Chapter I
Bismillah ar-rahman ar-rahim.
In the name of Allah, the Beneficent, the All-merciful.
The words of Hajji Fuad ibn Hassan ibn Tahir ibn al-Hajji of the tribe of the Bani Ibrim, who implores the prayers of all who read these words. May God grant to this poor man that his path may be a straight one and that he may be kept from the fire, which is the reward of all idolators and infidels.
Allah, in His wisdom, gives to each man the due measure of gifts and abilities. To some He gives one gift, to someone else He gives another. Although I am an unworthy scribe, God has given to me the gift of using a sling. To Allah, the All-seeing, the All-knowing, be the praise.
I first started using a sling when I was still little more than a baby: according to the story my mother tells, my older brother was competing with some other boys when I toddled up and demanded my turn at this new game. They all laughed at me, but when the others had gone away my brother showed me how to hold it.
To use one is simplicity itself: a sling is made of a pouch to which are attached two thongs, one slightly longer than the other. You wind the end of the long thong around your middle finger and hold the end of the short thong between thumb and forefinger. Then you place a stone in the pouch and start to swing the sling around your head. At the right moment you give an extra hard flick of the wrist and let go of the short thong. If you have timed the release right, the stone flies out of the sling directly towards your target.
Much of the skill depends on the stone you choose. If you are hunting and want to be sure of hitting the target, you choose smooth round stones just big enough to be encircled by your thumb and middle finger. If, on the other hand, you are trying to scare birds away from the crops, you choose oddly shaped stones that do not follow a true course but that flutter and hiss as they fly through the air. For directing sheep and goats you use lumps of dirt which shatter when they hit the ground and frighten the animal so that it shies away in the opposite direction.
Once I grasped the idea of using the sling my brother found four flat stones and piled them, one on top of the other, then he challenged me to hit them. Most children that age end up slinging more stones behind them or off to the side than in the direction they want, but my mother says that I swung the sling twice around my head and then released the string. The stone flew straight and true and hit the pile of rocks directly, scattering them. I don't remember every detail of this story - though I have heard it so often that sometimes I think I can - but I do clearly remember the look on my brother's face.
It was the will of God, of course, but I never forgot seeing my brother, whom I admired more than any one else after my father, staring dumb-founded at the scattered rocks. My brother gave me one of his old slings and from then on it went everywhere with me and I practised constantly until now, after just one circle around my head, I can hit a bird perched on a branch a good forty paces away. Two circles and I can hit a target a hundred paces away with certainty and two hundred paces away nine times out of ten.
Of course, I now have the best sling in the world: it should be, for I made it myself. I used a piece of kid skin for the shallow pouch that holds the stone and carefully cured the leather by smoking it over the cooking fire, working it with my fingers all the while to make sure that it kept its suppleness. With a tough thorn I pierced holes at each end of the pouch and through these I threaded thongs of stronger goatskin. The long one was two cubits and two spans, the shorter one was two cubits and one span. This was longer than most slings but gave greater throwing power, which was what I wanted.
In the five hundred and seventy-ninth year since al-Hijira of the Prophet Mohammed, peace and mercy of God be upon him, from Mecca to Medina, which according to the Frankish reckoning was one thousand one hundred and eighty two years since the birth of the Prophet Jesus, peace and mercy of God be upon him, I was fifteen years old - or sixteen, according to my father, though my aunt, who had a better memory than most, declared that I was at least seventeen, having been born in the same year as my father's best camel died, the one with which he had earned a whole ten dinars by permitting it to breed with the camels of Abu Suleiman of the house of Ibrahim ibn Mousa from Hebron.
That morning long ago was just like every other morning. It was my job to look after my father's sheep and goats and I was going to take them over towards the valley we call esh-Shahid because of the legend of a battle there long ago between a group of True Believers and an army of Romans from Byzantium. We had not taken the flocks there for nearly ten days and after that length of time you could expect the grass to have grown a bit and a few more leaves to have appeared on the bushes.
I filled my water bottle, put the bread my mother had baked into my pouch, picked up my staff and my sling, and set off. My mother looked up from where she was sitting on the ground in front of the cooking fire and smiled at me.
"Go with God, Fuad."
"God protect you, mother."
To get to esh-Shahid you must walk down the wadi from my father's tents as far as you can go at a brisk walk while slowly reciting the sura, The Cow, two times, and then turn to the right hand past the large rock with the mark like a sheep's head on it. When you are with sheep, of course, you cannot walk briskly. You could have recited The Cow four times or more by the time I was in sight of the sheep's head rock.
