The ship’s cook told me why he baked no bread. “I keep no flour in my galley,” he said. “Fine ground flour is impossible to preserve from contamination at sea. Either it breeds weevils or it gets wet. That is why the Romans first thought of making the pasta we enjoy today—because it is well-nigh imperishable. Indeed, it is said that a Roman ship’s cook invented that foodstuff, volente o nolente, when his stock of flour got soaked by an errant wave. He kneaded the mess into pasta to save it, and he rolled it thin and he cut it into strips so it would more quickly dry solid. From that beginning have come all the numerous sizes and shapes of vermicelli and maccheroni. They were a godsend to us mariner cooks, and to the landbound as well.”
The ship’s captain showed me how the needle of his bussola pointed always to the North Star, even when that star is invisible. The bussola, in those times, was just beginning to be regarded as a fixture almost as necessary for sea voyages as a ship’s San Cristoforo medal, but the instrument was yet a novelty to me. So was the periplus, which the captain also showed me, a sheaf of charts on which were drawn the curly coastlines of the whole Mediterranean, from the Levant to the Pillars of Hercules, and all its subsidiary seas: the Adriatic, the Aegean and so on. Along those inked coastlines, the captain—and other captains of his acquaintance—had marked the land features visible from the sea: lighthouses, headlands, standing rocks and other such objects which would help a mariner to determine where he was. On the water areas of the charts, the captain had scribbled notations of their various depths and currents and hidden reefs. He told me that he kept changing those notations according as he found, or heard from other captains, that those depths had changed through silting up, as often happens off Egypt, or through the activity of undersea volcanoes, as often happens around Greece.
When I told my father about the periplus, he smiled and said, “Almost is better than nothing. But we have something much better than a periplus.” He brought out from our cabin an even thicker sheaf of papers. “We have the Kitab.”
My uncle said proudly, “If the captain possessed the Kitab, and if his ship could sail overland, he could go clear across Asia, to the eastern Ocean of Kithai.”
“I had this made at great expense,” said my father, handing it to me. “It was copied for us from the original, which was done by the Arab mapmaker al-Idrisi for King Ruggiero of Sicily.”
Kitab, I later discovered, means in Arabic only “a book,” but then so does our word Bible. And al-Idrisi’s Kitab, like the Holy Bible, is much more than just a book. The first page was inscribed with its full title, which I could read, for it was rendered in French:
The going out of a Curious Man to explore the Regions of the Globe, its Provinces, Islands, Cities and their Dimensions and Situation; for the Instruction and Assistance of him who desires to Traverse the Earth.
But all the many other words on the pages were done in the execrable worm-writing of the infidel Arab countries. Only here and there had my father or uncle penned in a legible translation of this or that place-name. Turning the pages so I could read those words, I realized something and I laughed.
“Every chart is upside down. Look, he has the foot of the Italian peninsula kicking Sicily up toward Africa.”
“In the East, everything is upside down or backward or contrary,” said my uncle. “The Arab maps are all made with south at the top. The people of Kithai call the bussola the
south
-pointing needle. You will get accustomed to such customs.”
“Aside from that peculiarity,” said my father, “al-Idrisi has been amazingly accurate in representing the lands of the Levant, and beyond them as far as Middle Asia. Presumably he himself once traveled those regions.”
The Kitab comprised seventy-three separate pages which, laid side by side (and upside down), showed the entire extent of the world from west to east, and a goodly part of it north and south, the whole divided by curving parallels according to climatic zones. The salt sea waters were painted in blue with choppy white lines for the waves; inland lakes were green with white waves; rivers were squiggly green ribbons. The land areas were painted dun yellow, with dots of gold leaf applied to show cities and towns. Wherever the land rose in hills and mountains, those were represented by shapes rather like caterpillars, which were colored purple, pink, and orange.
I asked, “Are the highlands of the East really so vividly colored? Purple mountaintops and—?”
As if in reply, the lookout shouted down from his basket atop the ship’s taller mast, “Terra là! Terre là!”
