God's Banquet: A Tale of Muslim Spain

By Cameron Kamran

Lured by treachery outside the city gates one day, young princess Noor must choose between defending her home or saving her abducted father, the ruler of the Spanish Muslim city-state of Taifa. Her decision, to ruthlessly seize power within her father’s harem and face down medieval Spain’s most brutal warlord, puts her on a collision course with invading armies, the man she loves, and the keepers of Islamic tradition itself.

God's Banquet is a story about one woman’s struggle to survive in a medieval world still dominated by men. It is about a Muslim civilization long ago that brought together a rich mosaic of peoples and faiths from three continents in the heart of Europe. The setting is medieval Spain circa the 12th century, a world populated by Arabs, Spaniards, Africans and Persians; Christians, Jews, and Muslims. Muslim Taifa’s prime minister is Jewish and her libraries are the envy of humanity.

Noor’s maturation revolves around the Game of Kings, the ancient court pastime, brought by the Arabs to Europe, that would become Chess. As she seizes power in Taifa, the game is a tool for her to outmaneuver her enemies. At this time, the queen is not yet a piece on the chessboard.

God's Banquet illuminates a world long ago that is little understood by Western readers, a world with striking parallels to today, and the fluctuating tension and exchange between contemporary Islam and the West.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Sep 2, 2014
• ISBN: 9781483537177

Book preview

2014

1

Rodrigo

Rodrigo sat in the corner of the stone fort, glad to have a moment to himself, eating sorghum spiced with cumin seed from a wooden bowl. The sun’s last rays had faded across the mountain peaks of the Guadarrama, what the Arabs called Wadi A Raml, the Sandy River, several hours ago. The long shadow of night descended over the land. Not to worry, Rodrigo thought. This was the darkest hour, before the fair moon broke through the dusk and her handmaidens — the stars — pierced the curtain of night with their reassuring twinkle. It would not be long now before he could get his bearings, grab his spear, and join the others guarding the eastern wall for a cup of wine.

They were trickling in for the night, men from across the sparsely populated frontier, the unruly border region between the Christian kingdoms of the north and the Arab heartland to the south. The area the Arabs called thugur — the Front Teeth. Always so inventive with their tongue, the Arabs. Every word was poetry or revelation, with several meanings, some blatant, others hidden. A wandering teacher had offered to teach Rodrigo more of their language in exchange for a meal, but they had progressed slowly, Rodrigo stumbling across the sounds that he could not bring up from deep within his throat. He used the word frontera more than thugur. Frontera rolled off the tongue in the local dialect. But Rodrigo was drawn to thugur, even though he could not pronounce it that well. It had depth and meaning. It created an image in his mind. Frontera was just, well, plain frontera.

He gazed out the stone-block window towards the gate of the fort in between mouthfuls, using his flatbread as a utensil to mop up the last bits from his bowl. He could always tell apart the small farmers who still dared till the land from the more numerous, more prosperous shepherds. Most of the farmers could not afford weapons, many of them arriving with only their massive scythes across their shoulders, the crescent blade dangling above them in the night air like a broken moon. They were stout men with sinewy forearms and sunburned cheeks above their coarse beards, dressed in simple grey and brown cloaks. The shepherds were a smaller, nimbler kind. Some could afford chainmail shirts, pointed helmets, and sometimes a long sword.

Tarik Abu Noor, ruler of the city-state of Taifa only a day’s walk southeast, had provisioned the frontier fort with plenty of additional arms. Spears, swords, crossbows, and armor lined the interior hallways and the towers. Many of the craftsmen and even a few of the shepherds availed themselves of these and much more from the small company of Taifan soldiers who permanently garrisoned the fort. Never the farmers. They were stubborn men, wedded to the land and their chosen craft. If they were to defend it, they would die with those same instruments that God had given them to give life to it.

Rodrigo squinted into the darkness from the roof of the fort, momentarily silhouetted by flashes of heat lightning. He spied the reassuring fires of the sister towers that commanded the two peaks that formed the narrow pass of the frontier several hundred leagues in the distance. They were the first line of defense. Any hint of movement through that ravine would trigger a burst of drums and warning cries, and an eventual rainstorm of fire-tipped arrows.

