The Hand of Fatima Read online

  The priest stood stunned for a moment, then he bent forward to try to pull Hernando to his feet. This was the first Morisco who had prayed to Jesus Christ! Hernando stayed on his knees.

  ‘Help me,’ he repeated as the priest took him by the hands and struggled to raise him up. ‘Where can I find this surgeon? Tell me. My wife is very sick . . .’

  The chaplain let go of his hands brusquely. ‘I’m sorry, my boy.’ The man shook his head. ‘The Charity Hospital only admits men.’

  Hernando could not bear to hear how, after their long journey, the rest of the Moriscos broke out in prayers to the Holy Trinity.

  The hours went by, and it was already completely dark. The Moriscos tried to sleep on the ground, some on top of others. Hernando paced from side to side, without straying far from Fátima, stifling his sobs at the sight of the girl still shaking uncontrollably. Brahim was sleeping against a wall, with Musa and Aquil curled up by his side. Aisha was stroking Fátima’s hair, keeping vigil over her as if . . . as if awaiting her death.

  It was already well into morning when the sound of the alleyway gate opening startled Hernando. First he saw a young fair-haired girl coming directly towards him – what was that woman up to? – and then, limping along behind her . . .

  ‘Hamid!’

  The holy man put his finger to his lips and hobbled towards him.

  Hernando threw himself into his arms. At that moment he realized just how much he had missed his friendly, familiar face, the face of the person who had been his greatest comfort during his miserable childhood.

  ‘Let’s go! There’s no time to lose,’ Hamid urged him, clasping him tightly in return. ‘That one, his wife, that girl’ – he indicated Fátima to the girl who had come with him –‘help her up. Let’s go.’

  ‘What . . . what are you going to do?’ asked Hernando, unable to look away from the letter branded on the holy man’s cheek.

  Aisha got to her feet, and she was the one who helped the fair-headed girl lift Fátima under the arms.

  ‘To try to save your wife,’ Hamid answered as the two women made their way across the street, dragging Fátima along between them. ‘You must not go through the gate, Aisha,’ he added. ‘I’ll take charge of the girl.’

  Hernando remained paralysed. His wife? She was his wife as far as Christians were concerned, but to Hamid . . . and Brahim? What would Brahim say when he discovered that Fátima was not there? The fact that it was Hamid who was helping the girl might just take the edge off his anger.

  ‘She is not my—’

  Aisha, now free of Fátima, grabbed his forearm and indicated to him to keep quiet. Hamid did not hear him: his only concern was that no one should see them.

  ‘Tomorrow’, he said before shutting the brothel door, ‘I will come out to buy things. We’ll speak then, but bear in mind that I am only a slave here; I’ll choose the moment . . . And call me Francisco, the name the Christians gave me.’

  25

  ON 30 NOVEMBER 1570, by order of King Philip II, the three thousand Moriscos who had come from the plains of Granada with the chief magistrate Zapata left for their final destinations: Mérida, Cáceres and Plasencia amongst other places. This restored relative calm to Córdoba as a whole and the usual frenetic business activity to Plaza del Potro. First thing in the morning, from beyond the Martos mill on the banks of the Guadalquivir, Hernando saw them cross the Roman bridge in columns, just as he had done three weeks earlier in the opposite direction.

  At the sight of that column of men, women and children, silent and resigned to their fate, the bundle of stinking, bloody hides he was carrying on his shoulders became really heavy, much more so than had been the case going along the road outside the city walls, as the city council stipulated, from the slaughterhouse to Calle Badanas down by the river, where Vicente Segura’s tannery stood. For a few moments Hernando slowed down as he watched the long lines of deportees. He could feel the blood of the beasts running down his back until it soaked his legs, and the pungent stench of freshly flayed skin and flesh that the authorities refused to allow in their streets seemed only to reinforce the sense he had of the suffering of the Moriscos forced to leave. What would become of them all? What would they do? A woman walked past, frowning at him; Hernando responded and set off; his master did not allow delays, therefore he could not let himself linger.

