Leo Africanus by Amin Maalouf Page B

and old people, all haggard and skeletal, but also often gathered in gangs of youngsters of menacing appearance; and men of honour who could not bear either to throw themselves upon charity or into a life of crime were dying slowly in their homes, away from prying eyes.’
    This was not to be the fate of my family. Even in the worst moments of penury, our house never lacked for anything, thanks to my father’s position. He had inherited an important municipal function from his own father, that of chief public weigh-master, in charge of the weighing of grains and the regulation of proper commercial practice. It was this function which entitled members of my family to the name of al-Wazzan, the weigh-master, which I still bear; in the Maghrib, no one knows that I now call myself Leo or John-Leo de Medici, no one has ever addressed me as the African; there I was Hasan, son of Muhammad al-Wazzan, and in official documents the name ‘al-Zayyati’ was added, the name of my tribe of origin, ‘al-Gharnati’, the Granadan, and if I was far off from Fez I would be called ‘al-Fassi’ referring to my first country of adoption, which was not to be the last.
    As weigh-master, my father could have taken as much as he wished from the foodstuffs submitted to him for inspection, provided he did not do this to excess, or even receive payment in gold dinars as the price of his silence on the frauds perpetrated by the merchants; I do not believe that he thought to enrich himself, but his function meant that the spectre of famine was always distant for him and his family.
    â€˜You were such a chubby little boy,’ my mother used to tell me, ‘that I did not dare to take you for walks in the streets in case you attracted the evil eye’. It was also important not to reveal our relative affluence.
    Concerned not to alienate those of his neighbours who were in more straitened circumstances, my father would often offer themsome of his acquisitions, particularly meat or spring produce, but he always gave within limits and with modesty, because any largesse might have been provocative, any condescension humiliating. And when the people of the capital had no strength or illusions left, and showed their anger and helplessness in the streets, and when a delegation was to be sent to the sultan to charge him to put an end to the war at all costs, my father agreed to join the representatives of al-Baisin.
    Thus, when he would retell the tale of the fall of Granada, his account would always begin in the tapestried rooms of the Alhambra.
    â€˜There were thirty of us, from all the corners of the city, from Najd to the Fountain of Tears, from the Potters’ quarter to the Almond Field, and those who were shouting loudly did not tremble any less than the others. I will not pretend to you that I was not terrified, and I would have certainly gone back if I had not feared to lose face. But imagine the folly of what we did; for two whole days thousands of townspeople had sown disorder in the streets, yelling the worst curses against the sultan, abusing his counsellors and making ironic remarks about his wives, beseeching him either to fight or make peace rather than prolong a situation indefinitely in which there was no joy in living and no glory in dying. So, as if to bring directly to his ears the insults which his spies had certainly already reported to him, we, a group of strange, dishevelled and vociferous parliamentarians, were coming to defy him in his own palace, before his chamberlain, his ministers and the officers of his guard. And there I was, an official from the
muhtasib’s
office, charged with maintaining respect for the law and public order, in the company of the ring-leaders of the riots, while the enemy stood at the very gates of the city. Thinking of all this in my confusion, 1 told myself that I would find myself inside a dungeon, beaten with a bull’s pizzle until the blood came, or even