Something moved, cat-like, up the rock face of the far peak towards one of the towers. He frowned, wiping the exhaustion from his eyes. Yes, something moved. He could make out the outline of a creature with a long tail falling into the darkness below. It slithered upwards, with each flash of lightning a bit closer. He stared down at the drained cup of wine in his right hand. God had punished him with waking dreams of mountain beasts before. To take drink so soon after evening prayers, after he had prostrated himself in submission to God's commandments, was surely blasphemy.

Rodrigo’s father used to tell him stories of a time when the Caliph’s men were enough to protect the frontier. During the summer campaigns, columns of Berber horsemen snaked up through the mountain trails on fine Andalusian steeds, returning in triumph, their supply trains laden with silver from Leon, gems from Asturias and bales of wheat from the Lower Marches. But that was a lifetime ago. There hadn’t been a summer campaign for many years. The Christian kingdoms of the north had become bolder, sensing weakness. Strange men not from these parts swelled their ranks. Men who spoke with thick foreign accents and rode angry roans. Men who covered themselves in impregnable armor and carried lances that pierced the sun. Men who rode with a red cross emblazoned on their scales, but with their eyes affixed not on God but on the fertile land of Andalus.

Rodrigo remembered the cross from his childhood. He remembered his father taking the wood crucifix down from the hearth in their home, uttering a prayer and throwing it into the fire. He remembered how strange it felt the first time he knelt in front of his father to prostrate himself in the Muslim prayer, first in the morning and then several times more throughout the day. How odd the foreign words sounded when they first issued from his father’s lips in a low growl. He recalled washing his feet in the fountain outside the mosque and watching his friends stare at him, confused, as they walked up the street to the parish. He remembered the day his father took him into the forest.

You are my Isaac, he had said, stroking Rodrigo’s head with complete adoration, and some day you will understand what I do. The god of Muhammad follows the religion of Abraham. We must renew our covenant with this god. And I will not have my son looked at differently in the bathhouses of our new home.

Rodrigo remembered the searing pain of the knife as it cut into his foreskin. The long night of fever curled up in his father’s arms, beset by nightmares of a hooded man with no face in a cave on a mountain.

He thought back to the day that his father returned from the mosque with a beaming smile and hoisted him on his shoulders. It was not long after the day of his pain in the forest.

Oh, Rodrigo! he had said, tickling his stomach. We are reborn. His father pulled out a clump of dry grass from their meager plot of land and thrust his fist in the boy’s face. You see boy, this is no more. We can wish it away on the wind. And with that his father’s hand opened and the grass disintegrated harmlessly away. Always remember, boy, green is the color of your faith. The green of Islam. Wonderful green. His father stood on his knees and surveyed the rocky crags and terraced hills that had once been the unforgiving ground of his existence. And this, sweeping the hills with his hand, this, we say goodbye to. Gone from our lives is the mud and shit of this place. He looked down at Rodrigo, staring up at him with a perplexed look.

Today I have seen our new home.

In a vision, father? Rodrigo had asked, thinking back to his nightmares after the cutting.

No boy, his father had laughed, not a vision. I have seen it in this world. We will go south. South, away from this no man’s land. South, to lush pastures and plentiful waters. I talked with a passing merchant in the mosque last week. He has put me in touch with a shepherd who tends his flock in a valley four days journey from here. He is in need of men to help him manage his growing herd. We will become shepherds, my son, no longer tied to the earth and the rains. Shepherds, like Abraham and Moses before us. We are already shepherds in our bones, living in these mountains where so many bring their flocks for summer pasture. Oh my son, I knew that the new faith would deliver us! The imam said that the Prophet Muhammad had come to renew Christ’s message. This cannot be but a sign.

A man named Abdel Salaam had become their patron in the new land. In return, Rodrigo and his father helped tend his flock of sheep and goats. Abdel Salaam knelt to the god of Muhammad, but he was not Arab. He was proud of his Berber ancestry and would often breathe in the air of the mountains in front of the fire at night and tell Rodrigo it was the same air as the peaks of his African youth across the Straits of Hercules. He had come over with the Berber hosts for the summer raids when he was barely a man, settling in a place called Wadi al Hajaara, a place the local people called Guadalajara.

