to recoup his energy. Abu al-Mahasin and all the tribesmen present sat down. Then Abu Rakwa started an eloquent address in a gentle, lilting voice:
Tyranny and treason expelled me from Spain.
I have become an ascetic, O people! Today I have no wives to impregnate.
My only possessions are my coffee-pot, my cloak, and my stick; I use them to protect my honor and the last shred of my persona! protection.
As an ascetic I roam God’s earth, passing my time in prayer and teaching children.
I have presented the other life to the peoples of Egypt and Syria,
My heart being open to them like a blossom.
Have I not advised them to be patient and forbearing?
“Patience, patience!” I told them. “Even though your skin be flayed and the outrages of the tyrant al-Hakim spread abroad,
have I not proclaimed sweetness in word and deed?!
I have glorified love, and before the people
I have been extolling the exchange of flower petals and concealing rocks.
…
Thus I have occulted the life of power
And fraternized the exultations of seasons and dew.
I have welcomed glad tidings and expressed my joy;
I have climbed rocks,
I have pledged allegiance to the sea,
I have told people: You beloved who remain,
There is nothing so sweet as to intensify my great longing for you all.
…
I have said what I have said; I have made claims.
Time has passed, and another time has come
Bringing with it a cursed era of one who rules by tyranny, with chains and wires on feet and neck,
introducing things inconceivable to eye and ear: tiny coffins, destruction, women in prison, men whose souls gush out on sword blades,
terrified faces, wordless inquisitions,
the River Nile overflowing with the blood of victims and the heads of the innocent.
…
By the light of what the eye has witnessed:
The seed of all peace is but a false promise;
The windmill of waiting no longer draws any wind,
resolve is flagging, and suffering is all that remains.
By the light of what the eye has witnessed, we must confess:
Faced with such misery, in the most forceful sense of — that word.
The schemes of the hermit are mere folly and deceit.
We must confess:
All my words about strategy in the face of such miseries are crippled,
My ideas about abstinence in the face of power have failed,
And my head has become utterly useless.
My eye still bears the dusty tears of the eternal
As I contemplate the foaming blood that bursts from the history of inquisitions and wounds without number.
When Abu Rakwa had finished, he fell to the ground exhausted. His audience was thunderstruck. It felt as if they had just heard something they had been anticipating for a long time; or as if a set of pearls had long been hidden away within their innermost feelings, in the recesses of their memories and very beings; all that was needed was for someone to open them up and array them neatly in the realm of their current consciousness. As they sat there feeling such sensations, a young man named Shihab al-Din ibn Mundhir, fully armed and renowned among his tribe for his courage and eloquence, stood up and said, “Peerless counselor, our life here is not as we would like it to be! Seasons of lack and burning hot days have brought us low. We have gone into exile, with rocks for our beds; in years of drought we have wandered aimlessly. We have headed for streams and valleys, saying, ‘Maybe there is salvation in water.’ Down poured the water and destroyed our crops. Some folk said, ‘Maybe there is salvation in sun and sand.’ yet we became parched and exhausted. We fell into despair. At the very edge of disaster we found an escape in raids on other tribes. Some battles we won, others we lost. Yes indeed, O peerless counselor, our life is not as we would wish it! With every death, every famine, we are enveloped in silence. If we so much as raise our heads, the army of al-Hakim takes us prisoner and burns everything. As you can see, only despair remains, just like an axe digging ditches and hollows throughout our terrain.
“We beseech you by God, you who are descended from nobility and like us realize full well the hard yoke of oppression and tyranny, do not forsake us when the sun goes down today or in future days, do not forsake us when you have come to purge our minds and eradicate all memory of our mourning. Do not forsake us now that you have shown us the way to transform our despair and trauma into a great boon.”
Many voices were raised to echo Shihab al-Din’s thoughts, as one word or another was repeated. The import of them all was the expressed desire that Abu Rakwa stay with the tribe and discuss its present and future situation with the chiefs. At this point the shaykh of the Banu Qurra stood up, silenced the crowd, and addressed them all in a forthright tone, “By God, men of our tribe, if you want Abu Rakwa to stay with us and adjudicate our dispute with the Zanata tribes, then I’m with you But if you expect him to bring you all victory against your closest enemies, then let him be! Leave him out of your obsessions and strategies and let him go on his way.”
Expressions of disappointment and opposition greeted this speech; some men even looked angry. As soon as Abu Rakwa noticed their reaction, he quickly interceded. “The revered shaykh is absolutely right. By Him who created the heavens and changes circumstances, I have no intention of remaining among you if it is only some sinister purpose that draws your hearts toward me. I will not join you in any project to bring you victory over your imagined foes, those fellow inhabitants of these desert wastes who share with you a life full of hardships. I am firmly convinced that you and they are partners in misery and deprivation; the only reason why you fight each other is because you are so alike, each one of you trying to erase his own weakness by erasing that of people who find themselves in the very same plight or worse. You attack each other, totally forgetting the one who is the cause of all the misery and making much of his tyrannical power. I want you all to realize that there flows within the veins of your tribe, of your enemies — the Zanata tribe, and of others as well, a single kind of blood. There is no question of similarity or difference; that blood is the blood of piety and faith. Your only enemy is the person who has burned you and sucked you all dry, then tossed you into the desert wastes where food and drink are so scarce.”
What was foremost in their minds was the memory of the accursed fire that al-Hakim the Fatimid had unleashed against them all. With that thought burning inside, none of them had any trouble at all appreciating what Abu Rakwa was referring to. Their expressions showed clearly enough that they both understood and accepted what he was saying. Abu Rakwa seized the opportunity to add, “Noble Arabs! Are you happy to see al-Hakim dispatching his devotees into Egypt and Syria to disseminate slanderous and demeaning images of you to people far and wide? They claim that you are all tyrants and rapists, the very dregs of the Arabs, people who earn a living by raiding caravans on the pilgrimage route to Mecca; that you shed the blood of women and children; and that no sooner do you settle anywhere than you destroy everything, greenery and shrubs, and start spreading apostasy and destruction. They keep repeating these calumnies and worse. How much longer are you going to allow yourselves to be despised like this and to go on living in this terrible environment with such a reputation? How much longer are you going to waste your time fighting stupid and unjust wars against people who are just as weak as you are? Do you really want to let this desert keep on piling its life of poverty and suffering on top of your heads? By Him who has the power and the authority, I shall return to my own haunts if you do not change your ways and seek to achieve in this world the justice, glory, and divine unity that God has promised.”