CANARY CLUB:
two excerpts from a novel in progress
by Bronwyn Mills
Editor’s note
In 1492 all Jews who would not convert were expelled from Spain by royal decree. Some fled to Portugal; some, to the Netherlands. When Sultan Beyezit II heard of the expulsion, recognizing the potential contributions these exiles might make to his empire, he sent his ships under Captain Kemal Reis to transport them to Istanbul (Stamboul). In this excerpt, the protagonist, Cara bat Elazar ben Faraj al Bhagdadi, the daughter of a Jewish scholar from Granada (Garnata), and a budding scholar in her own right, disguises herself as a male, and armed with a false baptismal certificate, has shipped out with the Genoese Cristobal Colón as ship’s boy and assistant with navigational calculations. Her father, Elazar, goes on to Istanbul with Kemal Reis, bringing with him his canary, Quintus Hortensus. On board, Elazar meets another passenger who has a canary, Catullus, and they stage singing competitions between their birds for the entertainment of the others on board. The two birds become friends. However, Quintus has taught himself to read, is conversant with many classic texts, and is planning to write his memoirs for posterity.
The first excerpt is Quintus' "Fabula," the story of how he came to be part of this unusual family. 'A second excerpt begins in the Canaries where Colón has paused to make repairs on the Pinta. He sends “Juan de Toledo,” Cara under her assumed name, to take some measurements that will be used in future navigation.
______________
[1] Referred to as Sefardi, or Sephardic Jews, after the Spanish Jews’ name for Spain. Note, also, that the Spanish is often rendered as Ladino, old Spanish spoken in Al Andaluz by both Jews and Moors, and sometimes, traditionally, rendered in their respective scripts.
In 1492 all Jews who would not convert were expelled from Spain by royal decree. Some fled to Portugal; some, to the Netherlands. When Sultan Beyezit II heard of the expulsion, recognizing the potential contributions these exiles might make to his empire, he sent his ships under Captain Kemal Reis to transport them to Istanbul (Stamboul). In this excerpt, the protagonist, Cara bat Elazar ben Faraj al Bhagdadi, the daughter of a Jewish scholar from Granada (Garnata), and a budding scholar in her own right, disguises herself as a male, and armed with a false baptismal certificate, has shipped out with the Genoese Cristobal Colón as ship’s boy and assistant with navigational calculations. Her father, Elazar, goes on to Istanbul with Kemal Reis, bringing with him his canary, Quintus Hortensus. On board, Elazar meets another passenger who has a canary, Catullus, and they stage singing competitions between their birds for the entertainment of the others on board. The two birds become friends. However, Quintus has taught himself to read, is conversant with many classic texts, and is planning to write his memoirs for posterity.
The first excerpt is Quintus' "Fabula," the story of how he came to be part of this unusual family. 'A second excerpt begins in the Canaries where Colón has paused to make repairs on the Pinta. He sends “Juan de Toledo,” Cara under her assumed name, to take some measurements that will be used in future navigation.
______________
[1] Referred to as Sefardi, or Sephardic Jews, after the Spanish Jews’ name for Spain. Note, also, that the Spanish is often rendered as Ladino, old Spanish spoken in Al Andaluz by both Jews and Moors, and sometimes, traditionally, rendered in their respective scripts.
In the Beginning
Along the winding streets behind the Valencian Aqueduct, and down towards the Lycos river, with its worried monasteries and vacant palaces, shorn of Byzantium's power since Mehmet the Conqueror took the city, we began to meet with our birds, who would sing and sing until one of them and its owner would be declared the winner. They had come—or their avine forebears had—from the Canarias... |
At the edge of the world lay their islands--some say the remains of Atlantis, some say the garden where first grew the Golden Apples of the Sun, where monsters lay and where an island was known to rise in the mists and just when the sailor who saw it thought to land, it sunk again. From thence came a marvelous, rather modest-looking bird who, by the Prophet, sang like the birds in Paradise—no, not a nightingale. Not a Kungumapoo from the Spice Islands, not even a Hua Mei, descended from the Emperor's gift to that Venetian, Marco Polo. This little bird had no glorious plumage, no entertaining antics; rather it was a dull greenish yellow, ordinary, modest sized but bright as a Frankish penny. Who was it that first arranged that such a bird would be sent to us? Well, often you can tell what is going on in the world by watching what arrives in the market, what, under more favorable circumstances, would have stayed at home. Take tulips, for instance. Were they not a foreign flower to the Low Lands? Did that not reveal to the world that our remarkable empire, that of the Ottomanes, was "found" by those clumsy northerners, somewhere to their East?
Thence a modest little bird, who did not migrate, came from yet another place by ship to these shores and to our dear city. What, we might ask, does that mean?
Thence a modest little bird, who did not migrate, came from yet another place by ship to these shores and to our dear city. What, we might ask, does that mean?
Fabula de Quintum Hortensius
Dear Reader, my very best friend, Catullus, has advised that I should start at the beginning. He is not a literary bird, though he has been a kept bird much longer than I. However, he has finally come to understand the need I have to record my adventures for posterity. Mind, our friendship has taken some time to develop. For in this age, though much may be made of we birds who sing, we canaries, artists of the word—let along birds of this art—are not often given the serious consideration they deserve.
—Get to the point, Quintus! he would say, using my human name.
And so I shall:
Contrary to my name, I, Quintus Hortensius, (Q. H.), am a modest little bird. Mind, I did not name myself; and were you to try to say my true name—you being human, I presume—you could not begin to give it utterance. Indeed, it is a song that you may never hear, that my dear parents gave me long, long ago.
I am a caged bird. Not strictly speaking, in the sense that I am often on my master's shoulder, settled in the warm hollow of his collarbone and snuggled against his neck (and they say we are not friendly birds!) Without his kindness, I should be quite lost; for I did not begin my life in a cage, but on the island of La Gomera, where the winds blow through the mountains, the canyons, in wild whispers, soft moans, and when there are storms on the Atlantic, in banshee howls. There the great gods of the air, the voices of the invisible powers, never seen, only heard, there their power humbles trees, keeps them low to the ground, shatters them when displeased. One needs a song like ours to be heard. Indeed, even the humans on this island sing to each other across the distance—a crude whistle, nonetheless...
However, when we fly, lift up on the gentler breezes, ah! And when we sing, no matter what the rumblings on the part of the invisible powers... ah! ha!