The portcullis gate of the fort dropped down, jolting Rodrigo from his memories. A chain rope in the watchtowers on either side of the northern gate locked the iron gate into place.

Several shadows with long tails were visible now on the cliff face. No, thought Rodrigo, it was one long tail, stretching through them, linking them. And he realized that this was no tail at all but rather a rope made by men. The fires of the watchtower at the top of the cliff still fluttered in the breeze and Rodrigo could see the hunched-over silhouette of one of the tower guards. The fort itself was silent, a few men whispering longing in their sleep down the hall from him. A distant rumble signaled an approaching storm. Rodrigo still sat, watching the shadows move up the rock face, not willing to move, not yet. He blinked repeatedly, trying to determine reality from mirage. The shadows only multiplied, now on the cliff face of the twin peak opposite, also linked by a man-made tail, also making their way patiently towards the other watchtower at the top.

He stroked his thick hair back, revealing a patch of forehead, pale in contrast to the worn sunburn of his complexion. His hazel eyes squinted in memory, his eyelids narrowing within a pronounced ridge of bushy eyebrows. And for some reason, at a time when he should have acted, should have warned the others in the fort of what he saw on the cliff face, he hesitated.

The deeper, more painful memories from his childhood came flooding back. He had been taken screaming from his mother's arms as she pleaded with his father to leave for the sake of their child. He did not understand then why they had to flee, why his mother did not want him. Why it was not just a matter of greener pastures. Why his mother's beauty was a curse that boiled the Count's blood that drove him to command that she share his bed. Only later did Rodrigo understand — that his father was not a proud man, but he could not survive this. He would resist and the Count's men would hunt him down, and then, ultimately, turn to his son.

The orchards of the south bloom with pomegranates and Damascene limes, his father whispered to Rodrigo in his arms, his breath heavy with forgetful drink. "Curse this Christian God and his corrupt regents on this earth. I do not care that the church brands us renegados. Life is greater than salvation."

And for a while they were prosperous and safe, working the frontier as gentle shepherds. But over the years, as Rodrigo’s father succumbed to the fever and died, strife from the north came again. The frontier was shifting as the kingdoms of Hispania jockeyed for power and land. The thugur had followed Rodrigo, creeping south with the invaders, nipping at his footsteps like the front teeth of a wolf.

The shadows approached the top of the watchtower, only feet from its mouth. The rope that connected them stopped moving momentarily, straightening, as if to gather strength. The sentries were a simple shout for Rodrigo. Why didn’t he alert them? Why did he just stare hypnotically at the cliffside?

He thought of his father on his deathbed, calling out to his mother. The wife he had left behind in the Count's clutches to save his son, knowing with each footfall southward that she was being defiled again and again. And these were clearly the Count's shadows, slithering up the cliffside.

A crack of thunder smashed the silence overhead as both sentries on the western tower fell, struck down by unseen crossbow bolts as they peered over the cliff. The rope writhed feverishly as the Count's shadows leapt one by one into the western tower. Rodrigo's eyes remained riveted as his left hand lashed out to grab the ash wood of his spear. A torch fell into the abyss from the tower opposite as its sentries were cut down by more arrows. The alarm bell would not be sounded. The Count's men had hit their mark with deadly accuracy. But the sentry at the oaken gate of the fort itself had seen the torch fall. Rodrigo could see him now, peering up at the watchtower, trying to make out what had happened.

Rodrigo fell on one knee, his hand white-knuckled on his spear. The dream was fading from his mind, his father's deathbed, his mother's abandonment. These were his people now, despite his past. He had learned their names and toiled with them in the pastures. He had watched them kneel in simple prayer, prayer between God and the individual. Prayer uncontaminated by righteousness and sermon. After the fall of this crucial pass, his home was wide open. The Count's marauders would do what they wanted with the farmers and shepherds that were Rodrigo's adopted cousins.

