Murakush (Marrakech), c.1102
Walking pains me now. The distance to my rooms seems very great, each step jarring in my withered body. Here and there I pass serving girls and slaves. They dip their heads in respect as I pass but I do not acknowledge them. I know as I move on that they make secret signs to themselves that they think I do not see. The slaves from the Dark Kingdom clutch at their amulets, hidden under their robes. The Christians make the sign of the cross and touch their crucifixes, amulets all the same. The others make their own gestures, murmur their own little spells of protection. They are afraid of me, as they have been these many years passed. They are so young they cannot even remember a time when I strode rather than shuffled, when my hair rippled down my back and my eyes were bright. But they have heard enough stories from the older servants, from whispers in the bright gardens and murmurs in the dark streets. They believe nonsense about me, believe that I command spirits and djinns.
The door to my rooms is protected by guards who spring forward to open it for me as I approach, heaving on the carved expanse of wood. Servants scatter as I enter and stand, heads bowed, awaiting my orders. When I tell them to leave, they hurry to do so, for they have already heard the news, already know what has befallen me. The door swings shut behind them.
I trace the lines of my beloved maps with my fingertips. Every line fought for, every city’s name grown great only because of my work and vision.
My legacy, turned to dust.
I open a carved chest that once belonged to Hela. My hands are stiff and pulling the stoppers from the tiny bottles I have chosen is hard.
The mixture smells fetid but I drink it all the same.
Daughter
The sun is sinking and I am late back from the pools. My nursemaid Myriam is not her usual kindly self. She grabs me as soon as I come in and hustles me upstairs, gripping my arm in a painful way. I try to escape but she will not let me, hissing at me to be quiet and get into my bedroom, immediately.
“And wash that filthy mud off your legs!” she adds. “Where have you been?”
“The pools,” I say as I am bundled, breathless, into my room. Myriam is already throwing open chests while two slave girls who have brought up large buckets of hot water are pouring them into a big basin.
Myriam barely hears me. “Faster!” she snaps at the slave girls and they flee the room with a pile of orders falling over their heads – more water, washing cloths, towels, robes, belts, hair pins. Myriam pulls my clothes off and flings them in a pile, then lifts me bodily into the basin. I stand up to my knees in water while Myriam scrubs me down and then shriek as she starts to brush my hair with none of her usual gentleness. She puts a hand over my mouth to stifle my cries. I squirm and try to bite her hand. This earns me a sharp smack on the legs. I stop shrieking and stand still, in dumbfounded pain. Myriam hardly ever smacks. I cannot even remember the last time she smacked me, but it must be whole years ago.
“What is happening, Myriam?” I ask, through tears of pain. She is still working on the knots in my long hair while the slave girls rush back and forth with everything she asked for. A yank on my head forces it to one side and I see that the robes being laid out for me are new, and the finest I have ever owned. They are very long, and more formal than I usually wear. They are entirely made of silk, a fabric more usually reserved in such quantities for my mother’s clothes, and they are of many glorious colours. Myriam is arranging my hair very elegantly. I am going to look like a miniature version of my mother.
“Myriam?”
I try to get her attention but she does not seem willing to share any information with me. She is putting on her outer robes now, preparing to leave the house.
“Where are we going?”
“Engagement,” she says without any elaboration.
Well of course I have been to engagements before, but never dressed like this. I would be well dressed, but not so elegantly and expensively. I run through all our family members trying to think who it might be that is getting married, for it must be someone important to us if we are going to all this trouble, but I have heard nothing about this and surely my gossiping aunts would have told me if something so exciting was happening in our own family?
There is no time to ponder this, for Myriam is rushing me back down the stairs. I am just opening my mouth to ask some more questions when I see my mother and father standing by the main door, about to depart. They are surrounded by servants.
My father Ibrahim looks like a prince. He is beautifully dressed and looks very handsome. I cannot help smiling at him, even though I am still confused. He catches sight of me and nods, stretches out his hands to me. I reach him and he holds me at arms’ length to examine me.
“Very fine, Zaynab,” he says. “The image of your mother.”