We were four; I, being the third and as peculiar to canaries, born a little earlier than the others. Our nest was warm, our parents ideally attentive, and we grew rapidly. Indeed, in our music and flying lessons they were most assiduous; my father's chest was swollen with pride, my mother burbled indulgently at her fledglings' accomplishments. Carefully, they encouraged us to venture forth, a little journey, then one but a little longer, and so on. I, I must admit, showed particular talent for song; and my father, himself an artificer of some years, threw himself into cultivating my voice. He admitted that his own accomplishments were the result of long hours of training on the part of my grandparents, and that his voice was merely the result of such an excellent education, whereas I, his son, had the gift. It simply needed guidance, to be freed.
Now according to a passing petrel, en route from the other side of the sea, the humans there have a god, named Hurucán; and this power has authority over the most violent storms. Indeed, you will hear more of this power, for my tale is not brief; its telling, oft interrupted. First, I must relate the sad turn of events that resulted in my present situation. Far from your ears, though I swore to sing no more, I have secretly sung about it. Indeed, while I have only just begun this writing, I have worked on this particular song for many years, but you humans—should you pass by accidentally— think I am merely entertaining myself with an aria, albeit of singular beauty and longing. You think it is art for art's sake. Ha!
It was, indeed, a violent, stormy night and Hurucán was sending warning; the waves on the shoreline far below roared, and smashed the rocks below, as if Hurucán himself were treading there in a furor, blowing right through his invisible hands for the western warmth he had left behind. His warning cries shook every twig, tore the leaves of every bush; and still, he had not arrived. But we all knew the signs. We, of all creatures, seem to know these things in advance. Then, in the midst of that wild night, we heard—not the shriek of the invisible powers terrorizing the trees, demanding obeisance—no, human voices, the rough, dissonant sounds of what you call speech; and the light of a foul-smelling torch was suddenly upon us. A hairy paw intruding into our nest...grasping my mother way too tightly, throwing her down into...into...a sack...my father, my sisters, my brother, myself...flung into the darkness, crowded with feathers and the excrement of other fellow birds...
Faz frio! Vamos! I will never forget the sound of those words, that guttural sound from the throat of one of your crude, featherless fellows who like too many of your species, instinctively must possess and, all too often, destroy.
I need not go over our captivity in all its painful detail. Dumped into wooden boxes with cage-like slats, stacked several high just below the deck of a Portuguese caravel. Suffice it to say that we and several hundred other of our fellow Serinus canariae, were soon to become Serinus canariae domesticae or dead. Sadly, more of the latter than the former. Cramped, ill, defecating when and wherever, feverish, without food or water, surrounded more by corpses than of living creatures, my mother was the first of us to perish...if you survive...if...sing, sing... and she was gone. My sweet sister, my two stalwart brothers wing holding wing, and then my father, unable to so much as chirp though I thought I heard a faint whistling...sing...and a look of horror on his visage. Then the storm blew full blast. For days, we bucked and rolled; and then the invisible powers howled their howl, wailed their wail, ground their teeth on the masthead, tore at the furled sails, and shattered the caravel amidships.
The cage which contained us: myself, the bodies of my family and those of a number of fellow canaries broke free and floated onto the water as the eye of Hurucán passed over and the winds veered southwestward beyond us. At that moment, Never, I thought, never will I sing without them.
Ultimately the little mausoleum in which I was trapped washed ashore where two enterprising and filthy little gypsy youths found it, and took me, it's lone survivor, to market for a quick sale.
At Algeciras, I was sold to an old Muslim who worked in leather. He put me in a wicker cage and hung me in his shop, until one day, I inhaled a particularly noxious odor among those of his trade. His son, noticing my owner had failed to come to evening prayer, came and found me upside down, clinging to my perch, and his pater, dead as the proverbial doornail.
I was sold to a merchant from Cordova, who, in turn gave me to his daughter, who gave me to a childhood friend who lived in Malaga, who wasn't interested in me at all, so she sold me to a friend in Salobrena, whose husband wasn't interested in me either–Allah! that bird is a dull grey green, like a filthy monk's robe! It does not even sing!—so he took me to the Great Bazaar in Garnata, where I caught the eye of a bookmaker who hung me in his stall and talked to me during his long work hours. No doubt, he thought I would sing in reply and thus keep him company, but I remained silent, stunned with grief. To this day, though, I can still imitate the gentle chink! chink! of his hammer, made as he tapped out an intricate design on a leather book cover. At night Isak ibn Isak—for that was his name—covered my cage, and wished me "ليلة سعيدة, usbah alal khair." Early every morning he greeted me, "صباح الخير, my sad little bird, şabāhul kyahr." On Fridays, when he spent considerable time in the mosque, he gave a few coins to a little Mozarab who came, lifted the cover and gave me water and sesame seeds in the morning and returned to put back my cover and feed me in the evening. Even then, I could not bring myself to so much as chirp. Indeed, in my old age, as I look back on what has turned out to be quite an adventurous life for such a small bird from the hills of La Gomera, I cannot help remembering those early years of my youth with pain, first and so terribly separated from my loved ones, from my home, and my fellow creatures. Indirectly, however, Isak ibn Isak helped me to find a way to ease that sorrow, though I suppose he never knew; for one Friday after feeding me, the little Mozarab forgot to secure the latch on my cage.
From where my cage hung, I could look out and up the hills of the city to the vineyards and gardens where peasants toiled, from whence clear mountain streams flowed downwards into the fountains of the Alhambra on to where one might see the Darro course between it and the Albaícin. Here the winds blew gently, relieving one in the summer and discreetly forbearing to freeze one in the winter, when it rained. Once I even spied a familiar shape flying in the distance, a petrel, surely driven in by an ocean storm. The reason why I could see all this was because Isak had windows in his shop. They were a luxury of course, but when absorbed in the business of making books, he not only needed the light, but he needed to look up from such close work now and then and peer into the distance. It helped that the view was magnificent. When Isak was gone, if there was any light at all, it filled the room; and it was thus that on that Friday I was able to push open the door to my cage, quite gently with only one wing, and fly around the room.
Oh, the freedom to stretch one's wings, even a little!
