This is a beautifully written account of an imaginary period in Mexico at the time of Montezuma. Imaginary because in this alternate history, the Christians never regained control of Spain from the Moors. Instead of Spanish imperial conquistadors, the Aztec kingdom was colonised by Islamic Spanish colonists who established what they called the New Maghreb.
At the start of the novel, we meet the influential Jewish merchant Eli Ben Abram, married to a headstrong Nahua woman, Malinala, formerly enslaved. Through her stories we learn about the folklore and traditions of the indigenous peoples. Eli is an important man, friends with the emperor, able to closely observe the changes that are afoot.
“From my conversations with Moctezuma, who takes an interest in such things, I know that he considers God to be an incarnation of the Feathered Snake, the Smoking Mirror or the Left-Handed Hummingbird, depending on the time of day. I have not told the imam this. The poor man has enough to deal with.”
Then there is the water god, an axolotl: a fish with hands. Malinala tells him of the history of the Seven Caves, when seven tribes emerged from seven rocky wombs in the north and made their way to the south. The Mexica were favoured by the Left-Handed Hummingbird, warring with the other tribes either killing them or enslaving them. For a time they stayed in Aztlan, the Place of the White-Feathered Heron. All these stories flesh out the society that Eli has moved to.
The Jew is haunted by echoes of the past. The past he left behind in the Old World is catching up with him in the New Maghreb. Until now he has been protected as a ‘person of the book’. But all that seems about to change. Suddenly his friend Montezuma is acting strangely, many sacrifices are being made on the stepped pyramid, the volcano is rumbling ominously and there are rumours of new invaders from across the sea.
I really enjoyed the descriptive writing in Red Smoking Mirror, but what I enjoyed most were the snippets of background into society. For instance, the local name for a horse meant fast deer, a camel was an ugly deer and a mule was a strong deer. I also appreciated how Eli’s wife was able to act as a go-between because she could speak different languages and was an independent character connecting people.
“We were two links in a chain, connecting one thing to the next. Arabic to Mayayan. Mayayan to Nahuatl. Nahuatl to Arabic.
I freed her. She freed us.”
Drinking chocolate
The ceremony of preparing drinking chocolate is gradually introduced to us. It is one of the things. Malinala does for her husband, a ceremonial task. “Some xocolatl is going round, but from its smell, even from here, I can tell that it is badly made. The beans are burnt. Not enough chilli. Too much tlilxochitl-pod.” It reminds me both of Laura Estival’s Chocolate for Water and either Tracy Chevalier’s The Girl With the Pearl Earring, set in Delft or Jessie Burton’s The Miniaturist set in Amsterdam, where a young wife carefully prepares the chocolate for her indifferent husband. If anyone knows which of the latter two it is, I’d love to know.
When is this set? 1521
There were a couple of things I looked up because I wondered if they were anachronistic.
- Eli uses lemon-scented oil – Columbus brought seeds with him in 1493, to Hispaniola (now Haiti and the Dominican Republic), gradually spreading to the Caribbean and mainland Mexico…
- Eli has a French spyglass. The telescope was invented by Hans Lippershey in 1608, so that was not possible.
- Montezuma… which one? There was more than one.
Book serendipity: people of the book
Red Smoking Mirror strongly reminds me of People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks about the history of the Sarajevo Haggadah, a manuscript about Moses leading the exodus of the Jews from slavery in Egypt. This is no coincidence as both are at least connected to a Jewish intellectual being moved to safety. Geraldine Brooks’ People of the Book imagines the creation, illustration, concealment and further life-story of the Sarajevo Haggadah. Eli also refers to himself as a person of the book.
“The caliph’s law is a guarantee of the protections I enjoy as a dhimmi of Andalus, a person of the book. It extends to Christians too, for our God is the same God.”
Book serendipity: the siege of Sarajevo
Once again there is a link between the Bookcast Club podcast and what I am reading or thinking about. In the second to last episode I was listening to, episode 96, the discussion turned to a fictionalisation of a woman’s experience during the siege of Sarajevo, Black Butterflies by Priscilla Morris. The plot sounded extremely familiar as I have read Sarajevo Days, Sarajevo Nights by Elma Softić, the diaries of someone who lived through the siege. In fact, I’m wondering if it couldn’t be considered plagiarism, it’s so similar. And then, of course, there’s Steven Galloway’s The Cellist of Sarajevo, about which I was left less than enthusiastic.
Dagen en nachten in Sarajevo: dagboeknotities en brieven 1992 – 1995 (Sarajevo Days, Sarajevo Nights) – Elma Softić (uit het Engels vertaald door Atty Mensings; uit het Serbo-Croatisch vertaald door Nada Conić) https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2690231-sarajevo-days-sarajevo-nights
With the descriptions of the distant volcano, I was suddenly reminded of a story in the Wide Range Readers, when I was about seven. It told the tale of a barefoot Mexican farmer who noticed that the ground beneath him was getting hotter. Soon afterwards, a new volcano erupted in that very place. From that point on, volcanoes were added to tidal waves in my nightmares. Those Wide Range Readers have a lot to answer for.
“She has mentioned nothing of my missive to the emperor, and I have not questioned her on the sad fate of the water-god. Inside these silences is peace.
All peace is built on silence.
I find myself thinking of the Christian bells of Andalus, stifled by the caliph’s law, of the wars their stifling must have spared in the history of the caliphate. I think of our muteness at what happens in those temples. The things from which we turn away, not watching and not listening. A balance, Abd al-Wahid says. Within our silence we are safe.
How long will we stay silent?”
It’s unfortunate that it took me so long to write up my review because I received a digital ARC from NetGalley, intending to review it before publication. If I’d done it earlier, I would have been even more enthusiastic because it was still fresh in my mind. For what it’s worth, my opinions are my own, not influenced by the free copy.
Market Garden Reader 