Post of the Month

~ May 2007 ~

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Nasir ~ Written by Esther.  Posted on the HoS Yahoo group May 2006.

Nasir waited until Hubert and the Earl's hoofbeats had receeded then slipped back out onto the track. He was not concerned that they would linger in the forest. Hubert's wound was too severe and the man needed rest. Nasir had felt the soldier tense in pain behind him with every sharp movement of the horse. No, David would head straight out of Sherwood with only an injured man at his side. Nasir had other matters on his mind.

He turned and took a long, careful look at the track the two horses had taken back to Nottingham. He wanted to make sure there were no obvious traces that men had passed out from the trees this way. It was doubtful that anyone would be searching for such signs, but he had been trained to be thorough and the old habits died hard.

The brambles bent where the horses had pushed onto the main track, but these would spring back into place overnight. Any such marks of passing could have been left by a deer. The horses' prints were his concern. The curving shoe marks gave away that men had wandered deeper in the forest and Nasir wanted to follow their trail back to camp carefully and cover any sign of the beasts' passing.

He knelt on the dry earth and spread his hands over the ground, using both his eyes and fingers to search out the prints. The hardened mud did not hold anything too clear, but he brushed the ground over carefully and resettled the old leaves around the entranceway from the path. When he was satisfied that nothing beyond a wild animal could have disturbed the area, he stood and began to follow the path back to camp. It was slow going. He paused every so often to kneel and lower the level of his sight along the ground to ensure that he missed nothing and, as he worked, his thoughts turned to David.

He wondered what had passed between Robert and his father when they had stepped away from the camp. A tightly controlled anger emanated from the Earl throughout their journey back. A control that Nasir recognised from his own father, a man who had always kept tight rein on his emotions. Mahmoud had clung tenaciously to his position in the town of Enfeh, despite the coming of the barbarian infidels to their land, and been forced at times into compromises beyond his liking. It had not made him a comfortable man to live with.

Yet David's visit meant that the two fathers were not so alike. Like Robert, Nasir had been banished from his home, his family, but Mahmoud would never have searched him out the way David had done today.

He had told Robert of his banishment - the cold, hard facts of it. There had been no need for more, for he knew Robert and knew his friend would accept it. He had been unable to articulate the horror of that day even though it was burned as clear in his mind as if it had happened only yesterday and as he thought on it the memories came thick and fast.

Enfeh had been slow to stir after the heat of that day. The men of the family had remained at the mosque after prayers to talk with friends. Hassan, Nasir and their father left first to return home. Mahmoud had soon lost patience with the meandering pace of the two young men as they'd paused to chat with others along the way.

When Mahmoud strode on ahead to the house, they had followed on slowly until Hassan stopped at a friend's house. Nasir had left him there, knowing Hassan would make his way home in his own time, and followed his father. The flat roofed house, its sandstone bricks blurred and softened by the hazy light, was silent and Nasir walked through it to the central courtyard puzzled by the quiet. The men would soon be returning for the evening meal and his sister, Sayida, should have been out in the courtyard overseeing the cooking fires and servants. There was no one about.

Pushing his way through the curtains covering the kitchen entrance he had found the old cook crouched at her work, peeling vegetables with a knife. She'd paused as he had entered and glanced fearfully at the doorway that led through to the women's quarters. At Sayida's door Nasir had drawn back the curtain and frozen at the scene that met his eyes.

Mahmoud stood in the centre of the room, his head bowed, his shoulders heaving from exertion. At his feet lay Sayida -crumpled on the floor like a cloth doll carelessly discarded by a child in a moment of boredom. Mahmoud had turned to face him. His hands hung limply at his sides, knuckles raw and bleeding, his white robes marked by dark spatters.

Before he could stop himself Nasir had thrown himself at Mahmoud with murderous intent. Even now he remembered the feel of his father's flesh splitting beneath his blows, the crunch of cartilage and bone, the searing rush of rage that overrode the pain in his fists as he struck again and again. If his uncles had not dragged him away he'd have killed his father for what he'd done to Sayida.

Nasir had not found out until the men of his family held him up to trial that his sister had been caught in her room with a man by Mahmoud. Sayida had brought eib - shame - on their family. Her death was an honour killing and no man would have denied Mahmoud's right to deal with a wayward daughter in this way. Even as he mourned her Nasir had accepted his father's actions. Sayida had known the danger of being alone with a man, even if she believed she would not be caught. She had been brought up to understand eib, just as Nasir had been brought up to believe in sharif - honour. And above all else stood the honour of the family.

