Zengi Read online

Fadel turned away from the mosque to concentrate on his poem. His subject for today was Zengi’s childhood, and somehow he had to find a way to begin a qasida using the information he had gathered.

  He paced up and down the terrace trying different ideas in his head, sometimes speaking them aloud.

  “Zengi trained hard when he was just a boy,

  He preferred a spear to a child’s toy...”

  Fadel sighed. It was no good! That was just doggerel. He would have to try harder if he was to match the magic of A’sha Maimun.

  “Zengi practised with sword and spear,

  When he was young he knew no fear...”

  That was worse. He continued to pace, faster and faster as his frustration increased. Perhaps he was no good after all. Perhaps his father was right, and he should take up the law—and why not? It was not such a bad profession, and he would still be working with words. But not yet—he would have another try. He racked his brain. What was it that made A’sha Maimun’s poetry so good? Authenticity—that was it. Somehow, it was real in a way that his attempts were not. How could he compose a qasida that was real?

  Fadel stopped in his tracks. He had reached the end of the terrace at the opposite end to the Great Mosque and was looking out over the Citadel. He was reminded of Bazzu and remembered his words: “Listen, and I’ll tell you, lad, the story of a real soldier. Even as a youth he prepared himself for a life on the battlefield...” They were authentic. The words of real soldier in praise of his leader. Why not just cast them into verse and see what happened:

  “Listen! and I will tell you, lad,

  The story of a soldier true.”

  That was it! It had that authentic tone he was looking for, and their was a pleasing tension between the informality of the soldier’s voice, and the formal structure of the qasida. He decided to continue, and racked his brains for rhymes:

  “No abler chief for combat clad,

  Nor better brand in danger drew...”

  Good! But it was only a start. The pacing and the poeticising continued throughout the afternoon until the red sun was sinking behind the Great Mosque. Then Fadel stopped suddenly, sat down, picked up his reed pen, dipped it in ink and began to write:

  Listen! and I will tell you, lad,

  The story of a soldier true.

  No abler chief for combat clad,

  Nor better brand in danger drew;

  When but a youth of fourteen years

  Sages revered his comely form.

  He led his father’s cavaliers

  In summer calm and winter storm;

  His early days foretold renown,

  Predestined by the hand of fate,

  Princes upheld his youthful crown

  Until he grew to man’s estate.

  He waited a moment for the ink to dry, then picked up the linen paper and read over his work. He was satisfied, though he knew well enough that he had a long way to go before he approached A’sha Maimun. The authenticity was there, without a doubt, but imagery and vivid description were lacking. Nevertheless, he went to bed happy. Happier, in fact, than if he had spent the day caressing Aaliyah, carousing and merely dreaming of poetry.

  After Friday Prayers the following day, Fadel lingered in the Great Mosque and found an opportunity to speak with the Imam.

  “Salaam, most honoured Imam. I heard that our lord, Zengi, built this mosque,” he said. “Can you tell me more about it?”

  “Indeed I can, my son. It was not built by our honoured atabeg, but by Umayyad Caliph Suleyman in the year 98AH. But lord Zengi restored it, and most of what you see today is his work.”

  “I have heard he has done many more things for the glory of Allah.”

  “He has, my son. He will forever be remembered as the one who raised jihad against the Infidel. Before he rose to power, the Emirs were divided amongst themselves. They even opposed him...”

  “Opposed him? Why did they not unite against the Infidel?”

  The Imam sighed, “Because the Emirs were only interested in their own aggrandisement.”

  “So how did he get to the position he has today?”

  “By diplomacy and warfare. He fought battle after battle, sometimes against those Emirs, and sometimes against the Infidel, at last, a few years ago, he achieved his first significant victory when he attacked the Infidels in their fortress at Baalbek.”

  Fadel listened eagerly and all the while, the jinn was working. He hurried home, trying out lines of poetry as he walked, and by the time he got to his terrace, he had composed the following lines:

  It was a time of bitter strife,

  Of broiling day and night alarms,

  Murder and plunder both were rife,

  And every Emir slept in arms;

  crusaders from the ferrine west,

  Imbued with mad religious hate;

  Were rushing in fanatic zest,

  The Muslim to annihilate.

