Chapter 8
‘My dear Sinan, I don’t deny that thunderstorms are strange things,’ Abu Abdallah said. It was the morning after that bolt from the black in al-Bayyazin. ‘There are some scholars, for instance, who say that the screw-pine only blooms when lightning strikes near by.’
‘Yes, but master . . . ’
From his seat on the ambling mule, Abu Abdallah ignored his slave, walking beside the animal. ‘And I once heard of the case of a cat in the mountains of the Yemen that was hit by a thunderbolt as it sat on a drum. It was found sealed inside the drum, perfectly unharmed.’
‘But master, I swear I saw it.’
‘Nonsense, boy. It was a trick of the light, a shadow cast by the flames. When did a thunderbolt ever cut a man’s throat?’
‘But someone did,’ Sinan protested. ‘Or some . . . thing.’ He pic