  That was the deal Hamid had obtained for them through the prostitute Ana María who took charge of Fátima, hid her and looked after her on the second floor in the brothel. Hernando smiled when he thought of Fátima; she had eluded death.

  When the order came to despatch the Moriscos, the council officials took an interest in them once more. They took all their names again, and divided them up according to their destinations. At this point, Fátima had to leave the brothel and Hernando could see for himself that the news brought to them from day to day by the holy man was accurate: even though her face was lined with sadness, she had put on weight and looked healthier.

  None of them had had a chance to meet Ana María.

  ‘She’s a good girl,’ Hamid remarked one morning.

  ‘A prostitute?’ Hernando let slip.

  ‘Yes,’ said the holy man gravely. ‘They are usually good people. Most of them are girls from ordinary homes without means whose families hand them over as children to well-to-do households where they work as maids. The usual arrangement is that as soon as they are old enough these wealthy families are supposed to give them a modest dowry so that they can make a decent marriage. But in many, many instances the agreement is not fulfilled: when the time comes, they accuse them of stealing or of having slept with the man of the house or his sons – something by the way that they are often forced to do . . . far too often,’ he moaned. ‘Then they are thrown out penniless and with the stigma of being thieves or whores.’ Hamid pursed his lips and let a moment or two pass. ‘It’s always the same story. Most of them end up in brothels.’

  Hamid had been made a slave following the arrival of the Christians in Juviles. The pardon granted by the Marquis of Mondéjar counted for little. In the chaos that began with the slaughter of women and children in the church square, a number of soldiers seized the men who were ensconced in the village houses and deserted with the meagre booty of those Moriscos who had not been able to flee with the Muslim army. Before they even reached Granada, Hamid, branded, lame and filthy, was sold without haggling and for very little money to one of the many merchants who followed the army. From there he was carted off to Córdoba and purchased by the landlord of the brothel; what better slave for a place full of women than a man who was lame and frail?

  ‘We’ll buy your freedom!’ Hernando exclaimed indignantly when he heard the story.

  Hamid responded with a resigned smile. ‘I couldn’t escape from Juviles with our brothers. What happened to the sword?’ he asked, suddenly remembering it.

  ‘Buried at the castle of Lanjarón, beside—’

  Hamid signalled him to keep quiet. ‘He who is called to find it will do so.’

  Hernando thought about this before insisting once more: ‘And your freedom?’

  ‘What would I do as a free man, lad? All I know is how to farm fields. Who is going to take on a cripple to do that? Nor can I expect alms from the faithful. Here in Córdoba, if I were to devote myself as a holy man to what I have done throughout my life, freedom would only mean death—’

  ‘Freedom? Does that mean that you intend to continue with your work as a holy man?’ Hernando interrupted him.

  Hamid hushed him, glancing out of the corner of his eye to see if anyone was listening to them. ‘We’ll talk about it later,’ he whispered. ‘I fear we will have plenty of time.’

  ‘You know about herbs,’ the boy persisted. ‘You could devote yourself to that.’

  ‘I am neither a doctor nor a surgeon. Anything I might do with herbs would be regarded as witchcraft. Witchcraft . . .’ he repeated to himself.

  He had had to persuade young Ana Mar�
�a that his knowledge was not witchcraft, although in the end the girl still did not seem convinced. One day, shortly after arriving at the brothel, he came upon her crying disconsolately in her room when he went to fetch her some clean bed linen. To begin with, she stubbornly refused to answer his questions; Hamid was the landlord’s property and what guarantee did she have that he wouldn’t tell him? Hamid read that distrust in her eyes and kept at her until, little by little, she opened up to the holy man and confessed. Chancre! A small lesion had appeared in her vagina. It was painless and almost invisible, but a sure sign that in no time she would develop syphilis. The doctor sent every fortnight by the authorities to check on the prostitutes’ health and hygiene had just visited the brothel and had not noticed anything, but he would surely do so the next time. The girl started to weep again.

  ‘He’ll send me to the Lámpara hospital,’ she sobbed, ‘and there . . . there I will die among the syphilis cases.’