The sentry manning the portcullis gate had received no word from the watchtowers after repeated calls. He was now scurrying along the wall, like an ant, waving his spear like a huge antenna to sound the alarm. He disappeared into the stone guardhouse flanking the gate, an eerie silence following. Rodrigo waited for the alarm, the snare of battle drums, the call to arms. He enclosed himself in a veil of self-imposed reassurance — soon he could take his place with the rest of the defenders and meet his fate. But his ear was not greeted by the alarm drum, but by a more ominous sound — the methodical clanking of the chain rope raising the portcullis gate. The guard had not made it to the alarm drums. The invaders were already inside the fort.

And then a force deep within propelled him forward. His voice erupted in his ears, calling out first in the common dialect and then in broken Arabic. It reverberated in his head, deafening him, until his mouth finally dropped open to let it out.

Men lurched from sleep and reflexively grabbed their shoulders, searching for swords that were typically slung across their backs. Momentary panic gave way to reassurance as they slung weapons over their backs and ran for their helmets and spears. A few arrows, marinated in naphtha and flaming, were loosed at the gate, embedding in the ground in front of it to provide some light for the defenders to see what was coming. Already, sinister shadows elongated along the ground as the rising portcullis revealed what was just outside.

Rodrigo had heard tales of the new creatures sent down by the Christians in the north. It was not just the Count's brigands anymore, interested in pillage and rape. Others from further lands had answered the Christian call to arms against the Muslims. Shepherds and merchants wandering the wasteland had reported giants brandishing tree trunks as their lances. Their hair matched the color of their alabaster skin and their eyes resembled a snake's beguiling slits.

The gate was raised and the silhouette of upraised lances disappeared into the night. The host of armored men stretched back into the distance, as if a forest had dropped down from the sky. Even in the flickering shadows, as the first invader became visible, Rodrigo could make out the crimson cross on the white tunic over chain armor. He was the most heavily armored of them all, a giant visored helmet enclosing his entire head. The men surrounding him wore chain vests that rippled down their torsos in uneven links.

The invaders stood their ground in a disciplined line, silent, the flickering of their torches the only sound. Rodrigo faced them from the crenellated roof of the keep. Others had joined him, but he could smell their hesitation, their fear. He was the only one to shift his stance and raise his spear, aligning it with his right ear. Arching his back, he let it fly, the shaft arcing to pierce the dirt just inside the threshold of the gate and well shy of the invaders. The helmeted leader gazed at the lone spear for a moment and then his head rose to the night sky, a metallic laugh echoing off the peaks, melting into the thunder of the approaching storm. Metal slithered along metal as he drew a great two-handed blade from its sheath. He inched his charger forward towards the fort. His men followed him.

2

Noor

Noor thought of her mother as she wandered the north passage of the Citadel of Taifa, her father’s palace complex in the heart of the city. The mother she had never known. In the cool summer evenings she could see larks flittering about through the ornate wood lattice of the windows in the dusk light. The wood lattice carved by her father’s artisans into the shapes of the plants and animals that populated Andalus. Leaping gazelles. Unfolding lotus petals. Roaming lions. Some of these beings had never actually been seen in Muslim Hispania, but it did not matter. They had inhabited the eastern imagination for generations.

Her mother was like a lark, Noor thought. She flittered about in her mind, never standing still for Noor to get a good look at her. The princess of Taifa’s lanky body, awkward with teenage growth, bounced down the hallway, her right hand permanently fidgeting with long dark hair that fell to her waist. She was fair-skinned and already beautiful for a girl of only fifteen, wide cheekbones falling into a supple mouth. Her eyes in particular, colored a brilliant green, had an alluring light to them. Eyes she knew could not have come from her father’s almond-colored Arab ancestors. But Noor was not marked, like so many women, by extraordinary beauty. It was her birth, to one of the last powerful men in Andalus, that ruled her fate.

As a child she would face the mirror naked, combing her body for days for some subtle clue, some mark, a likeness. She spied on the Mothers, her father’s three wives, the women who ruled the city-state of Taifa’s harem. She watched them as they were bathed by attendants and rubbed down with myrrh. She snipped locks of hair while they slept and stole back to her cushions of soft Sevillian silk to examine them in the soft lamplight. She studied the Mothers as they spun their cloths, looking for a gesture, a tone of voice, a laugh, anything that might hint at a similarity.