Nasir was passing now under a stand of beech trees. In full leaf the spreading branches threw dense shade and few plants grew beneath them. Strewn with the leaves of the previous autumn the earth held its dampness. The tracks made by the two horses stood clear in the softened ground - the marks of the first horse heavily indented, giving away to an experienced eye that he'd carried a much heavier load than the one that came behind. Nasir took some time to smooth over the mud and obliterate the tracks, his thoughts still lost in the past.

The trial had not taken long. Nasir was bought up from imprisonment in the storage cellar beneath the house where he'd been thrown two days earlier. His father's reception room was cool, the long shutters thrown back, the windows shaded with cloth, filtering the sunlight. On the great rug in the centre of the floor sat the men of the family, silent and uneasy. It was all so unlike the usual atmosphere of the room where Mahmoud entertained his merchant friends and associates. The courtyard outside the window - Sayida's domain, ruled by her with an iron will and usually the hub of the household - was silent except for the splashing of the fountain.

At the far end of the carpet sat Mahmoud himself, leaning awkwardly against a great heap of cushions. His beaked nose was twisted oddly out of shape, both eyes puffy and swollen almost shut beneath his turban, his dark skin mottled with bruises. Through the haze of hunger and exhaustion that blurred his senses Nasir heard the wheezing sound his father made as he struggled against his injuries to draw breath.

I did that to him, Nasir had thought as he bowed his head. If they hadn't come, if my Uncles hadn't heard the screams....

The matter of his fate had already been discussed and decided upon. None of the men had glanced at Nasir as the charges against him and Sayida were spoken - one an attempted murderer, the other a fornicator. Neither had Mahmoud looked at him when he spoke at last, painfully ennunciating the words through his swollen lips.

"My daughter brought shame upon my family. My son has brought shame upon me in equal measure. I mourn the deaths of my two children."

Nasir had been unable grasp the words. In a daze of confusion he was taken to say goodbye to his brothers and then out to the front of the house where he was pushed up on horseback. The Uncles escorted him past the mudbrick houses of the town and out through the walls. The sea sparked in the sunlight, foaming against the beach that lined the cliffs Enfeh stood upon. Gulls wheeled overhead their harsh calls mocking and echoing in his head. As they had crossed the river that watered the town's fields, Nasir thought that he too was to meet his death, at the hands of his Uncles.

As the terraces and fields had slipped away behind them the men pulled the horses to a halt. Saud, the youngest Uncle - at 20 only two years older than Nasir himself - handed him a large waterskin and a wrapped bundle, his dark eyes sympathetic.

"Ride Nasir, away from here, away from Enfeh. May the Prophet, the peace and blessings of Allah be upon him, guide your path," Saud said, solemnly.

And Nasir had finally understood. His was a punishment as terrible and final as Sayida's. A living death - to be sent out into the land and denied by his family and never permitted to return.

The Uncles had drawn their swords and formed a line with their horses. If he tried to ride back they would kill him. For a moment he had been tempted to turn his horse at theirs and let it happen. An honourable way to die for the dishonour he'd given his father. But he was young. Fear pulsed in his veins and life called to him, so he'd spurred his horse and let her follow what path she chose, and turned his back on his home forever.

A particularly deep hoofprint drew Nasir back to the present as he concentrated on smoothing it away with his hand. He shifted his fingers over the humus of the forest floor to spread the dead leaves about, their colours dulled by age and rain, the veins lined with white mould. Around him the forest shifted and settled. A bird called its song above his head, a distinctive chiff chaffing trill, and he glimpsed its pale breast within the green canopy. He stood, satisfied with his work.

He was nearing the lake by the camp now, could smell the water drawn up into the air by the day's heat, but he was not ready to be amongst the others. His thoughts disturbed him, drew him back into a past he had long tried to forget, and he wanted to remain alone a while longer. The time was almost past for Asr, the evening prayer, and the meditative state would calm him.

He pushed on through the trees, making sure to circle the lake and come upon its shores from the furthest side so as not to meet any of the others. There was no wind, but the water rippled and dimpled as insects skimmed over its surface and fish fed on them from below.

He found the flat rock that he often used here for Salaat and removed his footwear. The water cooled his feet as he brushed the dirt and dust from his clothes. He bent to splash his face, careful to clean the inside of his nostrils and ears and rinse his mouth, then wash away all trace of mud from his hands and feet. He could not perform the ablutions completely but had long stopped worrying about that. Allah could see into the heart and mind of a man and read the intentions there and that mattered more, he felt, than clean clothes and a prayer mat.

Treading the water carefully, so as not to dirty his feet again, he stepped up on the warm rock. It angled back from the water, but was wide and long enough for him to kneel and prostrate himself upon. For now he remained standing and found his direction, facing as best he could judge, towards the Holy City. He paused a moment to silence his thoughts, his feet planted slightly apart, his eyes downcast. Then, when the calm washed over him, he raised his head and in a low, ululating voice he began the private call to prayer.