He whistles air in through his teeth.
The sound is so ugly.
Like toenails on tile.
Papa declaims on the way it once was.
How the Muslims
ruled here for lifetimes.
Seven lifetimes, in fact.
Hundreds of years!
How their streets ran with fountains.
How they planted trees bearing fruits
no Christian had heard of till then.
How the libraries here in our very city
held many more books than the sky contains stars.
“Forty thousand, señor—Can you fathom that?
“Then we Christians, returning,
tore their babes from their arms and even
their bellies. It’s still done today.
Amir here was snatched from his birthplace
and sold at a bargain to Don Barico
as if he were naught but maggoty bread.”
Señor Ortiz throws down his spoon
with a crash. “Do not, Isidore,
preach history to me.
You cherish the old days,
and the old days are dead.
“We are at war, and you feed a snake
in our very own nest.”
Words
The Plants man has decided
he needs twenty more copies
to take on his journey
to Aragon.
Why would the Aragonese
want to read about
every last leaf in Castile?
No one asks.
Each copy we make
is like one more meal.
But even Papa
is grumbling now.
“Papa,” I ask him,
“why not write your own books?”
(He loves words, does he not?
He’s always saying Thing A is like B
and Thing B is like C.
Why don’t we copy his words
in the shop?)
Papa smiles at the ground
like a joke’s inscribed there.
But after a moment
he’s solemn again.
“Far better to copy well, and true,
than invent badly,” he says.
How many times have I heard that by now?
I still think he should try it.
And I see that it warms him to think that I think
that he could.
Shake
We have copied for so many hours on end
my hand’s no longer a hand, it’s a claw!
Even my initials look like they’re done
by a child not yet ten.
It’s not just the hours.
My hand won’t stay steady.
I think of what Papa said of strong drink—
and girls.
I still water my wine, so I don’t think it’s that.
As for girls—
Well, it’s true—I meet Bea tonight!
Clean
Mama frowns at my tunic.
What? It’s my cleanest one.
“Turn around.”
Ah—there’s a spot after all.
(Dirt blares much brighter
in the presence of mothers.)
I can’t see what she’s doing,
but a force strong and wide
licks the length of my back—
a giant’s rough tongue.
I turn around, startled.
Do I look like a floor?
“Close your eyes,” she commands.
“There’ll be dust.” The broom scrapes
my front. My tunic is lined
with faint tracks of black.
“There. Now you’re safe.”
But she barks it.
“No one can say
that your clothing is clean
for the wrong blessed day.”
Spins away.
The broom clatters down
like the jeering applause
at the auto-da-fé.
Near Perfect
Here we sit: me with Bea.
Bea—I can hardly believe it—with me.
Her hand rests on mine. Just lightly, as though
it’s not really there.
But it’s there!
Only the scent of the orange tree above us
proves I’m not dreaming.
Everything’s perfect. Then—greech!
My stomach’s near empty, as always.
(Would that the Plants man had paid in advance!)
In a sweet, silent moment, it gurgles and turns.
Then lets out an utterly hideous yell.
I try to ignore it. Not to mention the rich,
(The fruit all belongs to the Crown.
I don’t fancy losing this hand
to a lurking sheriff—just when I’ve got
Bea to hold it.)
Greech! Yet again.
All I can do is sit still and pray
that, among all Bea’s perfections,
impeccable hearing’s not one.
Jewels
Now that spring’s here,
we get what we’ve longed for
all winter.
It’s snowing!
People stand in the streets with their tongues
stuck far out and their noses turned up to the sky.
Jewels of pure cold land soft in our mouths.
They melt into memories
even before we can pin down their taste.
Our faces are wet from the flakes.
But before long I see—
Amir’s is not drying.
Zero
“Amir, why not ask this Hafiz
where your parents are now?”
Amir shakes his head.
“And why not?” I insist.
“Come, let’s try.”
A face full of fire.
“You’re so good with numbers,”
he says. “Don’t you know about zero?
Take a cart full of zeros,
pile them into a mountain—
what do you have?
Still zero.
“Hafiz can shed light
on what’s already there.
That is all.