As I flew, swooping and diving, fluttering and flitting, sharpening my wings on the still air, my eyes caught a glitter. I had spied an illumination on Isak's work table, elaborated in careful inks and gold leaf:
א
You may recognize the Hebrew, Aleph, which of course in Arabic is Alif:
ا
both of which, as you also are no doubt aware, share the common Phoenician "alp," referring to the ox. In fact, as I soon learned, both the Hebrew and the Arabic letter refer to the condition of being trained, tamed, or familiar, being intimate with. Of course, when Musa came down from the mountains with the tablets of the Law, its first word begins with Aleph:
אָנֹכִי
And that is how I, a wild canary, trained to sing only by other canaries, became literate in the languages of men. Became, I suppose, tame. Perhaps a better word is "civilized," or even "erudite." A bird of the world. For each day, after Isak had gone home, I nudged the door to my cage with my wing, having learned to latch and unlatch it so that my keepers could not tell that anything was amiss, slipped under the cover placed over my cage, and in the dying Mediterranean light, I studied. Book after book, manuscript after manuscript. Hebrew, Arabic, once the lingua franca of the time. Ladino, that wonderful language of the Iberian Judios, so close to old Spanish but sometimes written in Hebrew, and Aljam'ia—Ladino written in Arabic. Aramaic. Greek. Latin. Romance—not generally written, but the language of the northern (much less the southern) masses. I became interested in the writings of the human spirit—poetry, literature, religions. I read Marcus Aurelius. An odd tract written by Spanish Adoptionists. Aha! This is how we creatures see the power(s) of the universe—astonishing that a human being could also think like this! I read the poetry of the Golden Age of Córdoba—the mellifluous Arabic of Aisha bint Ahmad al-Qurtubiya; and though I have no great liking for the feline race, how could one not enjoy her famous verse:
I am a lioness
and will never allow my body
to be anyone's resting place. But if I did,
I wouldn't yield to a dog -
and O! the lions I've turned away!
In brief, at a tender point in my youth, my mind was awakened slowly, oh so slowly, and, especially since dislodging a book that was not easily left open, took considerable gymnastics on my part. I even taunted a stray cat that had somehow gotten trapped in the store to knock a few down, then thankfully absent himself through an unnoticed hole in the wall.
Slowly, as I was saying, the grief that filled me began to loose its talons from my breast. One never forgets, though one can learn to live with pain, even forget it for long stretches of time. But Isak ibn Isak, decent man though he was, was getting impatient. His chance purchase of a dull grey-green bird, famed since the fourteenth century for its song, had not been entirely successful. Finally, he decided that in the interest of buying more inks for his manuscripts and illuminations, he would sell me. To wit, he posted a sign on his door advertising that I, "a modest little bird from Las Canarias," was for sale. "Ready to train." That last part, I suppose, was to encourage buyers to think that they might achieve what he had failed to do—get me to sing.
His customers came and went. After closing time, I turned to my studies. One late afternoon, as I was immersed in reading Pliny in the Arabic translation, and had been hopping along the line of print, right to left, I happened to look up and there, with nose pressed against the pane peering at me, was a strange being. No, two beings: an older man wearing a most peculiar red hat, and a young woman dressed in bright colors and wearing dangling gold earrings. Both had pressed their noses to the glass and were staring at me. Occasionally, one nose would loosen as the bearer pulled away to say something to their companion. They seemed quite excited; and I suppose it had something to do with me. Indeed, from the manner in which they pointed, I knew of course, it was the sight of a canary slowly carefully pacing every line of text.
“O, Baba, esta leyendo él?”
The following day, Elazar ben Faraj al-Bagdadi and his daughter, Cara, bat Elazar ben Faraj al-Bagdadi, came together and dickered a bit with Isak. In an instant, Doña Cara lifted my cage from it's hook—she was a tall woman— Goodness! this cage door is loose! she exclaimed as my little door momentarily swung open. She fastened it so that I could not escape and handed the cage to her father, who carried me down to their home in Garnata al-Yahud.
Dear me. They were Jews.
—Get to the point, Quintus! he would say, using my human name.
And so I shall:
Contrary to my name, I, Quintus Hortensius, (Q. H.), am a modest little bird. Mind, I did not name myself; and were you to try to say my true name—you being human, I presume—you could not begin to give it utterance. Indeed, it is a song that you may never hear, that my dear parents gave me long, long ago.
I am a caged bird. Not strictly speaking, in the sense that I am often on my master's shoulder, settled in the warm hollow of his collarbone and snuggled against his neck (and they say we are not friendly birds!) Without his kindness, I should be quite lost; for I did not begin my life in a cage, but on the island of La Gomera, where the winds blow through the mountains, the canyons, in wild whispers, soft moans, and when there are storms on the Atlantic, in banshee howls. There the great gods of the air, the voices of the invisible powers, never seen, only heard, there their power humbles trees, keeps them low to the ground, shatters them when displeased. One needs a song like ours to be heard. Indeed, even the humans on this island sing to each other across the distance—a crude whistle, nonetheless...
However, when we fly, lift up on the gentler breezes, ah! And when we sing, no matter what the rumblings on the part of the invisible powers... ah! ha!
We were four; I, being the third and as peculiar to canaries, born a little earlier than the others. Our nest was warm, our parents ideally attentive, and we grew rapidly. Indeed, in our music and flying lessons they were most assiduous; my father's chest was swollen with pride, my mother burbled indulgently at her fledglings' accomplishments. Carefully, they encouraged us to venture forth, a little journey, then one but a little longer, and so on. I, I must admit, showed particular talent for song; and my father, himself an artificer of some years, threw himself into cultivating my voice. He admitted that his own accomplishments were the result of long hours of training on the part of my grandparents, and that his voice was merely the result of such an excellent education, whereas I, his son, had the gift. It simply needed guidance, to be freed.
Now according to a passing petrel, en route from the other side of the sea, the humans there have a god, named Hurucán; and this power has authority over the most violent storms. Indeed, you will hear more of this power, for my tale is not brief; its telling, oft interrupted. First, I must relate the sad turn of events that resulted in my present situation. Far from your ears, though I swore to sing no more, I have secretly sung about it. Indeed, while I have only just begun this writing, I have worked on this particular song for many years, but you humans—should you pass by accidentally— think I am merely entertaining myself with an aria, albeit of singular beauty and longing. You think it is art for art's sake. Ha!
