3. Attainment

Thine interest Miss Celia in my narrative demands that I forewarn you on the contents of this one letter. Banda Atxe was to be a turning point in my life. I beg you to withhold your judgement on what I am about to confide, my most generous friend, if I may be so bold as to call you so.

Returning to my narrative, our sailing went without any enemy vessels hindering Buslu's embassy. The intricacies of the Raja's mission remained unknown to me and I was not eager on a future interview with de Graeff. I was finally presented as a gift to the Sultana, a woman in imposing regalia. Instead of taking me in her service, and against the plans of Master Jan, she gave me to the service of an old man in his retinue, a sage under the name of Shayk Nuradin. His household was not far from the palace, where I was assigned lowly chores under the vigilant eye of a foreman. I was in a degraded condition, yet my spirits were surprisingly high. Having been a proud soldier with a promising future under the banners of the King, I was laboring among the refuse of my new masters. All the novelties around me kept my senses wide awake, the outer furnishings of the palace, my port of entry  to the city, being more elaborate than that at the Moro Sultan. Applying myself to my duties, I learned their language, different from the one in Sulu, in not too long a time. I carefully earned the appreciation of the foreman, to an extent that he took me to indoor services. It came to be that the Shayk inquired after me, the Christian slave presented from Sulu, and I was called to his presence. I wasn't yet deemed worthy of his direct address, but he made his interest visible after having my story recounted, and commanded that I was to be given the opportunity of receiving instruction in the verities of Islam. His speech was full of terms unknown to me, which I attributed to my recent acquaintance with their Atxenese tongue. I was given a coarse white robe, taken to my new lodgings in a wing for  scholars adjoining the Shayk's apartment, and led into a small cell, shared with another man my age, Bandong. Along with other youngsters we were learning the opening verses of the Coran, and through them my first inklings of the Arabic language. My Atxenese companions there were friendly and of great help. I learned later that it was during that period that de Graeff had come to inquire after me. While I was embarking with my fellow scholars in long conversations on the suwar, my old lutheran acquaintance's request to meet me was being rejected at court. When the Shayk learnt about this, he gave me the honor of his attention. He praised me for my scholarly endeavours, this time directly, and invited me to recite the article of faith, thereby entering the company of the faithful.

By that time I felt so hopelessly far from my old allegiances and so strongly attracted to what I had found in Atxe, that I did not hesitate to recite it. Now I have disclosed to you what I had not to another soul, ever since disembarking in Barbados, a practice called the Takiya. I was allowed to move about freely in the plain yet esteemed robe of a religious scholar. After committing the holy writings to memory and a year of study among my young friends, I started using and elaborating arguments in Arabic. The Shayk got hold of this and interrogated me. When he was convinced of my newly acquired proficiency in the Arabic tongue and interested in my description of a land far to the east and across the sea, he chose to have me at his personal service. I was apprenticed into writing down his communications, religious writings and commentaries by an older secretary. I seldom left his quarters, just to take some fresh air. I abandoned any kind of physical exercise, and even though the cooking at his household was frugal, I lost the lean body of a young warrior to the more plump constitution of a scribe. During that year I learned from passing whispers how the Shayk had been falling in disgrace at court.

I take my leave from thou my lady and leave the continuation of my labors until my next letter, with the humble hope for thine merciful handling of the news I have disclosed in this.

2. Captivity

I am ever so grateful for the appreciation thou bestowest on my letters, I only aspire to be a worthy follower of the style of writing thou, Miss Celia, hath so graciously shared with me by making me your humble disciple and now correspondent.

