By Fire, By Water by Mitchell James Kaplan Read Free Book Online Page B

reverted to Arabic, “until you tell me what you were dreaming.”
    “It isn’t of any importance.”
    He turned onto his side. Judith waited. Finally, Baba Shlomo rolled onto his back. “My parents, of blessed memory. They were standing before me, here in this room.”
    “What did they tell you?” She took his hand.
    “Strange things. Things beyond my comprehension. The wind blowing over the aljama of Zaragoza, after the riots. After they died. The world beyond.”
    “What about the world beyond?” She squeezed his hand.
    He shook his head. “It was gibberish. Incomprehensible. Frightening.”
    “It isn’t good, then,” said Judith, as if Baba Shlomo’s dream were the final word on the afterlife.
    “That, I can’t say, since I couldn’t understand what they were saying.” Baba Shlomo sighed. “But I would like to visit their graves. I’ve never seen them. It’s all that’s left.”
    “Go back to sleep, Baba Shlomo. We have to attend the military procession in the morning.”
    “Another military procession? What is it this time?”
    Judith frowned. “Yonatan spoke of it over dinner. You were sitting right there.”
    “Perhaps I was dozing.”
    “It’s the emir’s nephew. He claims he can defend Granada against the Christians better than his uncle. He marched with his army from Malaga, but General al-Hakim met them halfway and sent them running.”
    Baba Shlomo shook his head. “What good is a parade to a blind man? Let the emir arrest me for missing it. But I doubt he’ll care much. He may not even notice.” He closed his eyes.

     
    Early the next morning, Judith and Levi hurried to Dina’s home. Excited about the morning’s festivities, Sara took Levi by the arm. The two ran off together.
    “Levi, Sara, stay with us,” Judith called after them.
    “We’ll meet you there,” Sara called back.
    The residents of Granada thronged the streets, plazas, and balconies of the capital. As morning shadows grew shorter, the citizens heard a steady, insistent beating of drums, the winding melodies of rasping reed instruments, and the rattling of shields and swords—at first far away, but slowly growing louder.
    The massive wooden doors of the city, on wheels thick as logs, rumbled open. Into the capital strutted three huge birds, each nearly as tall as a man, perched unsteadily atop long, spindly legs. Great feathery wings flanked their wide bodies, yet they did not fly. Their big eyes, set in heads almost as narrow as their long, S-shaped necks, blinked at the onlookers.
    No one had ever seen creatures like these. That their emir could possess them proved his wealth and power. Some children pointed. Others hid behind their parents’ legs as the otherworldly creatures strolled slowly past, urged forward by soldiers with sticks.
    Behind them strutted birds whose bright blue and vivid green tail feathers opened into enormous fans, filled with eyes; strange antelopes with horns like oxen and long, tufted tails; dromedaries saddled in silver, their humps and long necks shifting as they walked; bejeweled monkeys who screeched as they ran and jumped between the other animals; and two rare elephants wearing colorful headdresses, shipped for the occasion from the Southern Continent. Suspended between the two elephants, on a litter hung with silk and rugs from Persia, sat the vizier himself, Ibrahim al-Hakim, looking dignified but pleased with his victory and the crowd’s adulation. From the ornate sheath on his hip, the sapphire-encrusted handle of a large saber peeked out like a shy kitten from a bag.
    Behind the vizier, on elegant Arabian horses, rode hundreds of dirty and weary archers in ornamented, conical helmets and mail shirts, clutching disk-shaped shields. On long poles, some held aloft the heads of their fallen enemies, whose features, drained of blood, sagged dreadfully like masks of white putty.
    The parade slowly wound into the Jewish quarter. Judith and Dina watched, fascinated, as the