Tea leaves in Zaragoza - VI

"I thought you looked like a soldier, my man, and with all that you are an infidel, it looks like you've got good judgment ... now I am an old man and my eyes are dead and I see though that we were not following truth in those raids we were doing in the name of Allah, but just brutality, and I thank you for having come till here ... and I thank as well those who took my eyesight and in this way turned me into a man of God, instead of meeting death by the hands of infidels in one of our raids ... may God have mercy on the souls of us all, in peace only we will find Allah’s truth".
But the other man had vanished, as if a gust of wind had carried him away. Those who saw two men, wrapped in their cloaks, walking in the Medina, thought they had seen two ancient spirits appearing in the dark night. The guard was sleeping when they went through the door, and in Zaragoza no one saw them ever again. Of the things taken away, something had been given back; not the eyesight back to the old man, who had been a plunderer, not life back to those who had died: freedom from fear to those who still feared nameless horrors after so much time.

(previous)

Tea leaves in Zaragoza - V

The gray-clad man stops a moment, in part as he needs to catch his breath, in part as he wants to take a look at the other man, who remained silent before the threshold - he can just make him up as a motionless shadow, next to the black servant.
"Then grandpa died", he goes on telling his story, "and we continued fighting, first for our land, then for whomever paid us the best money ... we fought for Genua, for Pisa, for Aragona, for the German prince-bishops against the Hungars and the Frisians, for the Ceasar in Bisantium against the Persians and the Huns, even for the Caliph of Cordoba against the Cid Campeador ... I was following my father, and I knew that he kept with him a thing that the grandpa had meant should be given back to its legitimate owner poitta fiat ferru malu¹ ... so that when my father died under the walls of a city whose name I can't anymore remember ... but it was a city of Moors, faccis nieddas² like you, saint man ... that thing was passed on to me and with it the promise. And here I am."
The bearded man unfolds the leather and something drops on the table with a ringing sound. The old man cannot see it, but he can guess it is the curved-blade dagger, the one that had been taken from him years ago, and had been used to gouge out his eyes.
"He stored it away and never wanted to use it for anything else ... honest things like gelding pigs or skinning sheep ... not the right things for a weapon made to kill and maim men ... ferru malu, de genti ki beni de mare³ ... nothing good, so it had to go back to you ..."
"So many years ..." said the old man in a soft voice reaching for the knife with a trembling hand "And you ..."

(continues)
(previous)

¹ poitta fiat ferru malu because it was an evil iron
² faccis nieddas blackfaces
³ ferru malu, de genti ki beni de mare evil iron, of people who come from the sea

Tea leaves in Zaragoza - IV

“Something had hit me in the face …” the voice of the old man is faint now, but it seems that one can hear again the voice of a boy who is fleeing among the bushes, beyond the sea, in a land of crazy, feverish, fierce Latins.
“Unu fustixeddu de modditzi¹, a large lentisk branch, securely tied to a picket barely in turn fastened to a horse hair … you brush lightly against it … and it springs in your face … two faccis nieddas², dressed in a scale armor like the Byzantine, and with pointed helms, tumbled down … and then Lussurgiu, the blacksmith, hit them on the head ‘a smemoriadura’³ with the iron mace and knocked them out like two steers. The brain of one of them was spilling out from his eyes and nose … the other one, just a boy, was only stunned … and grandpa said he was the guy we needed …”.
Thus they dragged him by the feet … they cut off the head and hands of the other guy and put them in a basket together with some leaves, just in the way one does with figs, so that flies wouldn’t eat them too quickly …”
The boy who had hoped to get away is woken up with some kicks and a rubbing with nettle, a bucket of water is too precious to be wasted in this dusty plain, and as he opens his eyes he sees many leather- and iron-bound feet and spear tips under his nose, and once more drums rolling inside his head, now as in the previous dream, when he was fleeing among the bushes, or in the present dream, when he’s seeing endless hordes of warriors wearing horned elms, or perhaps the warriors themselves have horns on their heads because what’s seeing are not helms, but iron heads of unspeakable demons, horrible results of some pagan magic rite, magic as old as the stones of this hostile land … madness madness madness … but a heavy hand grabs him by his hair and forces him to look on “Mira, facci niedda, s’urtima cosa ki bisi, e bai, bai a du contai in Thuniss…hommini ki beniri innoi po gherrai nexidi cosa sua…mira…”⁴.
An endless forest of spears, shaking horns, surrounded by clouds of dust and by fires, smoky fires and drums and shrill flutes “s’urtima cosa ki bisi”⁵, then the knife thrusting inside the eye sockets, ripping out the eyes, taking away his eyesight forever.
The old man is breathing heavily, writhing in terror, as if he were living again through the moments which he has already seen so many times in his dreams, in many endless restless nights which left him exhausted and covered in cold sweat at the first light of dawn, when he had to lead the prayers. The gray-clad man bends toward him, lowering his voice: “Grandpa sent the young man back, after having plugged the bloody eye sockets with tar pitch and salted water, together with a negro whose tongue – but not eyes – had been ripped off … they plugged a tar-soaked cloth in his mouth to stop the blood, too … and they tied their ankles together, the blinded man and the muted man, they hung on their back sheep-skin bertulas⁶ filled with the heads of the other guys and they sent them back to the beach, to tell the horror which they had found in Monte Acutzu … and he told me that for years to come the faccis nieddas did not show up around … they feared the rage of the demons that had massacred so many of their men. Many helms and many spears, many fires and many drums, just a few warriors … a staged scene as the last thing that a terrified boy would see … a nice practical joke for the brigantes⁷, don’t you think so, holy man?”

