The Taste of Translation
A Triptych
Anne Gambling
Copyright 2011 Anne Gambling
https://www.nestedfishes.org
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Dedication
In honour of the One who touched me with Grace, opening my eyes to the Light within
…
With supreme gratitude to my you for sharing the journey and being ever at my side
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For my beautiful children with deepest prayers for the world you inherit and steward on
Some day, after we have mastered the winds, the waves, the tides and gravity, we shall harness, for God, the energies of love. Then, for the second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire.
Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955)
There is love at the centre of all things and all things are the same thing.
Guatama Siddhartha, the Buddha (c563BCE-c483BCE)
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Table of Contents
Panel One: Laleima’s Story
Report of the First Witness
Chapters 1-40
Report of the Last Witness
Glossary
Citations and References
Panel Two: Cantigas de Santa Maria
Song of the Brother: Verses 1-4
Song of the Gypsy
Song of the Monk: Verses 5-16
Song of the Revelation
Glossary
Citations and References
Panel Three: Kisha’s Story
So Many Stories
The Rhizomes of Memory
Into the Pit
Moving Staircases
Slippage
Beyond Siege
The Seventh Wave
Citations and References
Panel One: Laleima’s Story
When one is united to the core of another,
to speak of that is to breathe the name Hu,
empty of self and filled with love.
A man and woman together always have a spirit result.
Lovers don’t finally meet somewhere.
They’re in each other all along.
Jelaluddin Rumi (1207-1273)
Report of the First Witness
In a time before time, in a place before now, a woman enters a space. A space where vents sit flush with floor and walls, where arches, mosaics, vaulted ceilings, stone flags present a harmony of form.
She glides through the space as if in a dream, recalling the selfsame setting once seen in a dream. In a time before time, in a place before now.
But this is no dream, although she feels as if she dreams. Her gliding feet are silent, the tourist chatter far away, as if beyond glass or under water, her senses shape-shifted from the time and place of now.
She glides, oblivious to the shutter-clicks from a heavenly host of cameras by wave upon wave of enthusing bus trippers, all faded, muted by a resonant hum rising up from within. As she recreates her memory of the dream, recalls it with a clarity borne of finding the place in actuality, not simply a random dreamscape conjured by night vision, she recalls her actions, there and then –how she crouched before the vents, intrigued by the fragrant steam they shunted forth.
A heating system of sorts, she had thought and wondered how it functioned, had imagined water coursing pipes and gutters, beneath floors and between walls, to emerge heated, fragrant through this medley of vents.
Her fascination in the dream turns to excitement now in this tourist mecca as she contemplates a staircase down and into vaulted rooms tiled in blue and green. Centuries since they had been steam-filled, their patrons’ noble fingers trailed through misted dew. A rope bars her way, visitors not permitted beyond this point. No matter. Neither did she descend the stairs in her dream, but stood and looked down from above, down and through archways into a room of blue and green.
And so repeats her dream action now, in the real of time stilled. Looking down upon the calm repose of mosaics and a memory of coursed steam. The arches. Yes, the arches. Which she had looked down upon and through …
Sudden it is.
Not of the dream, nor conjured from memory, but here, now, present. Time no longer stilled, pulled into a longevity of space no dream can penetrate.
Her breath is quick, frantic, her heart’s beat loud and fast. Clear as day, she sees a girl walk through the room below, pass across her line of vision from left to right, framed by an arch’s pregnant curve, held in focus by an inner eye.
Where in the dream there had been none, now she sees one. A girl in a plain linen shift which reaches to her ankles. Her feet are bare and brown, her hair long and black.
She walks, weeps. Blood. There is blood. Dress stained, hands ruddied, floor smeared by a trail carved by feet as much as tears, blood leaking from a belly held. Till she slips from view, dissolves into mist not there. As sudden as her appearance, dissolved back whence she came.
The woman falls to her knees and her hands clutch a womb suddenly alive with primal ache. White spots before her eyes, her breath falters as she tries to quell rising bile. She is dizzy, unbalanced, submerged, shape-shifting as yet incomplete.
I think she’s going to faint! A voice reaches beneath the water. A hand clasps her arm. And she surfaces, gasping.
Help her to that chair, another voice instructs. Give her some space.
Slowly, slowly now, head pushed between her knees.
You OK?
A tentative nod and satisfied, the stranger pats her shoulder and moves off while she sits, slows her breath, and returns to the space of resonant hum where the bloodied girl speaks clear:
There is not enough love in the world.
I know, says the woman, heart heavy in a space no thought can penetrate.
A friend arrives, crouches down before her.
Aren’t you feeling so good? We came back to find you! And wipes her sweaty brow with a cool handkerchief, sweeps matted hair from her eyes.
The friend smiles. Come up to the top of the Alcazar. It’s a great view.
A photo is taken – of a face too pale for a midsummer’s day, backdropped by a sky too blue to be believed, offset against the blood red of palace walls. A small sadness flatlines the lips, percolates up from shell-shocked recollection.
