Author’s Note: This story, based on a true incident that took place during the Third Crusade, is an excerpt of Longbows & Rosary Beads, a Robin Hood retelling series-in-progress, and is dedicated to my Muslim friends who inspired me with some of the descriptions in this historical vignette.
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Kashif Ahmed bin Suleiman, now Abu Saeed since the birth of his son, looked back upon the entirety of his service as an aide, bodyguard, and translator to the great Salah-ud-deen with appreciation. But some memories stood out with particular keenness, such as the day when the young Frankish woman made her appeal.
It was soon after the Christian kingdom of Jerusalem had fallen into Salah-ud-deen’s hands. She had made her way across enemy lines, to the camp, wild-eyed and weary. It had been a miracle she had gotten as far as she did against the odds and the beating sun. Trying to reach his tent, she had been seized by the Sultan’s soldiers. She started spitting out words rapidly in her language, her voice strained, intense, pleading.
Salah-ud-deen stepped outside to see what the commotion was about, and then turned to Kashif. “Ask her if she speaks any Latin,” he instructed, calmly.
Kashif did so, and she answered, almost dejectedly, still using the Frankish tongue.
“No, she says only church Latin,” he translated back.
“Then we can safely assume she speaks no Greek,” he exhaled. “The Christians have as many feuds with each other as they do with us, and as we have had in past years with our fellows. Such divisions on their part have benefited us long enough, but…” He raised an eyebrow. “Barring all other forms of direct communication, ask what she’s about in her own tongue. She can’t have taken this length of a risk for nothing, unless she’s crazed.”
Kashif did as he was told, and her response once again became animated, as she directed her eyes towards the Sultan, desperately.
“She says she was ransomed from the city, but…not her child. That her son of three months was taken away from her, by one of us, as a reprisal. She knew not what to do but to come to you in hopes of…”
“I know,” Salah-ud-deen finished. He often knew things without direct translation; his mind operated too fast for it, and his instinct faster. And it was becoming common enough, this begging mercy from him. Sometimes it worked, sometimes not. But the Christians of Jerusalem knew they had a better chance of trying with him than any other, especially women pleading for their men or even more so, their children.
Whatever he was, or whatever brutality he was capable of in his warring, in his climb to power, and in his execution of any who dared cross over his line, he could not seem to completely set aside some underlying humanity in himself, and in others he encountered. That was his grace, deeper even than his strength. It was a balance of the two that made him great.
“What she asks, even if I were inclined to grant her it…she realizes the difficulty, does she not? It may be akin to finding a specific grain of sand in the desert.”
“The fortunes of war,” Kashif ground out. “Leave it as it falls, my sheikh. It is on the infidels to ransom their people. If they have failed in this, let it rest on their heads what happens to them.”
Kashif started to give a gesture, and the soldiers started pulling her back, but she struggled against them. Some steely determination in her eyes marked her out as a fighter, or indeed, a fighter’s wife. Yes, she was surely a crusader’s wife, fighting for a crusader’s child. And Kashif would rather have had none of it. But he saw she had managed to break loose and fall down on her knees, scraping her common dress on the rough earth, and there were tears in her eyes now.
“Heureux les miséricordieux car ils obtiendront miséricorde!” she cried out, breaking down into a sob, reaching out as if to grab at the edge of the Sultan’s tunic.
He took a step back, and looked to Kashif, questioningly.
“She said…blessed are the merciful…for they shall…”
“Experience mercy,” he filled in. “The Frankish tongue does not differ that far from Latin, not in such things as the Christian Gospels, at least.” He looked back to the woman in front of him, and sighed shortly. “Tell her…to wait.”
He turned and headed off into the camp, with Kashif following him.
It had taken hours, but Salah-ud-deen knew how to ask the right questions, and get the right answers, in and around the camp, in the areas where the unransomed prisoners would be held in preparation to be sold by their captors at the slave market, usually to a life bound in hard labor, or to serve in the households of the elite.
