The Year of Rice and Salt

Bistami felt that he was now cast loose, a wandering sufi dervish, homeless and searching. On his tariqat. He kept himself as clean as the dusty, sandy Maghrib would allow, remembering the words of Mohammed concerning holy behaviour: one came to prosper after washing hands and face, and eating no garlic. He fasted often, and found himself growing light in the air, his vision altering each day, from the glassy clarity of dawn, to the blurred yellow haze of midday, to the semi-transparency of sunset, when glories of gold and bronze haloed every tree and rock and skyline. The towns of the Maghrib were small and handsome, often set out on hillsides, and planted with palms and exotic trees that made each town and rooftop a garden. Houses were square whitewashed blocks in nests of palm, with rooftop patios and interior courtyard gardens, cool and green and watered by fountains. Towns had been set where water leaked out of the hillsides, and the biggest town turned out to have the biggest springs: Fez, the end of their caravan.

Bistami stayed at the sufi lodge in Fez, and then he and Ibn Ezra travelled by camel north to Ceuta, and paid for a crossing by ship to Malaga. The ships here were rounder than in the Persian Sea, with pronounced high ended keels, smaller sails, and rudders under their centreposts. The crossing of the narrow strait at the west end of the Mediterranean was rough, but they could see al Andalus from the moment they left Ceuta, and the strong current pouring into the Mediterranean, combined with a westerly gale, bounced them over the waves at a great rate.

The coast of al Andalus proved cliffy, and above one indentation towered a huge rock mountain. Beyond it the coast curved to the north, and they took the offshore breezes in their little sails and heeled in towards Malaga. Inland they could see a distant white mountain range.

Bistami, exalted by the dramatic sea crossing, was reminded of the view of the Zagros Mountains from Isfahan, and suddenly his heart ached for a home he had almost forgotten. But here and now, bouncing on the wild ocean of this new life, he was about to set foot on a new land.

Al Andalus was a garden everywhere, green trees foresting the slopes of the hills, snowy mountains to the north, and on the coastal plains great sweeps of grain, and groves of round green trees bearing round orange fruit, lovely to taste. The sky dawned blue every day, and as the sun crossed the sky it was warm in the sun, cool in the shade.

Malaga was a fine little city, with a rough stone fort and a big ancient mosque filling the city centre. Wide tree shaded streets rayed away from the mosque, which was being refurbished, up to the hills, and from their slopes one looked out at the blue Mediterranean, sheeting off to the Maghrib's dry bony mountains, over the water to the south. Al Andalus!

Bistami and Ibn Ezra found a little lodge like the Persian ribats, in a kind of village at the edge of the town, between fields and orange groves. Sufis grew the oranges, and cultivated grapevines. Bistami went out in the mornings to help them work. Most of their time was spent in the wheat field stretching off to the west. The oranges were easy: 'We trim the trees to keep the fruit off the ground,' a ribat worker named Zeya told Bistami and Ibn Ezra one morning, 'as you see. I've been trying various degrees of thinning, to see what the fruit does, but the trees left alone develop a shape like an olive, and if you keep branches off the ground at the bottom, then the fruit can't pick up any groundbased rots. They are fairly susceptible to diseases, I must say. The fruit gets green or black moulds, the leaves go brittle or white or brown. The bark crusts over with orange or white fungi. Lady bugs help, and smoking with smudge pots, which is what we do to save the trees during frosts.'

'It gets that cold here?'

'Sometimes, in the late winter, yes. It's not paradise here you know.'

'I was thinking it was.'

The call of the muezzin came from the house, and they pulled out their prayer mats and knelt to the southeast, a direction Bistami had still not got used to. Afterwards Zeya led them to a stone stove holding a fire, and brewed them a cup of coffee.

'It does not seem like new land,' Bistami noted, sipping blissfully.

'It was Muslim land for many centuries. The Umayyads ruled here from the second century until the Christians took the region, and the plague killed them.'

'People of the Book,' Bistami murmured.

'Yes, but corrupt. Cruel taskmasters to free men or slave. And always fighting among themselves. It was chaos then.'

'As in Arabia before the Prophet.'