Heaven

Art

After I returned from delivering a message one day, Abdulhakam was waiting for me in the garden. 

“You’re finished here,” he said. “It’s time for you to go.” He was clearly angry, but there was also an element of abashment in his voice. He reminded me of a sheep that had been punished after misbehaving: angry, but powerless to act upon that emotion. 

“Uh,” I said, not quite sure what he meant. 

“You’ll go with Hashday.” Just as he said this, Hashday appeared.

“Hello there, Aragad,” he said. “Come along.” I took one last glance at Abdulhakam as I left, but I regretted it immediately; his trembling body could barely contain the rage in his eyes.

“What’s going on?” I said.

“The caliph has decided to take you on his team of craftsmen. You should be very excited about this; it’s a great thing for you.”

“But Abdulhakam—”

“Don’t worry about him.”

“But how did you—?”

“The caliph can be very persuasive,” he said. “And besides, he’s looking for the best craftspeople of the Azara—it’d be a real shame to hold you out from him.”

“What does he need so many craftspeople for?”

“As splendid and grand as the Azara is today, it’s nothing compared to what the caliph has got planned. In ten years, this will be the greatest city on earth. And you get to be a part of it!”

“Can I ask you a question, Hashday?”

“Of course, my lad.”

“Who is the caliph?” Until recently, I had thought the caliph was God himself. But if I wasn’t in heaven, then he must be nothing more than a man, albeit a special one. Still, people only talked about him as if he actually were God… 

Hashday smiled. “His name is the Servant of the Beneficent, sometimes called The Defender of God’s Faith, but most of the time he’s just called Caliph—it means Commander of the Faithful. For us, he’s the sovereign of the Caliphate of Kurtuba… like a king. But for the Moslems, he’s something more. He’s a descendent of Mohamed the Prophet himself, and the supreme figure of the Moslem faith, at least on this side of the Mediterranean.”

I didn’t understand much of what he was saying, but I remembered that Abdulhakam had talked about Mohamed, the man who helped rid Arabia of idol worship. 

“Are we in Arabia, then?” I asked.

Hashday chuckled. “No. We’re in the Sefarad—a place usually called Alandalus, or perhaps Hispania by the most nostalgic among us. Arabia is actually quite far away. Look,” he said, crouching to the ground. He drew an oval with his finger in the sand. “This is the Sea. We are on this side,” he said, pointing to the left of the oval. “To the north of the sea is the rest of Europa. You come from around this area, in fact.” He was pointing above the oval, a bit to the right. “Arabia is over here,” he said, pointing to the right of the oval, “not far from where my ancestors come from.”

He looked up at me for a moment before going on. “You see,” he said, “we’re both displaced, in a way. But I’ve grown to love the Sefarad, and you’ll see soon enough, I hope. It’s a land of grains, wines and oils, of every sort of fruit, of silver, gold, iron, tin and marble. The land is replete of all the makings of a real paradise on earth.” He seemed lost for a few moments behind his eyes, but after a brief reverie he continued, “Anyway, down here is a land called Africa. If you’d like, I can show you this on a proper map at some point, when we have more time. For now we have to carry on.”