“You can look and see for yourself, Marco,” said my father. “The shore is in sight. Behold the Holy Land.”
OF course, I eventually discovered that the coloring on al-Idrisi’s maps was to indicate the height of the land, with purple representing the highest mountains, pink those of moderate altitude, and orange the lowest, and yellow land of no particular elevation. But there was nothing in the vicinity of Acre to prove this discovery by, that part of the Holy Land being an almost colorless country of low sand dunes and even lower sand flats. What color there was to the land was a dirty gray-yellow, not even a vestige of green growing there, and the city was a dirty gray-brown.
The oarsmen swept the
Anafesto
around the base of a lighthouse and into the meager harbor. It was awash with every sort of garbage and offal, its waters slimy and greasy, stinking of fish, fish guts and decayed fish. Beyond the docks were buildings that appeared to be made of dried mud—they were all inns and hostels, the captain told us, there being nothing in Acre that could be termed a private residence—and above those low buildings, here and there, stood the taller stone edifices of churches, monasteries, a hospital and the city’s castle. Farther landward beyond that castle was a high stone wall, stretching in a semicircle from the harbor to the sea side of the city, with a dozen towers upjutting from it. To me it looked like a dead man’s jawbone sparsely studded with teeth. On the other side of that wall, said the captain, was the encampment of the Crusader knights, and beyond that yet another and even stouter wall, fencing Acre’s point of land off from the mainland where the Saracens held sway.
“This is the last Christian holding in the Holy Land,” the ship’s priest said sadly. “And it will fall, too, whenever the infidels choose to overrun it. This eighth Crusade has been so futile that the Christians of Europe have lost their fervor for crusading. The newly arriving knights are fewer and fewer. You notice that we brought none on this passage. So Acre’s force is too small to do anything but make occasional skirmishes outside the walls.”
“Humph,” said the captain. “The knights seldom even bother to do that any more. They are all of different orders—Templars and Hospitalers and whatnot—so they much prefer to fight among themselves … when they are not scandalously disporting themselves with the Carmelitas and Clarissas.”
The chaplain winced, for no reason I could see, and said petulantly, “Sir, have a regard for my cloth.”
The captain shrugged. “Deplore it if you will, Pare, but you cannot refute it.” He turned to speak to my father. “Not only the troops are in disarray. The civilian population, what there is of it, consists entirely of suppliers and servitors to the knights. Acre’s native Arabs are too venal to be inimical to us Christians, but they are forever at odds with Acre’s native Jews. The remainder of the population is a shifting motley of Pisans and Genoese and your fellow Venetians—all rivals and all quarrelsome. If you wish to conduct your business here in peace, I suggest that you go straight to the Venetian quarter when we debark, and take lodgings there, and try not to get involved in the local discords.”
So we three gathered our belongings from the cabin and prepared to debark. The quay was crowded with ragged and dirty men, pressing close around the ship’s gangplank and waving their arms and jostling each other, crying their services in Trade French and any number of other languages:
“Carry your bags, monsieur! Lord merchant! Messere! Mirza! Sheikh khaja! …”
“Lead you to the auberge! The inn! Locanda! Karwansarai! Khane! …”
“Provide for you horses! Asses! Camels! Porters! …”
“A guide! A guide speaking Sabir! A guide speaking Farsi! …”
“A woman! A beautiful fat woman! A nun! My sister! My little brother! …”
My uncle demanded only porters, and selected four or five of the least scabrous of the men. The rest drifted away, shaking their fists and shouting imprecations:
“May Allah look upon you sideways!”
“May you choke while eating pig meat!”
“ … Eating your lover’s zab!”
“ … Your mother’s nether parts!”
The seamen unloaded our portion of the ship’s cargo, and our new porters slung our bundles on their backs or shoulders or perched them atop their heads. Uncle Mafìo commanded them, first in French, then in Farsi, to take us to the part of the city reserved for Venetians, and to the best inn there, and we all moved off along the quay.