For a long time she was sure it was Sarah. Patient Sarah, who taught Noor the weaving techniques of the lush southern lands of Garnata until her fingers became one with the silk thread. Sarah, who would gather Noor into her lap to braid her hair with lilac petals. Sarah, who had perfect fair skin and was called Full Moon of Full Moons in the court Arabic of Andalus. Sarah, whose alliance with her father Tarik had been arranged by his Jewish Grand Vizier, Ibrahim, to bind the aristocratic Jewish families of Sarah’s home in Garnata to the frontier kingdom of Taifa.

Noor remembered the night of her first piercing. Sarah held her still in her arms as one of the harem eunuchs cut into her earlobes. And in the irritable days that followed, it was Sarah who stayed up into the twilight hours to treat the swelling with a dressing of crushed dates, myrrh and candle wax. And on one of those nights, when all they could hear was the call of the nightingale in the gardens below, Noor snuggled into Sarah’s arm, turned her head towards that serene lunar face and worked up the nerve to ask her.

Are you my mother? My real mother, the one who gave me life?

The gentle stroking of her head was followed by a soothing shhhh. Even as she asked, Noor knew from the silence it was not to be. A tear emerged from Sarah’s left eye, rolling onto the cushion as she shook her head.

Nothing would make me happier, precious one, she whispered, for you are already like a daughter to me and a sister to little Hassan. Noor glanced over at the tiny frame of the boy sleeping on the cushions beside them, his knuckle thrust partially into his mouth, his chest rising and falling without sound. Quiet and gentle like his mother, his eyes always full of wonder, Hassan had quickly stolen Noor’s heart.

No, child, Sarah continued. I am like my namesake, Sarah of Abraham. After Hassan, I have remained barren. I have prayed for Adonai’s blessing and sought out the unguents and spells of the midwives. Nothing has restored my womb, she smiled through a sniffle. No matter. God has blessed me with the wonder of this incredible boy. And that is more than enough.

Umm Layth was more direct and abrasive with Noor, with a stinging retort that was her trademark.

YOU killed your mother, she shouted, balancing her son Layth on her knee and periodically massaging the blue-inked Arabic prayer tattoo on her forehead. She was the strongest of the Mothers, a portly North African with ochre skin the texture of aged leather. Sitting in the center of the main harem chamber by her loom, she barked orders in a guttural mix of Arabic and her native Berber.

She died in childbirth, Umm Layth continued, her thick, painted eyebrows bouncing. But they say she was your father's first and only love. After her, all of us are like brazier smoke compared to gold dust. Even in the throes of passion, when your father is most vulnerable to our charms, he is liable to scream out her name — Niloofar! She chuckled, becoming stern. Some tolerate it, like your Sarah, taking him in her arms afterwards and coddling him like a baby. Humph! I threw him onto the cold floor. A trickle of laughter echoed through the harem’s catacomb. On that day Noor realized the Mothers could only tell her so much. They had never really known her mother. She had died before their time.

They are all your mothers, her father Tarik would tell her, cradling her in his arms across his protruding belly and letting her bury her hands in his thick beard. "That is why we call them The Mothers. Remember what the Prophet said, ‘paradise lies at the foot of mothers.’ Treat them all with the utmost respect."

She studied him in silence, his eyes shifting to his book of proverbs to avoid her stare. Then she pulled her hands down into fists in frustration and he lifted her into his arms with a laugh. Balanced on her tiny knees across his massive chest, she put his necklace of gold and jade into her mouth. He gasped with a frown, pulling her to him to glare into her eyes. Undaunted, she lunged for his skull cap like a cat and he peeled away, falling on the ground in a giggling match.

A waterfall of kisses, in the heart of an empty desert. He would often say this, as he buried his face against hers, a tear of happiness on his reddened cheek.

