Travels with a Tangerine: A Journey in the Footnotes of Ibn Battutah (17 page)

(As might be expected, Friar Symon had something to say about Mamluk sexuality. His translator renders it with a blushing ‘…’ The original, however, hardly needs translation: ‘
Ab Admiraldo [sc. amir] usque ad Soldanum [sc. sultan] inclusive, sunt sodomite pessimi et vilissimi, et eorum multi cum asinis et bestiis operantur iniquitatem
.’ The statement is a generalization nearly as gross as the good friar’s Latin. But there is a seed of truth in at least the first part: al-Maqrizi noted that in his day homosexuality was becoming so widespread among the better sort of
mamluk
that, in order to attract attention, women had to go
à la garçonne
and wear boys’ caps. Elsewhere, he mentioned a mosque founded by a certain Zankadah the Reformed Catamite.)

By the end of the fourteenth century the boarding-house system had collapsed. Delinquent
mamluks
rampaged through the streets of the city, ‘more lustful than apes, more thievish than rats and more vicious than wolves’. Al-Maqrizi looked back with a sigh to the time when the playing-fields of Cairo had turned out ‘noble administrators of kingdoms, captains steadfast in the path of God, natural rulers who strove to manifest good and to restrain the unjust oppressor’. It might be Sir Henry Newbolt on the muscular gentlemen who ruled Britain’s Victorian empire.

Through the texts, I was filling in some of the gaps in IB’s strangely impersonal account of Cairo. But there was another book I wanted to get hold of, an earlier guide to the city mentioned by al-Maqrizi and written within a year of IB’s visit. Toby, my friend from Garden City, took me to a bookshop where he thought I might find a copy.

The bookseller was sitting outside his premises, a row of lock-up garages. ‘By al-Zubayri? I can’t say I’ve come across it,’ he said. ‘But you could try looking.’ We went in.

I laughed. The place was a literary version of Cairo itself, a living tell of books. They were stacked up to the ceiling and had invaded lofts and lean-tos. Even assuming that al-Zubayri’s work had survived and been published, and that there was a copy here to be found, finding it would take weeks, perhaps years, of patient excavation. Much of the stock in the lower strata had died off, like coral at the base of a reef. It had become purely structural; any attempt to extract volumes from lower down the piles would have sent the whole edifice crashing to the ground. For anyone with delusions about the immortality of the written word, it was a sobering vision.

A good number of the more accessible books were early twentieth-century works on vampires, ghosts and other aspects of the occult, and on sexology. Even more were concerned with magic and conjuring. I came across
Tricks with Watches
; Toby was tempted by
The Manipulation of Billiard Balls
. From these fragments of dead libraries we constructed a picture of the reading classes of Cairo in the Khedivial twilight – pashas in
tarbush
and waxed moustache, turning pages with moist fingertips, plotting illusions and seductions.

As we left the shop I spotted a row of matching octavos on a table by the door, and felt the slight jolt that comes from seeing the familiar displaced. I checked. It was the same edition as my father’s –
Nelson’s Encyclopaedia
of 1913 – and had the same slightly animal odour that clings to reference books long thumbed. People had often hinted to my father that it was out of date; I had to point out, when I moved to Yemen, that I was not going to live in a distant
sanjak
of the Ottoman Empire. But he remained loyal to those tatty maroon volumes, his contemporary. I ran my hand along the spines. I too was fond of
Nelson’s
, companion of many happy hours on the loo. (How deprived are the squatting nations! Defecation and ingestion of knowledge are such complementary activities.)

As we walked, I enthused to Toby about
Nelson’s
. Back at his flat in the mock-Gallic
arrondissement
of Garden City, he announced that I was due for an info-technological update. He opened Stella beers and, on his computer, something called HotBot. ‘It’s probably the best search engine for your purposes,’ he explained.

I said I’d take his word for it. I was happy pottering around the ginnels and culs-de-sac of al-Maqrizi’s
Settlements
or
Nelson’s
. What pleasure could there be in whizzing along the flash interstates of the World Wide Web, propelled by a search engine, and one so ludicrously named?