I was not much impressed by Acre—or Akko, as its native inhabitants call it. The city was no cleaner than the harbor, being mostly of squalid buildings with the widest streets between them no wider than the narrowest alleys of Venice. In its most open areas, the city stank of old urine. Where walls closed it in, it smelled even worse, for the alleys were sinks of sewage and swill, in which gaunt dogs competed for the pickings with monster rats, abroad even in full daylight.
More overpowering than Acre’s stink was its noise. In every alley wide enough for a sitting rug to be spread, there were vendors, shoulder to shoulder, squatting behind little heaps of trashy merchandise—scarves and ribbons, shriveled oranges, overripe figs, pilgrims’ shells and palm leaves—every man of them bellowing to be heard above the others. Beggars, legless or blind or leprous, whined and sniveled and clawed at our sleeves as we passed. Asses, horses and mangy-furred camels—the first camels I had ever seen—shouldered us out of their way as they shuffled through the garbage of the narrow lanes. They all looked weary and miserable under their heavy loads, but they were driven by the drumming sticks and bawled curses of their herders. Groups of men of all nations stood about conversing at the top of their lungs. I suppose some of their talk dealt with mundane matters of trade, or the war, or maybe just the weather, but their conversations were so clamorous as to be indistinguishable from raging quarrels.
I said to my father, when we were in a street wide enough for us to walk abreast, “You said that you were bringing trade goods’ on this journey. I did not see any merchandise put aboard the
Anafesto
in Venice, and I do not see anything of that nature now. Is it still on the ship?”
He shook his head. “To have brought a pack train’s load of goods would have been to tempt the innumerable bandits and thieves between us and our destination.” He hefted the one small pack he was carrying at that moment, having refused to relinquish it to any of the porters. “Instead, we are carrying something light and inconspicuous, but of great trading value.”
“Zafràn!” I exclaimed.
“Just so. Some in pressed bricks, some in loose hay. And also a good number of the culms.”
I laughed. “Surely you will not stop to plant them, and wait a whole year for the harvest.”
“If circumstances require, yes. One must try to be prepared against all contingencies, my boy. Who has, God helps. And other journeyers have traveled on the three-bean march.”
“What?”
My uncle spoke. “The famed and feared Chinghiz Khan, grandfather of our Kubilai, conquered most of the world in exactly that slow-marching manner. His armies and all their families had to cross the entire vast extent of Asia, and they were far too numerous to have lived off the land, whether by pillaging or scavenging. No, they carried seeds for planting, and animals fit for breeding. Whenever they had marched to the limit of their rations, and beyond the reach of their supply trains, they simply stopped and settled. They planted their grains and beans, bred their horses and cattle, and waited for the harvest and the calving. Then, again well fed and well provisioned, they moved on toward the next objective.”
I said, “I heard that they ate every tenth man of their own men.”
“Nonsense!” said my uncle. “Would any commander decimate his fighting men? He might as sensibly command them to eat their swords and spears. And the weapons would be about equally edible. I doubt that even a Mongol has teeth capable of chewing another warrior Mongol. No, they stopped and planted and harvested, and moved again, and stopped again.”
My father said, “They called that the three-bean march. And it inspired one of their war cries. Whenever the Mongols fought their way into an enemy city, Chinghiz would shout, ‘The hay is cut! Give your horses fodder!’ And that was the signal for the horde to go wild, to plunder and rape and ravage and slaughter. Thus they laid waste Tashkent and Bukhara and Kiev and many another great city. It is said that when the Mongols took Herat, in India Aryana, they butchered every last one of its inhabitants, to the number of nearly
two million.
Ten times the population of Venice! Of course, of Indians such a diminution is hardly worth remark.”
“The three-bean march sounds efficient enough,” I conceded, “but intolerably slow.”
“He who endures, wins,” said my father. “That slow march took the Mongols all the way to the borders of Poland and Romania.”
“And all the way to here,” added my uncle. We were just then passing two swarthy men in clothing that appeared to be made of hides, much too heavy and hot for the climate. To them Uncle Mafìo said, “Sain bina.”