It was, indeed, a violent, stormy night and Hurucán was sending warning; the waves on the shoreline far below roared, and smashed the rocks below, as if Hurucán himself were treading there in a furor, blowing right through his invisible hands for the western warmth he had left behind. His warning cries shook every twig, tore the leaves of every bush; and still, he had not arrived. But we all knew the signs. We, of all creatures, seem to know these things in advance. Then, in the midst of that wild night, we heard—not the shriek of the invisible powers terrorizing the trees, demanding obeisance—no, human voices, the rough, dissonant sounds of what you call speech; and the light of a foul-smelling torch was suddenly upon us. A hairy paw intruding into our nest...grasping my mother way too tightly, throwing her down into...into...a sack...my father, my sisters, my brother, myself...flung into the darkness, crowded with feathers and the excrement of other fellow birds...
Faz frio! Vamos! I will never forget the sound of those words, that guttural sound from the throat of one of your crude, featherless fellows who like too many of your species, instinctively must possess and, all too often, destroy.
I need not go over our captivity in all its painful detail. Dumped into wooden boxes with cage-like slats, stacked several high just below the deck of a Portuguese caravel. Suffice it to say that we and several hundred other of our fellow Serinus canariae, were soon to become Serinus canariae domesticae or dead. Sadly, more of the latter than the former. Cramped, ill, defecating when and wherever, feverish, without food or water, surrounded more by corpses than of living creatures, my mother was the first of us to perish...if you survive...if...sing, sing... and she was gone. My sweet sister, my two stalwart brothers wing holding wing, and then my father, unable to so much as chirp though I thought I heard a faint whistling...sing...and a look of horror on his visage. Then the storm blew full blast. For days, we bucked and rolled; and then the invisible powers howled their howl, wailed their wail, ground their teeth on the masthead, tore at the furled sails, and shattered the caravel amidships.
The cage which contained us: myself, the bodies of my family and those of a number of fellow canaries broke free and floated onto the water as the eye of Hurucán passed over and the winds veered southwestward beyond us. At that moment, Never, I thought, never will I sing without them.
Ultimately the little mausoleum in which I was trapped washed ashore where two enterprising and filthy little gypsy youths found it, and took me, it's lone survivor, to market for a quick sale.
At Algeciras, I was sold to an old Muslim who worked in leather. He put me in a wicker cage and hung me in his shop, until one day, I inhaled a particularly noxious odor among those of his trade. His son, noticing my owner had failed to come to evening prayer, came and found me upside down, clinging to my perch, and his pater, dead as the proverbial doornail.
I was sold to a merchant from Cordova, who, in turn gave me to his daughter, who gave me to a childhood friend who lived in Malaga, who wasn't interested in me at all, so she sold me to a friend in Salobrena, whose husband wasn't interested in me either–Allah! that bird is a dull grey green, like a filthy monk's robe! It does not even sing!—so he took me to the Great Bazaar in Garnata, where I caught the eye of a bookmaker who hung me in his stall and talked to me during his long work hours. No doubt, he thought I would sing in reply and thus keep him company, but I remained silent, stunned with grief. To this day, though, I can still imitate the gentle chink! chink! of his hammer, made as he tapped out an intricate design on a leather book cover. At night Isak ibn Isak—for that was his name—covered my cage, and wished me "ليلة سعيدة, usbah alal khair." Early every morning he greeted me, "صباح الخير, my sad little bird, şabāhul kyahr." On Fridays, when he spent considerable time in the mosque, he gave a few coins to a little Mozarab who came, lifted the cover and gave me water and sesame seeds in the morning and returned to put back my cover and feed me in the evening. Even then, I could not bring myself to so much as chirp. Indeed, in my old age, as I look back on what has turned out to be quite an adventurous life for such a small bird from the hills of La Gomera, I cannot help remembering those early years of my youth with pain, first and so terribly separated from my loved ones, from my home, and my fellow creatures. Indirectly, however, Isak ibn Isak helped me to find a way to ease that sorrow, though I suppose he never knew; for one Friday after feeding me, the little Mozarab forgot to secure the latch on my cage.
From where my cage hung, I could look out and up the hills of the city to the vineyards and gardens where peasants toiled, from whence clear mountain streams flowed downwards into the fountains of the Alhambra on to where one might see the Darro course between it and the Albaícin. Here the winds blew gently, relieving one in the summer and discreetly forbearing to freeze one in the winter, when it rained. Once I even spied a familiar shape flying in the distance, a petrel, surely driven in by an ocean storm. The reason why I could see all this was because Isak had windows in his shop. They were a luxury of course, but when absorbed in the business of making books, he not only needed the light, but he needed to look up from such close work now and then and peer into the distance. It helped that the view was magnificent. When Isak was gone, if there was any light at all, it filled the room; and it was thus that on that Friday I was able to push open the door to my cage, quite gently with only one wing, and fly around the room.
Oh, the freedom to stretch one's wings, even a little!
As I flew, swooping and diving, fluttering and flitting, sharpening my wings on the still air, my eyes caught a glitter. I had spied an illumination on Isak's work table, elaborated in careful inks and gold leaf:
א
You may recognize the Hebrew, Aleph, which of course in Arabic is Alif:
ا
both of which, as you also are no doubt aware, share the common Phoenician "alp," referring to the ox. In fact, as I soon learned, both the Hebrew and the Arabic letter refer to the condition of being trained, tamed, or familiar, being intimate with. Of course, when Musa came down from the mountains with the tablets of the Law, its first word begins with Aleph:
אָנֹכִי
And that is how I, a wild canary, trained to sing only by other canaries, became literate in the languages of men. Became, I suppose, tame. Perhaps a better word is "civilized," or even "erudite." A bird of the world. For each day, after Isak had gone home, I nudged the door to my cage with my wing, having learned to latch and unlatch it so that my keepers could not tell that anything was amiss, slipped under the cover placed over my cage, and in the dying Mediterranean light, I studied. Book after book, manuscript after manuscript. Hebrew, Arabic, once the lingua franca of the time. Ladino, that wonderful language of the Iberian Judios, so close to old Spanish but sometimes written in Hebrew, and Aljam'ia—Ladino written in Arabic. Aramaic. Greek. Latin. Romance—not generally written, but the language of the northern (much less the southern) masses. I became interested in the writings of the human spirit—poetry, literature, religions. I read Marcus Aurelius. An odd tract written by Spanish Adoptionists. Aha! This is how we creatures see the power(s) of the universe—astonishing that a human being could also think like this! I read the poetry of the Golden Age of Córdoba—the mellifluous Arabic of Aisha bint Ahmad al-Qurtubiya; and though I have no great liking for the feline race, how could one not enjoy her famous verse:
I am a lioness
and will never allow my body
to be anyone's resting place. But if I did,
I wouldn't yield to a dog -
and O! the lions I've turned away!
