The History of the Siege of Lisbon (2 page)

O
NLY WHEN A VISION
a thousand times sharper than nature can provide might be capable of perceiving in the eastern sky the initial difference that separates night from day, did the muezzin awake. He always woke at this hour, according to the sun, no matter whether summer or winter, and he needed no instrument to measure time, nothing other than the infinitesimal change in the darkness of the room, the first hint of light barely glimpsed on his forehead, like a gentle breath passing over his eyebrows, or that first and almost imponderable caress which, as far as is known or believed, is the exclusive and secret art never revealed to this day of those beautiful houris who attend the believers in Mohammed's paradise. Secret, and also prodigious, if not an impenetrable mystery, is their ability to regain their virginity the moment they lose it, this by all accounts supreme bliss in eternal life, thus proving beyond a shadow of a doubt that death does not bring an end to our labours or those of others, any more than to our undeserved sufferings. The muezzin did not open his eyes. He could go on resting there a little longer, while the sun, very slowly, began approaching from the earth's horizon, but still so far away that no cockerel in the city had raised its head to probe dawn's movements. It is true that a dog did bark, to no avail, for everyone else was asleep, perhaps dreaming that they were barking in their dreams. It is a dream, they thought, and went on sleeping, surrounded by a world filled with odours that were certainly stimulating, but none so potent as to rouse them with a start, the unmistakable
smell of danger or fear, to give only these basic examples. The muezzin got up and fumbled in the dark until he found his clothes, and dressed before leaving the room. The mosque was silent, nothing but hesitant footsteps that echoed under the arches, a shuffling of cautious feet, as if he were afraid of being swallowed up by the ground. At no other time of day or night had he ever experienced this torment of the invisible, only at this early hour when he was about to climb the stairs of the minaret in order to summon the faithful to morning prayers. A superstitious scruple made him feel quite guilty that the inhabitants should still be sleeping when the sun was already over the river, and awakening with a start, dazzled by the light of day, would ask aloud, where was the muezzin who failed to summon them at the appropriate hour, someone more charitable might say, Perhaps the poor man is ill, and it was not true, he had disappeared, yes, carried off into the bowels of the earth by some evil genie from the darkest depths. The winding staircase was difficult to climb, especially since this muezzin was already quite old, fortunately he did not need to have his eyes blindfolded like the mules who drive the water wheels blindfolded to prevent them from becoming dizzy. When he got to the top he could feel the cool morning breeze on his face and the vibrations of the dawning light, as yet without any colour, for there is no colour to that pure clarity which precedes the day and comes to graze one's skin with the merest suggestion of a shiver, as if touched by invisible fingers, a simple impression which makes you wonder whether the discredited divine creation might not, after all, in order to chasten the sceptics and atheists, be an ironic fact of history. The muezzin slowly ran his hand along the circular parapet until he found engraved in the stone the sign pointing in the direction of Mecca, the holy city. He was ready. A few more seconds to give time for the sun to cast its first rays on the earth's balconies and for him to clear his throat, because a muezzin's declamatory powers must be loud and clear from the very first cry, and that is when he must show his mettle, not when his throat has softened with the effort of speech and the consolation of food. At the muezzin's feet lies a city, further down, a river, everything is still asleep, but restless. Dawn begins to spread over the houses, the surface of the water mirrors the sky, and then the muezzin takes a deep breath and calls out in piercing tones,
Allahu akbar,
proclaiming the greatness of Almighty God to the heavens, and he repeats these words, just as he will utter and repeat the following phrases, in an ecstatic outburst, calling upon the world to witness that there is no other God than Allah, and that Mohammed is the messenger of Allah, and having affirmed these essential truths he summons the faithful to prayer, Come to recite the
azalá,
but man being indolent by nature, although a believer in Him who never sleeps, the muezzin charitably reproaches those whose eyes are still closed, Prayer is better than sleep,
As-salatu jayrun mitt an-nawn,
for those who understand this language, and he ended by declaring that Allah is the only God,
La ilaha ilia llah,
but once only this time, for that is enough when pronouncing definitive truths. The city murmurs its prayers, the sun has come out, lighting up the roof-terraces, and soon the inhabitants will start to appear in their patios. The minaret is bathed in full light. The muezzin is blind.

In his book the historian gave no such description. Simply that the muezzin climbed the minaret and from there summoned the faithful to prayer in the mosque, without specifying whether it was morning or noon, or sunset, for certainly in his opinion, such minute details would be of no historical interest and all the reader needed to know was that the author knew enough about the life of that time to be able to give them due mention. And for this we are indebted to him, for since his theme is that of battle and siege, and he is writing about the most virile of deeds, he could happily dispense with the raptures of prayer, which is the most submissive of situations, for he who prays, surrenders without a struggle and is for ever vanquished. Although, rather than ignore and fail to consider anything that might challenge these contradictions between prayer and warfare, we might here record, being so recent in time, and because of all the famous witnesses who are still alive, we might here record, we repeat, that much celebrated miracle at Ourique, when Christ appeared to the Portuguese king, and the latter called out to Him, while the army, prostrate on the ground, began to pray, Appear before the infidels, Oh Lord, before the infidels, and not before me who believes in your powers, But Christ had no desire to appear before the Moors, and the more the pity, otherwise instead of that most vicious battle, we might today be able to record in these annals the glorious conversion of the hundred and fifty thousand barbarians who finally perished, a waste of souls who might have raised their voices to heaven. That's life, certain things cannot be avoided, we never cease to importune God with our wise exhortations, but destiny has its own intransigent laws, and so often with the most surprising and dramatic effects, as in the case of Camoens who was able to exploit that inflammatory battle cry, by casting it into two immortal verses. How true that in nature nothing is created and nothing lost, everything used to advantage.