The morning was hot and the air in the wadi was very still. Every sound seemed magnified and the bleating of the sheep and goats nearly drowned out the sound of hooves coming up behind me. The sound did not, at first, alarm me. Everyone rides unless they are too poor to own a donkey or, like me, are herding sheep and goats. Even the women, when they are going to collect water or firewood, ride the donkeys that will carry the load back to the tents.
These hoof-beats, however, sounded slower and heavier, so naturally I turned to see who was coming, hardly daring to believe what my ears were telling me. The main road to Jericho goes through the Wadi Qelt and past Mar Girgis and only those travellers who have mistaken the road come anywhere near our tents. At first the curve in the wadi hid the rider, but now, as I neared the place where I must turn off, the rider came in sight.
My ears had not decieved me. It was a Frank, a large man with an iron helmet on his head and a white robe over his coat of mail. On his shoulder he bore the Nasrani symbol; even without it the heavy sword that swung at his side was enough to tell me that he was a warrior, a Nasrani ghazi and I hurried to get out of his way lest he be one of those sworn to kill all Muslims.
I scrambled up the side of the wadi and then stood and looked down on the man and his horse. The pair were well worth seeing, for the horse was one of those great beasts that the Franks brought with them from their own land, taller than any Arab horse, with huge hooves that left deep prints in the sand, at least as big as the bread my mother baked. Such a large animal, I felt sure, would be too slow and clumsy to climb the side of the wadi after me, even if its master should wish to kill me.
The man came closer and then pulled on his reins and stopped directly beneath me. He looked up at me with his big, red, clean-shaven face and smiled.
"Peace be with thee, O boy."
I stared at him in surprise, for he spoke our language, even though he did not frame some of the words properly. Then I came to myself and returned his greeting lest he think that we of the Bani Ibrim are without courtesy or manners.
"And on you be peace, ya Sid."
"Hast thou eaten, boy?"
"I have eaten, Sidi."
"Art thou from those tents behind us?"
"Yes, Sidi."
The man nodded.
"The sons of Ibrim are courteous and peaceable folk."
"Do you know us, Sidi?" I asked in surprise.
"I know of thy people, boy. I have seen them in the marketplace in al-Quds when they come to sell cheese and curds."
"Our cheese is the best in all the world," I boasted, starting to descend from my perch. This man might be a Frank, but he seemed friendly enough and he used our name for the city they called Jerusalem.
"Myself, I thought it rather too salty." The man grimaced. "Perhaps ye soak it over-long in the salt water down in the plain."
"Are you going to Jericho, Sidi?" I asked.
"Yes, and beyond, as far as Kerak if there is need. And thou?"
I shrugged. "I care for my father's sheep."
The man grinned. "As I did when I was thy age."
I stared at him in surprise. It had never occurred to me that Franks might have sheep and goats or that the grand lords of the Franks might have once been shepherds like me. There was something else strange about this man: where were his companions? I had never seen a Frank riding alone before. Usually they came accompanied by servants and soldiers, at least half a dozen at a time.
"You are alone, Sidi?"
"My squire - my servant -" he translated the foreign word, "who should come with me lies sick in al-Quds and the rest of my household have other tasks, but my business is urgent. I hoped to meet some pilgrims or merchants for company on the way, but today the road is empty. Hast thou seen any other travellers?"
I shook my head. "No, Sidi. No one has come near our tents except those of our tribe."
The man shrugged and twitched his reins. The horse shook its head and started to amble forward. "Go in peace, boy."
"Go you also in peace, Sidi."
I raised my hand in the salaam and the man fumbled underneath his robe and pulled out a purse. From it he selected a coin and tossed it to me, the silver glinting in the sunlight.
"The blessing of Allah be upon you, O Frank," I yelled after him.
He raised his hand in farewell and I scrambled down the bank and called to my flock. We set out behind him down the wadi and I watched him as he rode away, tall and upright in his saddle, his sword swinging loosely to the horse's gait. For all that they are "people of the Book," these Franks are idolators but, as my father says, "By the All-merciful, they are men and they fight like men." Not for the first time I wondered what it would be like to be a warrior and live in a grand palace in al-Quds and feast on sheep's tail and sherbert every day, with fair-haired houris to wait on me from morning to night.
