Tom Foran Clark

On a ridge high above the Mediterranean port city of Malaga, founded in the 8th century by Phoenicians, was a castle, the Gibralfaro. At the bottom of the ridge was the Alcazaba, a later Muslim palace-fortress. A long rampart connected the two castles, but Emery and Rita could not walk on it. To get from one castle to the other, they had to walk along a path on the south side of the Alcazaba. Along this walk, Rita regaled Emery with an early episode from the adventures of Lazarillo of Tormes:

“When Lazarillo left home to be a blind man’s servant," Rita told him, "his mother begged the man to treat her son well. He told her he would, saying Lazarrillo would be not just a servant to him, but like a son. ‘I've raised you and given you to a good master,’ Lazarillo’s mother said. ‘Take good care of yourself.’ He departed Salamanca with his master. They came to a bridge that had a stone statue of a bull on it. The blind man told Lazarillo to go up to the animal and put his ear next to it’s head, promising he’d hear a remarkable sound. Lazarillo did as he was told. The blind man knocked Lazarillo’s head so hard against the stone bull, Lazarillo said he felt the pain from its horns for three days. The moral? ‘A blind man's servant had to stay one step ahead of the devil,’ he understood -- ‘keep his eyes open and be ever on his guard'."

After they'd got a hotel room and gone down to the beach, Rita told Emery more about her mother. "That's all my mother had to say to me," Rita complained -- 'Men are against women,' she insisted, 'women as they are. Men require women to be objects -- to gaze upon, to lust after, to chase, to win, to screw -- to enjoy first and then to feel bad about afterwards. Men wanted their women in wraps, under covers, forbidden -- and on pedestals, naked, exuding the primal juices, lascivious, lewd. Men were all conceited about their powers. They thought they dominated women. Even exceptional men thought that. They did it because women let them do it. There were hundreds on thousands of men waiting for me outside the door, my mother told me -- staring, hissing beasts. To me, it didn’t add up. Men weren't that bad. I told this to my mother. She would not utter another word. 'You'll see,' she said. I felt sure that I could jettison her necessary past, view, society’s constraints, opinions, history, narrow prejudice. I would break free from those things. I was not going to be bound by my mother's stubbornness, misapprehensions, social conventions, restraints, customs, laws.

“This all came back to haunt me in Tangiers," Rita said. "What had happened in Morocco," she shook her head, "was... well, there was no interference. There was no discrepancy between the lofty idealism of my brain and the impulses of nature -- no conflict between my proud spirit and raw, unbridled lust. I listened only to my heart. What happened between us -- between Abdul Husein and me --is inexplicable unless you consider that I was more than in love with him. I remember perfectly his deep-toned, politely indifferent voice. I was a captive; and yet -- not. I don’t have the slightest regret.” Rita told Emery. “There is no regret. I am ashamed of nothing -- nothing!”

Of Abdul Husein, she had more to say:

“He came in, full of smiling playfulness. How well I know that mood! Such self-command has its beauty -- it danced in his eyes. He tried to move me with very simple words and things -- what men have been saying to women from the beginning of humankind. He told me that ever since we became friends, we two, he had not an hour of continuous sleep. He longed to get back to work, but now he could not work. He could only think of me. He had not the courage to tear himself away from me. I recognized the rites of his passion -- I could see very well. At first I didn't love him,'' Rita said. “At first he just fascinated me -- he had this fatal aspect -- and those smiles. I could see right into his heart -- and I was sorry for him. I was sorry for him! If he had suddenly taken me by the throat and strangled me slowly, I could have forgiven him while I choked.

"He claimed to be descended from Husayn ibn Mansur al-Hallaj," Rita said, "born in the ancient village of Madina al-Bayda in southern Persia. As a child, al-Hallaj had been inclined toward a spiritual life. He'd studied with various spiritual masters before marrying the daughter of Ya`qub ibn Aqta. They'd had three sons. Husayn ibn Mansur al-Hallaj had traveled to Baghdad to study with al-Junayd. As his Guide, Master, and guardian of al-Hallaj’s spirit, al-Junayd had his passionate student was completely in love with everything, the Secret of Love filling his being. The Beauty (al-jamal) and the Majesty (al-jalal) of his longing and yearning for Allah was like a great river flowing from its source to the ocean. Nothing could hinder its course. Al-Junayd had advised al-Hallaj to seek solitude and silence, though he knew his student's heart was full of yearning to help all persons. In his heart al-Hallaj could see Allah, the Beloved, everywhere in His Creation. Junayd had told him, 'Be careful about the Secret of Allah. Do not give it to those who cannot understand it.' He'd added, 'The time will soon come when you will set fire to a piece of wood.'

"In Baghdad, attacks against the unorthodox al-Hallaj had been increasing. The orthodox Muslims of Bagdad, and even some of the moderate Sufis themselves, had considered him dangerous and ahd turned away from him. They'd called him al-Hallaj of the secrets. Al-Hallaj had departed on a pilgrimage dressed in ragged clothes. When he'd reached Mecca, an authority had denounced him as a heretic and a magician; so he'd returned to Basra. From there he'd gone toAhwaz in Persia, then to India and Turkestan. He returned home with Chinese paper. Some said his teachings were written down on precious paper decorated in the style of the Manichaen manuscripts from Central Asia."

When the two reached Torre del Mar, with its six or seven milers of sandy beaches, Rita and Emery rented a beachfront apartment on the Paseo de Larios for a couple days. At the water's edge, Rita continued to tell more of Al-Hallaj, who'd arrived at a place where opposites met and were dissolved into Essence Itself.