Returning to my narrative, my captivity under the Raja Bungsu started as a strenuous ordeal. I was chained and imprisoned in a small cage. Of my fellow captives, their fates were kept hidden to me. I was fed a loathsome gruel, barely enough to keep me alive, and regularly beaten with long sticks across my cage's bars. After I lost track of time, I was released from the cage and put in shackles to toil in the rice paddies. While the laborers went about  I got a visit of a man in European garb. He introduced himself Master Jan de Graeff. After my initial surprise at hearing him address me in Spanish, he recognized my reticence and addressed my qualms. Father Miguel had already instructed us against the dangers of the devilish Lutheran heresy practiced by another European power, the Dutch. In my disadvantaged condition, I was prone to accept him as a friend. He explained me that he was acting as an adviser to the Sultan of Sulu, that's how he called him, on behalf of the Dutch Company of the East Indies, and had just brokered an embassy to the Sultanate of Atxe. He said he had convinced Bungsu that I, having gained some reknown, would be a good addition to the presents for the new ruler, a queen. He offered me the office of his informer at her court, taking for granted a grateful compliance on my behalf and an animosity towards the Moors given my affiliation. I didn't inquire much else from him, so though suspicious, with no choice but to follow his lead, my willpower weakened and I gave in.

Bungsu's interest was caught by the accounts of my fighting, and eventually called me to his presence. An imposing figure, he talked to me through Master Jan as an interpreter. It galled me to be cut off from the transactions, and I decided I was to learn the local tongue. In the building of the fort the natives had caught up fast to our Christian language, and it was them who did most of the translating for us when needed. Now it was a clear disadvantage to be unable to communicate by myself. I learned I was to be captive till the embassy was ready, although better fed and treated. A close watch was kept on me as I was instructed on some of their manners. I was also given a slave girl for company, taken years ago from an inland heathen people. She had been under moorish captivity, serving in the palace for years, therefore very useful in my instruction of their language as well. I learned the other Christians were toiling as slaves, and as expected I was kept at a distance from them. Once, one of my former companions caught sight of me and gave a look of reproach that I can only understand, seeing me I in better shape, not as emanciated as a laboring slave. As the launching of the embassy neared, I found myself all the less eager to escape, my curiosity wetted by familiarity with the Mahometan mores. I was clad as a moor and brought under a proper roof. This queen I was being presented to was called the Sultana, a name that made the upcoming events seem all the more intriguing.

Finally we set sail, Master Jan bidding me farewell at the pier. I entrusted to his charity the well-being of the other Christian soldiers in this stronghold and also for Yalma, the slave-girl. He told me not to worry about my comrades, as they would all be put to good use and a fair treatment, words that did not sooth me as I wished. During our sailing I learned my captors feared an encounter with some Christian vessel, and since they were not ready to entrust me a sword and a rope, it required my returning to a severe bondage, though without no mistreatment, the last of that kind I was to suffer for many a year.

1. First years

The expectations with which Master Gerald and this humble servant left thine society on our way to Belize were cut short by a storm of which thou must have received notice by this day. We were favoured by the Most Merciful and the lives of all aboard were spared in this shipwreck, my first after many years of seafaring. After finding aid and shelter in a fishing village, he we went thither the port of Belize. Master Gerald's most tender nature was brought to light when on the small pier, about to board back to his fellow English subjects, he released your humble servant of my bond to him. Now that I'm under the sovereignty of King Goodman I can heed thine gentle encouragement to provide a first hand account of my travels that, as in thine words, shall stand longer in paper than the frail memory of listeners. So it this that I set down pen to paper to record in these letters my travels ever since I left my native town of Tutpec in New Spain.

I was a young lad, in the service of the Spanish crown, enrolled to fight a foe unknown to me at that time. All we new about the Moor was that he was worst than the Mexica had been, an explanation as good as any for us Mixtecs. My parents, may the All-Merciful have them under His Shelter, were as ignorant as I about my destination. To cross what we saw as a never-ending sea was something frightful to them, enticing to me and unknown to all of us. As youngsters we dreamt of fighting the Chichimeca under the banners of our King, but the designs of our authorities threw us along our seasoned warriors into an unexpected journey across the Ocean, into His domain of New Castille. I had only trained in the acrobatics of swinging on the vines of my native forests during our childhood games, and the mock-sword fighting of the barracks as I grew up. The first leg of my journey started in the port of Acapulco, with the wondrous view of a Galleon the size of which I have never since, not even in the fleets of most wondrous realms, seen surpassed. During the three uneventful months of passage we were entertained by frightful narratives of starvation during the long return trip. Our Captain started training us for fighting on the deck against an eventual encounter with pirates, with the hands serving as aides to the swordmaster. A few of them climbed to watch us from the ropes. That sight probed me to stage my primitive vine-swinging skills, jumping uninvited with youthful bashfulness and catching the attention of crew and even the Master of our ship. It turned out swinging on the ropes of a ship had a nature somewhat different from that of the vines of the forest I had had my childhood exercise. One of the ropes didn't serve me quite as I expected and I fell from a distance high enough for my landing to unavoidably lack any nimbleness; rather, I tumbled along the deck in a most ungraceful manner; nor high enough to cause any serious injury in my then flexible body. My accident brought an uproar of laughter in my audience. A lieutenant gave a rough welcome to the upright position and they all made good sport of me. I took it in stride and soon enough I was given the chance to familiarize myself with these new surroundings, since that sort of manoeuvre was widely in use during the boarding of an enemy Galleon and I had shown promise.