  He said them through again, made a few minor changes, then wrote them down. He was pleased with result. There were a few vivid touches of description such as “the broiling day”, and some powerful diction. He was particularly pleased with “ferrine”, a rare word, which meant “behaving like a wild animal”. “Fanatic” was telling, too, and “annihilate”, though strong, was the plain truth, though a truth that many Muslims would not face up to, despite Zengi’s efforts.

  Every day for the next week Fadel went out in to the town and found people to ask about Zengi: the merchants in the Al-Madina Souq, the scholars in the House of Wisdom, and, of course, Bazzu in The Albali. He learned how Zengi had besieged Homs, and how Mu’in ad-Din successfully defended it, and how, in response, Damascus allied with the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem against him. But Zengi laid siege to the Crusader fortress of Baarin and quickly crushed the army of Jerusalem. He also learned how Zengi, realizing that an expedition against Damascus was bound to fail, came to an agreement with Damascus and married Zumurrud, the mother of the ruler, Mahmud. There was more, much more, and Fadel found it difficult to weave so much detail into his qasida without in becoming a mere verse chronicle. He solved this problem by focusing on a few major achievements and elaborating them with his finest flights of poetic fancy.

  At last the great day came when he read his masterpiece to his father. He settled him on the diwan that had once been Aaliyah’s favourite place, and, holding his manuscript with a trembling hand, read from beginning to end. It was a long poem, now, which contained many fine passages such as this:

  With daring heart Antar, the brave,

  Against him sped in proud array,

  To break in pieces, wave on wave,

  The finest swords of Araby.

  I seem to see him once again

  Breasting the billows of that sea,

  Beneath him dead and dying men;

  The Arab’s choicest chivalry;

  Before the Sultan’s eye that hour,

  Of gentle deed and courtly grace,

  The foremost on the run for power,

  Leading the veterans in the race.

  His father listened with rapt attention, and when the poem was finished, he jumped up and embraced his son.

  “Praise be to Allah!” he cried. “You have done it! You have written the finest poem about our honoured atabeg that I have ever heard. It is a masterpiece! It is, in its way, a swordstroke of jihad!”

  “Father, I know now where my talent comes from. To describe a poem as ‘a swordstroke of jihad’ is poetry in itself.”

  “But that is what it is!” insisted his father. “Our lord, Zengi, must hear it—and he shall! I am not without connections at the Citadel. I will hire a scribe to make a copy of your qasida in the most venerated style of calligraphy, and a fine rawi to read it to him.”

  And that’s how it happened that, a week later, Fadel found himself being ushered into the great man’s presence by the Visier, along with his father and the rawi.

  Zengi’s audience chamber had none of the
finery with which many oriental potentates like to surround themselves. There was a great, arched window in the Umayyad style to the left, its shape echoed by blank arches to the right and to the rear. The bank arches were painted in pale blue and covered with texts from the Quran in fine calligraphy. At the base of the rear arch was a bench where Zengi was sitting with some of his ministers and his two eldest sons, Saif ad-Din Ghazi and Nur ad-Din. To one side was a low table, on which a scribe, sitting cross-legged on a silk cushion was writing at the dictation of one of the ministers.

  Zengi was wore the leather gaiters and scarlet bantaloon of his soldiers, though with fine bisht of dark brown with a gold border instead of a cuisse. The fabled ‘Sword of Zengi’ hung by his side. It was an ancestral blade of finest Damascus steel that had been passed on in his family for generations. He was a tall, swarthy man in late middle age, with a beard, but no moustache. But the most surprising thing about him, after all that Fadel had heard, was that he had a pleasant appearance, enhanced by beautiful melting eyes. Was this the man who slaughtered six monks at a Templar castle? Was this the man who had trounced the finest swords in Araby? Perhaps he wore a different expression on the battlefield. However, it was most certainly the man that had achieved such triumphs of diplomacy.