But this…this was a mere babe. A still-suckling, three-month-old babe. The soldier who captured the little one had thrust it in a rough basket, leaving it open under the beating sun. It was squirming sporadically, as babies will do, making the noises babies do before their tribe teaches them a language that sets them apart from others, and teaches them to know dark eyes from blue ones. And this babe’s eyes were blue…
“In truth, soldier, I know not how you even expect to fetch a price in this manner.” Salah-ud-deen gestured to the child, exposed to the sun. “It is not even old enough to be away from its mother; do you wish to starve it, or scald it in this heat?”
“Perhaps, my sheikh, I have little care for it, either way. Though if I’d had my way, the mother might have been brought as well to see the fate of pale Christian skin in these parts.” There was a bitter cynicism in his voice punctuating his intent, and Kashif saw the Sultan visibly winced. Vengeance could be a petty, senseless, excessive thing…most commonly wreaked against the most helpless, in return for the deaths of other innocents…and on and on it would run, like water, like blood…
“And what if…I were to buy the child from you?”
“Sultan,” Kashif hissed, but Salah-ud-deen just put up his hand to shush him…as he always did when money talk, or lack-of-money talk, came into the equation. He had a habit of giving things away…to the point of putting himself in some incredibly delicate situations more often than his counselors cared to count.
“So…we should discuss…price?” the man inquired.
“Do you doubt that Salah-ud-deen would give you fair compensation? Would you infer that your sultan is a cheat?”
“No, never, my sheikh!”
“I am glad to hear that. Then my word should be enough for you to guarantee a just transaction. Now, if you would kindly hand over my newly acquired property.”
Kashif bit his tongue as the child was handed to his commander in short order, and promptly turned away from the would-be salesman.
“What look is that on your face, Abu Saeed?” his commander queried sternly as they moved away from the prisoner section, the baby still in his arms.
“I…have simply never seen you…in this capacity.” He jutted his chin towards the child, who had started to cry and wriggle at first, but was now beginning to calm down to some extent in the Sultan’s firm yet not harsh hold.
“Abu Saeed, do you know how many children I have fathered now?”
“I believe…the count escapes me.”
“Seventeen, to be exact. I have been at it since my marriage to the first of my wives, when I was the age of fourteen. And you have fathered…?”
“Thus far…one, my sheikh. As you well know.”
“And based on this, you critique my basic ability in such matters?”
“It wasn’t that…”
“Then what was it?”
Kashif glared at the child. “That…may fight us one day. Burn our villages, storm our cities…murder our women…this…unbeliever’s male child…it may have the makings of another Templar…”
Perfect timing, the baby started squirming and swinging its little fist around, which briefly collided with the Sultan’s face so he had to reposition his hold.
“Yes, assuredly…a valiant sword arm there, to smite us sorely…” Salah-ud-deen gave Kashif a look that conveyed his subtle sense of humor without actually smiling, but as he looked down at the completely guileless child gazing up at him, he came very near to it. “No one’s ever told him to be afraid yet. What a strange thing that is…for in a few years he’ll learn, and then…he’ll be like my youngest, knowing too well who the enemy is, and who the friend is…by the way they look…but this one can meet eyes with me, and not be afraid…”
“It doesn’t know what you are.”
Salah-ud-deen turned. “And what am I?” His words hung heavily. “Do you believe that of me, Kashif? Have we become creatures who only see in life the potential for death, or in defenselessness, the desire to cause more suffering?”
“But…they are infidels, rejecters of the last Messenger. And besides, they do it to us.”
“Some of them, yes, they do it to us. Such is the evils of men, and we avenge ourselves upon them, upon those responsible, and their heads upon the pikes are proof of it. But…” He paused and tilted his head questioningly. “We are not…those men. And if we are, have we not…turned into something we would rather not see within the reflecting glass?”
Kashif bit his lip. “In truth, I know not.”
He looked at his aide tellingly. “I know this: your sister’s death will never leave you, but if you do not put aside the guilt…it will eat you inside-out.”
Kashif knew he would not ever be able to put from his mind the images of her face melted from the fire and scent of burning flesh as it fell from her bones. That was all that was left of her after the Templar raider set her clothes aflame. And Kashif could not forgive himself, or let go of the hatred burning just as intensely in his heart, for he had not been there to defend her.
“Tell me,” the Sultan asked quietly, “what do you think the lady Ayesha would have done, had she seen this child?”