  Hernando had heard talk about the nearby hospital. Córdobans all feared going into any of the many hospitals in the city. ‘Only the poorest go to hospital,’ was a common expression, but the Lámpara, an asylum for women afflicted with incurable venereal diseases, was a name spoken with dread among the prostitutes. Heavily guarded by the authorities as a health precaution, going in there was sure to mean a slow and painful death.

  ‘I could . . .’ Hamid began to say, ‘I know . . .’

  Ana María turned to him and begged him with her green eyes.

  ‘There is an old Muslim cure that might . . .’ He had never treated anyone for chancre in the Alpujarra! What if it did not work? By now, though, the girl was on her knees, clinging tightly to his legs.

  ‘May God grant her a cure!’ Hamid prayed silently that same night when he washed Ana María’s vulva with honey and afterwards sprinkled over the wound ashes that he took from a small reed tube full of a mixture made from barley flour, honey and salt.

  ‘May God grant it!’ he prayed night after night as he repeated the treatment. The next time the official doctor called, the lesion had disappeared. Was that tiny fistula really the start of syphilis? wondered Hamid, while a grateful Ana María wept for joy in his arms. It was the Prophet’s remedy, he concluded: a remedy fit to cure chancre and syphilis. Had he not commended himself to God each time he treated her?

  ‘Tell no one about this, I beg you,’ Hamid asked, pushing her away from him. ‘If they knew . . . if the landlord or the Inquisition heard what has happened here, they would put me on trial as a sorcerer . . . and you as someone bewitched . . .’ he added, to make doubly sure. ‘What are you doing, my girl?’ he asked in surprise when he saw Ana María was taking off her bodice.

  ‘All I have is my body,’ she answered, as she opened her blouse and showed him her young breasts.

  Hamid could not look away from those smooth, white breasts and the large dark areolae around her nipples. How many years had it been since he last enjoyed a woman?

  ‘Your friendship is enough for me,’ he excused himself, flustered. ‘Cover yourself, I beseech you.’

  From that day on, Hamid enjoyed a respect bordering on reverence from all the women in the brothel; even the landlord altered his manner. What had Ana María told him? The old man preferred not to know.

  ‘I have arranged it so that you can all stay in Córdoba,’ Hamid announced to Hernando one morning. The holy man took a breath before going on: ‘You are all the family I have . . . Ibn Hamid,’ he said in a low voice, drawing close to Hernando’s ear. The young man shuddered, ‘and I would like to have you near me, in this city. Besides, your wife would not survive another exodus.’

  ‘She’s not my wife,’ Hernando admitted at last.

  Hamid looked at him questioningly and Hernando told him the story. The old man understood why Brahim had been so furious with him that first morning they met. He had thought it was due to the fact that Fátima had been taken to a brothel and he’d told Brahim bluntly: ‘No man will be with her. Trust me.’ The muleteer had wanted to argue, but Hamid had turned away. It was Aisha who had once again stood up to her husband. ‘They are making her better, Brahim. She’ll be of little use to you dead.’

  Ana María knew one of the judges in Córdoba: a man who was smitten by her and who regularly frequented the brothel. The judges were called upon to act as a counterbalance to the councillors in the government of the city. Unlike the latter, who were all noblemen, the judges were men of the people, chosen by their fellow citizens to represent them on the council. With the passage of time, however, the office became hereditary, able to be passed on, and the various monarchs either used it as a reward for services rendered or sold it as a way of acquiring substantial profits. The election in the parish church took on the air of a ritual pantomime and the judges, lacking the nobles’ titles and riches, tried to put themselves on a par with them and the councillors. The judge who visited Ana María seized on the girl’s request as an opportunity to demonstrate his power beyond the bed, and in a show of vanity accepted the task of ensuring that these Moriscos could stay on in Córdoba.

  ‘They are relatives of the lame Morisco,’ Ana María explained in a honeyed voice, referring to Hamid. The judge lay sated beside her in bed. ‘One of the women is sick. She can’t travel. Will you be . . .? Will you be able . . .?’ she asked innocently, ingratiatingly, leading him on, fully aware that the judge would reply with something along the lines of ‘How could you doubt it?’ as indeed he did. Ana María caressed his flabby chest. ‘If you can do it,’ she whispered, ‘we’ll have the best sheets in the brothel,’ she added with a mischievous wink.

