The Year of Rice and Salt

'So they changed their ways. I don't know. But the Christians were torturers. Maybe it mattered, maybe it didn't. All living things are free. Anyway they're gone now, and we're here.'

'And healthy, by and large,' said Zeya. 'Of course sometimes a child catches a fever and dies. And everyone dies eventually. But it's a sweet life here, while it lasts.'

When the orange and grape harvests were over, the days grew short. Bistami had not felt such a chill in the air since his years in Isfahan. And yet in this very season, during the coldest nights, the orange trees blossomed, near the shortest day of the year: little white flowers all over the green round trees, fragrant with a smell reminiscent of their taste but heavier, and very sweet, almost cloying.

Through this giddy air came a cavalry, leading a long caravan of camels and mules, and then, in the evening, slaves on foot.

This was the Sultan of Carmona, near Sevilla, someone said; one Mawji Darya, and his travelling party. The Sultan was the youngest son of the new caliph, and had suffered a disagreement with his elder brothers in Sevilla and al Majriti, and had therefore decamped with his retainers with the intent of moving north across the Pyrenees, and establishing a new city. His father and elder brothers ruled in Cordoba, Sevilla and Toledo, and he planned to lead his group out of al Andalus, up the Mediterranean coast on the old road to Valencia, then inland to Saragossa, where there was a bridge, he said, over the River Ebro.

At the outset of this 'hegira of the heart', as the Sultan called it, a dozen or more like minded nobles and their people had joined him. And it became clear as the motley crowd filed into the ribat yard, that along with the young Sevillan nobles' families, retainers, friends and dependants, they had been joined by many more followers from the villages and farms that had sprung up in the countryside between Sevilla and Malaga. Sufi dervishes, Armenian traders, Turks, Jews, Zott, Berbers, all were represented; it was like a trade caravan, or some dream haj in which all the wrong people were on their way to Mecca, all the people who would never become hajjis Here there were a pair of dwarves on ponies, behind them a group of one handed and handless ex criminals, then some musicians, then two men dressed as women; this caravan had them all.

The Sultan spread a broad hand. 'They are calling us the Caravan of Fools, like the Ship of Fools. We will sail over the mountains to a land of grace, and be fools for God. God will guide us.'

From among them appeared his sultana, riding a horse. She dismounted from it without regard for the big servant there to help her down, and joined the Sultan as he was greeted by the Zeya and the other members of the ribat. 'My wife, the Sultana Katima, originally from al Majriti.'

The Castilian woman was bare headed, short and slender armed, her riding skirts fringed with gold that swung through the dust, ber long black hair swept back in a glossy curve from her forehead, held by a string of pearls. Her face was slender and her eyes a pale blue, making her gaze odd. She smiled at Bistami when they were introduced, and later smiled at the farm, and the water wheels, and the orange groves. Small things amused her that no one else saw. The men there began to do what they could to accommodate the Sultan and stay by his side, so that they could remain in her presence. Bistami did it himself. She looked at him and said something inconsequential, her voice like a Turkish oboe, nasal and low, and hearing it he remembered what the vision of Akbar had said to him during his immersion in the light: the one you seek is elsewhere.

Ibn Ezra bowed low when he was introduced. 'I am a sufi pilgrim, Sultana, and a humble student of the world. I intend to make the haj, but I like the idea of your hegira very much; I would like to see Firanja for myself. I study the ancient ruins.'

'Of the Christians?' the Sultana asked, fixing him with her look.

'Yes, but also of the Romans, who came before them, in the time before the Prophet. Perhaps I can make my haj the wrong way around.'

'All are welcome who have the spirit to join us,' she said.

Bistami cleared his throat, and Ibn Ezra smoothly brought him forward. 'This is my young friend Bistami, a sufi scholar from Sind, who has been on the haj and is now continuing his studies in the west.'

Sultana Katima looked at him closely for the first time, and stopped short, visibly startled. Her thick black eyebrows knitted together in concentration over her pale eyes, and suddenly Bistami saw that it was the birdwing mark that had crossed the forehead of his tiger, the mark that had always made the tigress look faintly surprised or perplexed, as it did with this woman.

' I am happy to meet you, Bistami. We always look forward to learning from scholars of the Quran.'