Kashif dared a glance into those baby blue eyes glistening with blissful curiosity. “First, rightly decry it for a Frankish invader…then soften and want to take care of it…then become unreasonably attached and decide it was hers and no one else’s.”
Now the Salah-ud-deen did actually smile. “Well…we won’t go that far. It has a mother, and I believe it would feel safer overall with her than me.”
“It’s as safe with you as with a mother,” Kashif conceded softly. “I know how it is with you. You are loathe to harm a thing that looks at you with innocence, or turn away one that pleads to you in need, with nowhere else to turn.”
“I have had to be hard at times…can’t spare every innocent caught in the wars, can I?”
“But you do whatever you can; that’s where your heart is.” He gritted his teeth. “You know what I think before I utter it. I think…you gave them too good of terms. They slaughtered every Muslim they found when they entered the Holy City, with blood splashing in puddles beneath their horses’ hooves. But you had the streets splashed with rose-water.”
Salah-ud-deen shrugged. “I have high standards of cleanliness. Stone me!”
Kashif heaved a sigh.
“But you know I had not planned to be so generous after their first rejection of my offer,” Sala-hu-deen admitted gravely. “But had I not, they would have killed our prisoners and pulled down whatever was left our holy places.”
“But all the same, you’re going beyond what you need do now,” the younger man retorted. “You’re paying off many of the Christians yourself, and turning others loose at the gate…”
“Many are women, children…widows, orphans, the aged or infirm who use sticks to stand upright…even in practicality, they would gain little at a market, and cost more to sustain ourselves….”
“But you’ve been using your own ransom money to free whole swathes of them,” he shot back. “And too often letting the women beg off their men. They would fetch a ransom or a sale, but you let them go when they plead to you. And now going out of your way for this…offspring of your enemies….”
Sala-hu-deen turned his eyes down to the child again. “When the Messenger of Allah, prayers and peace be upon him, entered Mecca upon its conquest during the holy month of Ramadan, his companions might easily have punished those who drove them out and murdered others. They cried out ‘This is the day of blood!’, but he said to them in reply, ‘Change your cry, and say this is the day of mercy!’ He also said, ‘Allah does not show mercy to he who does not show mercy to people. Whoever does not show compassion, shall not receive compassion, and whoever does not forgive, shall not be forgiven.’ And one saves oneself by doing so. ”
“My sheikh…”
“Having mercy for others is in not punishing them when afforded the opportunity to do so, like Yusuf had for his brethren. As it was my namesake, I was made to recite it particularly often. Do you remember what he said in the surah?”
“Yes,” Kashif conceded.
“Quote it to me.”
His aide swallowed awkwardly “He said, ‘No blame will there be upon you today. Allah will forgive you; and He is the most merciful of the merciful.’”
“And is this not the way of Allah with us? When the Mighty and Sublime forgives His servants’ sins, they are covered on their books of bad deeds as if those sins never took place. As such, when our hearts know the fullness of compassion, it covers up in our hearts the wrong that was done to them. Such a thing is meant not just for us, but for all humanity, for they are still creatures of Allah.”
His aide turned to him. “Do you believe such a thing is possible?”
“We can try. Besides, I have not fasted for two Ramadans,” he noted. “Perhaps…I might make it up in other ways…”
“You know you are the most pious among us, and only refrained from the fast due to your health,” Kashif shot back in defense. “Your physician would confirm this before any imam…and so would your whole army!”
“But there was a time I was not so very pious,” he confessed. “In my youth, I struggled between the mind and the passions often enough. Even as I was schooled in the hadiths, I had far too easy access to wine, women, and pleasures that blind. Too easily did I find my temper ruling me without check, my father’s temper passed onto me, causing me to use to the blade in contest too freely, without proper thought. It was a little war within me…call it my first jihad…my first striving to resist. It raged between Allah and the shadow side of my will.”
“And you won out over it?”
“No, Abu Saeed, Allah won out, for He has His will for men, and dominion over all. I put my trust in Him now, the will between the seen and unseen, who sent for the Muhammad, peace be upon him, a mercy to the worlds. I am merely a part of that, the great submission, and strive to submit my own will, my passions, my temperament, all things…I seek to hold all of them in check. I have learned that the strong man is not the one who wrestles, but the strong man is in fact the one who controls himself in a fit of rage. It is a concentrated mind that makes a blade cut keener, remember that, my friend. And yet I am not so much the wielder as the wielded, the instrument not the song. I am…Allah’s sword, the weapon swinging in the hand of the One who brings about the victory. And can a sword claim credit ahead of its master?”
