Jorge Luis Borges - Labyrinths

doubtful words had halted him at the beginning of the Poetics. These
words were tragedy and comedy. He had encountered them years
before in the third book of the Rhetoric; no one in the whole world of
Islam could conjecture what they meant. In vain he had exhausted the
pages of Alexander of Aphrodisia, in vain he had compared the
versions of the Nestorian Hunain ibn-Ishaq and of Abu-Bashar Mata.
These two arcane words pullulated throughout the text of the Poetics;
it was impossible to elude them.
Averroes put down his pen. He told himself (without excessive
faith) that what we seek is often nearby, put away the manuscript of
the Tahafut and went over to the shelf where the many volumes of the
blind Abensida's Mohkam, copied by Persian calligraphers, were
aligned. It was derisory to imagine he had not consulted them, but he
was tempted by the idle pleasure of turning their pages. From this
studious distraction, he was distracted by a kind of melody. He looked
through the lattice-work balcony; below, in the narrow earthen patio,
some half-naked children were playing. One, standing on another's
shoulders, was obviously playing the part of a muezzin; with his eyes
tightly closed, he chanted "There is no god but the God." The one who
held him motionlessly played the part of the minaret; another, abject in
the dust and on his knees, the part of the faithful worshipers. The game
did not last long; all wanted to be the muezzin, none the congregation
or the tower. Averroes heard them dispute in the vulgar dialect, that is,
in the incipient Spanish of the peninsula's Moslem populace. He
opened the Quitab ul ain of Jalil and thought proudly that in all
Cordova (perhaps in all Al-Andalus) there was no other copy of that
perfect work than this one the emir Yacub Almansur had sent him
from Tangier. The name of this port reminded him that the traveler
Abulcasim Al-Ashari, who had returned from Morocco, would dine
with him that evening in the home of the Koran scholar Farach.
Abulcasim claimed to have reached the dominions of the empire of Sin
(China); his detractors, with that peculiar logic of hatred, swore he had
never set foot in China and that in the temples of that land he had
blasphemed the name of Allah. Inevitably the gathering would last
several hours; Averroes quickly resumed his writing of the Tahafut.
He worked until the twilight of evening.
The conversation, at Farach's home, passed from the
incomparable virtues of the governor to those of his brother the emir;
later, in the garden, they spoke of roses. Abulcasim, who had not
looked at them, swore there were no roses like those adorning the
138