Leo Africanus (41 page)

Then he started laughing again.

One man, however, was not at all resigned. It was Tumanbay. He was girding himself to write the most heroic pages in the history of Cairo.

923 A.H.
24 January 1517 – 12 January 1518

Master of Cairo, the Grand Turk strutted about as if he was intent on brushing over each holy place, each quarter, each door, each frightened look with his indelible shadow. In front of him, the heralds never wearied of proclaiming that no one should fear for their life or property, while at the same time massacres and looting were taking place, often a few paces from the sultan's retinue.

The Circassians were the first victims. Mamelukes or descendants of Mamelukes, they were hunted down relentlessly. When a high dignitary of the old regime was captured, he was perched upon a donkey, facing backwards, his hair in a blue turban and decked out with little bells which were hung around his neck. Thus accoutred, he was paraded around the streets before being decapitated. His head was then displayed upon a pole, and his body thrown to the dogs. In each camp of the Ottoman army hundreds of these poles were planted in the earth, each alongside the other, macabre forests through which Salim liked to wander.

Of course the Circassians, deceived for a moment by the Ottoman promises, did not take long to get rid of their customary headdresses, skull caps or light turbans, and put on large turbans in order to merge with the rest of the population. In consequence the Ottoman soldiers began to arrest all passers-by indiscriminately, accusing them of being Circassians in disguise and forcing them to pay a ransom to be allowed to go. When the streets were empty the soldiers forced open the doors of houses, and under the pretext of flushing out escaping Mamelukes, gave themselves over to pillage and rape.

The fourth day of that year, Sultan Salim was in the suburb of Bulaq, where his army had set up the largest of its camps. He had attended the executions of several officers and had then ordered that the hundreds of decapitated corpses which were cluttering up the camp should immediately be thrown into the Nile. Then he had gone to the hammam to purify himself before going to the evening prayer at a mosque near the landing stage. By nightfall he had returned to the camp and called several of his aides around him.

The meeting had just begun when an extraordinary tumult broke out; hundreds of camels, laden with burning tow, rushed towards the Ottoman positions setting fire to the tents. It was already dark, and in the ensuing chaos thousands of armed men invaded the camp. Tumanbay was at their head. There were certainly regular troops among his soldiers, but it was mostly the common people, sailors, water carriers, former criminals who had joined the popular militia. Some were armed with daggers, others had only slings, or even clubs. However, with the assistance of nightfall and surprise, they sowed death among the ranks of the Ottomans. In the most intense moment of the battle, Salim himself was surrounded on all sides, and only the determination of his bodyguard enabled him to force his way out. The camp was in the hands of Tumanbay, who, without losing a moment, ordered his partisans to throw themselves into the pursuit of the occupation troops in all the quarters of Cairo, and to take no prisoner.

Street by street the capital was reconquered. The Circassians set about chasing the Ottoman soldiers, with the active assistance of the population. The victims, now turned executioners, were merciless. I saw with my own eyes, not far from my house, the execution of seven Turks who had fled into a mosque. Chased by twenty Cairenes, they had taken refuge at the top of the minaret, and had begun to fire shots on the crowd. But they were caught, their throats cut and their bloody bodies thrown from the top of the building.

The battle had begun on Tuesday evening. On Thursday Tumanbay went to set himself up in the Shaikhu Mosque in Saliba Street, which he turned into his headquarters. He seemed so much in control of the city that the next day the Friday sermon was once more pronounced in his name from the tops of the pulpits.

But his position was no less precarious. Once they had got over the surprise of the initial attack, the Ottomans had rallied. They had retaken Bulaq, infiltrated into old Cairo as far as the area around my
street, and, in their turn gradually recaptured the lost ground step by step. Tumanbay mostly controlled the popular quarters of the centre, to which he had prevented access by hastily-dug trenches or barricades.