In less than a minute, the Ibns had appeared on the screen – Battutah, Hajar, Jubayr, Khaldun, Sa’id and the rest of them, members of the medieval scholarly internet. I was prepared to forgive HotBot for regarding Ibn Battutah (72 matches) as a different person from Ibn Battuta (205 matches). Toby showed me which buttons to press and went to make supper.

Most of IB’s appearances were passing mentions in bibliographies. But there were also some esoterica. IB, I discovered under ‘Planetary Nomenclature’, had lent his name to a heavenly body. An association of saluki enthusiasts quoted him in their website, and he was cited under Coconuts in ‘Johan’s Guide to Aphrodisiacs: Fruit and Nuts’: ‘Among the properties of this nut are that it strengthens the body, fattens quickly, and adds to the redness of the face. As to its aphrodisiac quality, its action in this respect is wonderful.’ And there, on the list of an Italian record distributor, was the CD I saw but didn’t hear inside the Gate of the Stick in Tangier. A further search led me to a discographic website run by a certain Malcolm. It had an entry on Embryo, the German group who had made the CD: ‘They started out as a pretty classic space rock band and then got very jazzy in a fusiony period heavy on vibes, and then Burchard started travelling around the world …’

I could go on almost indefinitely, I thought, chasing the shadow of IB between cyberspace and al-Maqrizi’s
Settlements
. But, like Burchard, I felt it was time to get going.

Upper Egypt

Eastward from Edfu

‘I suppose that, wherever one goes, one sees in great measure what one expects to see.’

Edward Granville Browne,
A Year Amongst the Persians

‘I
ARRIVED IN
the town of al-Aqsur [Luxor] on the thirteenth day of the month of Jumada ’l-Ula. It is a fine and large town on the bank of the Nile, and it contains the tomb of the pious ascetic Abu ’l-Hajjaj al-Aqsuri. I saw there on the river many boats of enormous size, like great palaces, with many storeys one above the other. The markets there are broad and expansive, but many of the goods in them are tawdry items, inscribed with images in the manner of the ancients. The people say that these images are a form of writing devised by Hermes [Trismegistos], who is also called by the name of Khanukh [Enoch] that is Idris (on him be peace).

‘Above the shops where these goods are sold they fix large signs written in the Afranji [Frankish] script. The reason for this is that God Almighty in His wisdom has given the inhabitants of al-Aqsur sustenance from the Afranj, who visit the town in great numbers. When I was in Alexandria I saw many of these Afranj, merchants from al-Bunduqiyyah [Venice] and Janawah [Genoa], but never so many as I saw here. Moreover, the Afranj who visit al-Aqsur are unparalleled as to ugliness. Most of them are tall and fat, with straw-coloured hair and white faces tinged with redness. This redness is increased by the action upon their skin of the sun and, as I was told by a worthy and pious
shaykh
of the town whose name I have forgotten, because al-Qubt [the Copts] sell them different sorts of intoxicating drinks. I heard also that some of the Muslims also sell
these
drinks, may God Almighty punish them for their wickedness.

‘It is an extraordinary thing, but these Afranj do not hide their ugliness. On the contrary, they reveal their members in ways of which I do not wish to speak, men and women alike. Most of them also carry on their backs saddle bags [
khirajah
], both small and large, in the manner of pack-animals. In these they carry their travelling-provisions. It is a most undignified sight.

‘Even more extraordinary is the fact that these Afranj, who as is well known are Nasara [Nazarenes, i.e. Christians], also venerate the
berbas
which are the temples of the ancient idolaters. I watched the manner of their veneration. They first present an offering to the gatekeeper who sits at the gate of the
berba
. Next, they circumambulate within the courtyard of the
berba
. Before them walk
mutawwifs
[pilgrim guides, a term usually applied to those at the Ka’bah in Mecca]. These
mutawwifs
are plainly distinguishable by the small pennons which they carry. As they walk, they speak to the visitants, advising and exhorting them in strange tongues. As for the visitants, they reply to these exhortations with a great babble. Also, many of them repeatedly cover their eyes with talismans like small boxes. When I saw this, I was unable to restrain my laughter.

