Don Ibrahim

Don Ibrahim is a self-styled Cuban operator and warm-hearted organizer whose schemes are as theatrical as his attachments are sincere. In Seville, he imagines a future for his small circle of companions even as he prepares an incendiary attack on a consecrated church; when the plan nearly burns down their own room instead, the mishap reveals the precarious human loyalties beneath his bravado.

Identity and Circumstances

Don Ibrahim lives without a home of his own, lodging in a modest pension in Triana alongside a traveling comb salesman and a woman whose profession the narration pointedly describes as beyond doubt. He shares this unsettled existence with the Potro del Mantelete, who lives nearby in a partly abandoned tourist boat lent by an old acquaintance. Their circumstances mark them as marginal figures, making the household they form with the Niña Puñales a chosen rather than conventional family.

At the moment he prepares the firebomb, Don Ibrahim sits at a dining table as sunlight moves over the Guadalquivir. The Potro stands silhouetted against the river in the window, while the Niña sings from the kitchen and the smell of fried eggs with blood sausage reaches the room. Don Ibrahim murmurs an ole along with her song and continues working. His attention to the mundane meal around the dangerous task gives the scene its peculiar domestic balance: the plot to damage a church is being assembled amid the familiar routines of companions who share food and space.

His self-presentation depends on stories of famous acquaintances. A loose blue-and-red striped tie, he claims, was given to him in Havana by the tall Englishman Graham Greene in exchange for a New Testament and a bottle of Four Roses; he prizes it both for the tale and because, as he insists, it is genuine Oxford. Later, he treats an old silver lighter as a keepsake from Gabriel García Márquez, whom he says he met when the writer was a humble crime reporter in Cartagena de Indias. These claims belong to Don Ibrahim’s colorful self-invention; the account establishes them as his assertions, not as independently verified history.

The Arson Scheme

Don Ibrahim carefully fills an Anís del Mono bottle with a litre of unleaded, 98-octane gasoline. Newspaper protects the table’s varnish, and he wipes fuel from the faceted glass with a cloth. The Niña had argued that a consecrated church should not be set alight with just anything; the Potro fetched the fuel in an empty Carbonell olive-oil tin. Don Ibrahim presents his expertise with comic solemnity, attributing his knowledge of Molotov cocktails to a conversation with Ernesto Che Guevara over mojitos in Santa Clara and calling the device a Russian invention by Karl Marx.

The planned mechanism combines a thin candle, matches, a wind-up alarm clock, two metres of twine, and a bottle arranged to fall. The three companions are supposed to be in a bar where they can be seen when ignition occurs, so that they will have an alibi. Stacked wooden benches and old ceiling beams are expected to help the fire spread. The instructions have come from Celestino Peregil: total destruction is unnecessary, but damaging the building would suffice, and a complete loss would be better still. The essential condition is that the blaze appear accidental.

Don Ibrahim is not portrayed as a commander who simply imposes his will. He thinks of the others as his tribe, clan, and family, and tries to reason with them rather than issue orders. The Niña does not approve of the plan, and her misgivings wound him. The Potro, by contrast, has made no objection, though his silence is difficult to interpret. Don Ibrahim’s affection for him is especially strong because he regards the Potro’s loyalty as freely given, not bought with money.

Loyalty and the Life He Imagines

The Potro’s loyalties have their own rituals. Although he is not religious, every Good Friday he puts on the old navy-blue suit from his unhappy wedding, buttons a white shirt to the neck, and accompanies the Niña through Seville behind the Esperanza’s float. Don Ibrahim, whose freethinking convictions keep him out of what he regards as obscure rites, watches them pass before dawn: the Niña in black mantilla and at prayer, the Potro silent and steady at her side. His pride in the Potro’s fidelity is not abstract. He imagines that, near the end of his own life, he could answer the question of what he had done worth remembering by saying that the Potro had been a faithful friend and that he had heard the Niña sing Capote de grana y oro.

He also pictures a more tangible future for the group: a grand copla venue they call the Temple of Copla. In his vision, it has cane chairs, elderly and silent waiters, bottles on the tables, a spotlight on the stage, and a real guitar accompanying the Niña’s rough-edged voice. The Potro would be head waiter. The place would admit no groups of tourists or tiresome mobile-phone users. Don Ibrahim expects no grand reward for himself: only a quiet table at the back, a slow drink, a Montecristo cigar, and the chance to hear the Niña sing, along with the hope that the business prospers. His dream is both affectionate and practical, an imagined livelihood built around a voice he values.

Accident and Aftermath

The planned fire comes close to beginning in the wrong place. As the Potro passes the table on his way to the kitchen, he instinctively moves to stub out his cigarette in the ashtray, where Don Ibrahim has put the gasoline-soaked cloth. Don Ibrahim catches the movement and calls out to him. The near-disaster turns their careful apparatus into an immediate domestic threat: the scheme designed to make a church fire look accidental is nearly ignited by a casual gesture at home.

The consequences are painful but limited. The Potro runs around the room with his left arm on fire, while Don Ibrahim suffers superficial burns, singed moustache bristles and eyebrows, and a carefully treated face. The Niña acts quickly, spraying the men with a kitchen siphon and throwing a blanket over the table to smother the flames. By the time the firefighters arrive, only smoke, a burned table, a stain on the ceiling, and the embarrassment of the three partners remain. The companions silently agree not to speak of the episode again. Don Ibrahim gives the humiliation a brisk, mock-scholarly conclusion: painful chapters of life, he says, must be forgotten at full speed.

The failed attempt fixes the contrast at the heart of his portrayal. Don Ibrahim can speak grandly of revolutionary instruction, technical expertise, and a carefully arranged alibi, yet his scheme founders on the household details he has failed to control: a cigarette, a rag, and an ashtray. The fire meant to damage a church instead exposes the vulnerability of the makeshift family he hopes to lead. His tenderness toward the Potro and his imagined place in the Niña’s future do not erase his participation in the arson plan; they make the danger more intimate, and his failure more revealing.