  At a nod from his master, the Visier spoke:

  “My lord, I bring before you a poet who has written a qasida in your honour and wishes you to hear it.”

  Zengi made a gracious gesture, signalling that he was ready to listen, and the minister stopped his dictation.

  The rawi stepped forward and began the recitation from memory. As he spoke the lines, Fadel tried to read the expression on Zengi’s face, hoping to detect signs of approval. But there was no reaction at all.

  When the last line had been read, and was echoing around the high, vaulted chamber, Zengi, said something to a minister, who signalled to the Visier to come over. A moment later, the Visier returned, and said to Fadel.

  “The lord Zengi likes your poem. He wishes to appoint you as his court poet. That being the case, you will present yourself to me tomorrow morning and I will make the necessary arrangements.”

  Fadel looked at the great atabeg, but already he had turned to other business, and the minster had resumed his dictation. He had hoped for a word of praise from the great man himself, in particular, some indication of which passages he had liked the best; something to guide him in his future struggles with the jinn—but there was nothing to do but leave.

  “Allah is most gracious!” exclaimed his father as soon as they were out of the audience chamber. “You are a great man, now, my son! You are Zengi’s court poet. He will prosecute the jihad, and you will sing of it, and together, you will be remembered by the posterity of Islam.”

  “Thank you, father,” said Fadel, somewhat absently, for he was still puzzling over the contradiction between his hero’s outward appearance and his acts of violence and cruelty. It was something he would like to write about—but how?

  CHAPTER THREE

  Next morning, Fadel presented himself at the outer gate as instructed. They were the same guards who he had questioned before, and looked at him suspiciously. However, he said nothing, and showed the pass that the Visier had given him. Word was passed and the Visier met him at the inner gate and showed him to his quarters.

  “You will be sharing with our lord’s other poet, Faaiq,” said the Visier, as he led the way into a long, low chamber with two small arched windows at the far end.

  Under the window was a diwan on which a young man was reclining. His smooth features and short, sleek beard suggested that he was in his middle twenties. He had a far away look in his eyes—the look of a poet whose dreams have taken him to “faery lands forlorn”—or perhaps of an opium addict. The latter was suggested by a short, thin opium pipe called a sepses on the table beside him, and a heavy flowery aroma hanging in the air.

  “Salaam; peace be with you,” said Faaiq.

  “And peace to you also,” said Fadel.

  “So you are the new poet?”

  “I have that honour,” said Fadel curtly, for he was somewhat put out to find another poet in residence. He had imagined that he was going to be the court poet, rather than just one of them.

  Faaiq read his thoughts.

  “It is always so,” he said. “A great man has many wives and many concubines; he has many servants and many slaves—why should he not also have many poets?”

  Fadel was horrified.

  “You mean, there are others?”

  Faaiq laughed. “No, just you and I, and perhaps I am feeling a little like you, for was I not the one and only court poet before your arrival?”

  Fadel now saw the situation from a different angle.

  “I see what you mean. I hope we can be friends.”

  “The concubines are friends—well, when they are not falling out, so why should not we be friends, too? I would call for wine, but it is not permitted in the Citadel, and our master is strict. But I have a spare pipe.”

  Fadel shook his head. “I have foresworn all intoxicants—concubines too. Of course, alcohol is haram—as for the others, I found that they were distractions from my art.”

  Faaiq picked up his pipe.

  “On the contrary, I find that my best poetry comes in opium dreams—this, for example:

  “A pretty Nautch girl with an oud

  in a vision once I saw,

  she was an Abyssinian maid,

  and on her five-stringed oud she played

  singing of Mount Abora...”

  “...I forget the rest because the Visier broke the spell.”

  “Haven’t I heard that somewhere before?” said Fadel.

  “Perhaps,” said Faaiq unconcernedly. “I read the old poets as you can see...” He waved his hands to indicate the books scattered around the room, “...and their poetry gets mixed up with mine. It doesn’t matter. Zengi has had no education to speak of and wouldn’t know the difference.”

  Fadel was shocked to hear his fellow poet speak of their master so casually.