It is a photo she looks at now and then, its record of witness to a time before time, a place before now.
Each time she looks, she remembers the face of her watch, the jolt in observing its fact of time stilled.
For she had been where she had been, seen what she had seen, at five in the afternoon.
One
I was a princess once, the last of my mother’s children – Butayna was the favourite slave of my father, the Nasrid Sultan Yusuf I, the one they called Abu-I-Hayay. She was my mother – his first loved, his best loved.
This story begins, as most do, in the year of my birth – by your reckoning, the year 1346, by mine 747. My home the Madinat al-Hamra, the red castle above the city of Granada, the one within sight of the high snows of the Sierra Nevada, the one known in your world as the Alhambra. Rest assured I will stay, for the purposes of my story and your understanding, principally in your world. Of speech. Of time. Of presence. It is of no consequence, a name here, a date there. I have been gone so long, all such matters are as ephemeral as a snowflake on a summer’s day.
The last of my mother’s children – my brother Muhammad heir to the throne, an eight-year-old
when I was born, my sister Ayesha five. Grand names formed by a baby’s mouth – Esha pampered me, Mumu protected me. Love guided my entry into the world, blessed my first experiences, my parents ever at hand, sharing their love most openly.
Sitting atop Father’s knee, I would tell great stories of a genie who could spring from a jar – such a tiny jar, yet the genie a magician, a giant who could live in a jar! And Mother would laugh at my fantasy, her voice birdsong itself, a window onto a world of love and passion. Passion brought forth from depths we children could only wonder at. Depths my father had known. Depths which spoke of twinned souls. Even though he a king and she a slave, from such a union, we three entered this world – Mumu named for the Prophet, Esha for his wife, and I for love.
Shall I tell the story of how that came to be?
Once a girl called Laleima was the love of Ibn Quzman, poet of the Cordoban royal court many centuries before, and he wrote:
Now do I yearn for you, Laleima, little star
If Allah made you a palsied beggar,
Such alms would you collect – gemstones by the bushel!
There was a time when all al-Andalus recited his words and lived with their sweet harmony in their hearts. Father fell in love because of that poem, sung by a nightingale in the harem one day.
La la la la, she sang, with a diadem in her hair … La la la … a wee green quince …
Blessed with an angel’s tongue, some said. To think, Father had never seen her! Falling in love with a voice, a sound, as pure as rain spiralled down from heaven. And Father surrendered at once.
He called to a servant, said: Bring me the one who sings as divinity itself.
The servant was confused. Sir, they all sing!
No, Father scoffed. Only a nightingale can sing.
Eventually the right women were asked the right questions and Butayna was brought before the caliph but only after they had worked their harem magic to make her pleasing to his eyes. They chattered and giggled with the honour she would receive, tried to calm her nerves on this, her first time. Misting her mind was a sheen of fine perfume, stirring her juices gold dust through her hair, opening her senses tinkling bells at her ankles. Thus she walked, hands clasped, eyes lowered, toward her destiny.
Oh, but he would not look upon her! As she approached, he put a hand to his eyes, commanded that she cleanse herself of the noisy trinkets at her neck, wrist, ankle, waist, for no sound was, or could be, as pure as her voice. For, he recited:
Do not cross me off as fickle
Because a singing voice
Has captured my heart.
He bade her sit behind a screen and sing, and once her nerves were soothed, her voice lifted pure and true. Now certain that she was the one, he came, knelt before her, brought her jewelled fingers to his lips, buried his face in her lap and breathed in the scent of her womanhood.
Praise Allah! Her divinity was of this world and not the afterlife! And he took her there, that night and every night.
They were of the same wood which makes the minstrel’s lute and the warrior’s bow, and I the last conceived of their oneness. Through a poem, through a song, I became Laleima, little star.
Our world was splendour itself. We lived in apartments of beauty and tranquillity, partook of morsels fresh and succulent, and were told stories from The Arabian Nights each evening. Elaborate stories which glowed through the misted incense, the fug of sandalwood and musk. Candles tight-clasped in lanterns of red and blue threw shadows upon our wide-eyed concentration, there upon the couches. Propped against pillows fringed with brocade, we listened as Father wove stories one to the other, in and out and over and under, a magic carpet of words which reeled us in like fish wet and whipping in mid-air –
Until suddenly: Enough! We will continue tomorrow.
Oh, how we would wail our frustration not to hear the whole story in one sitting! Our Scheherazade leaving us to wonder during those interminable hours of daylight what next would be revealed when again the sun set. A ritual ever the same – our meal and Father’s story before he would recline while Mother lifted her lute, plucked its strings and spun her own web of fantasy in the darkening salon.
I was small, of course, only three or four, but if one must have memories, then let them be these! Vivid, present, of the here and now. Clear, lucid, each sound resonant and each smell pungent, each sight a visual feast. And I have it all – still inside. In that place where life is lived.