They both looked slightly startled, but one of them responded, “Mendu, sain bina!”
“What language was that?” I asked.
“Mongol,” said my uncle. “Those two are Mongols.”
I stared at him, then turned to stare at the men. They were also walking with their heads turned, looking wonderingly back at us. The streets of Acre teemed with so many people of exotic features and complexions and raiment that I could not yet distinguish one kind of foreigner from another. But those were
Mongols?
The orda, the orco, the bogle, the terror of my childhood? The bane of Christianity and menace to all Western civilization? Why, they might have been merchants of Venice, exchanging a “bon zorno” with us as we all promenaded on the Riva Ca’ de Dio. Of course, they did not look like merchants of Venice. Those two men had eyes like slits in faces like well-tanned leather … .
“Those are Mongols?” I said, thinking of the miles and the millions of corpses they must have tramped across to get to the Holy Land. “What are they doing here?”
“I have no idea,” said my father. “I daresay we will find out in good time.”
“Here in Acre,” said my uncle, “as in Constantinople, there seem to be at least a few persons of every nationality on earth. Yonder goes a black man, a Nubian or an Ethiope. And that woman there is certainly an Armeniyan: each of her breasts is exactly as large as her head. The man with her I would say is a Persian. Now, the Jews and Arabs I can never tell apart, except by their garb. That one yonder has on his head a white tulband, which Islam forbids to Jews and Christians, so he has to be a Muslim … .”
His speculations were interrupted because we were almost run down by a war horse ridden at an uncaring canter through the tangled streets. The eight-pointed cross on the rider’s surcoat identified him as a Knight of the Order of the Hospital of San Zuàne of Jerusalem. He went past with a noise of jingling chain mail and creaking leather, but with no apology for his rudeness and not even a nod to us brother Christians.
We came to the square of buildings set aside for Venetians, and the porters led us to one of the several inns there. Its landlord met us at the entrance, and he and my father exchanged some deep bows and flowery greetings. Though the landlord was an Arab, he spoke in Venetian: “Peace be upon you, my lords.”
My father said, “And on you, peace.”
“May Allah give you strength.”
“Strong have we become.”
“The day is blessed which brings you to my door, my lords. But Allah has led you to choose well. My khane has clean beds, and a hammam for your refreshment, and the best food in Akko. Even now, a lamb is being stuffed with pistachios for the evening meal. I have the honor to be your servant, and my miserable name is Ishaq, may you speak it with not too much contempt.”
We introduced ourselves, and each of us thereafter was addressed by the landlord and servants as Sheikh Folo, because the Arabs have no p in their own language, and find it difficult to make the sound when speaking any other. As we Folos were disposing our belongings about our room, I asked my father and uncle, “Why is a Saracen so hospitable to us, his enemies?”
My uncle said, “Not all Arabs are engaged in this jihad—which is their name for a holy war against Christianity. The ones here in Acre are profiting too much from it to take sides, even with their fellow Muslims.”
“There are good Arabs and there are bad,” said my father. “The ones now fighting to oust all Christians from the Holy Land—from the entire eastern Mediterranean—are actually the Mamluks of Egypt, and they are very bad Arabs indeed.”
When we had unpacked the things necessary for our stay in Acre, we went to the inn’s hammam. And the hammam, I think, must rank with those other great Arabian inventions: arithmetic and its numbers and the abaco for counting. Essentially a hammam is only a room full of steam, generated by throwing water on fire-hot stones. But after we had sat for a time on benches in that room, sweating copiously, half a dozen menservants came in and said, “Health and delight to you, lords, from this bath!” and directed us to lie prostrate on the benches. Then, two men to each of us, their four hands wearing gloves made of coarse hemp, they rubbed us all over, briskly and for a long time. As they rubbed, the accumulated salt and dirt of our voyage was scraped off our skin in long gray rolls. We might have deemed that sufficient for cleanliness, but they kept on rubbing, and more dirt came out of our pores, like thin gray worms.