Mirrors (31 page)

The great-grandson of Queen Isabella, Emperor Philip II, sworn enemy of water and light, reiterated certain prohibitions against the Moors, and as the year 1567 began, he decided to implement them with an iron fist.

It was forbidden to:

speak, read, or write in Arabic,
dress in traditional garb,
celebrate holidays with Moorish instruments or song,
use Moorish names or nicknames,
bathe in public baths.
This last prohibition forbade what no longer existed.

A century before, there had been six hundred public baths in the city of Córdoba alone.

THE MOST POWERFUL MAN IN THIS WORLD LIVED IN THE OTHER

Emperor Chin was the founder of China, and from him China got its name. Emperor Philip II was lord and master of half the world, stretching from America to the Philippines, and from him the Philippines got its name. Both of them lived for their deaths.

The Spanish monarch spent his weekends at El Escorial cemetery, built for his eternal rest, and he slept his finest siestas in his coffin: a rehearsal.

Everything else mattered but little. His Invincible Armada had been minced, and cobwebs had invaded the coffers of the Royal Treasury, but the promenades to his funerary temple sheltered him from the world’s ingratitude.

On his final journey from throne to grave, King Philip had sixty thousand masses celebrated in homage to his own glory.

LAST SPARK OF THE TURBANS

Moorish rage exploded. Against the prohibitions, the remaining children of Mohammed in the lands of Andalusia rose up.

For over a year the soldiers of Christ were unable to stamp out the flames. Then, just as in the times of the Crusades, a decisive favor came their way: they were given exclusive rights to all booty, tax-free, as well as the right to enslave all prisoners.

The forces of order then seized the wheat and the millet, the almonds, cows, sheep, silks, gold, clothing, necklaces, girls, and women. And any men they hunted down, they auctioned off.

THE DEVIL IS MUSLIM

Dante knew Mohammed was a terrorist. Not for nothing did he locate him in one of the circles of hell, condemned to be disemboweled in perpetuity. “One whom I saw ripped,” the poet rejoiced in
The Divine Comedy
, “right from his chin to where we fart . . . ”

More than one pope found proof that the hordes of Muslims tormenting Christians were not beings of flesh and blood, rather a great army of demons that grew larger with every blow of the lance, sword, and harquebus.

Back in the year 1564, demonologist Johannes Wier counted the number of plainclothes devils working full time for the perdition of Christian souls. There were 7,409,027, organized in seventy-nine legions.

A lot of boiling water has flowed under hell’s bridge since that census was taken. How many envoys from the kingdom of darkness would there be today? Their flair for the theater makes a precise tally difficult. Those sneaks still wear turbans to hide their horns, and long tunics to cover their tails and bat’s wings, not to mention the bombs they carry under their arms.

THE DEVIL IS JEWISH

Hitler did not invent a thing. For two thousand years, the Jews, the unpardonable assassins of Jesus, have been the ones guilty of all sins.

What do you mean, Jesus was Jewish? And the twelve apostles and four evangelists too? Impossible. Revealed truths live outside the realm of doubt: in synagogues the devil teaches Jews to defile the host, poison holy waters, cause bankruptcies, and spread plagues.

England expelled them in 1290, leaving not a one, but that did not stop Marlowe and Shakespeare, who probably never met a Jew in their lives, from inventing characters who fit the caricature of a blood-sucking parasitic moneylender.

Accused of serving the evil one, this accursed people wandered for centuries, from expulsion to expulsion, from massacre to massacre. After England, they were tossed in succession from France, Austria, Spain, Portugal, and from several Swiss, German, and Italian cities. They had lived in Spain for thirteen centuries. When they left, they took the keys to their homes with them. Some have them still.

The colossal butchery organized by Hitler was the culmination of a long history.

Hunting Jews has always been a European sport.

Now the Palestinians, who never played it, are paying the bill.

THE DEVIL IS BLACK

Like the night, like sin, black is the enemy of innocence and light.

In his renowned book of travels, Marco Polo described the inhabitants of Zanzibar: “They are quite black and go entirely naked. . . . They have big mouths, and their noses are so flattened and their lips and eyes so big that they are horrible to look at. Anyone who saw them in another country would say that they were devils.”

In Spain three centuries later, a black-painted Lucifer rode a chariot of fire onstage in playhouses and at fairs.

Saint Theresa could not shake him off. He stood right beside her once, “a very abominable shade of black.” Another time, when he sat on her prayer book, she saw a red flame emerge from his black body as the prayers burned him.

In America, everyone knew it was Satan who pounded the drums on the plantations, calling on the thousands of imported slaves to disobey, and who put music and writhing and shuddering into the bodies of his children born to sin. Even Martín Fierro, the poor and punished gaucho, felt a little better when he compared himself to the blacks:

“Those guys were made by the Devil,” he said, “as a blight on hell.”

THE DEVIL IS FEMALE

Malleus Maleficarum,
also known as
The Hammer of Witches,
recommends the most ruthless techniques for exorcising titty, long-haired demons.

At the request of Pope Innocent VIII, two German inquisitors, Heinrich Kramer and Jakob Sprenger, wrote the book that became the juridical and theological basis for the tribunals of the Holy Inquisition.

The authors demonstrate that witches, Satan’s harem, represent women in their natural state, for “all witchcraft comes from carnal lust, which in women is insatiable.” And they warn that such beings of pleasant aspect, fetid touch, and deadly company enchant men and attract them, serpent’s hiss, scorpion’s tail, only to annihilate them.

That treatise on criminology advises torturing everyone suspected of witchcraft. Those who confess deserve the stake; those who do not also deserve the stake, because only a witch, fortified by her lover the devil at the witches’ Sabbath, could resist such suffering without telling all.

Pope Honorius III decreed:

“Women should not speak. Their lips carry the stigma of Eve, who led men to perdition.”

Eight centuries later, the Catholic Church still denies women the pulpit.

The same fear drives fundamentalist Muslims to mutilate women’s genitalia and cover their faces.

And a sense of relief moves orthodox Jewish men to begin each day by whispering:

“Thanks be to God for not making me a woman.”

THE DEVIL IS POOR