“You are noble, my sultan.”
“If nobility goes without humility it undoes itself. Do not forget that.”
“I doubt this child will remember such things in years to come,” Kashif scoffed. “From what I have seen of knights, there is rarely a match of either…much less gratitude.”
“I would not be completely sure of that. I have fought a leper king too many years, checking each other strike for strike. Whatever I may think of polytheists and cross-worshippers, they show zeal. And besides, with this child, they will surely tell him he should kiss the ground to have been held by one with darkness of feature, and live….and he will learn to fear, just as my children will continue to fear pale, shaven faces.”
“They are tall and fearful to our children…”
“And we are short and fearful to theirs,” he added, with a slight jab at himself. “It all works out the same…” The baby started crying again, and struggling. “I…believe it’s hungry. It’s been too long from her already.”
They were back at the front of the camp now, where the woman was slumped against a tent pole on the ground. Salah-ud-deen appeared from the shadows, holding the bundle in his arms. His lips slightly curled upwards, his face seemingly about to crack from the unusual expression it gave. It was a peculiar scene for anyone who knew this warrior of Allah, who had led so many men into war and many more to a certain death. In that instant he seemed suddenly vulnerable, almost fragile. The infant stared into the abyss of his deep dark eyes, which seemed to have calmed him down again, unusually so for a child who had been kept apart from its mother so long.
As soon as the mother caught sight of him and the babe in his arms, she crossed herself and then sprang forward crying, “Ohh, mon ange, mon trésor, mon coeur!”, and pulled the child from his arms and into her own, kissing it upon the face and head.
And then all at once, she started pulling open her dress, exposing her breast for the child to suckle. At first, there was a sense of awkwardness from the onlookers at what momentarily seemed improper. But the awkwardness melted soon enough, for she was in truth a mother, driven by the same desperation that would be felt by any mother, of any tribe, to sustain her child. It was so natural, flowing, instinctive, like the well-spring that brooked quelling. There was no shame in it, no hesitation, just love.
And the hardened soldiers surrounding her did not know what to do. So they did nothing; just stood and watched, as did Salah-ud-deen and his aide, almost numbly as she let the baby nurse. And then she began to cry. It was another natural enough thing to do, but the depth of the tears, the wrenching sobs of sheer relief seemed to dredge something up in her enemies looking on. Kashif saw the look on his commander’s face, the look of having been stripped, for one moment, of the pretext and prescription of duty, and seeing the pure nakedness of need cut to the pure nakedness of the soul of man…who wanted to go home.
When the woman managed to pull herself together, she looked up and softly asked something of Kashif. The Sultan, too, seemed to snap out of his own phase, and turn to his aide for answers.
“She wants to know…why they are all staring at her in such a way,” Kashif translated quietly. “She has not seen soldiers look upon an enemy, much less a captive woman, as they look upon her.”
“Tell her that paradise lies at the feet of the mother,” Sulah-ud-deen murmured. “That is why their eyes pain them. They have seen eternity in the midst of chastisement.”
Kashif translated his words back to her, and another sob escaped her, this time for a reason besides mere relief. In an instant, she was back on her knees in front of him, grabbing for his tunic once more, in a gesture of gratitude, and whispered something else. Again, he looked to Kashif.
“She says you have given her back eternity in the midst of chastisement, too.”
He nodded slightly in recognition of this, and helped pull her up by the elbow. Then he gestured to one of the soldiers. “Secure her a mount and send her back across the lines to her people. Let no harm befall her or her child.”
Salah-ud-deen and Kashif watched as she departed, the tears still glistening in her eyes.
And the two men did not meet each other’s eyes for a long while.
“I am a man of war,” the Sultan stated at last. “And yet I would say it is a greater victory to win men’s hearts through gentleness and kindliness than through blood, if it be possible. For blood never sleeps…” He turned to his aide.
“But…it is not always possible. And here we are…”
And he turned and walked back to his war tent. And it all began again.