(continues)
(previous)

¹ Unu fustixeddu de modditzi a small lentisk branch
² Faccis nieddas blackfaces
³ a smemoriadura with memory-erasing effect
⁴ Mira, facci niedda, s’urtima cosa ki bisi, e bai, bai a du contai in Thuniss…hommini ki beniri innoi po gherrai nexidi cosa sua…mira… Look, blackface, the last thing you are going to see, and go tell it in Tunis, ... a man who comes here to wage war doesn’t know what he is doing.
⁵ s’urtima cosa ki bisi The last thing you are going to see
⁶ bertulas pannier
⁷ brigantes brigands

Tea leaves in Zaragoza - III

The old man remained silent, intent, as if his eyes were once again open under the linen blindfold that went from his brow, wrapped up in his turban, down to his nose.
“A ship came from Thuniss to the waters in front of Crabonaxis¹ and the brigantes² came down in large numbers … they wanted salt, they wanted timber, they wanted slaves … they wanted our blood, as always … they climbed up the watchtower while the men on top used up all of their arrows without wasting a single one … they were so many … and they could climb up to the top eventually … and they caught them, they castrated them and they disfigured them … then they made their way to the villages.
The balentes³ came from the mountains and from the other parts of the coast to find the Ten Horses Tower burned down and its defenders impaled among the arrow-riddled corpses of the brigantes … the plunderers had moved inland. The balentes were too few to attack them in an open field so they finished off the dying, buried their dead and tracked down their enemies without attacking them at once even if they had new weapons, bought from the Pisans, paid for with the gold of the matres⁴ and kept well-oiled … even a saintly man like you knows what is a crossbow, doesn’t he?”
The old man shuddered … and a voice welled up again in his mind, the voice of Daoud, the convert Jew, who looked at the Berber pierced by the hissing bolts who had broken through the Damascus steel armor and felled to the ground the formidable warrior between the lentisks of the clearing “They have crossbows, the crossbows that Sheitan, be he one thousand times cursed, delivered to the Franks and the Greeks to ruin the believers …”. He shut up suddenly, realizing he had spoken inadvertently, lost in the thought of those terrible moments.
“Not Sheitan, old man, but Guglielmo di Massaciuccoli, an old rascal from Pisa, who got us to pay through the nose for them … but grandpa told me that that time they worked wonders … iron-covered brigantes with their plate armors pierced through like pigs, one by one in the dust vomiting blood on the slopes of Monte Acutzu⁵ … and the balentes shot from well-hidden positions, protected by the bushes and by the archers … who could nothing against the armored Saracen warriors, but could nail the light-armored men who raided the shrubland looking for the crossbowmen … and it was then, while the night was falling, that grandpa got an idea.”
We were sitting in the krakkiri⁶, a fogu sturau⁷, with the stars above us, our black hoods over our heads, dressed in our chainmail armors oiled with olive dregs and sheep fat.
“They are too many”, grandpa said, leaning onto his matzocca⁸ “and without heavy cavalry we will never push them back into the sea. We can get heavy cavalry only if we borrow gold from Pisa to pay Angles and Teutons … but in that way we would just be switching from one slavery to the next.” “You travelled” Buikku⁹ said, sharpening a two-foot bolt “you saw how the Teutons and the Persians fight, and the Varyags from Rus as well, the ones that serve the Caesar who rules Bysantium … what can we do?”.
