My passion is the poetry of the Spanish Convivencia period. From the eighth century to 1492, people of the faiths of Abraham, Christ, and Mohammed, blessed be their names, lived in peace together, learned from one another, pursued wisdom, and wrote their hearts in poetry. In the university city where I lived, the poetry of Wallada bint al-Mustakfi of Cordoba, Hafsa bint al-Hajj of Granada, and many others was accessible. I lived high above thousands of people, spending nearly all
of my time in my library. Electronic servants provided for all my needs, physical and intellectual. Anything I couldn’t buy from an online vendor, I had trained myself not to want.

My apartment was my work of art. Every object earned its place in my home. A small bay window gave access to a view of the city if one were interested. Off the kitchen, a third-floor balcony looked over a square-block park. I looked into the upper branches of tall cottonwoods, two October Glory maples, and a lush, wild growth of bushes, some flowering. I considered the view as much of nature as I required. I had a view of the changing seasons, birds and squirrels. I felt empathy for their anxiety. I purchased opera glasses to watch the finches build nests and blue jays chase them away. Such engineering skills for creatures without hands and brains the size of a garbanzo.

The nations had come together in 2030 to restrict commercial harvesting of hardwood trees on public land. Ten years later, the Planet United Against Extinction High Council increased quotas for O2 production, extending protection to old hardwoods on private property. Fines for unauthorized tree cutting were made astronomical, and burning wood, except in a small fireplace or stove, was a felony. The remaining forests were surveilled constantly by swarms of PUAE drones. Finally, atmospheric oxygen levels had begun to rise.

My friend Topher’s invitation to a book burning surprised me. Every woman in her fifth decade should have a younger male friend, and Topher is mine. He is a bibliophile though not a connoisseur. He knows authors, titles, translators, editions, editors as some men know sports stars or sci-fi movie trivia. In me, Topher has a mentor and a listener who is not flirty, pouty, clingy, or controlling.

Topher attended every burning he heard about but he never invited me. Outside is where I never went, not since the pandemics. I worked from my home during the quarantines. After I learned how to obtain every possible household and personal necessity by delivery, I was transformed. I slept better. I was more productive in my work, research and manuscript editing for language and literature journals. My panic attacks ended, I stopped stuttering, and I no longer screamed at strangers to stop touching me and hogging my oxygen.

He texted me: “BB U+me? See you 10am.”

At 9:55 the sound of a siren pummeled my windows. I pulled my sound-absorbing drapes, but the shrieking grew louder. When the sound reached its maximum irritation, it suddenly stopped. Through a gap in my drapes, I could see drones and police cars with lights flashing. A crowd of people stepped back to allow EMT robots to approach a body lying in the street.

I rushed through the apartment, gathering clean towels and a bottle of hydrogen peroxide. Arms laden, I stood frozen at my front door. I began hyperventilating. I heard knock-knock-pause-knock. That was Topher’s identification code.

Topher slid past me, gently taking the towels from my rigid arms. “You were dead in the street! I wanted to save you.”
“It wasn’t me,” Topher said. “The guy is okay. He got up and walked to the ambulance.”
I calmed down quickly with Topher’s soothing reassurances and deep breathing. When he thought I was ready, he said, “What were you going to do with towels and hydrogen peroxide, Francie?”

I smiled at my silly efforts. “I have no idea.” Topher was the only person allowed to call me Francie, short for my pen name, Frances D’Larue.

“I’ll start the coffee maker. We will sit on the balcony. The maples across the street are flaming, figuratively speaking,” I said.

“So I noticed when I alighted from the hired car,” he said. We both smiled. With me, Topher felt free to release the inner P.G. Wodehouse he kept hidden from his normal friends.

Topher paused in front of my bookcase. On a shelf at eye level, a climate-controlled museum display case held my treasures. I am not a collector of rare books as some are for their investment value nor for the pride of ownership. What books I own, I have read or intend to read. The exceptions contained in the display box were a handful of first editions

I had acquired or been gifted over the years. Three small silver easels stood front and center. Two volumes of the poems of Zuhra bint al- Raahil occupied the first and third. Volume two had eluded me, but its place was reserved if I ever found it.

We enjoyed two cups of coffee each and the little pecan cookies Topher brought. The autumn sun was warm and the breeze-blown trees shushed at us to keep our voices down.

“So, are we going to the book burning together, or do I have to go stag as usual?” Topher said.

Instead of answering, I pointed to a yellow flicker taking off from a branch. He flew in a wide circular pattern and landed inches from where he started. “Aviary schadenfreude, I call that. I think that little trip was strictly for our benefit. ’Watch this, humans.’ Flying, of course, is the skill humans have always craved but never achieved. We are all Icarus.”

“What if I told you that a volume of the poems by the Moorish woman you love so much will be on offer at the book burning?” he said.

“Be careful, my dear. You’ll cause my old heart to explode with such talk,” I said.

