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reflecting on this blindness on the part of the people of my country, including my own parents, who had been able to persuade themselves of the imminent arrival of an army of salvation when only death, defeat and shame awaited them.

    That year was also one of the most dangerous of all those that I would pass through. Not only because of the dangers hanging over my city and those nearest to me, but also because for all the sons of Adam the first year is the one in which illnesses are most deadly, in which so many disappear without leaving a trace of what they might have been or might have done. How many great kings, or inspired poets, or intrepid travellers have never been able to attain the destiny which seemed promised to them, because they were not able to come through his first difficult journey, so simple and yet so deadly! How many mothers do not dare to become attached to their children because they fear that one day they might find themselves embracing a shadow.
    â€˜Death,’ says the poet, ‘holds our life by two extremities: Old age is no closer to death than infancy.’
    It was always said at Granada that the most dangerous time in the life of a nursing baby is the period immediately after its weaning, towards the end of the first year. Deprived of their mother’s milk, so many children did not manage to survive for long, and it wascustomary to sew into their clothes amulets made of jet, and charms, wrapped up in leather sachets, sometimes containing mysterious writings which were thought to protect the bearer against the evil eye and various illnesses; one particular charm, called ‘wolfstone’, was even supposed to tame wild animals if placed upon their heads. At a time when it was not uncommon to encounter wild lions in the region of Fez, I often regretted not having been able to lay my hands on such a stone, although I do not believe that I would have dared to get sufficiently close to these creatures to place the charm on their manes.
    The pious considered these beliefs and practices contrary to religion, although their own children often carried amulets, because such men rarely managed to persuade their wives or mothers to listen to reason.
    I cannot deny this in my own case. I have never been parted from the piece of jet which Sarah sold to Salma on the eve of my first birthday, which has cabbalistic signs traced upon it which I have never been able to decipher. I do not believe that this amulet really has magical powers, but man is so vulnerable in the face of Destiny that he cannot help himself being attracted to objects which are shrouded in mystery.
    Will God, Who has created me so weak, one day reprove me for my weakness?

The Year of Astaghfirullah
    896 A.H.
14 November 1490 – 3 November 1491
    Shaikh Astaghfirullah had a wide turban, narrow shoulders and the grating voice of the preachers of the Great Mosque, and, that year, his dense reddish beard turned grey, giving his bony face the appearance of perpetual anger, which was the entire extent of the baggage which he carried with him into exile. He would never again colour his hair with henna; he had decided on this in a moment of lassitude, and woe to anyone who asked him why: ‘When your Creator asks you what you were doing during the siege of Granada, will you dare to tell Him that you were prettifying yourself?’
    Every morning, at the time of the call to prayer, he climbed to the roof of his house, one of the highest in the city, not to call the believers to prayer, as he had done for several years, but to inspect, from afar, the object of his righteous anger.
    â€˜Don’t you see,’ he cried out to his sleeping neighbours, ‘that it’s your own tomb that is being built down there, on the road to Loja, and you go on sleeping here waiting for someone to come along and bury you! Come and see, if it is God’s will that your eyes be opened. Come and see the walls which have been raised up in a