In brief, at a tender point in my youth, my mind was awakened slowly, oh so slowly, and, especially since dislodging a book that was not easily left open, took considerable gymnastics on my part. I even taunted a stray cat that had somehow gotten trapped in the store to knock a few down, then thankfully absent himself through an unnoticed hole in the wall.
Slowly, as I was saying, the grief that filled me began to loose its talons from my breast. One never forgets, though one can learn to live with pain, even forget it for long stretches of time. But Isak ibn Isak, decent man though he was, was getting impatient. His chance purchase of a dull grey-green bird, famed since the fourteenth century for its song, had not been entirely successful. Finally, he decided that in the interest of buying more inks for his manuscripts and illuminations, he would sell me. To wit, he posted a sign on his door advertising that I, "a modest little bird from Las Canarias," was for sale. "Ready to train." That last part, I suppose, was to encourage buyers to think that they might achieve what he had failed to do—get me to sing.
His customers came and went. After closing time, I turned to my studies. One late afternoon, as I was immersed in reading Pliny in the Arabic translation, and had been hopping along the line of print, right to left, I happened to look up and there, with nose pressed against the pane peering at me, was a strange being. No, two beings: an older man wearing a most peculiar red hat, and a young woman dressed in bright colors and wearing dangling gold earrings. Both had pressed their noses to the glass and were staring at me. Occasionally, one nose would loosen as the bearer pulled away to say something to their companion. They seemed quite excited; and I suppose it had something to do with me. Indeed, from the manner in which they pointed, I knew of course, it was the sight of a canary slowly carefully pacing every line of text.
“O, Baba, esta leyendo él?”
The following day, Elazar ben Faraj al-Bagdadi and his daughter, Cara, bat Elazar ben Faraj al-Bagdadi, came together and dickered a bit with Isak. In an instant, Doña Cara lifted my cage from it's hook—she was a tall woman— Goodness! this cage door is loose! she exclaimed as my little door momentarily swung open. She fastened it so that I could not escape and handed the cage to her father, who carried me down to their home in Garnata al-Yahud.
Dear me. They were Jews.
What makes some people yearn to stay by their hearth, to shape the mooring place from which others cast off? What make some of us want to leave? to go thither and yon, to observe lands not yet seen and people not yet encountered? My people have not had the luxury of a permanent hearth, and though we fervently desire safe harbor, what of those of us who quite naturally cannot stay still? Can you imagine? From Ibn Sina, we read of the islands, like single travelers wrapped in their cloaks and hunched against the winds; we have been infected with a yearning, a yearning catch up to them and look, not for a miraculous shelter, but what? an elusive
|
miracle of another kind, perhaps. I wanted to see the Ocean Sea; to find islands such as Ibn Sina describes, to go from island to island, like a child stepping from stone to stone in the shallows of a stream, to see Cipangu, to meet the Great Khan, to arrive from a direction which that exalted ruler would not have expected. All that I wanted to do for myself.
- Cara bat Elazar ben Faraj al-Bagdadi
* * * *
- Cara bat Elazar ben Faraj al-Bagdadi
* * * *
If I flew up to the starry vault And joined the heavens' westward flow I would learn, as I travelled the sky The fate of all things here below. - Caliph al Ma'mūn |
17 Agosto 1492, Real de Las Palmas, Gran Canaria. Juan de Toledo
The "small craft" that Colón commissioned for my use is nothing more than a rowboat! And today, Colón has ordered a very muscular oarsman to take Torres[1] and me out into the bay in it. If only Colón would have granted me the use of his compass; instead, I had but a rough portulans, developed sometime between now and the Castilian conquest of these islands, a great pile of rope coiled up in the stern, a log, my quadrant, and an hourglass calibrated for half-four on one turn, half-four on another, and so on.
“But Don Cristobal, this little boat is much too slow—"
“Just measure distances, then! And remember the measure of your little boat! I must go help Pinzón, else we shall be here forever!”
Torres was silent. The oarsman, another "Juan," rowed placidly as we distanced ourselves from the shore. He was charged with rowing evenly, in a regular rhythm so that we can accomplish this test of the rope with some consistency; and I could hear him chanting something just under his breath, as if to keep time.
I knotted the close end of the rope to the log and secured it so it would drag without wobbling (or as little as possible.) As Colón instructed, I was to take the rope and finish knotting it according to the measure of the cubit used by Al-Farghāni. I believe this cubit to be a basic unit of measure for the Arabic mile; and Colón wishes to establish longitude and make a better map, westward to Cathay and the Indies—we shall see. For now, we checked the rope for approximate accuracy.
This morning the airs around the island were fresh. I envisioned the winds that drove that water to the northwest of us, crashing on the beaches of the Portuguese's Azores, diminishing as it reached the Canarias, but cresting again, not so far away, on the edges of those vast, unknown blackamoors' lands to the east. But the water, for once still and varied in deep greens and indigos, was not my enemy that day!
On a very clear day, one could just barely see Tenerife's dark mountains which rise to the west. Indeed, was that its faint deep purple hump in the distance? Though not visible, I knew La Gomera, from which we would set sail when Pinzón's ship was repaired, to be but a stone's throw south of that wild and windy isle.
“My portulans says that if we stay close to the shore, the distance from Las Palmas to the pharo on that shore—" I pointed off in the direction of a lighthouse, “that should be one Arabic mile.”
“What difference does it make? A mile is a mile,” grumbled Torres. “Come now, my good man,” he addressed the oarsman. “Keep a steady pace. No slowing down”!