Yet with equal suddenness and equal lucidity can I see each evening’s end. For it would be morning, and I tucked up in bed, the sun streaming golden trails through the jalousies, and Sara, my nurse, on her mat at my side.
But where is Mother? I would cry. And the candles and stories of Father?
At that, Sara would cuddle me close, all rose and musk, and say:
Mouse, you slept! On the beautiful cushions of velvet and silk, the stories and music and candles and incense, your brother and sister, mother and father, all enjoined in your dreams. Who knows when one ceased and the other began? Or if it was all one, and none of the other, or if they are one and the same, day, night, night, day, no veils to part, no borders to cross.
And she would shrug as if it were beyond her, this way the worlds collided and hugged each other to themselves.
But I am certain of some things, she continued. I carried you here, settled you in bed, your eyes heavy-lidded, lashes brushing your cheeks with soft fairy flutters, deep breaths issuing from your tiny stub of nose, and a smile still etched on perfect honeyed lips.
She nodded solemnly in her certainty, suddenly laughed, clapped her hands. Come, she said. It is morning and with it the sun. The day is new and ready for your play.
I humphed, grumbled, folded my arms, pouted. I hate mornings! I want only The Arabian Nights with Mother and Father and Mumu and Esha. I want only nights. All day and all night! I want never to sleep!
Shouted out loud to the sun, moon, stars, whoever would listen to the wishes of a child, grant them with good humour and an understanding twinkle while Sara prepared my basin and ewer for washing.
It was a game each day, for at its end, my wish would be granted each night, I thought, till the end of time.
When I was small, I believed in a forever of just such days, believed each would be as perfect as I wished, and for a thing I named forever. Perhaps because of my belief, Allah decided my first test must be momentous, must show me once and for all the way of this world before I became too grown and stubborn.
Until my test, I did not know nights could be stained by sadness and longing, so painful I would one day wish never again a night to suffer. The shadows on the apartment walls during Father’s stories and Mother’s music danced to the mirth of the candlelight. But later shadows loomed with the ghosts of the dead and still living who reached out with cold fingers to choke me of joy and hope and that thing called forever.
Oh! Thanks be to Allah that I tasted the fruits of Paradise before they were taken away. For taken away they were when I was no more than four. A plague, the one they called the Black Death, swept across the maps of our known world from east to west as fast as the sun travelled the sky. Yet Allah the Merciful would not visit death and suffering upon the beauty of Granada. Allah the Almighty delighted in his Andalusian Paradise, its lushness and bounty. Ah, but in our certainty we become forgetful. In our belief in the beyond, we become mortal. The fist of fate which knocked upon the gates of each kingdom also sought entry to ours.
Later, my father would lament the riches from bazaars in Damascus and Cairo brought into the palace that day. A day like any other – the sun full and warm on our backs in the garden, butterflies proving elusive to my spirited chase and the eunuch Mahmoud bringing news of a merchant to my mother and her maids beneath the jasmine bower – he waited in the hall with precious jewels and aloewood. Would she see him?
Mother rose, signalled to two of her maids. And I followed, skipping along behind.
No, ca
lled Esha. Leave be, Mother is busy. Come and play!
She was filling a basin rimmed by gold with water from the fountain over and over to see it wink in the sunlight – a palette of rainbows depending which way she tipped and turned the bowl, colour trails blinding and verdant by turn, prismic sparks shooting this way and that.
I soon grew bored though and wandered, finding myself on the steps to the first gallery where all the pretty things were laid out for Mother’s inspection on carpets overlain with fine silk. There I hid and watched her point to this or that treasure from her ivory couch, murmuring approval, discussing price.
The merchant knelt at her feet, swathed in sweat. It sheeted his forehead, rained its bounty into the gutters of his cloak and flowed down his sleeve to the jewelled earrings he passed into her hand.
Are you ill? she asked.
No, my Lady. It is just the warmth of the day and I in robes unsuitable for the season.
Some cool water to refresh you perhaps? She motioned for a maid to pour from the ewer into a silver cup, the damp chill of its contents drained by the merchant in one gulp.
Forgive me, he stammered, but requested another. He was distracted, unable to concentrate.
Come. You are unwell. We can continue on the morrow. And she clapped for a servant to help him rise.
My Lady, thank you for your understanding, he said, kissing the hem of her gown. With your permission, may I leave my wares here? I fear I have not the strength to load the mule that stands by the gate.
Of course. She smiled. Indeed, Mother was filled with the breath of compassion.
It was only some days before her expression clouded, her eyes dulled, her brow was beaded from an inner fire none could understand. She took to her bed and permitted only the two maids who had attended her that day to sit by her. And when they in turn fell ill, those who were older than I understood what would come to pass.
I remember the weeping, the keening, the candles placed in windows, the cleansing visits to the bath and prayers offered in the mosque. Servants walked the halls in silence, hushed whispers in private corners the unspoken command.