I look towards my mother Djalila. She is always beautiful, but today she is stunning. Her robes are magnificent. If my father looks like a prince, she looks like a queen. I thought my new robes were grand, but she makes me look like a beggar girl. She is not smiling, however. Her face is pale and still. Beside her stands her handmaiden Hela, who rules our household in my mother’s name.
“You are late,” says Hela.
Myriam bows her head without speaking.
Hela ignores Myriam’s contrite face and turns to the servants. “Ready?”
They all nod. It is only now that I look from one servant to the next and see what they are carrying.
A large jewellery box.
Dried fruits.
A live sheep.
An engagement cake.
I look again, unable to believe what I am seeing. Jewellery. Dried fruits. The struggling sheep. The cake. These are the gifts that the groom takes to his intended bride on the day of their engagement.
My father is taking a second wife.
***
My mother has a beautiful mirror in her room. Sometimes when she is occupied elsewhere I snatch a peek at myself in it. My mother does not like anyone going into her room. Only two people are allowed: her personal maidservant Hela, who comes and goes at will. And my father, who makes his way to her rooms only rarely and with a slow tread.
When my mother is not in her room and I am sure no one will find me, I creep close to her mirror and peer at myself. I have long thick hair, although it is always tangled, for I twist and turn under Myriam’s hands until she gives up and lets me escape. I have very large dark eyes, which Myriam praises and says are like my mother’s. I am not sure she is right. My mother’s eyes can gaze at you without blinking for whole minutes, whereas my eyes are always moving, seeking out curiosities and following movements around me. My mother is very still. I have never seen her run or move fast. The same is true for my aunts, but they are fat and like nothing better than to lie on their comfortable cushions and eat sweets and cakes, giggling and quivering with the latest gossip. They are my father’s sisters and come often to visit, caressing their brother and praising him. They are polite to my mother but she does not join in with their sticky-fingered whispers. She ensures they have everything they need and then leaves them, retreating to her rooms and the songbirds who flutter in their ornate cages there. The aunts while away long afternoons on their visits, occasionally catching me as I run through our house. When they catch me they crush me to their warm, multicoloured breasts of velvet and silk. Hot roses and jasmine flowers pervade the air around them. They laugh and poke and ask questions, rewarding answers with kisses and tastes of honeyed treats, then let me race away, back to my own games.
The mirror reflects my mother’s bedroom, a place of fine colours and rich scents, beautifully arranged objects, which I am not allowed to touch. So I content myself with observing them in the mirror, reaching out through the glass so that I leave each item exactly where I found it, for my mother would surely spot any small changes.
In her mirror I am a small scrawny girl of ten years, with scabbed knees and long dark hair, wide-open eyes and a too-large mouth. I am not yet grown to a woman, but Myriam swears it will not be long now. I do not care. I have no older sisters with whom to compare and find myself wanting. No brothers either. I am my parents’ only child.
My father is a carpet merchant, and the carpets from his workshops are much prized. Kairouan is famous for its carpets, and my father’s are the best in the city. His workshops are elaborate places, with beautiful intricate paper designs replicated in a thousand, thousand tiny knots, tied by the deft hands of women, following the designs created by my laughing aunts. Some of the makers work at home, but many choose to work in my father’s workshops where they can chatter amongst themselves as they work. His workshops are refined compared to those of the other crafts – the heavy beating of the copper, the stench of the tanneries, the wet muddy droplets and dust of the potteries. He is a busy man, so I see little of him. Sometimes when Myriam takes me on her shopping trips I visit his workshops where I can stroke the soft carpets as they grow on the looms, but I am not allowed to go to the dirtier workshops in the city.
