The Book Smugglers of Timbuktu by Charlie English

Author:Charlie English [Charlie English]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2017-03-24T04:00:00+00:00

It was said of Sidi Yahya that “no foot more virtuous … ever trod the soil of Timbuktu.” He was a sought-after teacher, and one day he was giving a lesson at the foot of the minaret when dark clouds gathered overhead and a peal of thunder was heard. His students hurried to collect their things and get inside, but Sidi Yahya told them to stay where they were. “Take your time!” he said. “[Rain] will not fall here while the angel is directing it to fall on such and such a locality.” The rain passed them by. Weather forecasting wasn’t Sidi Yahya’s only talent: on another occasion, his servant girls spent all day trying to cook a fish, but the fire had no effect on its flesh. “This morning,” he told them, “when I went out for the early-morning worship, my foot brushed against something damp in the entrance hall; perhaps it was that fish. Whatever my body touches cannot be burned by fire.”

Of all the virtues that were valued in fifteenth-century Timbuktu, modesty does not seem to have been one of them.

Toward the end of his life, governor Muhammad-n-Allah had a dream in which he saw the sun setting and the moon disappear immediately after. He recounted it to his friend Sidi Yahya, who told him that as long as he promised not to become afraid, he would explain the dream.

Muhammad-n-Allah declared that he would not be afraid.

Very well, said Sidi Yahya. “It means I will die and you will die shortly afterwards.”

Muhammad-n-Allah became deeply upset.

“Did you not tell me that you would not be afraid?” said Sidi Yahya.

“My distress comes not from the fear of death,” the governor said, “but rather from concern for my young children.”

“Place them under the care of God Most High,” Sidi Yahya responded.

The holy man died soon afterward, and Muhammad-n-Allah followed him to the grave. The friends were buried close to each other in the same mosque.

The scholar for whom Baba reserves the greatest affection, and whose life he recounts in greatest detail, is his own teacher, Muhammad Baghayogho. A gentle and considerate soul, Baghayogho was “given by nature to … benign intent.” He was “guileless, and naturally disposed to goodness, believing in people to such an extent that all men were virtually equal in his sight, so well did he think of them and absolve them of wrongdoing.” He had great reserves of patience: he could teach all day without growing bored or tired, and took particular attention with the dull-witted, to the extent that Baba once heard a colleague say that he thought Baghayogho “must have drunk [holy] Zamzam water so that he would not get fed up during teaching.”

Baba gives a detailed account of the hardworking Baghayogho’s day. He would begin his lessons after the predawn prayers, breaking off only to perform the mid-morning worship, after which he would sometimes go to the qadi to plead on behalf of people who had asked for his help. Noon would find

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