As part of the spoils of war which Ghazi had given to win patronage from Buri, I was brought forwards to bow and scrape before the enthroned Muslim lords, delivered into the hands of a servant of the envoy, and then led away again. I never saw Sahak, al-Mutarshid, Buri, Ghazi, or any of my fellow prisoners again, nor did I ever learn the name of my new master, the envoy. I became once more a commodity of exchange, a vessel of value to be bartered for favour – in this case, the favour of the Caliph of Cairo.

As I say, over the next days, as my depth of understanding grew, so too did the realization of the awful significance of the events Bohemond had set in motion when he decided to attack the Armenians. I watched my new masters closely and observed them in their dealings, and so gained invaluable insight into the complicated affairs of the Arab race-insight which would serve me well in the days to come. I kept my eyes and ears open, and pieced together any scraps of information that came my way, meditating long over them. This is what I learned:

Ghazi's defeat of Bohemond's army greatly relieved and encouraged the Muhammedans; in a single battle the amir had reduced the Christian might in the region and restored Muslim hopes that the hated Franj might yet be pushed out. Antioch was now vulnerable to siege and capture. The Templars could not protect the city by themselves alone; without a swift and abundant supply of fresh troops, the end was a foregone conclusion. For the first time in many, many years the Turks could entertain notions of recapturing that great city. Once Antioch was under Seljuq rule, Jerusalem could not fail to follow.

Shrewd amir that he was, Ghazi was not slow to recognize the rich potential of his victory. That day when he halted the executions on the battlefield, he was already calculating the cost of his next venture: the siege of Antioch.

Aware that he must strike quickly and decisively, Ghazi rushed to Damascus where he knew the Caliph of Baghdad had lately arrived. On the way, he gathered the support for his scheme from those who would help supply the army he hoped to raise. A siege is a lengthy and expensive business, and Ghazi required the aid of more powerful men to mount and supply a force large enough to capture that great city. He also needed the consent of his betters-not only their approval of his military plan, but their sanction of his larger aims as well. Again, the wily amir showed his acuity, for knowing he did not possess the necessary authority, he sought a bargain that would allow him to rule the city once it had been captured.

To this end, he lavished gifts upon his liege lords and vassals alike, demonstrating that he had the discernment and largesse of spirit to rule wisely and well. As I was learning, gift giving among the Arabs is a meticulous arrangement of balances as perilous as it is precise, for each and every gift carries with it an obligation which binds the recipient to the giver in many and various ways. Ghazi gave gifts to his overlords so they would grant him the authority to proceed with his plans of conquest. Caliph al-Mutarshid, commanding the highest power, was given the greatest gifts.

The fortuitous appearance of the Egyptian envoy added another element to the intricate symmetry of powers and obligations which Eastern potentates glory in manipulating. As it happened, the celebration Sahak mentioned was to mark the proposal of a peace treaty between Baghdad and Cairo. It was not until much later that I learned how the two powerful caliphates had been at each other's throats for many years-owing to differences over religious observance, mostly. The fall of Jerusalem had awakened them to the danger of a house divided; the Caliph of Cairo, a more far-thinking ruler than most, had, I would eventually discover, offered his extensive fleet for the use of a combined Arab army united against the common enemy. Together Cairo and Baghdad might drive out the invading foreigners.

This offer had been spurned by the arrogant and pride-bound Baghdad caliphate, which considered itself superior to Cairo in every way. Still, as the years passed and the crusaders established themselves as a continual threat and ever-present thorn in the side of the Arabs, Baghdad began to soften to the idea of uniting against the crusaders. With the fall of Antioch imminent, and the prospect of recapturing Jerusalem a genuine possibility for the first time in many years, the young Caliph al-Mutarshid decided it was time to make peace with Cairo. Towards that end, the Egyptian emissary, who was merely making a routine visit to Damascus, had been summoned and lavished with gifts by way of a peace offering.

The Arabs have long enjoyed a fantastically elaborate game played between two people on a wooden board with dozens of small carved pieces. I once observed this game, and though I failed to grasp any but the most rudimentary principles, it did seem to capture the essence of the intricate convolutions of the Eastern mind. For although the board is marked with fixed squares of alternating colour, red and white, each piece moves entirely at will-but only within certain tightly circumscribed limitations peculiar to its rank. And for each move there is a countermove, each power balanced by an equal and opposite power. A game of infinite possibility, it is nevertheless played out according to rules as immutable as the mountains and invariable as a sunrise.

I had become like one of the lesser pieces in this strange game, and when the emissary departed Damascus two days later, I went with him – and all the rest of the plunder amassed by Ghazi as well, to be given to the Egyptian caliph as tokens of reconciliation between the powerful rulers of Baghdad and Cairo. So, following a five-day march overland from Damascus to the port of Sidon on the coast, I was put aboard one of the sturdy ships of the Egyptian caliph's substantial fleet, and we sailed for Cairo, arriving five days later at Damietta on the wide, spreading, many-fingered delta of the river Nile.

We left the ship at the harbour of Damietta, a foul stink-hole of a town, and proceeded by sailing barge up the wide, muddy river to Cairo. I stood at the low rail and watched the graceful river boats with their single, fin-shaped sails and long steering oars, gliding slowly on the brown water. We passed tiny settlements built on the banks of the river with long, fields of green cultivated grain stretching in wide, generous bands behind. One after another, we passed them, so many that they seemed after awhile to merge into a single, endless strip of villages all the way to Cairo.

I stood on the deck of the barge and watched life along the river unfold like a vast, seamless tapestry unrolled before me to reveal the age-old images of the river realm: three boys riding a donkey piled high with palm branches; a girl with a willow switch in her hand, herding grey geese along the path; two women washing clothes at the riverside; men casting fishing nets from small, bobbing boats; a youth carrying a row of dried fish on a pole over his shoulder; a laughing bevy of girls with water jars on their heads, their mantles knotted around their slender hips; a farmer gathering rushes with a curved scythe, and another leading an ox-drawn cart mounded with yellow melons; naked brown children wading in the cool shallows.

From the moment we entered the river channel, all that had gone before seemed to fade away into the warm, heavy air of the valley lowland. The looming tribulations of the last days dwindled away to piddling insignificance in the face of an immense and all-pervading tranquillity. No mere human event could disturb the prodigious peace of that land; the great tempests of war and ruin that wreak such havoc among men are but fleeting squalls that arise and disappear, swallowed in a serenity as old as the earth. I stood on the deck of the barge, and felt myself being drawn down and down into the limitless depths of the most profound cakn I had ever known-as if the timeless sky with its bright spray of stars wheeling through its eternal round proclaimed: this, too, shall pass.