“Well, it does matter.” My strategy to keep Torres at a distance was, first, that I would drown him in fact: “The old Greek stadion which Ptolomaeus used, but adjusted to multiply into the Roman mile, does not fit in the same proportion as it does in the case of the Arabic mile, which the House of Wisdom used in the time of Al Ma-mūn—”
My second strategem was to give Torres something to do that required him to concentrate on anything but me: “Here, Don Luis!” I ordered him. “Take this quadrant. Hold it like this, and do not move!” That kept him, if not on his toes, straddling the middle of the boat in a steady, slightly ridiculous pose. And it shut him up. The oarsman, I saw, suppressed a smirk and I tried not to snicker as I let loose another barage:
“In fact, Don Luis, the great Marinus of Tyre, who lived until the year of our Lord, 130, established Las Canarias as zero meridian for longitude (and the division of the windward and leeward winds.) He then used the Knights Templars' island of Rhodes for a line of latitude in order to establish coordinates and in such a way that would overcome the errors of the great Ptolemeus.”
Torres' eyes started to droop under the weight of my data--
(If only we had Marinus' maps. The best I may hope to achieve is to try to imitate some of his methods…)
“Ma-aster Juan,” drawled the oarsman. We had arrived at the place of the pharo and it was time to tie another knot in the rope.
“ Don Luis! Take care, we need a good measure! Read me the quadrant,” I ordered Torres. “Please.”
He did not know what to do and I had to very slowly and carefully rise up in our craft and peer over his shoulder. After the wobble subsided, I got an approximate reading, but the thought came to me: how would this instrument behave on the open sea when a mere wobble, soon stilled, became a monstrous heave? Surely we would achieve no accuracy save in the calmest of seas.
And so we went, wobbling, sloshing a bit, stopping to check our measures, then hewing to the map and its directions as closely as possible. I never so much as lifted the hourglass.
I have mentioned little about these islands. Up until the very end of our day's excursion, when we could look out to the open sea, navigating along the shore of Gran Canaria kept us in calmer waters. Though it sheltered us from rougher water, Tenerife was too far away to see, except on very rare occasion; but on Tenerife, the sailors said, lived a monster in one of the mountains. When he settled in for the night, he bellowed smoke; when aroused on even rarer occasions, fire. His rage, multiplied, would mimic the fires which Pliny the Elder observed, those that drowned the cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum and, drawing too close to satisfy his scientific curiosity, which caused his death. His nephew, Pliny the Younger, wrote of his demise and the consequences of his uncle's curiosity; but I do not think those cities were attacked by an enraged monster, not that the tragedy was any the less. I was skeptical of the yarns these mariners spin.
The climate on these islands was mild but windy, and when the wind was up, it howled. One felt as if one were being pushed down the village paths, nor would I want to be out in the hills when that wind was at its most. There were many deep clefts in the rock, in the mountains, and the inhabitants had a curious habit of whistling across them, with loud and varied tones. They did this to communicate when to use one's voice would render it hoarse almost immediately. Certes, learning how to communicate thus was apparently quite a skill, for the "vocabulary" of this whistled language (I hardly know what else to call it) was quite complex. As for the people who were native to this island, they looked like Moors, but apparently they are not. From a strictly commercial point of view, the old salts in the tavern said, one could make a tidy profit from selling them off as slaves, though if one was not strict with them they easily became rebellious and sullen. Guanches, they called them.
At dusk we arrived at the main port. Just in time. I managed to save my quadrant from falling into the brink, for Torres had nodded off. Still, we docked with a goodly length of knotted rope. I was too tired to even eat, but had to go to Colón's compline, lest he doubt my presumptive devotion. The crew were less complicated—they still referred to conversos as "Jew.”
Well, do your duty, then. Off to bed, my girl/young man!
__________________________
[1] Torres was a converso cousin, who had not seen Cara since she was a little girl. Cara had no desire to make herself known to him, nor was she pleased to have Colón send him along with her.
* * * *
20 Agosto 1492: Colón reprimanded me ferociously, almost viciously: “ Useless! Useless! Your intervals between knots are too short! It will make it seem that the Ocean Sea is much too wide!”
“But I have used the cubit that Al-Farghāni and those at that time used, in Arabic meas—er, equal to one and half Roman pedes.”
“No, no, no! Al-Farghāni used the black cubit.”
“But Don Cristobal, if these knots are to mark the black cubit, that is half another Roman pes, but if we are to mark by the Arabic mile—"[2]
“A mile is a mile, as expounded by the great Ptolomaeus, as reported by the Frank and ” Colón paused to emphasize, “the holy father, Pierre d'Ailly, who has written in his Imago Mundi, that that measure was calculated by Al-Farghāni himself: Fifty-six and two-thirds miles equals one degree of latitude. You disappoint me, young man!"
“(but is that a Roman mile? Al-Farghāni used an Arabic mile…)”
“Out! out of my sight! Martín Alonso is enough of a headache without this, this—"
“Of course, Don Cristobal. I shall correct my error; but would it not be better to give me more rope?”
I scuttled out from under his raised hand. I was not willing to be struck by a moody Almirante who did not like to admit a single wrong…
And so I have left my old rope in my cramped little quarters, and, off again, out in that wretched boat, with Torres and the Morisco oarsman, Juan. My portulans was now but an even rougher guide, along with a lodestone compass, which Colón reluctantly supplied this time. We must work quickly to knot up a new length of rope according to El Almirante's demands.
We had been on these islands for sixteen days. How long must we keep doing this? How long must we stay here? Or was El Almirante simply giving me things to do, so I would be elsewhere occupied?
You disappoint me, young man.
“But Don Cristobal, this little boat is much too slow—"
“Just measure distances, then! And remember the measure of your little boat! I must go help Pinzón, else we shall be here forever!”
Torres was silent. The oarsman, another "Juan," rowed placidly as we distanced ourselves from the shore. He was charged with rowing evenly, in a regular rhythm so that we can accomplish this test of the rope with some consistency; and I could hear him chanting something just under his breath, as if to keep time.
I knotted the close end of the rope to the log and secured it so it would drag without wobbling (or as little as possible.) As Colón instructed, I was to take the rope and finish knotting it according to the measure of the cubit used by Al-Farghāni. I believe this cubit to be a basic unit of measure for the Arabic mile; and Colón wishes to establish longitude and make a better map, westward to Cathay and the Indies—we shall see. For now, we checked the rope for approximate accuracy.
This morning the airs around the island were fresh. I envisioned the winds that drove that water to the northwest of us, crashing on the beaches of the Portuguese's Azores, diminishing as it reached the Canarias, but cresting again, not so far away, on the edges of those vast, unknown blackamoors' lands to the east. But the water, for once still and varied in deep greens and indigos, was not my enemy that day!
