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single day by the might of Iblis the Evil One!’
    With his hand stretched westwards, he pointed with his tapered fingers to the citadel of Santa Fé which the Catholic kings had begun to build in the spring and which had already taken on the appearance of a city.
    In this country, where men had long adopted the odious practice of going into the street with their heads bare, or just coveringthemselves with a simple scarf thrown carelessly over their hair, which slid slowly on to their shoulders in the course of the day, everyone could distinguish the mushroom-shaped silhouette of Shaikh Astaghfirullah from far away. But few of the men of Granada knew his real name. It was said that his own mother had been the first to bestow this soubriquet upon him, because of the horrified cries which he used to utter from earliest childhood whenever anyone mentioned in front of him an object or an action which he considered improper: ‘
Astaghfirullah! Astaghfirullah!
I implore the pardon of God!’ he would cry at the mere mention of wine, murder, or women’s clothing.
    There was a time when people teased him, gently or savagely. My father confessed to me that long before I was born he would often gather together with a group of friends on Fridays, just before the solemn midday prayer, in a little bookshop not far from the Great Mosque, to take bets; how many times would the shaikh utter his favourite phrase in the course of his sermon? The figure ranged between fifteen and seventy-five, and throughout the ceremony one of the young conspirators would carefully keep count, exchanging amused winks with the others.
    â€˜But, at the time of the siege of Granada no one poked fun at Astaghfirullah,’ continued my father, thoughtful and disturbed at the memory of his former pranks. ‘In the eyes of the great mass of the people, the shaikh came to be regarded as a respected personality. Age had not caused him to abandon the words and the bearing for which he was famous; rather, on the contrary, the characteristics we used to laugh at had become accentuated. But the soul of our city had altered.
    â€˜You must understand, Hasan my son, that this man had spent his life warning people that if they continued to live as they did, the Most High would punish them both in this world and in the next; he had used misfortune to arouse them as a beater arouses game. I still remember one of his sermons which began along these lines:
    â€˜ “On my way to the mosque this morning, through the Sand Gate and the suq of the clothes dealers, I passed four taverns,
Astaghfirullah!
, where Malaga wine is sold with only the merest pretence at concealment,
Astaghfirullah!
and other forbidden beverages whose names I do not wish to know.” ’
    In a grating and heavily affected voice, my father began to imitate the preacher, embroidering his sentences with countless
Astaghfirullah!
,mostly pronounced so quickly as to be almost incomprehensible, apart from a few which were probably the only authentic ones. This exaggeration apart the words seemed to me as if they were fairly close to the original.
    â€˜ “Have not those who patronize these infamous haunts learned, from their earliest childhood, that God has cursed those who sell wine and those who buy it? That He has cursed the drinker and he who gives him to drink? They know, but they have forgotten, or otherwise they prefer drink which turns man into a rampaging animal to the Word which promises him Paradise. One of these taverns is owned by a Jewess, but the three others are owned,
Astaghfirullah!
by Muslims. And in addition, their clients are not Jews or Christians, as I know full well! Some of them are perhaps among us this Friday, humbly inclining their heads before their Creator, while only last night they were prostrate in their cups, slumped in the arms of a prostitute, or, even, when their brains were clouded and their tongues unbridled, cursing Him Who has forbidden