Our house is large. We have a shaded courtyard filled with a gurgling fountain, flowers and trees. We have slaves, and some servants who carry out the more important household tasks, such as Myriam. It is Myriam who washes me but it is the slaves who heat and carry the heavy buckets of water to my room, they who clean the house, and do the chopping and stirring under the watchful eye of our cook, Hayfa. Our rooms have beautiful carved ceilings, our doors are painted and have marvellous thick handles and bolts in heavy beaten metal which I could not even draw until I was ten. We have great carved chests of perfumed woods in which to keep our belongings, and my father, although he is not a scholar himself, has many books. Sometimes he invites scholars from the great university to eat with us, and then they talk of many things until it is so late that I am falling asleep, and Myriam is summoned to carry me to bed. I am still small for my age and she is like a stocky little donkey, able to carry a great burden with no effort. She hoists me in her arms, whispering kind words so as not to waken me. She carries me to my soft bed and leaves me there till morning. Mostly she spends her time exclaiming in despair because I am always running about the city getting my costly robes dirty and sweaty from the heat and the dust. A girl from a good family like mine should not really be out on the streets.
But there is so much to see, for Kairouan is surely one of the greatest cities in the world! The surrounding lands are fertile and so there are grains, olives as well as great herds of sheep who provide wool, meat and milk. In the souks you can buy anything you want and on the big market days many hundreds of animals are slaughtered to feed the thousands of people who live here. Aside from its glorious carpets, Kairouan is known for its rose oil, which smells very sweet and rich. People say that if you marry a woman from Kairouan she will fill your house with roses and carpets, and it is true, for my mother smells wonderful and our house is full of beautiful soft carpets. Some carpet merchants use only the poorly designed or badly woven carpets for their own house, those that did not turn out as they were intended. My father says that is a poor economy, for when visitors and fine customers come to his house to be entertained they see extraordinary designs and marvel at their intricacy and quality. Then they eat and drink and gaze at my beautiful mother, who reclines in silence on finely-woven cushions in her gloriously coloured robes. The next day they buy many carpets from my father, finer and in greater quantities than they would have done had they not been so well entertained. I usually attend these dinners but the talk is often dull and the customers are old and smack their lips when they eat. Often I make my excuses after dinner and leave them to it. My mother watches me go. Occasionally I wonder if she would like to leave too, but if she is bored she never shows it.
Kairouan is also a very holy city. They say that Oqba found a golden cup in the sand here which he had lost many years before in the Zamzam well in Mecca, so perhaps there was a river flowing between Mecca and Kairouan. The water which comes up in the Bi’r Barouta well here is therefore holy, and if you drink enough of it you are exempted from the visit to Mecca which all good Muslims should undertake. The water is pulled up by a blindfolded camel that goes round and round all day. I watch it sometimes and wonder what it must think, on its endless wheel of walking, unable to see the daylight. Perhaps it is as well that it is blindfolded. If it realised that its journey would never end it might give up its life in despair.
Above all the rooftops towers the minaret of the great mosque. Inside the prayer hall are columns, very many of them. It is forbidden to count them or you will surely be blinded, but the street boys say there are four hundred and fourteen exactly. I have not counted them. Some of the street boys are blind in one eye or both, and it could be that they were the ones who counted the columns. I am not taking any chances. I love to see. Everywhere there are new things to see, especially in the souk. True, I often visit the souk with Myriam, but visiting it alone is different. I can run, I can get lost, I can visit parts of the souk where the shops get darker and smaller and the wares sold are more mysterious. I can stand and stare at the healers and their wares. There are teeth, snake skins, skulls of strange animals, bottles of every shape and size. The healers whisper that they can cure any illness, even ones I have never heard of but which the men and women who sit before them seem to be flustered by when they hear them mentioned. If I stare when I am with Myriam I am quickly dragged away as she tuts at me for my ‘morbid fascinations’. Later I return alone to have my fill of staring, slipping out of the gate of my home when no-one is looking.
Although I come from a good family I find the other girls I am expected to spend my time with very dull. They only want to talk of their clothes, and their jewels, and whether their sisters will be married soon. The older ones whisper about boys they like and the younger ones beg to be told their secrets and follow them like unwanted pets, creeping a little closer every time, only to be pushed away when noticed.
