Read The Moor's Account for Free Online Page B

will water do? He is bleeding, not fasting.
    At least I am offering advice, not just standing there like some people.
    My mother pressed her palms on the wound and called for a candle from her basket so she could take a better look. My grandfather, may God have mercy on his soul, had sent her on the road with plenty of his stock. The Portuguese soldier calmly tethered his horse to a post and went to pull the donkey off the barge, but the poor animal twitched its long ears, turned its head sideways, and refused to move.
    Come help me, the soldier said to his companion. The two men, each one with a strap in his hand, dragged the donkey forward, but the travelers held it back from its saddle. First, you kill a man, they said, and now you want to steal his donkey? Meanwhile, the head ferryman searched the donkey’s panniers for the bundle of candles my mother needed.
    The commotion must have flustered the animal, because it began to bray. Out of solidarity, the other donkey on the barge took up the call. Donkeys, as anyone who has owned one will tell you, are loud. They can be heard for leagues around. If you happen to be near a particularly vocal one, it can be very unpleasant, which is exactly what everyone on the eastern bank of the Umm er-Rbi’ experienced on that fall evening of the year 903 of the Hegira. The deafening noise made everyone cover their ears, so no one heard my mother say that she was feeling the early contractions of labor.
    One of the travelers, perhaps remembering the saying of our Messenger, as recorded by Abu Huraira—when you hear a cock crow, ask for God’s blessing, for their sound indicates they have seen an angel, and when you hear a donkey bray, seek refuge in God for their sound indicates they have seen Satan—picked up a heavy stone and threw it at the soldiers. Others soon joined him, though it was dark by then and no one could see anything. The wind moaned, the horses heaved, the donkeys brayed, people shrieked.
    At last, one of the ferrymen managed to light a candle. He lifted it up. The horses had somehow untethered themselves and ambled away, dragging their prisoner. The soldiers dropped the man they had been beating and ran after them. The travelers sat up, rubbing their heads or limbswhere the stones of fellow travelers had struck them. As for my father, he still lay where he had fallen, contemplating the scene with impotent fury.
    The ferrymen told everyone to get back on the barge immediately, before the Portuguese soldiers returned. The travelers carried my father aboard, seating him gingerly next to his belongings. With difficulty, my mother walked on. Hurry, she told the ferryman, this child is on its way.
    The anchor was hoisted, and the barge glided on the river, now as dark as olive oil in a jar. By then, my mother’s pain had grown so intense that she settled herself on her knees and began to push. My father asked her whether she needed anything. I need to be home, she said.
    So it was that she pushed me out into the world, on the barge that carried her from one bank to the other, my father bleeding by her side. She said that she did not cry, that the violence that had been visited on my father had silenced her pain.
    When they arrived in Azemmur, a porter helped my mother, my father, and me onto his cart and took us home, while our belongings followed behind on the donkey. As they walked through the gate of the medina, my mother turned to my father and said, I want to name him Mustafa. My father did not reply; he had fainted.
    All three of us—father, mother, and newborn child—were carried into our new home. My uncle Abdullah went to fetch the doctor while the neighbors on either side of the house came to help: the men lifted my father onto his bed, where he would be more comfortable; the women washed and dressed me, then handed me to my mother to nurse; the children moved our belongings out of the doorway and into the courtyard.
    The doctor was a