Those were good times, when, in order to receive satisfaction, all we had to do was to ask with the appropriate words, even in difficult cases, already disillusioned, as it were, like a patient without hope of being cured. For example, this very same king, who, having been born with shrivelled, or atrophied, legs, as people say nowadays, was miraculously healed, without any doctor having laid a finger on him, and even if he had done so, it would have been to no avail. Nor are there any signs, no doubt because he was a person destined to rule, that he had to importune the heavenly powers, we refer to the Virgin and the Lord, not to the angels of the sixth hierarchy, in order to produce this edifying outcome, thanks to which, who knows, Portugal may owe her independence. It so happened that Dom Egas Moniz, the tutor of young Afonso, was asleep in his bed when Holy Mary appeared to him in a vision and said, Dom Egas Moniz, are you asleep, and he, not knowing whether he was awake or dreaming, asked, in order to be certain, My Lady, who are you, and she politely replied, I am the Virgin, and I command you to go to Carquere in the municipality of Resende, and if you dig there you will find a church which was once built in
my name, and you will also find my statue, repair it for it is in a lamentable state after being so sadly neglected, and then you must keep vigil there, and you will lay the boy on the altar, whereupon I assure you he will be instantly cured and restored to health, and take good care of him thereafter, because I happen to know that my Son is thinking of entrusting him with the destruction of the enemies of the Faith, and obviously that is something he cannot do with stunted legs. Dom Egas Moniz awoke as happy as could be, convened his aides and, mounting his donkey, made his way to Carquere and ordered his men to dig at the spot pointed out by the Virgin, and lo and behold there was the church, but the surprise is ours rather than theirs, for in those blessed times warnings from on high were never gratuitous or misleading. It is true that Dom Egas did not carry out the Virgin's instructions to the letter, for when she told him to dig, it is our understanding that she meant with his own hands, and what did he do, he ordered others to dig, the serfs working the land most likely, for even at that time these social inequalities existed. Let us be grateful that the Virgin is not easily offended, otherwise she might have shrivelled up little Afonso's legs once more, because just as there are miracles that do good, some miracles have proved to be harmful, as those wretched pigs in Holy Scripture can testify, for they threw themselves over the precipice when Sweet Jesus put the demons that had been plaguing the possessed man into their bodies, whereby these innocent animals suffered martyrdom, and they alone, for much greater was the downfall of the rebellious angels who were immediately turned into devils when they rebelled, and as far as we know, not one of them died, which makes it difficult to pardon the improvidence of Our Lord God, who carelessly missed the opportunity of putting an end to this unfortunate race once and for all, wise is the proverb that cautions, he who spares his enemy, will perish at his hands, let us hope that God will not have cause to repent one day when it is much too late. Nevertheless, if at that fatal moment he should have time to remember his past life, let us hope His spirit will be enlightened and He will understand that He should have spared all of us, vulnerable pigs and humans, those vices, sins and feelings of discontent which are, as the saying goes, the work and mark of Satan. Between the hammer and the anvil we are a red-hot iron, which has been beaten so much that the heat is extinguished.

For the present, we have had enough of sacred history. We do want to know, however, who wrote the tale about the beautiful awakening of the muezzin at dawn in Lisbon, with so many factual details that it sounds like the testimony of some eyewitness here in our presence, or, at least, the ingenious use of some contemporary document, not necessarily relevant to Lisbon, because, for the purpose, one would only need a city, a river and a clear morning, the most banal of compositions, as we know. The reply, surprisingly enough, is that no one wrote it, and despite appearances, it is not written, the whole thing was nothing more than vague thoughts in the proof-reader's mind as he was reading and correcting what he had surreptitiously missed in the first and second proofs. The proof-reader has this remarkable flair for splitting his personality, he inserts a
deleátur
or introduces a comma where required, and at the same time, if you'll pardon the neologism, heteronomises himself, he is capable of pursuing the path suggested by an image, a simile, or metaphor, often the simple sound of a word repeated in a low voice leads him, by association, to organise polyphonic verbal edifices capable of transforming his tiny study into a space multiplied by itself, although it is difficult to explain in plain language what that means. Here it struck him that the historian had provided little information by mentioning the muezzin and the minaret, simply to introduce, if such rash judgments are permissible, a little local colour and historical atmosphere into the enemy camp, a semantic blunder we might as well correct at once, since this is the camp of the assailants, not of the besieged, for the latter, in the meantime, are installed with reasonable comfort in the city which except for the odd interval, has been theirs, since the year seven hundred and fourteen, as counted on the beads of the Christians, for those on the rosary of the Moors are different, as everyone knows. This correction was made by the proof-reader himself, who has a more than adequate knowledge about calendars, and who knows that the Hegira began, according to the rules given in that indispensable reference book,
The Art of Verifying Dates,
on the sixteenth of July in the year six hundred and twenty-two after Christ, AD in abbreviated form, without forgetting, meanwhile, that since the Moslem year is governed by the moon and is, therefore, shorter than that of Christianity which is oriented by the sun, we must always discount three years for each century gone by. This meticulous fellow would make an excellent proof-reader, if he were to consider trimming the wings of a discourse given to inventions that are sometimes irresponsible, a case of someone who has sinned because it came so naturally, incurring obvious errors and dubious assertions, we suspect at least three, which if proved, would show conclusively that the historian had no reason whatsoever for flippantly suggesting that he should devote himself to history, As for philosophy, God help us.