Tarik believed his replies to her questions were enough to satisfy her in those early days. As a child, she studied her genealogy tables, the meticulously researched ancestries tracing her father’s heritage as the ruler of Taifa back to the time of the Prophet. These complex charts, put together by armies of experts and secretaries, were the prime source of an Arab ruler’s honor and authority. They placed him within the mythology of tribal lore and gave him the legitimacy to perpetuate his rule. She memorized the name of each tribe and patriarch as they stretched back into history, placing the very blood in her veins at the doorstep of Medina, the city in Arabia that was the Prophet’s original refuge in exile, his first community. And this was supposed to give her comfort. To fill her with pride, that she was a descendant of the Ansar, those who had been the first of Muhammad’s companions. The first to take up the green standard of the new faith and carry it to the far reaches of the world. And it did placate her. For a while. Until the questions began to rise in her again. Until the visions of how her mother might have been infiltrated her dreams. In reality, every child of the harem had many mothers — from the nurses who suckled them at the very beginning to the bath attendants who scrubbed them, to the numerous slave women who took turns schooling them. They were surrounded and held by many hands. But eventually, as Noor watched newborns emerge from birth canals and midwives concoct mysterious potions and talismans to scare away evil spirits, the mysteries of creation dawned upon her. And she needed to know.

3

Tarik and Ibrahim

The steady smell of incense drifted along the streets of Taifa, conquering all other odors. Rising up from its source within the rectangular synagogue that commanded the Jewish quarter, through the cypress beams of its rooftop, the sandalwood zephyr descended upon the narrow streets and hung suspended like a protective fog. Only the Grand Mosque’s minaret, across the city, penetrated its smoke, extending its shadow over Christian and Jewish quarter alike.

Tarik, Noor’s father, Lord of the Upper Marches, Hajib of Taifa, sat cross-legged in the center of the large prayer room, picking the dry skin from his big toe. His legs and hands had always been stubby appendages attached to a thickset torso. But what they lacked in refinement they made up for with great strength and dexterity for a man of his size. He shifted his large buttocks on the brocaded mattress-carpet laid across the Hebrew prayer mats underneath, resting an elbow upon a cushion of ostrich feathers. He wore his comfortable drinking robe, a spring-time tunic of light green open in the front and made from fine eastern silk, a wool skull cap keeping his head warm. A goblet of crystal, fired in Sevilla and the color of pine forest, rested in his right hand, filled to the brim with fine wine from the Christian monasteries of the Taifan valley.

He surveyed his clandestine court of assembled boon companions with the glowing pride of a father. A score of men sat in long white tunics stretching down to their ankles, sipping wine, laughing and sometimes singing along with a mixed band of minstrels. A man against the western wall of the temple sat underneath an invocation carved into the wall in both Arabic and Hebrew. He picked up his bamboo flute and began to play along. A five-stringed lute joined from somewhere within the mix of boisterous voices. Saad Abu Driss, Tarik’s brother and the captain of Taifa’s city guard, joined in on his hand drum, his thick, powerful fingers thumping down on taut mountain goatskin. He was even larger than Tarik, all chest, with the copper skin of the mountain Berbers. Serving women thrust out their hips in a gentle gyration, hoping to catch the roving eye of a nobleman. Outside the synagogue’s main chambers, far from the sacred pulpit, servants poked at bubbling cauldrons, collecting the ash beneath their fires in visible mounds. This was an Arab tradition from the days of the Bedouin, brought from further east. The hearth that collected the most ashes was the mark of the most hospitable and magnanimous host.

Beside the cauldrons, dishes of grilled meats warmed under gentler fires. Wild pigeon seasoned with a saffron glaze. Spiced sausage of mutton and fat. Several guests bent over a silver basin brought around by a slave girl, washing their hands with a mixture of camphor, musk, dried oregano, rose petals and dried citron leaf. Others already sat, slave boys positioned behind them to massage their shoulders and necks while they ate and drank.

Parasites, Tarik thought, his eyes narrowing. Those who make a living attending my banquets. Those who would whisper honey in my ear for a seat at my table. Who to trust in this mental labyrinth called rule?

Ibrahim! he bellowed, unaware of how loudly he spoke, you have outdone yourself tonight. He stared with a glazed-over smile at the tall skinny man to his right, dressed in a thin silk robe of sky blue. This one was no parasite.

I am glad you are enjoying yourself, my lord, Ibrahim replied, tilting his head ever so slightly in deference, the meticulously trimmed hairs around his mouth elongating with a suppressed yawn. Physically, he was the opposite of Tarik in every way. His face was as long as Tarik’s was wide, the skin pulled tight over a bony face ending in a wide forehead topped with brown hair. Where Tarik’s beard was an unruly bush, a brush forest liable to expand in any direction, Ibrahim’s was a contained sprinkle, every brown follicle aligned with the next. Tarik’s flat nub of a nose was equally matched by the long aquiline of Ibrahim’s.

