Opening the door, I stepped into the passage, and beyond the colonnade, sunlight fell across a garden where hibiscus, rose, and jasmine grew. A few minutes I stood there, letting the last of the tension flow from me.
The gate by which I had entered was closed, and it was barred from within.
10
Over a pilaf my host explained that his name was ibn-Tuwais, and that he was an Arab of the Quraysh, the tribe of the Prophet. He had been both a soldier and an official of the caliph.
“I have known many Franks, and was for a time a prisoner in Palermo.”
“My father often spoke of the place.”
“He is dead?”
“So it has been said, but perhaps the man lied, or was mistaken.”
Many times stories are told merely to make the teller seem important, and how many times had men said they had themselves seen things of which they had but heard?
“What are your plans?”
“To remain here, to study, to learn, to listen for news. It has been said that all news comes to Córdoba.”
“My roof is yours. I have no son, and kismet has brought you to me. In the meanwhile, I am not without sources of information. I shall seek news of your father. His was a name well known on the sea, and there will be stories.”
“You must forgive me. I cannot share your home unless I am permitted to pay. It is a custom among my people.”
Tuwais bowed. “Once I might have taken offense, but I am a poor man. You see a house of wealth, and so it was under the old caliphs, but the Berbers have offered me no position.
“Your company will please me, for in my youth I made great talk with the scholars of Baghdad and Damascus. Moreover, I have a few books, some of them very fine, very rare.”
He arose. “An old man’s advice? Speak little, listen much. In Córdoba there is beauty and there is wisdom, but there is blood, also.”
That night I read myself to sleep with the Chronology of Ancient Nations by al-Biruni, reading also from the Almagest of Ptolemy.
My thoughts turned to Aziza. Where was she? Did she fare well? Was she with her friends? Her beauty was a memory that would not be forgotten.
During the days that followed, I read, walked in the streets to learn my way, and listened to the spoken tongues, learning more of Arabic and something of Berber.
It was now more than four hundred years since the Moors had conquered Spain. Their invasion of France had been repelled by Charles Martel. The corrupt empire of the Visigoths had collapsed before the first attack by a small band of Moslems led by Tarik, a veteran soldier. The Visigoth Empire had been a mixture of peoples and languages, many of them inherited from bygone years. The Iberians, Phoenicians, and many others left their mark. The Phoenicians were a Semitic people, settled in many places along the coast, opening trading establishments and sending their ships into the Atlantic. Their ships and those from Carthage, which had once been a Phoenician colony, sailed around Africa, went to the Scilly Isles for tin, sailed the coasts of Brittany and into the North Sea. As each mariner was jealous of his sources for raw materials and trade goods, we shall probably never know the true extent of their voyages.
The Greeks, the Romans, the Vandals, and the Goths had all invaded Spain, and left their mark upon it. Invading armies then, as well as now, left behind them an outbreak of pregnancy, destroying forever the myth of a pure race.
Never did I tire of roaming the streets, one of which, as Duban the soldier had told me, was ten miles long and lighted from end to end. The banks of the Guadalquivir were lined with houses of marble, with mosques and gardens. Water was brought to the city through leaden pipes, so everywhere there were fountains, flowers, trees, and vines.
It was said there were fifty thousand fine dwellings in Córdoba, and as many lesser ones. There were seven hundred mosques where the faithful worshiped, and nine hundred public baths. And this at a time when Christians forbade bathing as a heathen custom, when monks and nuns boasted of their filthiness as evidence of sanctity. One nun of the time boasted that at the age of sixty she had washed no part of her body but her fingertips when going to take the mass.
There were thousands of shops, with streets devoted to workers in metal, leather, and silk; it was said there were one hundred and thirty thousand weavers working with silk or wool.
Upon a side street I discovered a lean, fierce man who taught the art of the scimitar and dagger, and each day I went there to work with him. My long hours at the oar as well as a boyhood of running, wrestling, and climbing rocks had given me uncommon strength and agility. My teacher suggested another, a huge wrestler from India, a man of enormous skill, now growing old. He spoke Arabic fluently, and between bouts we talked much of his native land and those that intervened.
As black-haired as any Arab, my hair was curly and my skin only a little lighter than most of theirs. Now I cultivated a black mustache and could easily have passed for an Arab or Berber. In my new clothing, with my height, I drew attention upon the streets where I spent my time, learning the ways of the city, listening to the bargaining, the gossip, debate, and argument.
As yet I had chosen no school, yet each night I read myself to sleep with the writings of al-Farabi on Aristotle, and I was learning much. Among other things I learned that one could attain to no position unless one was adept at extemporaneous poetry, and poetry of all kinds was appreciated by men in the street as well as by the leaders in the brilliant intellectual and artistic life for which Córdoba was famous.
Knowing no one, I often sat alone in one of the coffeehouses that were springing up in the cities of Moslem Spain. At first, when coffee became known, it was pressed into cakes and sold as a delicacy; later it was made into an infusion and drunk. It was said to be inspiring to the mind, a contribution to thought. The coffeehouses became the haunts of intellectuals and poets.
Coffee was a product of Africa but soon crossed the Red Sea into Arabia. Ibn-Tuwais, with whom I often talked the hours away, had been a friend of a learned man who told him of an ancient time when a ship a day had sailed from the Red Sea ports of Egypt such as Myos Hormus and Berenice, sailing to the faraway cities of India, Ceylon, and China. These vessels often brought cargoes of tea, and this, too, had become a favorite beverage. Unknown in Christian Europe, it had first been used for medicinal purposes, but was now drunk for pleasure.
Neither drink was known in Frankish lands, but seated in the coffeehouses, I drank of each at various times, twirling my mustache and listening with attention to that headier draught, the wine of the intellect, that sweet and bitter juice distilled from the vine of thought and the tree of man’s experience.
Averroes, one of the great intellects of Islam, was qadi of Córdoba at the time. Maimonides, a Jew and a great scholar, had lived there and visited from time to time, or so it was said.
The tea and coffee houses were alive with argument, and there were Persians from Jundi Shapur, Greeks from Alexandria, Syrians from Aleppo mingling with Arabs from Damascus and Baghdad.
In one of the coffeehouses I frequented, Abul Kasim Khalaf, known to the Franks as Albucasis, was an occasional visitor. Famous as a surgeon, he was even better known as a poet and wit. The botanist ibn-Beytar was his friend, and many an hour I sat, my back to them, but hungrily gathering every word. In this way my education progressed, but also I was learning more of the Arabic language. From time to time they mentioned books, and these I hastened to find for myself that I might learn from them. Into every aspect of learning I threw myself with all the hunger of the starved.
Each day I lingered in the bazaars, moving from place to place to talk to merchants from foreign lands, and each I asked for news of Kerbouchard. Many knew nothing; others assured me he was dead, but still I could not accept it.
Of Redwan and Aziza I heard nothing, although there was much talk of politics.
Well-supplied with money from the selling of the galley, I purchased fine garments, becoming very much the elegant young man of fashion. I sat many an hour, usually engrossed in some manuscript or book purchased in the street of the booksellers.