Shadows of the Pomegranate Tree Read Online Free PDF Page B

serious again. ‘Yes?’
    ‘And yet something in me rebels against the act of conversion. I begin to feel agitated, even violent, when I think about it. I would rather die than cross myself and pretend that I am eating human flesh and drinking human blood. The cannibalism in their ritual repels me. It goes very deep. Remember the shock of the Saracens when the Crusaders began to roast prisoners alive and eat their flesh. It makes me ill to even think of it, but it flows from their faith.’
    ‘What a contradictory woman you are, Zubayda bint Quddus. In one breath you say that what matters most to you is the well-being of our children, and in the same breath you exclude the only act which might guarantee them a future in their own ancestral home.’
    ‘What has that got to do with happiness? All your children, including little Yazid, are ready to take up arms against Isabella’s knights. Even if you allow your own sceptical mind to be crushed by Miguel, how will you convince your own children? For them your conversion would be as big a blow as the wall of fire.’
    ‘It is a political and not a spiritual matter. I will communicate with the Maker just as I have always done. It is simply a question of appearances.’
    ‘And when Christian nobles come on feast-days will you eat pork with them?’
    ‘Perhaps, but never with my right hand.’
    Zubayda laughed, but she was also shocked. She felt that he was close to a decision. The wall of fire had affected his brain. Very soon he would follow in Miguel’s footsteps. Once again he surprised her.
    ‘Did I ever tell you what several hundred of us found ourselves chanting that night while they were destroying our inheritance?’
    ‘No. Have you forgotten that you were silent for a whole week after you returned from Gharnata? Not a word did you speak to anyone, not even Yazid. I pleaded, but you could not bring yourself to speak of it.’
    ‘No matter. We wept like children that night, Zubayda. If our tears had been properly channelled they would have extinguished the flames. But suddenly I found myself singing something I had learnt as a youth. Then I heard a roar and I realized I was not the only one who knew the words of the poet. That feeling of solidarity filled me with a strength which has never left me. I’m telling you this so that you understand once and forever that I will never convert voluntarily.’
    Zubayda hugged her husband and kissed him gently on the eyes. ‘What were the words of the poet?’
    Umar stifled a sigh and whispered by her side:
    ‘The paper ye may burn,
    But what the paper holds ye cannot burn;
    ‘tis safe within my breast.
    Where I remove, it goes with me;
    Alights when I alight,
    And in my tomb will lie.’
    Zubayda remembered. Her private tutor, a born sceptic, had told her the story hundreds of times. The lines came from Ibn Hazm, born five hundred years before, just when the light of Islamic culture was beginning to illuminate some of the darkest crevices in the continent of Europe.
    Ibn Hazm, the most eminent and courageous poet in the entire history of al-Andalus. A historian and biographer who had written four hundred volumes. A man who worshipped true knowledge, but was no respecter of persons. His caustic attacks on the preachers of orthodox Islam led to them excommunicating him after Friday prayers in the great mosque. The poet had spoken those words when the Muslim divines had publicly committed some of his works to the flames in Ishbiliya.
    ‘I learnt about him too, but he has been proved wrong, hasn’t he? The Inquisition goes one step further. Not content with burning ideas, they burn those who supply them. There is a logic. With every new century there are new advances.’
    She heaved a sigh of relief, confident in the knowledge that her husband was not going to be rushed into a decision which he would regret for the rest of his life. She stroked his head as if to reassure him, but he was already asleep.
    Despite her best