“People say that far away … where the sun rises, and perhaps even beyond that, some men live, as small as we are, their skin yellow as gold … or yellow as piss, according to others … these men learnt something that we also know … in sa gherra perdinti tottus, finzas su ki binciri¹⁰ … and so they figured out that when an enemy marches against you, you have to scare them, scare them with thoughts of huge, unreasonable threats, get them to believe that your strength is immense, superhuman and unmatchable, get them to think that your ten warriors are actually a thousand, that your horses are not one hundred but one hundred times one hundred, and your arrows a hundred times that … and the news must not come from you, but from one of them who has seen - or he believes he has seen - and comes back to tell the story … crazed with fear …”.
The old man was breathing slowly, while the old memories welled up … memories of a time when the sun was not only heat on your face, but dazzling light, sparkles on the sea waves, coloured flowers in wheat fields, flashing weapons and burning fires … arrows whistled while they were running among the bushes … their armor was not as much of a protection as something of a hindrance: crossbows bolts broke easily through them and they could not flush out the crossbowmen hiding in the wild olive and juniper bushes, those who had tried to get to them had ended up with a slashed throat or a spear in their back. Most of the Tunisian raiders were far away, towards the course of the river … and their group of five had made the mistake of chasing a young shepherdess hoping to bring her back to the camp to take advantage of her at leisure … but they had realized too late that she was running away without hurry … and she was choosing a precise path, not running crazily like a gazelle pursued by a pack of jackals … and when two of them had fallen into a hole covered with leafy branches, skewering themselves on reed bundles which had been tied together with rush leaves and kept apart from each other with a stone in the middle of the bundle, they had understood it was a trap … horned helms had appeared between the bushes … a deep beastly growl vibrated in the air and the hunters, turned into prey, were afraid to think to what could be chasing them in that heat filled with cicadas’ songs. Arrows, drums, horn calls in their ears and the breath is becoming short, and that growl behind you …
“And if the enemy thinks that a thousand men are getting to him and not just ten … or that those who torment him are daemons vomited out from Earth’s innards or generated by a magic spell … he will be looking back while he’s racing away … and you will wait for him by the wayside and you will put a spear through him head on …” Run, run as much as you can … the hillside is steep but we can do it because over there the creek is already showing and our gulet¹¹ is in the waters just behind … and we can do it if we run, if they don’t catch us, if they think we are dead too, if Daoud and the other guys climb up till here … Abdhul wasn’t anymore with them and turning around they see him fallen on the ground, with two arrows in his neck, spitting red drool, his mouth already covered with flies … they run away crazy with fear while the drums are getting closer and closer behind them, they run on the track that should lead them to the sea …

(continues)
(previous)

¹ Crabonaxis
² brigantes: brigands
³ balentes: valiant men
⁴ matres: mothers
⁵ Monte Acutzu
⁶ Krakkiri
⁷ a fogu sturau: with our fires out
⁸ matzocca
⁹ Buikku: Sardinian version of the name that in Italian is Salvatore
¹⁰ in sa gherra perdinti tottus, finzas su ki binciri: In war they all lose, even those who win
¹¹ gulet: a kind of sailing vessel

