ONE NIGHT, OUTSIDE THE CITY
by
James Munro
I was late coming back to the city - Granada, that is - and had to spend the night outside the wall. Looking for somewhere to stay, I found myself instead beside the city pit, which was huge, like all those in the South and East, and had obviously been in use for centuries, yet somehow was still nowhere near full, perhaps because the stuff subsides, perhaps because the dogs and rats eat so much of it; and I saw a not unusual sight a movement, a body moving down in the pit, a dog or a donkey, or a person, that had not been quite dead when they threw it in, and was still not quite dead enough for the rats and the other dogs to do their work.
There was nothing I could do, of course. Whatever the creature was, and whoever had cast it out, he had no doubt had a perfect right to do so. And if he hadn't, who was to say? It had happened, as so much had happened over the years, so much, both good and bad, before my very eyes, and if I had learnt one thing in the East, one thing that kept me sane, it was that what is to happen happens; that if it happens it is written, was written and had been written since the beginning of time; and that Allah is the only Judge. But then I saw an old, old man sitting staring down into the pit. Staring straight at the moving creature. And following his gaze, I saw now that the creature was a woman. And being one always for a good story, whatever the situation, I said, in Arabic, 'Did you cast her in there, father?'
He didn't take his eyes off her for an instant, but a slight movement of his head told me that my question was as offensive as it was absurd.
'Forgive a foolish intruder. May Allah bear witness that my question was prompted only by a desire to help, a desire to know if there was any way in which a mere outsider, a foreigner, a creature of the North, a thing of naught, might be of assistance.'
Now he turned and glanced at me, as if to confirm that I was indeed a thing of naught. 'Why do you then address me in that accursed tongue, señor?' he said, in Spanish.
'Forgive me, father. I have spent many long years in the East fighting the infidel, and have perforce learnt the tongue of my enemy, but have only recently arrived in Spain and know little Spanish.'
He looked at me again. This time he held my gaze. And after a long time, he spoke again, in Arabic. 'Yes, there is something you can do for me. For her.'
'Tell me, father.' I looked down into the pit again, The woman was still now. No, there was a movement. Was it her or a dog sniffing round her? I was beginning to regret my hasty words.
'You asked if it was I who cast her into the pit. No. I have no rights over her. She is not mine to cast into the pit, and neither is she mine to save.'
'Then why ?'
'She was mine, once. Mine to do as I would with. And I sold her.' He paused and looked at me, 'She is my daughter.'
It turned out that some twelve years earlier he had invested unwisely and ended up deeply in debt. His wife was dead.There was only him and his daughter, Katerina. (Despite all his years abroad, Ferchard gave the name a Scottish ring Kat'rina pronouncing it almost as he would the name of his long dead first love, Catriona.) He began to sell off his assets, simply to pay the interest on his debts. How long could that go on? Katerina said to him, 'Father, sell me.'
'Sell you? Never!'
'Father, if you do not, they will take you away, they will sell you.'
'For what little I am worth!'
'And then what will I do? I will end up in slavery anyway? Sell me now, father! I am a virgin, and a Christian! I am worth more than all your debts! And then you can still have a life. Start all over again. Make another fortune. Find another wife. Have another daughter. Have the son you always wanted.'
'But what will become of you?'
'I am beautiful! I shall find favour with my master.'
With her master, yes but with her mistress?
I was beginning to understand.
She bore her master twins, a boy and a girl. They were named Rachid and Souad, for they were Muslim children even if their mother was, or had once been before she was introduced into civilised society, an accursed Christian, a Nazrani.
Rachid was her master's firstborn son. His wife, one Leila, if I remember rightly, kept very quiet at first, especially when he talked of marrying Katerina and making Rachid his heir, but she knew an old woman a witch (yes, they have them out there too) and she paid her well and took the disgusting concoction she gave her to take every night and sure enough her husband began once more to see only her, to love only her, and in no time at all she was pregnant again and within the year had a fine big son whom they named Ahmed.
No chance now of the Nazrani slave-woman's child becoming the heir! In fact, he spent most of his early years as the family whipping-boy, either waiting, shaking, to be whipped he never got used to it who does? are we horses? or being whipped or lying there sobbing afterwards while recovering from being whipped and all for his half-brother Ahmed's misdeeds. For that was how Ahmed's mother, Leila, arranged things with the two eunuchs who taught and cared for the boys; and as Ahmed was both spoilt and vicious, and likely to take a horrifying revenge on the eunuchs for any chastisement imposed on him, it suited them quite as well as it suited Leila.
In tales, it would have been Ahmed and his doting mother against whom Fate moved, leaving Rachid to become the heir his father would obviously have preferred. But this is no tale.
The father died one night, and by dusk the next day Rachid had been clumsily castrated and he and his sister, Souad, packed off to Algeciras for shipment across the strait to the port of Tangier, which boasts the biggest and most anonymous slave market in all north Africa.
'But when did all this happen?' I asked.
'Yesterday.'
'Yesterday? But then ...? And your daughter? Katerina?'
'When she saw her Rachid cut off it had been done by the time they brought her in but when she saw him there pouring with blood from between his legs she seized the knife and attacked the eunuch who had done it, and then Ahmed himself. She did him no harm not to Ahmed anyway, though she did give the eunuch's pendulous chest a nasty gash; she was quickly overcome by the other eunuchs in attendance but for this her thumbs and fingers were cut off, first, so that she could never hold a knife again; her hamstrings were severed so that she could never stand up to anyone again; her tongue was cut out so that she could never abuse anyone again as she had abused Ahmed and his doting mother while all this was happening; and finally her eyes were plucked out, and left hanging on her cheeks: they were still swinging from her eye-sockets when she was cast naked into the pit, last night.'
'And how did you find out all this?'
'I had heard of her master's death. The rest was predictable. I posed as a pedlar and gossiped at the kitchen door. Then I followed when two of the eunuchs dragged her here by her feet, with a crowd of jeering urchins and drooling dogs following her, and cast her in.'
'And is there anything I can do?' Sure now that there wasn't.
'Yes, there is, my son. You can follow them to Algeciras, then on to Tangiers, and if such should be the will of Allah, you can buy them back.'
'I have little money.'
'Or ensure that they go to a good master.'
Was that supposed to be an answer?
'I cannot leave her to die here alone. Come back for me at dawn and accompany me home; we will talk further, in sha allah, and I will give you gold '
When I left him I had no intention of going back, I had my own quest, I was in search of the kidnapped and enslaved Marian, daughter of my old friend. I had no time and little interest in taking on other people's problems. Yet at dawn I was there, under a smoky pink sky. Down in the pit all was still. As the light brightened, I made out rats creeping and scurrying, but there was no sign of the woman.
He took me home, where his wife gave us to eat and to drink, and he gave me a purse of gold. 'Buy them, my son. Or use this gold to enable someone else to buy them, someone they will be happy with.'
And that is what I did. In Tangiers, in the days before the sale, I inspected them. The boy was worthless, but the girl, Souad, was exquisite. I knew then that not all my money and all her grandfather's could buy her.
At the tavern, the night before the sale, I got talking to a man, one Abdelwahed ben Youssef, a scholar and traveller, who was, in so far as you can find one such in such a city, a good man. And when, next day, I saw him bidding for them, and saw his smile fade as the bidding went up and up and up, I went close to him and said, 'Abdelwahed, my friend, if you bought them, the two of them, would you be kind to the boy?' He said he would, that Allah himself would smile on one who was good to that boy. I gave him their grandfather's money.
And never saw them again.
Until ten years later in Scotland. But that is another story.
© James Munro, 2004
