Granada Read Online Free Page B

chased him. Abu Mansour then screamed out, "It's your mother who has fallen, not Granada, you raven of evil omen. Get out of my bathhouse or I'll kill you."
    The bathers all jumped up and stood between Abu Mansour and the man he was about to strike. Men from inside the baths poured out naked as the day they were born, and those sitting or resting on the benches lost their towels in their forward rush to see what was happening. Saad stood there frozen in a state of shock, aware that he should go and help his master but unable to move a muscle, as though his feet were plastered to the floor.

    His mind drifted. To wander aimlessly about in the daytime and greet the night sitting in the corner of a mosque reeling from the pangs of hunger that only sleep could relieve, wrapped in a coarse woolen cloak, what's new about that?
    That was not the first time Saad found himself without any source of sustenance, as he thought about the days when his future appeared to him like a winter morning enveloped in a thick fog in which you could hardly see your own footsteps. Those days he used to ruminate over his past, the distant past when the branch grew freely, and the not-so-distant past when it was snapped off the tree, blown about by the stormy winds. And the more he tried to recall what had happened, the more the details came back to him, ones that had slipped his mind. He was astonished that he could forget, but more astonished that these memories came back to him with a sudden new clarity, and after thinking about it somewhat, he became certain that nothing was lost, that the human mind was a wondrous treasure chest, and that however deeply lodged in the head, it preserved things that couldn't be counted or weighed: the scent of the sea, his mother's face, pale shafts of sun that filtered through the green vine leaves moistened by drops of rain, threads of silk on his father's loom, his grandfather's hacking morning cough, the laugh of the little girl, the taste of a fresh green almond, a broken jar seeping olive oil, or a solitary rosary bead that had rolled behind the chest of drawers where he used to hide.
    After three days of looking for work and sleeping at night in the mosque, Saad thought of asking Abu Mansour for help. "I left my master, or rather he fired me. I'm looking for work."

    "Do you know the Paper Makers' Quarter?"
    "Yes, I know it."
    "Go there and ask for Abu Jaafar's shop. Tell him I'm the one who sent you. If he can't find you any work, come back to me."
    Abu Jaafar spoke to Saad while he worked:"You should observe closely everything Naeem and I do. God willing, you'll learn quickly. Can you read and write?"
    "No."
    "That's another problem we'll have to deal with. Naeem, come over here. This is Saad who comes to us from Malaga. He's going to be working with you. You have to help him. I trust you're a good teacher?"
    Naeem smiled, proud of the confidence his patron bestowed on him in assigning him such a task. However, Saad wasn't so happy, as he saw in Naeem a boy with a frail body and hazel eyes that glistened with sparks of shrewdness. Although no older than thirteen, Saad felt as though he were a man. Hadn't his body developed and his voice dropped, and the lines of his mustache grown in? What could this pale, mousy kid possibly teach him?
    That evening Saad's feelings toward Naeem were reinforced and his annoyance with him increased. He was a chatterbox who went on endlessly about nothing and everything. He asked him about Malaga, about his father and mother, how he came to Granada all by himself, why he hadn't stayed with them, and where did he work before coming to Abu Jaafar. He never tired of asking questions, and Saad had no desire to reveal anything to him, so he responded with terse, evasive answers.
    When Naeem realized he was getting nowhere with Saad, he began to talk about himself. He told him that he didn't know or remember his parents. In fact, the only person he remembers is the old woman who