Tea leaves in Zaragoza - II

“Enianta de su mari, is faccis nieddas a conca serrada ...”¹ , so the gray-clad man started out, as if he were singing a sad song “enianta de su mari, they came from the sea with s’inzoga² and the sword, with bows and arrows, su fogu e sa mutria mala³ … people that come from the sea, never good news for our land and our people … s’inzoga² for men and women, children and old people, good for them only as pack animals, to be used for work and driven with lashes if it needs, accappiaus a sa mol’e tzugu⁴, their neck tied, carrying a sheep bell so they are heard and easily caught if they try and run away, just like sheep … they came from the sea from Thuniss and Catthraxene, there were more of them than su pipizziri⁵ in August and there were so few of us … and after the inzoga, the sword for those who didn’t submit, and the fire and su presoni⁶.” The eyes of the gray-clad man sparkled, the old man listened intently as if searching for a secret rhythm in that harsh tune, so distant from the harmony of the oft-recited suras.
“Ma s’agatta sa borta, but sometimes” the gray man went on after a short pause “sometimes the sheep too have enough of it, they see too many slaughtered lambs, too much milk drained away with trickery and treason and inzà cumprendinti ki no tenent pastori⁷, they understand then that there is no shepherd caring for them and they are at the mercy of thieves and murderers. This happened in my land, when the Ceasars had to give up control of the seas … and they started up coming from the seas, is istrangios⁸, first the Goths, then the Vandals and then is faccis nieddas⁹ … and we found out we were sheep without shepherd and that the sheep could not take it much longer. Just as when Is Arrubios¹⁰ came, a long time ago, to plunder and round up new slaves, Babbu Mannu¹¹ put swords and arrows in our hands … and new weapons, as the times had changed, and the balentes¹² alone were not enough. And we put then black-sailed ships in the sea, in front of the ghost city of the Ceasars, in the lagoon and in front of the walls of the village of Stampaxi¹³ and rowed them to the open sea, together with the fishermen, just like fishermen, and stopped them there, still, with the oars in the water and with lowered sails. When we then saw a ship with armed men coming in the still faint dawn light, ready with the intzogas² to grab people as slaves from our houses, our churches, our fields, … with their weapons, their armours, their swords, … and so many, as fleas on a dog … and tell me old man, what do sheep do when so many wolves are around? Even if the sheep grew teeth, they know wolves have a bigger mouth … it does not help trying to bite them at their throats … sa berbeghe no abbrancara sos canes¹⁴ … better letting the wolves think they are safe and they have to worry about nothing else as plundering … otherwise wolves join forces, come in a big group, and for the sheep it’s over … so every now and then some ship ended up on a sandbank … because the sea signals had been moved around … we then jumped on the ship, and we killed every single one of them, conca a pari¹⁵, homines et juvenes¹⁶ and all of them into the sea with a stone tied to their feet or their neck, food for the fish … sometimes we let them put their feet on ground … then an arrow on the back every ten steps, from the shore till the hill … and then the knife under women’s garments, in market baskets, among children’s toys … the knife slashing the throats of the faccis nieddas⁹, while waiting for the balentes¹² to come, ever too few, to fight them … some other times we retreated in our towers and down arrows and Greek fire, stones and heads cut in past bardanas¹⁷, and fire on their ships, and underwater swimmers holding knives between their teeth in the praniggiu¹⁸, smooth as a millpond … some other times, is faccis nieddas⁹ who came to sell, sold their stuff, those who came to buy, bought what they wanted, those who came to steal, stole, and those who came for slaves, grabbed them … but this particular time something else happened …”

(continues)
(previous)

¹ “Enianta de su mari, is faccis nieddas a conca serrada ...”: they were coming from the sea, the blackfaces in helms
² s’inzoga: the rope
³ su fogu e sa mutria mala: the fire and the evil ways
⁴ accappiaus a sa mol’e tzugu. tied to the grindstone
⁵ su pipizziri: locusts
⁶ su presoni: the prison
⁷ inzà cumprendinti ki no tenent pastori: they then understand there is no shepherd caring for them
⁸ is istrangios: strangers
⁹ is faccis nieddas: blackfaces
¹⁰ Is Arrubios: the Red People
¹¹ Babbu Mannu: the Great Father
¹³ balentes: valiant men
¹³ Stampaxi: one of the city boroughs of Cagliari, a village at the time of the story
¹⁴ sa berbeghe no abbrancara sos canes: sheep do not grab the neck of dogs
¹⁵ conca a pari
¹⁶ homines et juvenes: men and youngsters
¹⁷ bardanas: task force missions
¹⁸ praniggiu: low waters

