Free The Book of Saladin by Tariq Ali Page A

He could not afford to let the Festival degenerate into an orgy. His inspectors had appeared on the streets the previous night, accompanied by the criers, shouting out a warning: all obscene displays would be severely punished. The response of the people was equally severe. A transvestite had been picked to be the Emir.
    When we reached the square outside the palace, the noise had subsided. It was as if everyone simultaneously had felt the Sultan’s presence. He was seated on his horse, surrounded by his personal bodyguards. As our Emir approached, Salah al-Din rode forward to meet him. Words were exchanged between them, but only the transvestite heard them. A hundred different versions were circulating later that afternoon. The Sultan was seen to smile. Then he rode back into the palace.
    The revelry would continue late into the night, but many of us, exhausted and hungry, began to make our way home as the sun began to set. Rachel and I had removed our masks. We were buying some wine to take home when a face I thought I recognised approached, bent over my ear and whispered.
    “Ibn Yakub, if you want to see some real fun tonight, go to the Turcoman quarter, just behind al-Azhar. Don’t go to the Bab al-Zuweyla this year. The shadow-plays will be something unusual.”
    Before I could reply, the man had disappeared. Why was his face so familiar? Where had I seen him before? My inability to place him began to irritate me. Then, while we were eating our evening meal, I remembered who he was, and the memory made me gasp. He was one of the eunuchs, Ilmas by name, who worked in the harem. I had seen him, on occasion, talking to Shadhi and whispering in the Sultan’s ear. He must be a spy sent to observe the shadow-players, and to report on each of their performances. He had spoken to me conspiratorially, but was his whispered message in reality an order from the Sultan? Usually the players performed just outside the Bab al-Zuweyla. Was the eunuch Ilmas trying to keep me away from something? I gave up and decided to follow his advice.
    The festivities were approaching a natural climax as I walked back through the maze of lamplit streets to the Bab al-Zuweyla. Reassured by the fact that nothing unusual was taking place there, I walked on till I had reached the Turcoman quarter. The square was lit by lamps, and people were drinking and eating as they discussed the events of the day.
    Salah al-Din, according to the gossips in this quarter, had complimented the “Emir” on his eye make-up, and asked whether he and his friends would come and celebrate the impending liberation of al-Kuds. At this critical point, our transvestite leader had evidently lost his tongue and simply nodded like a child in the presence of a magician.
    The odour of hashish, not at all unpleasant, wafted by me at several points. At a distance I could see a large gauze cloth, behind which the shadows of the musicians and the actors could be seen preparing for the first of the evening’s performances.
    The play began at midnight. It was the story of a beautiful girl, surprised with her lover by an angry husband. The anguished crowd sighed with sympathy as the lover was slain and the woman dragged away by her husband.
    During the interval, the fate of the woman was the only subject of discussion. Angry debates shook the square. Should the husband have killed her as well? Why had he killed the lover when it was his wife’s fault in the first place? Why kill anyone? Love was sublime and no laws, Allah be praised, could prevent the attraction of one person for another.
    As the evening progressed, I realised that what we were watching was no ordinary tale. I seemed to know all these characters—or was my imagination at work, seeing parallels where there were none? The emotional tension in the square indicated that I was not the only one to have noticed a degree of coincidence.
    The second part of the performance removed all my doubts. The husband was sentenced to a