On a very clear day, one could just barely see Tenerife's dark mountains which rise to the west. Indeed, was that its faint deep purple hump in the distance? Though not visible, I knew La Gomera, from which we would set sail when Pinzón's ship was repaired, to be but a stone's throw south of that wild and windy isle.
“My portulans says that if we stay close to the shore, the distance from Las Palmas to the pharo on that shore—" I pointed off in the direction of a lighthouse, “that should be one Arabic mile.”
“What difference does it make? A mile is a mile,” grumbled Torres. “Come now, my good man,” he addressed the oarsman. “Keep a steady pace. No slowing down”!
“Well, it does matter.” My strategy to keep Torres at a distance was, first, that I would drown him in fact: “The old Greek stadion which Ptolomaeus used, but adjusted to multiply into the Roman mile, does not fit in the same proportion as it does in the case of the Arabic mile, which the House of Wisdom used in the time of Al Ma-mūn—”
My second strategem was to give Torres something to do that required him to concentrate on anything but me: “Here, Don Luis!” I ordered him. “Take this quadrant. Hold it like this, and do not move!” That kept him, if not on his toes, straddling the middle of the boat in a steady, slightly ridiculous pose. And it shut him up. The oarsman, I saw, suppressed a smirk and I tried not to snicker as I let loose another barage:
“In fact, Don Luis, the great Marinus of Tyre, who lived until the year of our Lord, 130, established Las Canarias as zero meridian for longitude (and the division of the windward and leeward winds.) He then used the Knights Templars' island of Rhodes for a line of latitude in order to establish coordinates and in such a way that would overcome the errors of the great Ptolemeus.”
Torres' eyes started to droop under the weight of my data--
(If only we had Marinus' maps. The best I may hope to achieve is to try to imitate some of his methods…)
“Ma-aster Juan,” drawled the oarsman. We had arrived at the place of the pharo and it was time to tie another knot in the rope.
“ Don Luis! Take care, we need a good measure! Read me the quadrant,” I ordered Torres. “Please.”
He did not know what to do and I had to very slowly and carefully rise up in our craft and peer over his shoulder. After the wobble subsided, I got an approximate reading, but the thought came to me: how would this instrument behave on the open sea when a mere wobble, soon stilled, became a monstrous heave? Surely we would achieve no accuracy save in the calmest of seas.
And so we went, wobbling, sloshing a bit, stopping to check our measures, then hewing to the map and its directions as closely as possible. I never so much as lifted the hourglass.
I have mentioned little about these islands. Up until the very end of our day's excursion, when we could look out to the open sea, navigating along the shore of Gran Canaria kept us in calmer waters. Though it sheltered us from rougher water, Tenerife was too far away to see, except on very rare occasion; but on Tenerife, the sailors said, lived a monster in one of the mountains. When he settled in for the night, he bellowed smoke; when aroused on even rarer occasions, fire. His rage, multiplied, would mimic the fires which Pliny the Elder observed, those that drowned the cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum and, drawing too close to satisfy his scientific curiosity, which caused his death. His nephew, Pliny the Younger, wrote of his demise and the consequences of his uncle's curiosity; but I do not think those cities were attacked by an enraged monster, not that the tragedy was any the less. I was skeptical of the yarns these mariners spin.
The climate on these islands was mild but windy, and when the wind was up, it howled. One felt as if one were being pushed down the village paths, nor would I want to be out in the hills when that wind was at its most. There were many deep clefts in the rock, in the mountains, and the inhabitants had a curious habit of whistling across them, with loud and varied tones. They did this to communicate when to use one's voice would render it hoarse almost immediately. Certes, learning how to communicate thus was apparently quite a skill, for the "vocabulary" of this whistled language (I hardly know what else to call it) was quite complex. As for the people who were native to this island, they looked like Moors, but apparently they are not. From a strictly commercial point of view, the old salts in the tavern said, one could make a tidy profit from selling them off as slaves, though if one was not strict with them they easily became rebellious and sullen. Guanches, they called them.
At dusk we arrived at the main port. Just in time. I managed to save my quadrant from falling into the brink, for Torres had nodded off. Still, we docked with a goodly length of knotted rope. I was too tired to even eat, but had to go to Colón's compline, lest he doubt my presumptive devotion. The crew were less complicated—they still referred to conversos as "Jew.”
Well, do your duty, then. Off to bed, my girl/young man!
__________________________
[1] Torres was a converso cousin, who had not seen Cara since she was a little girl. Cara had no desire to make herself known to him, nor was she pleased to have Colón send him along with her.
* * * *
20 Agosto 1492: Colón reprimanded me ferociously, almost viciously: “ Useless! Useless! Your intervals between knots are too short! It will make it seem that the Ocean Sea is much too wide!”
“But I have used the cubit that Al-Farghāni and those at that time used, in Arabic meas—er, equal to one and half Roman pedes.”
“No, no, no! Al-Farghāni used the black cubit.”
“But Don Cristobal, if these knots are to mark the black cubit, that is half another Roman pes, but if we are to mark by the Arabic mile—"[2]
“A mile is a mile, as expounded by the great Ptolomaeus, as reported by the Frank and ” Colón paused to emphasize, “the holy father, Pierre d'Ailly, who has written in his Imago Mundi, that that measure was calculated by Al-Farghāni himself: Fifty-six and two-thirds miles equals one degree of latitude. You disappoint me, young man!"
“(but is that a Roman mile? Al-Farghāni used an Arabic mile…)”
“Out! out of my sight! Martín Alonso is enough of a headache without this, this—"
“Of course, Don Cristobal. I shall correct my error; but would it not be better to give me more rope?”
I scuttled out from under his raised hand. I was not willing to be struck by a moody Almirante who did not like to admit a single wrong…
And so I have left my old rope in my cramped little quarters, and, off again, out in that wretched boat, with Torres and the Morisco oarsman, Juan. My portulans was now but an even rougher guide, along with a lodestone compass, which Colón reluctantly supplied this time. We must work quickly to knot up a new length of rope according to El Almirante's demands.
We had been on these islands for sixteen days. How long must we keep doing this? How long must we stay here? Or was El Almirante simply giving me things to do, so I would be elsewhere occupied?