Topher scrolled through the contents of his phone. With an expression of smug generosity, he showed me a photograph of the tome I craved. I tilted my head back and closed my eyes. “Anyway, the word ‘Moor’ was an invention of Christian Europeans. Consider a time of peace, tolerance of belief, and respect for learning. Enthusiasm for the arts in every form. Imagine living your whole lifetime untouched by war. This was Spain, more precisely, Al-Andaluz for nearly four centuries. Humanity living up to its gifts.”

“Who was she?” Topher asked.

“Zuhra bint al-Raahil lived in the household of a cacique as his last wife. Her husband welcomed Jewish and Christian guests to his home. Even non-believers were tolerated. I dream about the evenings of musical performance or storytelling in halls of exacting geometric architecture. She celebrated her world in her poetry. She even wrote some erotic satire, very saucy stuff.” I opened my eyes and smiled at Topher.

“You read Arabic?” he asked.

“I have translations of all her poems in old Spanish. To continue, when the poet’s death was imminent, she desired to gift her poems to those who made her life joyful: her husband, her daughter, and a servant boy whose singing calmed her in her last sickness. She asked for a copy of her published poems, and tore the book into three parts. The pages were gifted as she directed.

“Zuhra bint al-Raahil’s poetry was known in her own time and beyond. Her work remained in print and available through the years of the Convivencia. The torn pages became a kind of legend, and collectors spent centuries searching for them, but only two volumes were ever found. Collectors schemed and bargained for the first and third volumes for years, but the second was considered lost. How I came to possess la primera and la tercera is a long story and includes at least one shameful act.”

“That’s lovely,” Topher said. His attempt to stifle a bored yawn made me giggle.

“The Moors invented deodorant and toothpaste, and introduced daily bathing to the civilized world,” I said.

Book burnings began shortly after the PUAE 2030 ban on the printing of paper books for mass consumption. A limited number of hardcovers were still produced for libraries, but the proletariat literati (my own term) had to be satisfied with digital or audio versions of new titles. Of course, there were millions of paper books in warehouses and home libraries. Over the years, old worn-out paperbacks fell apart, never to be replaced.

The burnings were like funerals for torn, crumbling, beloved books. The mourners formed a circle around a deep pit of crackling embers. The pit was covered by a grate for safety and to lessen the emission of smoke. Book burnings were illegal. Nothing called forth the meddlesome fire drones like a whiff of smoke in a forest.

By turns, the owners brought their books to the edge of the pit.

After sharing a mixture of eulogy and book report, emphasizing personal benefits the reader may have received from the text, the grate slid back just enough for the owner to drop his book into the pit. When the old paper hit the embers, everyone responded with a soft moan to its hiss. In seconds, flames enveloped the book like fluttering fingers. The grate was replaced, and the next mourner stepped forward.

Lest you think the burnings were exclusively an homage to the word, there was a mercantile element to the gathering. The sale of privately owned books was not illegal. Perceiving the eventual scarcity of physical books, many craved ownership of favorites or classics. Bidding could be brutal, and large sums of money were exchanged via electronic devices.

Generally, nothing could persuade me to endure a car trip to the country at the end of which a huddle of strangers would gather close to me in the dark. But this was a chance to get la segunda.

Topher rented a two-passenger electric car for the trip. As we drove through city traffic, I squeezed my eyes shut behind my sunglasses and recited lines of poetry with the urgency of someone praying over a dying loved one.

“Was that one by your lady poet?” Topher asked.

“A twelve-year-old slave girl named Safiyya al-Baghadiyya wrote that.”

“Wow to her and another wow for you. We are out of the city, now. You are unlikely to see another human being until we reach the book burning.”

“Quiet,” I said. “A drone is probably following us and listening to every word.”

We were in the country sooner than I expected. “How much longer, do you think?”

“About an hour.”

“It’s nice out here,” I said. “What are those screens in the pavement?”

Topher started to laugh but stopped abruptly. “You really don’t know.”

I said nothing.

“Solar panels,” he said. “They’re built into lots of roads now, outside the cities. The energy is stored in giant batteries. We passed one a few minutes ago.”

“That little concrete building? I thought it was a bunker of some kind,” I said.

This time Topher did not bother to smother his laughter. “It has been a long time since you were out of that apartment,” he said.

“I’m starting to regret it already,” I mumbled. Petals of enormous daisies came into view on the horizon.

“Do you know what those are?”

“Of course,” I said. “They are wind turbines. So beautiful in their simplicity. Their unhurried movement is so calming. I alternate between watching a single blade’s rotation or staring at the middle and seeing the movement less directly.” The turbines grew larger as we moved nearer. “What would he make of these giants?” I said.

“Who?”

“Don Quijote. He tilted at windmills much smaller than these beautiful beasts. By the way, that book is the greatest ever written.”

