The Discovery of America by the Turks Read Free

trick? Of no great concern because the events to be recounted here took place with Jamil as their protagonist, and not with his purported forebear, Moorish from the Bichara, Spanish from the Alonso, of doubtful existence. It is better to concern ourselves with proven, undeniable facts, even though the truthful story does touch upon the miraculous.
    The reference to the discovery of America comes from the current and omnipresent celebrations: A peaceable person can’t take the smallest step or blow the slightest fart without the Fifth Centenary landing on his head. Of the Discovery, say the descendants of the fearless men who discovered the other side of the sea; of the Conquest, exclaim the descendants of the massacred Indians; of the enslaved blacks, cultures wiped out by the passage of mercenaries and missionaries carrying the cross of Christ and the baptismal font.
    The argument is all laid on, a violent polemic with no middle ground, no agreement in sight, sectarianism predominatingon both sides, and anyone who wants to can get involved and leave himself open to carrying off the scraps. I’m not going to be the one to do it, no not I, a Brazilian of mixed blood, the fruit of the Discovery and of the Conquest, of the mixture. I am only recounting here what happened to Jamil Bichara, Raduan Murad, and other Arabs in full discovery of Brazil back there at the beginning of the century. The first to arrive from the Middle East carried papers issued by the Ottoman Empire, which is why right down to the present moment they’re all stamped as Turks, making up that fine Turkish nation, one of the many in the amalgamation that has composed and is still composing the Brazilian nation.
    The ship that the young Jamil Bichara and the wise Raduan Murad had boarded made port in the Bay of All Saints in October 1903, 411 years after the epic of Columbus’s caravels. But this did not cause their landing not to be a discovery and a conquest, for the lands to the south in the state of Bahia, where they set themselves up to do battle, were at the time covered with virgin forest. The planting of crops and the building of houses was just beginning. Colonels and their hired guns were killing one another in disputes over land, the best in the world for growing cacao. Coming from different regions were backlanders, Sergipeans, Jews, Turks—they were called Turks, those Arabs, Syrians, and Lebanese—all of them Brazilians.

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    Begun on board, the friendship that linked Jamil Bichara and Raduan Murad continued and grew stronger when the two immigrants decided without any previous discussion to test their lives in the southern lands of Bahia, the newly discovered El Dorado of cacao.
    During their dismal crossing Jamil had come to admire the wisdom and skills of Murad. Almost a child still, a youth, Jamil filled with enthusiasm as he watched his traveling companion overcome seasickness and squander his knowledge and cunning at the poker table—just a plank that went up and down with the rolling of the ship—and the backgammon board. Or as he listened to him declaim love poetry, some of it of a delightful concupiscence, about odalisques and wine, which he recited in Arabic or Persian on moonlit nights under a blanket of stars spread out over the sea. Jamil and the others who listened, a coarse rabble, didn’t know the Persian tongue, nor did the ancient name of Omar Khayyám mean anything to them, but the sonority of the stanzas of the Rubaiyat, the enveloping melody alleviated the harshness of the voyage and served to increase Raduan Murad’s prestige. He disembarked surrounded by respect, his pockets garnished with coins of copper, silver, and gold, earnings brought him by talent and manual skill.
    The El Dorado of cacao! People were hurrying there from the backlands, from the northeastern states—Sergipe, the smallest of them, the closest and the poorest, saw itself become almost depopulated of men; they were abandoningwives, fiancées,