Cut the formal mule dung, Ibrahim Ben Saul, Tarik replied, spit flying from his mouth. You and I used to fondle women’s backsides together in the markets, until the market inspector almost flogged us to death with his cane. This is no forum for court pleasantries, not between us.

A flash of mischief from the skinny man’s eyes evaporated into a tender smile.

I have not forgotten those days, Fount of the World. But we are no longer boys, and you are no longer the son of a provincial governor. Even when he was commanded by his lord to drop the proper language of respect, the Grand Vizier of Taifa still addressed his old friend with any number of titles he kept on the tip of his tongue. Ibrahim’s face became all at once cloudy and he hesitated, gesticulating his lips as if he were practicing his next words. His hands curled around one another, fingers pressing into palms. In even motions, he folded one hand over the other, over and over, massaging the sweat into his skin repeatedly. It was a subconscious act of habit when the vizier sought to cool his nerves. Tarik stared at him until the vizier recoiled.

What, my lord?

What is it now, Ibrahim? Tarik whispered, looking away.

Yes my lord? Ibrahim replied.

You forget who you talk to, old friend, Tarik snapped. When you work your hands like that, something is amiss.

Right, Ibrahim replied, reddening slightly. This is perhaps not the best time to bring this up, but there is more disturbing news from the north.

Tarik remained silent, continuing to survey the room before him. He had the amazing ability to will away the wine clouding his head when he needed to. Ibrahim marveled at his constitution sometimes.

Two more forts, the vizier continued.

Alfonso? Tarik whispered.

Or the host of brigands that stir up trouble for him. Exactly what happened and who it was is unclear. All we know is what the scouts report — stone carcasses, blackened and crumbling, where our battlements once stood.

Tarik fingered his navel. His other hand appeared from underneath his cloak to grasp Ibrahim’s bony wrist, his whole torso leaning in deliberately, his dark brown eyes shifting about for eavesdroppers.

You’re right, Tarik replied in a sober whisper. This is not the best time to bring this up. A smile slowly formed on the Hajib’s lips as he looked for a reaction on Ibrahim’s face, which remained blank with confusion. So disciplined, so serious. That was Ibrahim. Tarik counted on this, for who else was as thorough, as unemotionally effective at navigating the thousand issues that engulfed his kingdom every day. Only Ibrahim. No wonder the poets called him The One With Two Right Hands. A measure of pride unabashedly beamed through Tarik’s face as he regarded his Grand Vizier.

An impatient elbow caught Ibrahim in the ribs. As long as I can drink wine in your temple, Ibrahim, I am not too concerned with Alfonso’s marauders. We will deal with them in good time. Tarik turned away, plucking a few large purple grapes from a tray of fruit. He hesitated, his eyes wandering to the tray of pastries filled with fried cheese and coated with cinnamon. Looking down at his waistline, he shrugged and popped the grapes in his mouth.

Besides, he mouthed between chewing. You worry too much. Stop acting like an old woman.

You count on me to worry, my lord.

Ibrahim did pride himself on his seriousness, but it was also a defense mechanism. Humor meant emotional engagement, and that was viewed by Ibrahim Ben Saul as a grave weakness leading to the downfall of a man. Detachment was crucial; it bred diligence and discipline. He was the ruler’s conscience, the sober reality that balanced grandiose dreams. If Tarik was instinct, Ibrahim was reason.

It had been a long day of allegiance ceremonies for the ruler of Taifa. The Muslim ‘Eid celebrations had exhausted him with the pomp and circumstance that he loathed so much. The sea of countless officials, decked out in their finest robes, walking up to pledge their loyalty to him and to the Caliphate, kissing his hand in obedience. It was the death of the old year and the beginning of the new. The ceremony confronted the chaos of this death and renewed the reassuring order of the Hajib’s rule. Quartermasters, treasurers, and police commanders. Notaries, judges, and secretaries. Counselors and white and black slaves. And of course, the Judge of Judges, the chief judge and religious notable of the kingdom, the bristles of his white beard piercing Tarik’s exposed hand like a thousand hidden daggers. He would have to watch that one.

