A Journey to the End of the Millennium Read Free Page B

its bow or the row of rusting shields that adorned its sides, they prepared it for its civilian mission. They installed separate cabins amidships, cleared outthe hold, reinforced the timbers with large wooden rivets, increased the height of the mast, and fitted a larger, triangular lateen sail. They waited for the summer to manifest itself, and then Abu Lutfi selected six experienced sailors to take the ship on a trial run back and forth near the Straits of Gibraltar. It passed the test, and so they loaded it with the great mass of merchandise that had accumulated in the warehouses over the past two years, and with further goods as well. Jars full of pickled fish-cheeks and olive oil, camel skins and leopard skins, embroidered cloth and skillfully made brassware. Also sacks of condiments , and sugar canes, and fastened baskets full of figs and dates and honeycombs, and leather containers brimming with desert salt, in the depths of which they had concealed daggers inlaid with precious stones and flasks of rare perfumes. It was late June when they set sail, turning their backs for the first time in their lives on the rising sun and setting their faces to the west, to the great expanse of the ocean. Clinging cautiously to the coast of southern Andalus, they began to sail northward along the califate of Cordoba and the kingdom of Leon, turning eastward somewhat along the northern coast of Castile and Navarre to the port of Bayonne. From here, after a short rest, they sailed along the coast of Aquitaine and the duchies of Gascony and Guyenne, touched the coast of Belle Île, and turned northwest, into the heart of the ocean, so as to give a wide berth to the dangerous craggy headlands of Brittany. So weary were they from the long voyage that they momentarily disregarded the old pirates’ map and hunted for the mouth of the river they were seeking in the big gulf that they had come upon. But they had been overhasty, and pressed on northward for ten long days more, skirting the great duchy of Normandy until at last they were able to turn east, into the crocodile jaws of a new bay that appeared at dawn in all its splendor, and into which flowed the longed-for river named the Seine, which would conduct them circuitously but safely to the place where their third partner had vanished, after submitting to his wife’s repudiation.
    Even though there was no reason why the Christian millennium should trouble Jews or Muslims sailing alone upon the universal ocean, the Moroccan ship, advancing at the pace of a fast horse, seemed to have absorbed something of the new religious fervor radiating from the nearby Christian coasts. How else are we to explain the fanaticismwith which the sailors harried the black boy, who attempted occasionally to commune with his ancient gods, which the dread of the wide ocean was forcing out of the memory of his pagan childhood? Ben Attar sometimes thought that this panic-stricken youth might be able to find peace in his outlandish prayers, and even bestow it upon others. But this is not what the Arab sailors thought, for whenever they caught the boy prostrating himself in supplication to the sun or the moon or the stars or bowing down at the base of the old bridge, facing the animal head carved at the top of the mast, they would drag him to his feet and flog him for idolatrously polluting the worship of the one invisible God, who here, on the high seas, seemed to his worshippers not merely a necessity but the only rational divinity. Fearing that the young African might secretly betray them, they attached little brass bells to his coat, so as to keep track of his movements. And even now, as he brought Ben Attar the light meal he had cooked for him, the soft chimes dissolved the silence of the night.
    On a round brass tray lay an earthenware bowl full to overflowing with a yellowish stew with some pieces of white cheese floating on it. Beside it was a fine silver basket replete with figs that had been picked and