Leo Africanus Read Online Free Page B

avenge himself upon his son. The kingdom was thenceforth divided into two principalities which proceeded to destroy each other under the amused gaze of the Castilians.
    â€˜Seven years of civil war,’ mused my mother. ‘Seven years of a war in which sons killed fathers and brothers strangled brothers, in which neighbours suspected and betrayed each other, seven years in which men from our quarter of al-Baisin could not venture alongside the Great Mosque without being jeered, maltreated, assaulted, or sometimes even having their throats cut.’
    Her thoughts wandered far away from the circumcision ceremony taking place a few steps away from her, far from the voices and the clinking of cups which seemed strangely muffled, as in a dream. She found herself repeating ‘That accursed Parade!’ She sighed to herself, half asleep.

    â€˜Silma, my sister, still daydreaming?’
    The harsh voice of Khali transformed my mother into a little girl again. She fell on her elder brother’s neck and covered his forehead, his shoulders, and then his arms and hands with hot and furtive kisses. Touched but somewhat embarrassed by these demonstrationsof affection which threatened to upset his grave demeanour, he remained standing, stiff in his long silk
jubba
with its flowing sleeves, his scarf, the
taylassan
, draped elegantly around his shoulders, his face only revealing the ghost of a protective smile as the sign of his happiness. But this apparent coolness did not discourage Salma in the slightest. She had always known that a man of quality could not reveal his feelings without giving an impression of levity which was not appropriate to his status.
    â€˜What were you thinking about?’
    If the question had been asked by my father, Salma would have given an evasive answer, but Khali was the only man to whom she would reveal her heart as well as uncovering her head.
    â€˜I was thinking of the evils of our time, of the day of the Parade, of this endless war, of our divided city, of the people who die every day.’
    With the flat of his thumb he wiped a solitary tear from his sister’s cheek.
    â€˜These should not be the thoughts of a mother who has just given birth to her first son,’ he declared without conviction, adding in a solemn but more sincere voice, ‘ “You will have the rulers you deserve,” says the Prophet.’
    She repeated the words after him: ‘
Kama takunu yuwalla alaikum
.’
    Then, artlessly: ‘What are you trying to tell me? Weren’t you one of the foremost supporters of the present sultan? Didn’t you raise al-Baisin in support of him? Aren’t you highly respected in the Alhambra?’
    Stung to the quick, Khali prepared to defend himself with a violent diatribe, but suddenly realized that his interlocutor was only his little sister, tired and ill, whom, in addition, he loved more than anyone else in the world.
    â€˜You haven’t changed, Silma, I think I’m talking to a simple girl, but in fact it’s the daughter of Sulaiman the bookseller that I’m dealing with, may God add to your age what He subtracted from his. And may He shorten your tongue as He lengthened his.’
    Blessing the memory of their father, they burst out in peals of frank laughter. They were now accomplices, as they had always been. Khali hitched up the front of his
jubba
and sat cross-legged on a woven straw mat at the entrance to his sister’s bedroom.
    â€˜Your questions pierce me with their softness like the snow of Mount Cholair, which burns even more surely than the desert sun.’
    Suddenly confident and a little mischievous, Salma asked him bluntly:
    â€˜And what do you say?’
    With a gesture which was not at all spontaneous she lowered her head, seized the edge of her brother’s
taylassan
and hid her red eyes within it. Then, her face still hidden, she pronounced, like the sentence of a qadi:
    â€˜Tell me