‘I heard one of the
mutawwifs
speaking to the gate-keeper in Arabic. He was of the race of the visitants and his speech was barbarous and incorrect. I asked him which place he came from in the territory of the Afranj, and he said: I come from Barr Man Jahum. Ibn Juzayy adds: I have read that this place is part of the Island of Anqiltarah [England]. And God is the most knowing.’

(Translator’s note: ‘Barr Man Jahum’ is literally ‘the land of him that presented a doleful countenance’. An obscure phrase to say the least, it may be a corruption of ‘Birmingham’. This alone would be enough to raise suspicions about the authenticity of the account. Indeed, the whole curious passage, with its glaring anachronisms, is surely an interpolation from the pen of some pseudo-IB …)

A day in Luxor had got to me. Tourism had made it a pseudo-place, like Eurodisney or Riyadh, to which one could fly direct from Barr Man Jahum. A pseudo-reaction seemed the only one possible.

*

The previous morning, as the train rumbled over the bridge from Cairo to Giza, the Nile had looked particularly mucose. It moved
sluggishly
, exhaling hanks of mist. I remembered the story of an alchemist who could, it was said, weave tents from its water. The skyscrapers along the banks were spectral; a two-man scull slid through the vapour. It was going to be another smoggy day. But I was heading south.

A tiny man moved slowly along the train, begging alms in rhyming prose. Hawkers also walked up and down, throwing their goods into our laps. Each specialized in a particular line – newspapers, combs, sticking-plasters or keyrings. If you didn’t want to buy, you handed them back when their owners came past again. The only one who seemed to sell anything was an old lady who had diversified: she sold copies of the Qur’anic Chapter of the Merciful, and chewing-gum.

As we left Giza station I thought of the Pyramids and the Sphinx, invisible from the railway line. The thought set off an old ditty, ‘
The sexual life of the camel is stranger than anyone thinks
…’ I tried to make mental notes on the landscape, but the rhyme kept intruding, to the rhythm of the train. ‘
For during the mating season, it tries to bugger the Sphinx
…’ What was that stuff in the fields like giant rhubarb? ‘
But the Sphinx’s anal orifice is blocked by the sands of the Nile
…’ I must do something about my abysmal knowledge of botany … ‘
which accounts for the hump on the camel
…’ Note: palm trees ‘…
and the Sphinx’s inscrutable smile
.’

It was no good. I gave up on the landscape and opened the
Travels
.

IB left the Convent of the Relics some time in May 1326, heading for Mecca. He travelled down the Nile, passing through Luxor, then turned east at Edfu. For fifteen days he crossed the desert between the Nile and the Red Sea, calling in on the way at the tomb of al-Shadhili, the greatest of the Maghribi Alexandrian saints and author of the
Litany of the Sea
. And then, at Aydhab, the port for Jeddah, he got stuck. He only had himself to blame. Earlier, in the Nile town of Hu, he had told a local holy man of his pilgrimage plans. ‘You will not succeed in going to Mecca on this occasion,’ the saint told him bluntly. ‘Go back, for you will make your first Pilgrimage by the Syrian Road and no other.’ Two months and 1,500 miles after he had left it, IB found himself back in Cairo. He had made the elementary mistake of ignoring that inexorable tour operator, Fate.

Inexorable, inscrutable … The Sphinx was threatening a comeback. But a sobering realization laid it to rest: I didn’t know quite
where
I was going. The Nile section of the journey was straightforward; the problems started after Edfu. Humaythira, the remote desert location of al-Shadhili’s tomb, was according to IB ‘infested with hyenas, and during the night of our stay there we were continually occupied with driving them off’. In the morning, he found that one of the creatures had stolen a skin of dates from his baggage. If the hyenas were not bothersome enough, I had also heard that the tomb might lie in a military zone. The port of Aydhab was more of a problem. I knew where it ought to be – if, that is, anything were left of it – but I didn’t know what country it was in. At the bottom right-hand corner of Egypt is a wedge-shaped bit of desert, roughly the shape and size of Sicily, which couldn’t decide whether it was Egyptian or Sudanese. Aydhab was in the south-eastern extreme of this disputed territory. Where IB was blasé about destiny, I’d ignored a twentieth-century irritation: borders.