The first rays of the sun are just emerging from behind the mighty peaks of Jabal ath-Thalj. It has been about thirty minutes since the strong and melodious voice of the muezzins tore through the silence of the night, echoing from hill to hill - as if to remind us that here, we are still the masters of our souls. The coolness of the morning, accentuated by the light breeze blowing from the mountains, gives no indication of the heavy heat which will descend within a few hours; a few hesitant clouds embrace the summits of the still snow-covered mountains. Below, the city is already waking up. The believers, I guess, disperse into the narrow streets from the great mosque, open their shops, little by little fill the courtyards, the markets, the baths; no doubt the muhtasib has taken over from the night guard and recently started his patrol. Beyond the suburbs, cohorts of peasants will soon spread out into the vast fertile plain to tend its rows of olive trees, its pretty orchards, its luxuriant gardens, its groves of orange trees, pomegranate trees, lemon trees, almond trees and its flower beds which flourish on either side of the waters of the Shanîl - which hardly impress anyone at this time of year. Here and there, cypress hedges point the way to the most beautiful residences, the properties of princes and nobles. Further west, overlooking the landscape, the al-Hamra palace — where my sultan and nephew lives — imposes its majesty imbued with a thousand and one mysteries that seem to conceal its ocher-colored walls, extended to the horizon by the roofs white people of the hill of al-Bayyâsîn, where a whole crowd of craftsmen, masons, street vendors and students are already bustling with enthusiasm to the blessed rhythm of the dhikr of passers-by.

In a word, life — what we have fought for with all our strength and all our souls. And beyond, beyond the beautiful red hills dotted with pines and slender cedars like so many guard towers of our kingdom, beyond what my eye can reach, these lands that we did not know, unable or unwilling to defend these lands where I was born, which were once ours and where the adhan did not resonate this morning; further still, where even the most daring imagination fears to venture, the endless plains of Castile - the den of the Demon, they say here - and the country of the Franks and other cold and obscure lands still whose existence and name we only know from the stories of merchants and whose fiercest warriors, however, sometimes come to wash up on our shores in search of glory and booty.