Tarik released himself to the hypnotic sound of the lute player, closing his eyes and bobbing his head to the rhythm of the goat skin drum. He had swung away from Ibrahim to take in the room, his stomach following his shoulders, raising his glass to several of his courtiers and guests. He did this when they were at an impasse, when his vizier wanted to encroach on his leisure time with affairs of state. It was a role he had gently slipped into ever since he had met the young Jewish tax collector who had become his chief counselor. The reluctant lord, loathe to rule but nudged into difficult decisions by his closest advisor. But soon he grew bored again and swung back towards Ibrahim to continue their conversation. He raised his finger at Ibrahim, the wide sleeve of his robe bordered with Arabic verse in gold thread falling away from his hand. But the vizier was ready for him, wrapping his long fingers around the wine goblet in the Hajib’s other hand, pressing gently, pulling the cup away from him. Tarik’s words were caught in his throat as the vizier’s other hand emerged from the wide sleeve of his robe with a succulent Garnatan orange, already peeled and dripping.

We will deliver the tribute to Alfonso in the next fortnight, Ibrahim whispered, disarming Tarik and placing his goblet on the carpet on the other side of himself. Tarik relented, grabbing the orange and raising his free finger again, his eyes widened in reproach.

The day your vizier knows to bribe you with your favorite fruit is the day you must get rid of him. Their eyes remained locked for several seconds, until Ibrahim made the Hajib smile with a few couplets from Ben Sara’s ode to an orange.

Are they burning coals which show in the branches their vivid colours Or cheeks peeking out from among the green curtains of the palanquins? Are those waving boughs, or delicate shapes of the body for whose love I am suffering what I suffer?

Tarik took the toothpick of olive wood out of his mouth and replaced it with an orange wedge.

Speaking of bribes, our Christian protector is as greedy as ever, Ibrahim said, nodding his appreciation as Tarik placed a dripping orange crescent in his lap where the fold of his robes created a trampoline between his crossed legs. But not all of his vassals are happy.

Tarik nodded his head, distracted by the sultry legs of a female slave, transparent through the thin silk of the balloon-like pants enclosing each of them.

Alfonso is a man like any other. He and his men understand only two things. The sword point and the coin. These are their only gods.

The slave girl came over with a copper basin and the Hajib deposited the rose water cloth he had washed his hands with into it, smiling up at her exposed navel and then meeting her painted eyes. She blushed with his attentions, but never once wavered from his stare. He beckoned forward with his hand and she lowered herself into a squat before him, her legs poised at right angles like a contortionist.

"Ghaliya!" Tarik roared and a servant boy scampered over with a small urn full of the popular solution — a mixture of musk, aloe, and ambergris that formed an inky paste. The Hajib dipped a horsehair brush into the writing solution and raised his arm in the air so that his wide sleeve would not encumber him. He stroked the air with the brush before the slave girl’s face, admiring her inviting smile.

A challenge, composing verse worthy of your beauty, Tarik said, drawing an imaginary box around her forehead, then hesitating to pull her headband inlaid with jewels and a verse from the Quran back above her hair line. We would not want the Word of God mingling with flirtatious praise.

Flirtation and praise, the slave girl purred, they are part of the Union that we seek all of our lives. I am the gateway to all Creation. Her hand stole down to her waist, seductively peeling back her transparent silk pants, exposing the hidden undergarment, revealing the erotic verses stitched into it. Her eyes penetrated his, stripped of their timid veil, "...and this is the incantation of my gateway. If you can match its verse you may unlock the secret of me."

Tarik chuckled, taking in the scent of her necklace of fermented cloves. He began to paint verse in black paste onto the slave girl’s forehead in flowing Arabic.

I believe you are a gateway, but perhaps not to God, he laughed. Go and ponder this couplet and if it be to your liking, return to me.

May God keep you and remove all adversities from your domains, she smiled, making sure he saw the sultry sway of her buttocks as she walked away.

"Ah, Abu Dawood, the pomegranates are