You disappoint me, young man.
__________________
[2] Is a measure based on the story of Caliph Al-Ma-mūn's Nubian slave a reliable measure? The tale is told that this fellow stood unusually tall; thus the length of his forearm became the standard measure for the cubit. Because that arm was black, the measure so derrived was called "the black cubit," equal to 2 Roman pedes. We are to understand that the "legal cubit" which many of Al-Farghani 's contemporaries used—was equal to one and one half Roman pedes. The Arabic mile, however, evolved into the nautical mile , whereas the Roman mile lay ground for the standard mile on land. A Greek milion, or eight stadia is equal to 1.479 km (1,617 yd or 0.919 "modern" land miles in your barbaric English tongue.) One Greek stadion is equal to 1/10th of a nautical mile. Bear in mind that the exact length of an Arabic mile has been much disputed, being between 1.8 and 2.0 km (1.1184681 - 1.2427424 "modern" miles.) (Ed.)
* * * *
23 Agosto 1492: Dark of the Moon. It appeared that there was not much rope left. Certes, Colón had it in his head that fifty-six and two thirds Roman miles would be equivalent to one minute in an arc of latitude. But a cubit of one and a half pedes or two? which mile—Roman or Arabic? He continued to insist that he is using Alfraganus, al-Farghāni's, figures and that they would establish longitude once and for all. But how could his figures be correct?[3] I knew something was not right, but even I was no longer sure. And El Almirante did not like to be wrong. It is clear: he did not even like to be thought wrong.
Torres had brought along a small net, thinking to catch some fish, but his only success was to make Juan, the oarsman, laugh. Now Torres was nearly asleep and I did not want to wake him.
Peace at last.
Torres had brought along a small net, thinking to catch some fish, but his only success was to make Juan, the oarsman, laugh. Now Torres was nearly asleep and I did not want to wake him.
Peace at last.
__________________________
[3] We are literati, not mathematicians! Colón is confused, as 56 2/3 by Al-Mamun's astronomers was figured at 111.8 km per degree and 40, 248 km for the earth's circumference, almost the actual 111.3 and 40,068 km, resp,. of today's more accurate measure. Yet he thought the Indies but 18,000 miles away. Cubit? Schmewbit! You figure it out! (Ed.)
* * * *
At sunset, as we were nearly done, and approaching that passage which gave us a view onto the Ocean Sea, I observed a change in the looks of those waves, and our little boat began to bounce at bit
“Juan?”
“Nada,” Juan assured me, “just a little wave.”
But I heard him swear in Arabic which both I and Torres, who had been bounced awake, understood,
“By the beard of the Prophet!!”
What rose up in the distance was not the breath of a monster, snug in his mountain on Tenerife, nor the manifestation of his rage. Closer than our unusual sight of Tenerife in the far distance on a very clear day, this thing appeared, shaped itself as a dark solid mass, and, as it settled, a flickering necklace of lights seemed to align itself along one edge. Soon we heard the sounds of both wind, wave and stringed instruments. In that hour between sunset and the fading of the light, we could see the wavering of trees rising up and thinning out to a mountainous peak, trees quite unlike those we had seen either in Sefarad, any land we had left behind, or in the islands where we stayed. The scent of some unknown blossoms—just a hint—wafted out on a warm breeze, as if the island itself blew that intoxicating incense towards us on its breath. And in truth the lights were not flickering; rather they bobbed, as if some beings were bearing torches, rather than huddling around a fire. Were those lights the luminae of habitation, of beings like us or archangels, creatures imitating corporeal shape? Was that music, the ground that kept the rhythm of water and air in tempo, on key? was it the sound of Paradise or Gehenna, or the song of humble islanders? For it was, beyond doubt, an island, just where, before, we had only looked out onto the Ocean Sea. Further, though its mass was dark, it seemed as if a light, almost a halo, hung about its edges.
Would the bearer of those lights have seen our little boat, with three strangers in it, bobbling more aimlessly than it should? Would they come out to greet us?
Torres was transfixed. And I could see Juan hesitate and adjust his oars; and it was as if he yearned to row towards that island with all his heart, as if someone was calling him: “Come! Come! Be with us.”
“No! Juan, no!” I shrieked. The island, with all its song and its alluring light, vanished as if it had never been seen.
None of us, out of wonder or fear, in the duration of that mirage, had made the sign of the cross to protect ourselves.
“Juan?”
“Nada,” Juan assured me, “just a little wave.”
But I heard him swear in Arabic which both I and Torres, who had been bounced awake, understood,
“By the beard of the Prophet!!”
What rose up in the distance was not the breath of a monster, snug in his mountain on Tenerife, nor the manifestation of his rage. Closer than our unusual sight of Tenerife in the far distance on a very clear day, this thing appeared, shaped itself as a dark solid mass, and, as it settled, a flickering necklace of lights seemed to align itself along one edge. Soon we heard the sounds of both wind, wave and stringed instruments. In that hour between sunset and the fading of the light, we could see the wavering of trees rising up and thinning out to a mountainous peak, trees quite unlike those we had seen either in Sefarad, any land we had left behind, or in the islands where we stayed. The scent of some unknown blossoms—just a hint—wafted out on a warm breeze, as if the island itself blew that intoxicating incense towards us on its breath. And in truth the lights were not flickering; rather they bobbed, as if some beings were bearing torches, rather than huddling around a fire. Were those lights the luminae of habitation, of beings like us or archangels, creatures imitating corporeal shape? Was that music, the ground that kept the rhythm of water and air in tempo, on key? was it the sound of Paradise or Gehenna, or the song of humble islanders? For it was, beyond doubt, an island, just where, before, we had only looked out onto the Ocean Sea. Further, though its mass was dark, it seemed as if a light, almost a halo, hung about its edges.
Would the bearer of those lights have seen our little boat, with three strangers in it, bobbling more aimlessly than it should? Would they come out to greet us?
Torres was transfixed. And I could see Juan hesitate and adjust his oars; and it was as if he yearned to row towards that island with all his heart, as if someone was calling him: “Come! Come! Be with us.”
“No! Juan, no!” I shrieked. The island, with all its song and its alluring light, vanished as if it had never been seen.
None of us, out of wonder or fear, in the duration of that mirage, had made the sign of the cross to protect ourselves.