Of all the days which Allah has created, it was on that Friday and no other that Nur chose to feel the pains of confinement. I had to creep out and edge my way across my garden to call the neighbourhood midwife, who only agreed to come at the end of an hour's entreaty, and then for gold: two dinars if it was a girl, four dinars if it was a boy.

When she saw the fragile pink cleft between the baby's swollen thighs, she called out to me in a vexed tone:

‘Two dinars!'

To which I replied:

‘If everything ends well, you'll get four all the same!'

Overjoyed at such generosity, she promised to return several days later to perform the excision, which she would do for nothing. I asked her not to do so, explaining that this practice did not exist in my country, at which she seemed surprised and upset.

To me my daughter seemed as beautiful as her mother, and as pale-skinned. I called her Hayat, Life, for whom my dearest wish, as for all my family, was simply to be able to escape alive from the murderous orgy of Cairo, where two empires confronted one another, the one intoxicated by its triumph, the other determined not to die.

In the streets the battle was still raging. The Ottomans, who had regained control of most of the suburbs, tried to push towards the centre, but they only advanced slowly and sustained heavy losses. However, the outcome of the battle was no longer in doubt. Soldiers and militiamen gradually deserted Tumanbay's camp, while at the head of a handful of faithful followers, some black fusiliers and the Circassians of his personal bodyguard, the Mameluke sultan struggled on through another day. On the Saturday night he decided to leave the city, although without having lost any of his determination. He said that he would soon return with more troops to flush out the invaders.

How can I describe what the Ottomans did when they were able to enter the quarters of Cairo once more? This time it was no longer a question of eliminating the Circassian troops who had opposed them as it had been after their first victory. They now had to punish the
entire population of Cairo. The soldiers of the Grand Turk poured into the streets with orders to kill anything that breathed. No one could leave the accursed city, since all the roads were cut; no one could find themselves a refuge, since the cemeteries and the mosques were themselves turned into battlefields. People were forced to crouch in their own homes, hoping that the hurricane would pass. On that day, between dawn and the last quarter of the night, it is said that more than eight thousand were slain. The streets were all covered with corpses, men, women, children, horses and donkeys, mingled together in an endless bloody procession.

The next day, Salim had two flags hauled up outside his camp, one white, the other red, signifying to his men that vengeance had henceforth been taken and that the carnage should stop. It was high time, because if the reprisals had continued for several days with the same intensity, the Grand Turk's only conquest in this country would have been an enormous charnel-house.

Throughout these bloody days, Nur had not stopped praying for victory for Tumanbay. My own sentiments were scarcely different. Having welcomed the Mameluke sultan under my roof one evening, I admired his bravery even more. Above all, there was Bayazid. Sooner or later, a suspicion, a denunciation, an indiscretion, would hand him over to the Ottomans, with all his family. For the security of the outlawed child, and for our own, Tumanbay had to be victorious. When I realized, in the course of the Sunday, that he had definitely lost the fight, I flared up against him, from suppressed disappointment, fear and rage, declaring that he should never have thrown himself into such a hazardous enterprise, dragging the population in his wake and bringing down the wrath of Salim upon them.

Although she was still very weak, Nur sat up with a start, as if she had been awoken by a bad dream. Only her eyes could be seen in her pallid face, staring at nothing.

‘Remember the pyramids! How many men have died to build them, men who could have passed many more years working, eating and mating! Then they would have died of the plague, leaving no trace behind them. By the will of Pharaoh they have built a monument whose silhouette will perpetuate the memory of their labour for ever, their suffering, their noblest aspirations. Tumanbay has done no different. Are not four days of courage, four days of dignity, of defiance, worth more than four centuries of submission,
of resignation and meanness? Tumanbay has offered to Cairo and to its people the finest gift that exists: a sacred flame that will illuminate and kindle the spirit in the long night that is beginning.'