“Now, Master Ramon,” he says
with an angry toss of his head,
“please—leave me alone.”
Raro
“Es raro,” she says.
Strange.
I quickly learn how much Bea
adores that small word.
Everything’s raro. The clouds in the sky,
shaped like roosters today. They’re raro.
The girl over there, can’t you tell that’s a wig?
Doesn’t she know those are sewn
out of dead people’s hair? She’s rara indeed.
Nearly all that we see
is judged in this way.
I don’t quiz her on how this could be.
If everything’s strange, then strange
must be normal. Correct?
One day by the river
a leper walks by.
We split from our kiss
at the jing of the bell at his neck.
We say it together. Raro!
And laugh, though
nothing’s that funny.
I wonder, then on.
Does Bea know, guess, or fear
that I’m an al-Burak?
And if so, is raro the worst word
she’d use for me?
Fernando’s Army
King Fernando departs with an army so vast
it seems to contain every man in the world.
It’s hard to believe enough still remain
to make up this crowd.
Those like me—too poor to own horses
or swords—are left behind.
We cheer and clap.
Women throw garlands, wave handkerchiefs
that a
re dusted with scent. The air’s thick
with perfume and the first heat of spring.
It’s not fair.
“I should be going,” I say.
Amir jabs me a look.
“Not, of course, to kill Moors.
Just to get out of this bloodthirsty place.”
Amir shakes his head.
“And wars don’t drink blood?”
But he doesn’t sound angry.
He follows the soldiers
with faraway eyes.
A Cow, at Breakfast
No more hot chocolate at breakfast
for Mama and me. Try, instead,
a loaf left from Tuesday,
soaked in brackish warm water.
At least this way it’s more
like a clump of wet sand
than tooth-splitting rock.
On the bright side, we’ll soon, at long last,
see the spoils of those Plants of Castile.
On the dark, we don’t have a clue
what we’ll do next.
The mountain of paper brought back
from Toledo is now little more
than a bump.
Paper is less dear than parchment, it’s true,
but that doesn’t mean it comes cheap.
Papa says enough paper to fill just one order
costs almost the same as a very large cow.
Lying in bed, I play a new game.
Which one of the books in the world,
were it mine, would I trade for that cow?
Or, which page of which book
would I trade for a bite of fine beef?
Or even a hoof, or an eye,
or a tongue?
I could boil some nice leather covers
instead. Eat them as a soup.
That couldn’t be worse
than this morning’s bread.
What could?
The Apprentice’s Masterpiece
Papa wanted to keep the line going.
He had only one child, one son—what else
should he be but a scribe?
Most families send out their sons
when they’re seven or eight.
They live and apprentice with other
men, in other trades.
In exchange, the boy’s parents
get a good little sum.
Well, I stayed home. I was glad.
What better teacher is there than Papa?
From every successful apprentice
a master is made.
To prove his mettle, the new master
must create—well, what else?
A masterpiece.
Papa wouldn’t exempt me.
But he found me a book
that he knew I would love.
The Twelve Works of Hercules.
The stories are full of adventure
and places that I’ve never been.
Best of all, Enrique de Villena,
the man who composed it,
is Cordoba’s very own son.
Each day, after closing the shop,
I copied till Mama insisted I stop
to eat dinner. It was always too soon.
The words seemed to fly from my fingers.
The work wasn’t work.
At the end of a year, I had my
masterpiece. Its pages were perfect.
My quill never slipped.
I was so proud.
I couldn’t stop turning its pages.
Admiring the slant of my letters,
the fine, feathered strokes
of the ink.
And now it’s been almost
two years since I’ve touched it.
What if I sold Hercules?
Here it sits, worthless, under my bed.
Shouldn’t it feed my family
instead of just fleas and rats?
Bestseller
The Edict of Faith
has been read again.
The Father advised us
to look to the chimneys
of known conversos.
If we see smoke on Fridays,
we must denounce those
who live in that house.
Despite all this madness
there are one or two people,
very brave souls, who haven’t stopped
all their business with us.
I know without asking
they want it kept quiet.
When their work is ready
I slink to their shops as if carrying tracts
by assassins.
One of these men is Señor de Allende.