“Won’t argue with you. What’s the second greatest book?” “You pick,” I said.
“This is a freshly-cut field of alfalfa. No sweeter scent on earth.” Topher lowered both windows. “Crime and Punishment is my number two.”

He made a sharp turn onto a narrow, unmarked asphalt road. My shoulder bounced off the window next to it, but the door did not burst open. I did not roll multiple times on gravel, nor did I land in a muddy ditch. Imagining such events was only slightly less terrifying than experiencing them.

“I don’t think this is right,” Topher said.

I shook my head to remove the road dirt that I believed filled my hair. My shoulder truly hurt from hitting the window, but the paralysis was my anxiety’s own idea.

Poor Topher saw my dismay and pulled the car slowly to a stop.

“Why are you stopping? See up ahead, the top of a house and another building. Maybe they will help us.”

Topher shook his head. “Book burning locations are secret. This could be a decoy site.” He turned off the car’s engine and opened his door. “I’m going to walk up to the house and see if anyone is there.”

“No!” I cried. “What if a drone swoops down on me? What if...”

“Come with me, then,” Topher said.
Dear God, when will the agony end? I thought.

The house appeared undamaged from the road at the bottom of the hill. As we gained proximity, I observed that the porch roof sagged at one end. The left column was split and did not support it. The door opened with a two-finger push.

The knob fell off at Topher’s feet and rolled in a loopy circle. Light poured into the living room from a hole in the roof and fell on a little silver puddle in front of a stone fireplace as big as a cave. A few pieces of furniture were left where they had always stood, now without purpose.

I stood before the fireplace and listened. The quiet calmed me back to my senses. I closed my eyes to let my hearing take over. Leaves rustled like fanning pages of a favorite book. A bird called and another answered. I found an overturned chair in the dining room and set it upright. That’s better, I thought.

Topher stepped back outside. I circled the dining room, setting first a heel then a toe as slowly as I could without losing my balance. The brush of a lace curtain against the sill of an open window lifted the hairs on the back of my neck. Pirouetting in a small circle, an exquisite solitude wrapped itself around me.

“Feeling better?” Topher asked.
“I thought you went out.”
“I checked around the place. No one has been here for quite a while,” he reported.
I dragged the dining room chair into the living room and sat facing the fireplace. I reached forward and rubbed my hands in the imagined warmth. “You go ahead,” I said. “I want to stay here a while. Pick me up after the burning.”

“That could be tomorrow morning.”
“I’ll be fine here, really. Take your time.”
“What about volume two? The guy with the Spanish poems is expecting you.”

Damn this coveting heart, I thought. “I’ll meet you at the car. I want to see if the bathroom is operational.”

Topher knew nearly everyone at the burn site. I wanted to cling to his hand as we approached the pit, but realized I might look ridiculous. (Might?)

A man approached the pit. He introduced himself as Alberto, friend of someone high in the administration of the Toledo Museum. He put out his right hand. I touched it gently. Was no sacrifice too great for volume two?

“I have the documentation for the book,” he said. Strapped across his chest was a creased leather bag the color of café con leche.

Topher joined us and introduced himself to Alberto. I examined the provenance documents and nodded in suppressed elation, or my version of it. When he placed the volume into my hands, I murmured, “Es un milagro. Zuhra’s poems will rest together at last.” Looking at Alberto directly, I added, “Volumes One and Three are for sale. I know it is a different arrangement than Topher described to you, but the sister volumes will be together.”

Alberto stuttered to the effect that he would contact me shortly with a price. “May I ask what has changed your mind?”

“I found something I want more than the poems.”

I moved away from the fire pit as the first eulogy of a volume of George Sand’s Indiana began. Most of the pages were in ribbons. The cover had been removed, as leather burns more slowly than paper. The handful of embers awoke and did their work quickly. The owner’s tears threatened to extinguish the little pyre.

“Stay as long as you dare, my son,” I said. “I’m going back to the car.”

“What did you find, Francie?”

Alone in the house, when Topher had gone out to the car, I’d found an envelope in a drawer. Inside was the name of the owner, who was grateful for the sale.

Making the old house livable and secure has taken more work than I’d imagined. The money from the sale of Zuhra’s poems has allowed me to restore the farm house to a sanctuary of solitude, a bibliophile’s dream. Before the fireplace, I compose sonnets about the joy of self- containment.

The country is not silent as night falls. I’ve grown to quite like the trills and calls of invisible creatures. We leave one another alone.

Topher is my only guest, and he infrequently. I chat with a young woman who delivers groceries and my scant necessities. I will ask her if she wants to meet my friend Topher. But not yet.

I love my garden. I never imagined how therapeutic digging in the dirt can be. Already I am planning to expand it next year. Many birds visit me there. They make their homes in the trees and I watch their offspring learn to fly. Little show-offs.

Author’s note: Zuhra bint al-Raahil is a fictional character, but the other poets mentioned in the story lived and wrote.