Festival of Ibrahim

The Festival of Ibrahim is the ceremonial setting for a decisive night in Jahilia: its last evening brings public revelry, grotesque disguises, and an attack on the followers of Mahound into a single sequence. For Hamza, the festival’s noise and masks are not harmless spectacle. They accompany his search for the threatening manticore and end with the discovery that the violence directed at his companions is tied to Hind’s family.

The Festival’s Closing Night

The last night of the festival transforms Jahilia into a masquerade. Daytime wrestling gives way to night wrestling, while singers and dancers replace the poets whose seven poems have been nailed to the walls of the House of the Black Stone. The courtesans wear golden, bird-beaked masks; gold glitters in the streets, in the braziers set in the sand, and in the illuminated walls and doorways. The pilgrims lie unconscious as cutpurses work among them, and wine-blurred celebration spills from the houses.

This abundance does not feel festive to Hamza. He moves through the glowing streets with a sense of insult and disgust, then leaves the revelry behind to search the city’s shadows for the apparition of a lion. The contrast makes the festival’s public gaiety feel unstable: beneath its bright pageant, the night is already charged with menace.

Masks, Vision, and the Search

Earlier, Hamza sees a manticore on the battlements, but it vanishes as laughter rises around him; the people nearby are Jahilians returning from the fair in fancy dress. He understands that the night may bring danger nonetheless. The battle sword he calls for has remained in its leather scabbard since his conversion by his nephew. After forty-four years served by the same valet, Hamza tells him that peace will have to wait.

As Hamza searches, the city’s disguises multiply: people appear dressed as animals and fantastic beings, while Djinn, houris, and demons seem to fill its alleys. The spectacle blurs the boundary between costume and apparition without settling whether what Hamza sees is supernatural. After hours, he finds the red, triple-toothed manticore of his vision in a dark corner by the outer wall. At the same time, a fight is unfolding there, and the attackers’ red lion masks connect the night’s imagined beast to a very real threat.

The Attack and Its Consequences

The men under attack are Khalid, Salman the Persian, and Bilal. Their drunkenness has begun in self-destructive unhappiness; unfamiliar with alcohol, they become thoroughly intoxicated and abuse passers-by. Khalid, the water-carrier, brandishes his water-skin and boasts that water could destroy and cleanse Jahilia, washing it away so that a purified beginning could be made. The lion-masked men pursue the three until fear sobers them and leaves them cornered.

Hamza arrives in time, draws his sword, and rushes into the fight. It ends quickly: two attackers flee and two lie dead. Khalid, Salman the Persian, and Bilal are wounded, though not seriously. Hamza recognizes the dead men as Hind’s brothers and understands their involvement as a sign that the believers’ position is nearing a crisis. In the festival’s final hours, masquerade gives way to bloodshed, and the companions gather weeping in the city-wall’s shadow.