He’s an Old Christian—his seal of pure blood
is framed on his wall.
But he’s always shown nothing but kindness
to us. He’s my first stop.
When I reach his street,
I can hardly get near
for the press of the crowd.
Though few can afford to eat meat
in these times of drought, they’re lined up like sheep
for this latest new thing.
A week’s wage for the very same book
all their neighbors will buy and learn off by heart.
Al-Burak: Why Conversos Are Devils.
Hercules and I will have to come back.
Commission (2)
Father has sent a new patron away!
I’m so angry, I turn—
nearly yell at my father.
He is crying. This is a sight I refuse
to get used to. Yet lately, I do.
Again—poor Papa—it’s over a book!
“That, my Ramon, was an exquisite thing.”
“A trap.” Mama’s face
is nut-hard, furrowed
with new lines of frown.
“I don’t think so, Raquel. Still—
I’m sorry, Ramon. How I’d love you to work
on something that fine. Then would you see
the true depth of our art.
“It was a Passover prayer book, a fine Haggadah.
One of the few Jewish books in al-Andalus
not consumed by their fires.”
Mama says, “Isidore, don’t have second thoughts.
If they found out you’d so much as touched that
one book,
they’d call it backsliding.
“Think of Ramon.
If they burned you for work
you’d chosen to do, wouldn’t they take
your apprentice too?”
Backsliding
Were the choice mine, I’d do it.
I would copy that book.
I would take that bold chance.
But when is the choice ever mine?
As for that ladder, that great, famous ladder
to Christian from Jew,
I don’t recall any such thing.
How can I slide down
what I never climbed up?
You know what?
I don’t recall ever taking one step
that wasn’t mapped out for me first.
Knives
I look, really look,
at my mother. It must be
the first time I’ve done so
in months.
I feel a cold shock.
Could this be the pillowy Mama
who once scooped me up
like I weighed nothing more
than a glove?
Now the bones at her collar
jut out like stashed knives.
Her skin looks too thin,
like parchment rubbed free
of a thousand mistakes.
Return
Señor Doda is here.
He’s been coming to us
since before I could write.
Now he’s here to return
the last book that he ordered.
“It’s paper!” he says, to explain.
“My wife believes only the Jews”—
here,
he cringes—“use such things.”
He smiles, turns his hands
so the palms face the sky.
“But paper is better than parchment, señor,”
I tell him. “They’ve used it in China
for hundreds of years.”
Señor Doda won’t be swayed.
“What if I wanted to sell it again?
My wife’s not alone in her thinking.
No one will touch it.
“I’m sorry, Ramon.
But I won’t be allowed
back inside my own door
if I pay you for this.”
The Familiari’s Daughter
Bea’s angry. At me.
I’ve failed to notice
something about her.
(It seems hard to believe.)
I wheedle. “Give me a clue.”
She scowls, but relents.
“Oh, you’ll never guess, you ignorant boy.
It’s my skirt. Can’t you tell? It’s fine
Persian silk. A thousand times finer
than that old sack I wore!
A blind man could see it.”
I appease her. I tell her
her own perfect beauty
blocks everything else.
She warms up.
(Once again, those daft books
pay off for Ramon!)
I know that it’s rude
to inquire about money.
But we Benvenistes have so little—
it’s made me obsessed.
“So…what is the source
of this new gush of wealth?”
She claps her small hands, so glad I’ve asked.
Her father’s been named familiari.
A familiar, a spy, of the Inquisition.
There are riches, it seems,
in ratting on friends.
I pretend to be thrilled.
But what I’m thinking instead:
Aren’t people like him
in the business of squashing
conversos? People like Papa, and Mama,
and me?
Green
Bea invites me to lunch at her home.
She says, “Only my mother and sisters will come.”
Only?
I feel, by the end,
as if I’ve been grilled
by Inquisitors—four of them.
But the food!
Warm bread and plump olives. Long, thin
slices of serrano ham, marbled red and white.
More food than I’ve had for two solid weeks.
But the ham, slippery as it is,
seems to stick in my throat.
Later, Bea asks, “Was lunch not to your liking?
Though you ate like three men, your face
was as green as the olives.”