Shadows of the Pomegranate Tree Read Online Free PDF

have been proud of our scholars. Ximenes is clever. He is intelligent, but he did not succeed that day.
    When Zegri bin Musa replied point by point and was applauded even by some of Ximenes’ clergymen, the prelate lost his temper. He claimed that Zegri had insulted the Virgin Mary when all that our friend had done was to ask how she could have remained a virgin after the birth of Isa. Surely you can see that the question followed a certain logic, or does your theology prevent you from acknowledging all known facts?
    Our Zegri was taken to the torture-chamber and treated so brutally that he agreed to convert. At that stage we left, but not before I had seen that glint in Ximenes’ eyes, as if he realized at that instant that his was the only way to convert the population.
    The next day the entire population was ordered out on to the streets. Ximenes de Cisneros, may Allah punish him, declared war on our culture and our way of life. That day alone they emptied all our libraries and built a massive wall of books in the Bab al-Ramla. They set our culture on fire. They burnt two million manuscripts. The record of eight centuries was annihilated in a single day. They did not burn everything. They were not, after all, barbarians, but the carriers of a different culture which they wanted to plant in al-Andalus. Their own doctors pleaded with them to spare three hundred manuscripts, mainly concerned with medicine. To this Ximenes agreed, because even he knew that our knowledge of medicine was much more advanced than everything they knew in Christendom.
    It is this wall of fire that I see all the time now, Uncle. It fills my heart with fear for our future. The fire which burnt our books will one day destroy everything we have created in al-Andalus, including this little village built by our forefathers, where you and I both played as little boys. What has all this got to do with the easy victories of our Prophet and the rapid spread of our religion? That was eight hundred years ago, Bishop. The wall of books was only set on fire last year.
    Satisfied that he had won the argument, Umar bin Abdallah returned to the house and entered his wife’s bed-chamber. Zubayda had not yet gone to sleep.
    ‘The wall of fire, Umar?’
    He sat down on the bed and nodded. She felt his shoulders and recoiled. ‘The tenseness in your body hurts me. Here, lie down and I will knead it out of you.’
    Umar did as she asked and her hands, expert in the art, found the points in his body. They were as hard as little pebbles and her fingers worked round them till they began to melt and she felt the tense zones beginning to relax once again.
    ‘When will you reply to Miguel on the question of Hind?’
    ‘What does the girl say?’
    ‘She would rather be wed to a horse.’
    Umar’s mood registered a sharp change. He roared with laughter. ‘She always did have good taste. Well there you have your answer.’
    ‘But what will you tell His Bishopness?’
    ‘I will tell Uncle Miguel that the only way Juan can be sure of finding a bed-partner is for him to become a priest and utilize the confessional!’
    Zubayda giggled in relief. Umar had recovered his spirits. Soon he would be back to normal. She was wrong. The wall of books was still on fire.
    ‘I am not sure that they will let us live in al-Andalus without converting to Christianity. Hind marrying Juan is a joke, but the future of the Banu Hudayl, of those who have lived with us, worked for us for centuries. That is what worries me deeply.’
    ‘Nobody knows better than you that I am not a religious person. That superstitious old wet-nurse of yours knows this only too well. She tells our Yazid that his mother is a blasphemer, even though I keep up a pretence. I fast during Ramadan. I ...’
    ‘But we all know that you fast and pray to preserve your figure. Surely this is not a secret.’
    ‘Make fun of me, but what matters the most is the happiness of our children. And yet ...’
    Umar had become