Tea leaves in Zaragoza - I

Tea leaves in Zaragoza

Giorgio Astara

Night has fallen over Zaragoza, and together with the darkness low clouds came, frayed by a wind that blew without pause throughout this autumn day. Along the narrow alleys of the Medina wind gusts whirl ceaselessly flapping the gray cloaks of the two hooded men. A silent ulema is leading them, silent and intent in the thankless task of protecting two infidels that thread on this soil, which is dearest to Allah, from the rightful wrath of the believers. The priest then knocks at a wooden door, and when from inside a clang of unlocking bolts reaches his ears steps aside and walks away silent without a parting word for the two wretched men whom he accepted escorting for the sake of Allah, praised be his name.
When the servant draws the curtain aside, a gust of cold air enters the warm stillness of the shadowy room. One of the gray-clad men, his face inscrutable, stops at the threshold, the other enters the shady room where an elderly man, wrapped in a white woolen cloak, sits in front of a low table, his face covered by a linen veil. “Is it you the man I’m waiting for?” the voice of the old man sounds still clear, despite the age.
In front of him stands a small man, his gray hair cropped short and straight after the fashion of the Latins and the Franks, bareheaded like just one of the crazy followers of the impostor Christ could dare, wearing a Frank sword at his belt and a sheep skin over his tunic. The servant shakes his head over the queer ways of his master, the elderly saintly man and mullah, whose name cannot be uttered in Zaragoza, the man who dedicated his life to the service of Allah after his eyes were blinded by the viciousness of the unfaithful Rums.
“Seu eu, t’appu scrittu eu, That’s me, I’m the man that wrote to you” the other answers, his harsh accent mellowed by the lightly mocking undertone in his voice as if there was something silly in the situation. The old man seems to get the irony when he answers:
“Oh, yes … your letter was read to me, I don’t have my eyes anymore … since a lot of time … what would I use them for anyway? I committed the Suras to memory in the long years I spent in the darkness, and I could recite them to the believers with my voice that is still so clear, a gift from Allah to make up for the loss of my eyesight. It’s since my young age that I pray in the mosque with all of the people, and in addition I call the believers to prayer at the set times.”
“You are a muezzin …” the other answers, still standing “just like the bells in the Christian lands, you call the believers to prayer.”
“Bells are a trick of Sheitan's for those who believe in the Christian deception … nothing can substitute for a man’s voice to speak to a man’s heart … isn’t your renegade rabbi Paul that talks about clanging cymbals? ”
“Our Paul says that without love man is a clanging cymbal … Well, if I were here to talk theology, I would not be here alone, but with many balentes¹ from my land, armed to the teeth” the gray man replies, showing white teeth behind his bristly moustache “Do you want to leave me standing, saintly man, since I’m a Christian?”
The old man waves a hand, as if he was chasing away a fly, but he is perhaps driving away an evil thought, the sin of being inhospitable in a honorable house in Zaragoza, where all are welcome, believers, Jews and Christians.
A house servant brings on a tray a large copper jug smoking with hot water and copper cups where many brown leaves have been carefully crumbled into bits together with mint offshoots: while he sets the low table up, putting on small almond-and-honey pastries and small unleavened bread rolls, the two men remain in front of each other, silent.
At the end, after the tea from Cathay has been sipped in silence, the old man starts speaking again: “You wrote to me, and my secretary read it to me, that you have something that belongs to me … how can you have such a thing in your hands … supposing that you are telling the truth … what do you answer?”
“Answering will take some time perhaps … but it is just after sunset and I cannot sleep till just before dawn, sometimes … do you want to hear my story, revered man? I heard this story many times through the years, when I was a child with curly hairs, from the voice of my grandfather, next to the forredda², mother of sparks, in the winter nights, or in su the cuili de su monti³ under the stars of a summer night … my mind will go back to my young days as I will go through the story … will you listen?”
“You talk … you talk like …” the old man answers as if searching for something in his memory “Tell your story then, this old man will be listening.”