"When you became obliterated," Rita said, "you arrived at a place in which nothing was either obliterated or confirmed. Divine erasing and effacement -- something which cannot be expressed in words. Al-Hallaj sought to throw himself into the Fire of Love, and be consumed by It. He felt that, at the moment of being consumed, he could reach the Reality of the true existence in Him.

"Abdul said he was striving to reach that same place -- in my company! I could not argue with Abdul," Rita confessed. "He obliterated me, consumed me, effaced me, erased me. It was just great. He didn't care what I had to say, and I didn't care what I had to say. For him, I may as well have been a marble statue -- a marble statue that shrieked and cried and sang and laughed out loud."

Further up the coast at the foothills of the Sierra de Tejada range, sixty miles from Málaga, was the village of Nerja, known for its over five hundred bars, cafes, and restaurants. Another claim to fame was Nerja's Balcón de Europa, the "Balcony of Europe," a palm-fringed promenade built on the edge of a towering cliff, once the site of a great Moorish castle, with sweeping panoramic views of the coves, caves, and beaches below, set against the majestic Sierra de Tejada mountains. Nerja had also winding streets, whitewashed houses, wrought iron terraces overflowing with bougainvillea, and twenty miles of beaches. Walking in the Gardens of Capistrano Playa, which descended to Burriana Beach, Rita talked on, letting go of talking about Abdul for now, returning to the subject of how, before she'd ever met him, she'd met Emery's friend Pike. She carried with her, in fact, the map and little diary that Pike had got from Arlen Townsend. She wanted Emery to understand how closely Arlen Townsend's story paralleleled George Borrow's story of the treasure-digger of St. James -- the Benedict Mol:

"At that time," Rita said, "Spain was all but overrun by bandits. Borrow arrived in the company of soldiers at the Pico Sacro -- the Sacred Peak -- St. James of Compostela. In the town, Borrow met an elderly gentleman bookseller, Rey Romero, who liked to drop in on Borrow at his posada to join Borrow in his ‘delicious summer evening’ walks around the town. One moonlit night the two were surprised by treasure hunter, Benedict Mol, who’d walked all the way from Madrid. ‘The schatz is nigh,’ he said.

" 'Have you discovered the place where the treasure is deposited?' Borrow asked him. 'Oh yes,' the treasure hunter answered. 'I know all about it now. Some people helped me hire a meiga, a haxweib -- a witch. She pulled out a pack of cards and laid them on a table in a particular manner and said the treasure was in the church of San Roque. Sure enough, when I went to the church, it was exactly the place I’d envisioned -- the same place as I had seen in my mind's eye.'

" 'But let's just suppose the treasure really is in the church you mention,' Borrow countered. 'No one’s going to let you rip up the floor of the sacristy to search for the treasure.' But the Benedict Mol was confident of success. In his travels he had met a priest who'd volunteered to help. The two agreed to share the treasure between them. Then a Captain in the town interefered, making excavations of his own -- and all eyes were on him. But he did not know exactly where to look. Benedict's search for the treasure was put on hold, so the dust the captain had raised could settle. But his search was by no means over."

Emery and Rita arrived in Motril, at the the heart of the lush, sub-tropical Costa Tropical in the foothills of the Sierra Lujar mountains. They got a room at a hotel on the Playa Poniente, but spent most of their time at the town's other main beach, the quieter Playa Granada. On the beach, between the dramatic cliffs and the long stretch of coastline, they watched the sailboats and ate oranges, lemons, apples, avocadoes, mangoes, and bananas. Going inland, they walked along rough dirt paths leading to pine trees, wild flowers, hawks and eagles, butterflies, dragonflies, and lizards. As they walked along, Rita told Emery stories of Spanish Gypsies, but not with great enthusiasm. She only really lit up when she began to tell Emery more her childhood hero, Lazarillo.

“Lazarillo served a blind man. Though he despised the man, Lazarillo recognized his master was quite sharp -- quite smart. ‘He has a thousand ways of getting money,’ Lazarillo saw. He had a prayer and a cure for everyone -- for women who couldn't have children or who were in labor; for women unhappy in their marriages, for their husbands to make them love their wives more. He told people in their desperation, ‘Do this, and then this; take this herb; take this root.’ Everyone went to him for help -- especially women -- believing everything he told them. Whatever he gave them, it worked. ‘He earned more in a month,’ Lazarillo reckoned, ‘than a hundred ordinary blind men in a year.'

"It makes me think of what Abdul gave me," Rita changed the subject. "Whatever that drug was, Abdul had plenty of it in Tangiers. I am quite certain now that he drugged me. At the beginning. Later not. I have nothing to reproach myself with. As for Abdul, like Lazarillo's master, he was loyal to what he thought were the redeeming proprieties of the situation. I told Abdul plainly that he should want a woman who had freedom in her choices, who was independent in her thoughts -- to love her for what she is, to know her such as life had made her, as nature had fashioned her, demanding from her only candor and innocence. 'I love you exactly as you are,' he'd insist, giving me an aphrodisiac or something. Actually, I didn't treat him all that generously much of the time. There were moments when I was not kind. Looking back on it, you could even say it was absurd -- but exquisitely absurd!

“Well, that was yesterday,'' Rita said. The seductive inflections of her voice seemed to move through Emery gently, and all around his heart. “Abdul was a moody man -- full of self-esteem, but also playful. Life is hard, but life is good. Who can know what benefits may yet be reaped?"