  “But do you not want to give your best work in service of our lord and of jihad?”

  “Jihad is a dream—or perhaps I should say, a nightmare, for it can only be achieved by suffering. My dreams are better. In those dreams I am the greatest poet of Islam. All the Emirs pay me homage. They shower me with gold and jewels. They give me a palace to live in. An army of slaves attends to my every need, and all I have to do is smoke this.”

  He touched his pipe.

  “But I will leave you to arrange your things. That door there leads to my sleeping quarters, and the other leads to yours. The Visier will send you a slave, but until he comes, mine will help you. Wadeed!”

  At Faaiq’s call, a young boy appeared from somewhere in the vestibule.

  “I am here to attend to your every desire, master,” said the boy.

  “Wadeed, this is Fadel, the new poet. Show him to his sleeping quarters and help him to arrange his things. You will find a bundle in the passageway.”

  “I hear and obey, master,” said Wadeed and hurried off to fetch the bundle.

  “A handsome young lad, is he not?” said Faaiq. “I hope you will be so lucky in your slave.”

  “He is a good worker, then?”

  “He is good at everything.”

  “You mean...?”

  “Ah, but I remember that you have foresworn all pleasure.”

  “For now, but when I have achieved something I will marry, for did the Prophet—may peace be upon him—teach us that it is nikah?”

  “Indeed, and one day I shall do the same, but between the opium and the slave boys I seem to have lost my way.”

  “Have no fear, for is it not written: ‘Ah! Verily, the help of Allah is always near!’”

  “‘I made dua to Allah, but I had no answer.”

  “In the hadeeth it is written: ‘There is no man who prays to Allah and makes dua to Him, and does not re
ceive a response’.”

  “I see you are an Islamic scholar.”

  “I studied the Maliki school of Islamic law at the House of Wisdom. I was meant for a lawyer, but the jinn got the better of me.”

  Faaiq laughed, “I was meant for a soldier—can you imagine it?”

  Next morning, before it was hardly light, Fadel was awoken by a tugging on his feet. It was Wadeed trying to wake him gently.

  “Master, hurry!” he said in a harsh whisper. “The Emier is waiting!”

  Fadel rolled out of bed, pulled his kameez around him, and went out to see what the fuss was. There was no sign of the Emier, but Faaiq was standing there in full military attire.

  “In the name of Allah! What is going on!” exclaimed Fadel.

  “I forgot to tell you that we have to report to the parade ground at dawn.”

  “The parade ground?”

  “Our lord has commanded that we train with his troops for two hours each day, so that we understand the rigours of warfare. Also, we are expected to accompany him into battle so that we may witness his glorious achievements.”

  Fadel did not object to the principle; indeed, he thought it was a good idea for a poet to be at the heart of the action, but he was angry with Faaiq for failing to warn him, and couldn’t help wondering if he had done it on purpose.

  “Well, I must go,” said Faaiq. “I daren’t be late. Our lord, Zengi, is very strict about such matters.”

  He turned to go.

  “But where am I to get armour?” said Fadel.

  “In the armoury. Wadeed will show you. But hurry. It would be a pity to lose our new poet so soon.”

  Luckily for Fadel, there were several other new recruits, and there was a delay in finding arms and armour that fitted, so he was able to march out to the parade ground with the others.

  He found himself in a contingent of twenty new recruits, who were being taught the very basics. How to hold an assegai, how to march in line, how to respond to the word of command.

  At first it was not too bad, as the morning was cool, and the buildings around the parade ground cast a long shadow. But as the sun rose, the sweat began to stream down his back under his cuisse, and down his forehead from the padded mental helmet. The bright light dazzled his eyes, and the dust choked his lungs. His assegai seemed to get heavier and heavier, but if he let it droop he received a sharp rebuke from theSarjukhe. Every bone of his poet’s body protested, yet every part of his poet’s soul rejoiced. He word find words for it, and his poetry would be real, authentic; the poetry of a man who had been and seen, not the poetry of a man who paced up and down on a luxurious terrace.