Nur's words left me only half-convinced, but I did not try to contradict her. I simply put my arms around her gently to put her back to bed. She was speaking the language of her people; I had no other ambition than to survive, with my family, no other ambition than to go away, in order one day to relate on a piece of glazed paper the fall of Cairo, of her empire, of her last hero.

I could not leave the city for several weeks, until Nur was in a position to travel. In the meantime, life in Cairo became increasingly difficult. Provisions became rare. Cheese, butter and fruit could not be found, and the price of cereals rose. It was said that Tumanbay had decided to starve out the Ottoman garrison by preventing the provisioning of the city from the provinces which he still controlled; in addition, he had made agreements with the nomad Arab tribes, who had never submitted to any authority in Egypt, that they should come and lay waste the surroundings of the capital. It was said at the same time that Tumanbay had brought the materials of war, arrows, bows and powder from Alexandria, that he had assembled fresh troops and was preparing to launch a new offensive. In fact clashes multiplied, particularly around Giza, making impassable the road to the pyramids which we needed to take to fetch Bayazid.

Should we, in spite of everything, try to flee, at the risk of being intercepted by an Ottoman patrol, by Mameluke deserters or some band of looters? I hesitated to do so until I learned that Sultan Salim had decided to deport several thousand inhabitants to Constantinople. At first it was the caliph, the Mameluke dignitaries and their families, but the list continued to lengthen: masons, carpenters, monumental masons, pavers, blacksmiths, and all kinds of skilled workers. I soon learned that the Ottoman civil servants were drawing up lists of the names of all Maghribis and Jews in the city with a view to deporting them.

My decision was taken. Promising myself to leave within three days, I was making a last trip to the city to settle various matters when a rumour reached me: Tumanbay had been captured, betrayed by the chief of a bedouin tribe.

Around midday cries rang out, mingling with the calls to prayer. A word was uttered near me, Bab Zuwaila. It was towards that gate that thousands of citizens were hurrying, men and women, old and young. I did likewise. There was a crowd there, continually increasing in size, and the more impressive because it was almost silent. Suddenly it parted to allow an Ottoman column to pass through, of a hundred or so cavalrymen and twice as many infantrymen. With backs to the crowd, they formed three concentric circles, with a man on horseback in the middle. It was not easy to recognize Tumanbay from this silhouette. His head bare and his beard shaggy, he was dressed only in scraps of red cloth ill concealed by a white cloak. On his feet he had only a bulky wrapping of blue material.

At the command of an Ottoman officer, the deposed emperor dismounted. Someone untied his hands, but twelve soldiers surrounded him immediately, sabres at the ready. However, he was clearly not considering flight. He waved with his free hands to the crowd, which cheered him bravely. All eyes, including his own, then turned towards the famous gate where a hangman was in the process of fixing a rope.

Tumanbay appeared surprised, but the smile did not leave his lips. Only his gaze lost its sharpness. His only cry to the crowd was:

‘Recite the
Fatiha
three times for me!'

Thousands of murmurs could be heard, a rumbling which became more vibrant each moment.

‘Praise be to God, Lord of the Universe, the Compassionate, the Merciful, Master of the Day of Judgement . . .'

The last
Amin
was a long drawn out cry, furious, rebellious. Then nothing more, silence. The Ottomans themselves seemed taken aback, and it was Tumanbay who shook them:

‘Hangman, do your job!'

The rope was tied round the condemned man's neck. Someone pulled at the other end. The sultan rose a foot, then fell back to the ground. The rope had broken. The rope was tied once more, pulled again by the hangman and his assistants, and broke once more. The tension became unbearable. Only Tumanbay maintained his amused manner, as if he felt himself elsewhere already, in a world where courage receives quite a different reward. The hangman tied the rope for the third time. It did not break. A clamour broke out, sobbing, moaning and prayers. The last Emperor of Egypt had
expired, the bravest man ever to have governed the valley of the Nile, hung at the Zuwaila gate like a vulgar horse thief.