When Ibn Tufayl died in 1185, I took him with me, and my soul wandered without any guidance.

With my experiences and my aptitude for the natural sciences, and having arrived at the Oneness of the necessary being, I aided Ibn Tufayl until he was taken into the Almohad court, where he became a favored doctor of the Almohad caliph Abu Ya’qub Yusuf al-Mansur (1163 – 1184 A.D.). He called me “The Vapor” through which the living are roused to life, and after whose departure the body becomes cold, no better than the stick we use to fend off beasts. He eventually birthed me through his mother the gazelle, when we embodied the character of Hayy ibn Yaqdhan. I was always with him when he treated the sick, and when he worked as a hajib, or minister, in Granada. Our identical birthdays are not coincidental, since we-he and I-are soul-twins, born from one isthmus. Anyone who has delved into history and dates would recognize that this matches the birth date of Abu Bakr Mohamad ibn Abdul Malek ibn Mohamad ibn Mohamad ibn Tufayl al-Qaisi, known for short as Ibn Tufayl. But the truth-which I have hidden so well throughout my eleven years of existence-is that I wasn’t born in Mecca, but rather in the year 500 Hijra, or 1106 in the Christian calendar, in Wadi Acci near Granada.

The BoaĮveryone knows me as Fatima the Meccan. Raja Alem’s “The Boa,” translated by Rana Ghuloom, was on the inaugural ArabLit Story Prize shortlist in 2018 and appeared in the first-ever issue of ArabLit Quarterly.

Rana garden story