Fortunately that trip wasn't our baptism of fire and we reached Manila unscathed. After having seen so many ponderous cities, this walled settlement does not seem remarkable now, but at that time it was the largest such sight in my short years, surpassing those of Acapulco. The presence of the Catayan people also called my attention. Those people had given their allegiance to the Spanish crown after a number of rebellions had been crushed, but remained kin to marauding pirates, not the same ones we had come to fight. From there we were hurried along thither the town of Jambangan, for the building of a fort. Many of us expected more fighting than masonry labour, so we toiled with disappointment. After some months the news of a pirate raid on a group of neighbouring islands, though terrible for those who suffered it, cheered us up in view of the expected retaliation. We rallied and manned the ships to go fight the Moor. Close to our the region pillaged we found an enemy outpost and our high spirits drove a fierce fighting. The enemy was dismayed as they saw us leaping from the ropes onto their decks. When they scuttled one of their ships full of enslaved baptised natives, our rage flared beyond bounds. After our glorious victory, a group of us requested to form further punitive expeditions to free other enslaved Christian natives in the Moorish stronghold. Among them we learned about a group of bound European soldiers. Our Captain, Don Hurtado de Corcuera, introduced them as Portuguese, fellow subjects to our King. He praised our valour and the Fort of Saint Joseph turned into frantic preparations as we got more natives from other islands for the construction work. After restraining our careless enthusiasm for longer than we had wished, upon the arrival of Spanish reinforcements, we stormed the stronghold of Jolo. From there I was among those in the forefront of a drive towards what seemed to us then the last post in that moorish chain of islands, Tawi-Tawi. Throughout that campaign my skill in swinging and fighting increased as did my unexpected reknown among the Moors, which made the Raja Bungsu, the new ruler of the Moors, to offer a reward for my capture. So it was that shortly after being promoted to lead a small detachment of men, I suffered what I have come to believe was a betrayal from renegade natives. A small vessel carrying me and a few comrades on a patrol which overreached the counsel of caution, suffered an assault by a much larger force of swift pirate boats. Resistance was futile and as death had become a familiar sight already, I had learned to respect her. We were bound and taken to a larger ship and hence towards their base.

The Warrior: Timeline

1619: Born in New Spain, in the Villa de Tutpec, of Mixtec fathers

April 6 1635: At 16, along with 300 soldiers, arrives from New Spain to garrison fort La Caldera, Zamboanga.

1640: at 21, captured by forces of the Sultan of Sulu, Raja Bungsu

1642: Arrives at Aceh, meets the first Sultana Taj ul-Alam

1644: Travels with Nuruddin ar-Raniri back to Guajarat.

1647: Goes to Nurudin’s ancestral land, Hadhramaut, in Yemen.

1648: Performs Hajj along Nuruddin’s relatives/clan
1649: Short stay in Egypt, pestilence and famine drives him along North African coast, settling in Algiers.
1649-1654: Joins in the Anglo-Dutch privateers from Algiers, learns English. Seized by Enlgish forces, released in Barbados in bondage, at 35.
1654-1660: Rises in plantation service in Barbados, travels to Jamaica with master. Meets Celia, plantation mistress.
1661: Stays in the Miskito Coast, as advisor to King Oldman. Contacts Nahuatl people from San Salvador. Writes narrative of exploits and travels.
1669: At 50, visits parent's grave in Tutpec and settles there.