(continues)

¹ balentes: valiant men
² forredda: oven
³ su cuili de su monti: the sheep pen in the mountains

Swords for hire - IV

A dark light appears in the black eyes of the old warrior “If you are talking about the German knights that forced their way through the Catalan infantry towards the end of the battle … I think they were able to save their hides … together with the Englishmen … but they took a serious beating … their leader has only one eye and a broken nose, right?” “Yes … he’s Hagen” Hanno answers all in one breath “He made it for sure … he smashed more Catalan skulls than the whole Pisan army was able to, today.” “I’d like you to tell me something … why do you lose your time saving crippled soldiers, instead of looking after your own safety? You are risking a lot …” “I, Gabinius, recruit ‘balentes’ in villages throughout the island … and bring them to fight for the side that pays the best money … Pisa’s wages weren’t bad … but those dimwits have never even opened a military treatise … so when I saw things were taking a bad turn I thought: what shall I tell Tzitza Peppa, Columba, Bonaccattu, what shall I tell all of the matres that entrusted their balentes to me? Could I come back bringing them their dead sons’ swords? And why? So I decided to listen to the advice of a friend I was chatting with a few days before the battle …”
“But you did not answer my question … why save random mercenaries?” “Not random … Germans … and a German once has drunk my wine in my house.” The darkness was now complete and the squad travelled rapidly in the brush … since a while the fragrance of the sea had been reaching them mixed together with that of laurel, myrtle and lentisk essences through the dense thicket. “He was a soldier of fortune just like you … he had come on Genua’s pay to fight against Pisa … he found shelter in our lands owning little more than his sword … but he was of good character … he fitted well in our community and worked with us … pulled in the fishing nets, repaired the palisade traps … who knows perhaps it was because of the beautiful eyes of Reparata, a virgin in the atedeo of Bainzu … who knows … he was a strapping, well-built man and worked in peace with us … He was our guest and we became friends.
Then one morning at dawn while we were preparing the nets to go out to the ‘praniggiu’ … a Saracen galley showed up … coming from Antiogu for sure … it approached rowing, sliding on water in the morning still … twenty or thirty of them swam to the beach and came to shore as ghosts … it was just three of us on the beach … the youngest of us run away as fast as the wind … but they would have caught him if it hadn’t been for Wolfram … who picked up an oar and confronted the band of “faccis nieddas” … and he killed so many with the oar, so many with the weapons he grabbed from the fallen enemies … when a group of balentes arrived the “faccis nieddas” were running away … Wolfram was on the ground … covered with the bodies of the killed enemies … he had protected our village … Do you understand, Hanno? I owed something to Wolfram … and you and your friends have collected on it …”
“Yes … something similar happened in my village as well … in Carinthia, at the time I was a child … a Frisian … a strong man, a heathen as big as a bear, got himself killed by the Hungarians to save a group of children that were playing on the river’s dry bed … we found seven or eight Hungarians with their skulls crushed like walnuts and five or six more with broken necks … he had perhaps twenty arrows stuck in his body but he was still alive, while the children hugged him and cried … so my grandfather told me … it took him many days to die and we buried him without his iron collar and with a sword … he had earned his freedom at least in the afterlife.”
“Do you see Hanno? It does not matter whether German or Sardinian or Frisian … we are all men under the sun … perhaps one day we will shake hands with the faccis nieddas and with the Hungarians as well … who can say?” “What shall I do now?” “I would like to introduce you to a friend of mine … someone who pays better than Pisa and can perhaps promise us a better future … for soldiers of fortune like us.”
A lanky man emerges from the shadows, wrapped in a purple-dyed woollen cloak … his dark skin and black, perfectly groomed beard make him look like an Oriental, but his gray eyes show a Slavic inheritance. “Hanno … I introduce you to Costantino Lascaris, he comes from Byzantium, on behalf of Alexius Comnenus, Basileus of the Romans … the Csar of the Bulgarians has decided to ally himself to the Republic of the St. Marcus Lion to wage war against the Basileus … and Costantino is recruiting men for the Saint Legions of the Stratiots to send against the Bulgarians … he already recruited many soldiers in the Rus, and now he has come till here …” The Byzantine remains silent, his eyes reflecting the fires … like an open door.
A Byzantine dromon sailed beyond the Isla de Is Cavurus in the following days … eastbound, carrying the destinies and hopes of a diverse group of men. Hanno was thinking about the seas of grass in his Carinthia, and about the crazy island that he thought he was leaving forever behind him … who can say where one’s life goes when a man is at sea?

Matres mothers
Atedeo family (??)
Bainzu a man’s proper name (equivalent of Salvatore?)
Praniggiu the low waters in the bay
Antiogu S. Antioco (an island off the coast of southern Sardinia)(??)
“faccis nieddas” blackfaces
balente valiant man