When I told my father about the periplus, he smiled and said, “Almost is better than nothing. But we have something much better than a periplus.” He brought out from our cabin an even thicker sheaf of papers. “We have the Kitab.”
My uncle said proudly, “If the captain possessed the Kitab, and if his ship could sail overland, he could go clear across Asia, to the eastern Ocean of Kithai.”
“I had this made at great expense,” said my father, handing it to me. “It was copied for us from the original, which was done by the Arab mapmaker al-Idrisi for King Ruggiero of Sicily.”
Kitab, I later discovered, means in Arabic only “a book,” but then so does our word Bible. And al-Idrisi’s Kitab, like the Holy Bible, is much more than just a book. The first page was inscribed with its full title, which I could read, for it was rendered in French: The going out of a Curious Man to explore the Regions of the Globe, its Provinces, Islands, Cities and their Dimensions and Situation; for the Instruction and Assistance of him who desires to Traverse the Earth. But all the many other words on the pages were done in the execrable worm-writing of the infidel Arab countries. Only here and there had my father or uncle penned in a legible translation of this or that place-name. Turning the pages so I could read those words, I realized something and I laughed.
“Every chart is upside down. Look, he has the foot of the Italian peninsula kicking Sicily up toward Africa.”
“In the East, everything is upside down or backward or contrary,” said my uncle. “The Arab maps are all made with south at the top. The people of Kithai call the bussola the south-pointing needle. You will get accustomed to such customs.”
“Aside from that peculiarity,” said my father, “al-Idrisi has been amazingly accurate in representing the lands of the Levant, and beyond them as far as Middle Asia. Presumably he himself once traveled those regions.”
The Kitab comprised seventy-three separate pages which, laid side by side (and upside down), showed the entire extent of the world from west to east, and a goodly part of it north and south, the whole divided by curving parallels according to climatic zones. The salt sea waters were painted in blue with choppy white lines for the waves; inland lakes were green with white waves; rivers were squiggly green ribbons. The land areas were painted dun yellow, with dots of gold leaf applied to show cities and towns. Wherever the land rose in hills and mountains, those were represented by shapes rather like caterpillars, which were colored purple, pink, and orange.
I asked, “Are the highlands of the East really so vividly colored? Purple mountaintops and—?”
As if in reply, the lookout shouted down from his basket atop the ship’s taller mast, “Terra là! Terre là!”
“You can look and see for yourself, Marco,” said my father. “The shore is in sight. Behold the Holy Land.”
2
OF course, I eventually discovered that the coloring on al-Idrisi’s maps was to indicate the height of the land, with purple representing the highest mountains, pink those of moderate altitude, and orange the lowest, and yellow land of no particular elevation. But there was nothing in the vicinity of Acre to prove this discovery by, that part of the Holy Land being an almost colorless country of low sand dunes and even lower sand flats. What color there was to the land was a dirty gray-yellow, not even a vestige of green growing there, and the city was a dirty gray-brown.
The oarsmen swept the Anafesto around the base of a lighthouse and into the meager harbor. It was awash with every sort of garbage and offal, its waters slimy and greasy, stinking of fish, fish guts and decayed fish. Beyond the docks were buildings that appeared to be made of dried mud—they were all inns and hostels, the captain told us, there being nothing in Acre that could be termed a private residence—and above those low buildings, here and there, stood the taller stone edifices of churches, monasteries, a hospital and the city’s castle. Farther landward beyond that castle was a high stone wall, stretching in a semicircle from the harbor to the sea side of the city, with a dozen towers upjutting from it. To me it looked like a dead man’s jawbone sparsely studded with teeth. On the other side of that wall, said the captain, was the encampment of the Crusader knights, and beyond that yet another and even stouter wall, fencing Acre’s point of land off from the mainland where the Saracens held sway.
“This is the last Christian holding in the Holy Land,” the ship’s priest said sadly. “And it will fall, too, whenever the infidels choose to overrun it. This eighth Crusade has been so futile that the Christians of Europe have lost their fervor for crusading. The newly arriving knights are fewer and fewer. You notice that we brought none on this passage. So Acre’s force is too small to do anything but make occasional skirmishes outside the walls.”
“Humph,” said the captain. “The knights seldom even bother to do that any more. They are all of different orders—Templars and Hospitalers and whatnot—so they much prefer to fight among themselves … when they are not scandalously disporting themselves with the Carmelitas and Clarissas.”
The chaplain winced, for no reason I could see, and said petulantly, “Sir, have a regard for my cloth.”
The captain shrugged. “Deplore it if you will, Pare, but you cannot refute it.” He turned to speak to my father. “Not only the troops are in disarray. The civilian population, what there is of it, consists entirely of suppliers and servitors to the knights. Acre’s native Arabs are too venal to be inimical to us Christians, but they are forever at odds with Acre’s native Jews. The remainder of the population is a shifting motley of Pisans and Genoese and your fellow Venetians—all rivals and all quarrelsome. If you wish to conduct your business here in peace, I suggest that you go straight to the Venetian quarter when we debark, and take lodgings there, and try not to get involved in the local discords.”
So we three gathered our belongings from the cabin and prepared to debark. The quay was crowded with ragged and dirty men, pressing close around the ship’s gangplank and waving their arms and jostling each other, crying their services in Trade French and any number of other languages:
“Carry your bags, monsieur! Lord merchant! Messere! Mirza! Sheikh khaja! …”
“Lead you to the auberge! The inn! Locanda! Karwansarai! Khane! …”
“Provide for you horses! Asses! Camels! Porters! …”
“A guide! A guide speaking Sabir! A guide speaking Farsi! …”
“A woman! A beautiful fat woman! A nun! My sister! My little brother! …”
My uncle demanded only porters, and selected four or five of the least scabrous of the men. The rest drifted away, shaking their fists and shouting imprecations:
“May Allah look upon you sideways!”
“May you choke while eating pig meat!”
“ … Eating your lover’s zab!”
“ … Your mother’s nether parts!”
The seamen unloaded our portion of the ship’s cargo, and our new porters slung our bundles on their backs or shoulders or perched them atop their heads. Uncle Mafìo commanded them, first in French, then in Farsi, to take us to the part of the city reserved for Venetians, and to the best inn there, and we all moved off along the quay.
I was not much impressed by Acre—or Akko, as its native inhabitants call it. The city was no cleaner than the harbor, being mostly of squalid buildings with the widest streets between them no wider than the narrowest alleys of Venice. In its most open areas, the city stank of old urine. Where walls closed it in, it smelled even worse, for the alleys were sinks of sewage and swill, in which gaunt dogs competed for the pickings with monster rats, abroad even in full daylight.