  Permission to stay in Córdoba required that the menfolk had jobs. The judge managed to get Brahim set up in one of the many farms on the outskirts of the city.

  ‘Muleteer?’ scoffed the judge when Ana María told him how Brahim made his living. ‘Does he have any mules?’ The girl shook her head. ‘Then how does he propose to work as a muleteer?’

  As regards Hernando, there was no room for discussion: he was sent to work as a labourer in Vicente Segura’s tannery.

  And that was where he was on that 30 November 1570, carrying hides to Calle Badanas along the banks of the Guadalquivir, his gaze fixed on the last Moriscos who were at that moment passing the Calahorra fortress and leaving behind them the Roman bridge that was the entry point to the city of the caliphs.

  Calle Badanas began at the church of San Nicolás de la Ajerquía down by the river and then, following a jagged line, came out at the Potro church very near the square. Most of the tanneries were located in this district because that was where they had access to the plentiful waters of the Guadalquivir; the air the tanners breathed was acrid and stinging as a result of the different processes the hides were subjected to before they were transformed into fabulous cordovans, embossed leather, soles, shoes, belts, harnesses or any other object made of leather. Hernando went into Vicente Segura’s tannery through the rear door, the one looking out on to the river, and offloaded the hides in a corner of the large courtyard, as he had done for the three days he had been working there. One of the foremen, a bald, strong Christian, came across to check the condition of the hides without so much as greeting Hernando, who was once more engrossed in the bustle inside the courtyard that took up all the space between the river and Calle Badanas. Tanners, apprentices, and a couple of slaves who did nothing except fetch fresh water from the river, were all toiling without a break. Some rendered the hides: that was the first job to be done as soon as a skin was brought into the tanner. This involved putting the hide in a shallow tub of fresh water until it was softened, for as many days as it took depending on the type of hide and its condition. Some of the pelts, already rendered or in the process of being cured, were stretched on tables with the flesh part exposed, ready for the workers to scrape them clean with sharp knives, taking off the flesh, blood and any dirt that might have stuck to them.

  Once the hides were cured, it was time for the hair to be removed. This proce
ss involved steeping them in a mixture of water and lime with the flesh side facing downwards. The liming process depended on the type of hide and what it was to be used for. Hernando noticed that some of the apprentices were cleaning the hides of fur and then airing them on sticks, the amount of time determined by the season of the year, before steeping them again and repeating the process a few days later. The liming could last between two and three months, according to whether it was winter or summer. All the hides were cured and limed; then when the master tanner felt the hide was ready, the procedures varied according to whether it was to be made into soles, shoes, belts, cordovans or embossed leather. The tanning of the hides took place in tanning vats, holes in the ground covered with stone or brick, in which the hides were immersed in water mixed with bark from the cork oak tree, which was plentiful in Córdoba; the master tanner oversaw the tanning process carefully. Hernando watched the master and the foreman, who was standing in one of the vats, naked from the waist down, trampling on kid goat skins destined to be black cordovans, and constantly turning them over and washing them with water and sumach. That part of the job would last eight hours, during which time the workmen never stopped treading, turning and soaking the skins.

  ‘What are you staring at? You’re not here to waste time!’ Hernando jumped. The bald worker he had given the hides to was waiting, holding out what seemed to be the one in the worst condition of all. ‘This is for your pit,’ he said, pointing to it. ‘Go to the dung heap as you did on the other days.’

  Hernando did not want to look near the far end of the courtyard, where in a remote and hidden corner a deep pit had been dug. A column of hot, stinking air from the rotting manure rose out of the hole into the cold of the November day. When he stepped down into it, as he had had to do on the two previous days, that column of smoke would come alive, clinging to his every move and enveloping him in heat, stench and murk. The master had decided to use manure and not lime on any of the hides that were flawed, such as the one the other worker had just given him. The process was much shorter than the usual two months; above all, it was much cheaper. The resulting hides, which were of inferior quality because manure did not achieve the same effect as lime, were used to make soles for shoes.