I escape whenever I can and run through the city with the street children, who are quick, funny and clever. I take sweet cakes from our kitchen and share them with the greedy boys. Our cook marvels at how I can eat so many cakes and always be so bony, but she likes to feed me. She says our house does not have enough children for her to spoil, and what is the use of cooking for adults, who are too refined to say they enjoyed the food. She likes the way I beg her for treats and how greedily I bite into them. She heaps handfuls on me and I run into the streets and spread their honeyed stickiness across the whole city.
Sometimes we go beyond the city walls to the great pools, the reservoirs of the city. They feed the city so that no one goes without water. Even when there are droughts we can still visit the hammams and our fountains can still play, soothing our heat with their splashing.
The pools are deep. In the centre of the largest is a beautiful pavilion. In the summer evenings the fine men and women of Kairouan come down and sit inside it, enjoying the fresh breeze blown over the cooling water. During the day, though, it is our palace. We play at being great amirs, waving our hands regally at our servants. We take turns being servants or amirs. Those playing amirs think up ever more ridiculous tasks and those playing servants undertake them as badly as possible, moving stupidly slowly or doing the very opposite of what they have been told, so that we all shriek with laughter and even the ‘amirs’ snort and then hide their mouths so we do not see them losing their dignity. And when I return from my adventures, late as ever, Myriam despairs of me.
Especially today.
***
We are gradually joined by friends and family as we walk towards the mosque for the sunset prayers. I pretend to pray, but my head is spinning. My father is taking another wife! Who is she? I never heard anything being discussed. I berate myself for not spending more time with the gossiping aunts, who must have known all about these plans. No wonder my mother looks so still, so angry. But she must have given her permission or my father could not have taken another wife. I shudder at the very idea of suggesting such a course of action to my mother. My father must be a braver man than I realised. Who is she? Who is this woman who is brave enough to come into my mother’s home and marry my father under her still, dark eyes? I am afraid for her, even though I do not know her name.
By the time prayers are finished and we have made our way outside the mosque there is a huge crowd. Word has spread of the engagement. More and more people join us as they emerge from other mosques or their houses as we stand there, waiting to go to the bride. The sheep, held tightly by two of our servants, has given up struggling and lies quietly on the ground, sadly contemplating its fate.
Now the crowd begins to move. Slowly we walk towards one of the quarters until we come to a door set into a high wall. The crowd is excited. My mother’s face is rigid, without expression. My father is his usual reserved self, smiling wryly at some of the more ribald comments from the crowd and waving them away but I notice his left hand moving constantly, clenching and unclenching while his right hand reaches out to pat people’s shoulders, to gently steer my mother through the crowded space.
My aunts are at the front of the crowd, and they start to pound on the door.
A laughing voice calls out. “Who is there?”
My aunts answer as one. “We have come to ask if you will give your daughter to be married to Ibrahim an-Nafzawi!”
The crowd cheers.
Of course there is much demurral before we are allowed in. It would not do for the bride’s father to seem too eager. More calls, more responses, until finally the door is opened and we are welcomed inside. A great crowd streams in, myself and Myriam getting lost in it so that we fall back from our front-row positions and end up towards the back as we enter the courtyard.
It is a pretty place, not so grand as our own home, but still pleasing to the eye. It is cool and there is a small fountain that splashes merrily. There are fresh-scented trees which later will bear sweet fruits, although right now they are full of small boys who have climbed them to get a better view while the first surah of the Qur’an is recited over the engaged couple.
“In the name of Allah, Most Gracious, Most Merciful. Praise be to Allah The Cherisher and Sustainer of the Worlds; Most Gracious, Most Merciful; Master of the Day of Judgement. Thee do we worship and Thine aid we seek. Show us the straight way, The way of those on whom Thou has bestowed Thy Grace, those whose portion is not wrath, and who go not astray.”
I have been craning my neck throughout this instead of paying attention, straining to see my father’s new bride, earning myself several digs in the ribs from Myriam. I fail to spot them and now the crowd begins to depart, so we are buffeted here and there by the many moving bodies. I am regularly stopped by those leaving as they wish happiness and prosperity to all members of both families. Many women pinch my cheeks and smile, asking if I am happy with my new aunt. I can only smile and nod, the men patting my head as they pass, muttering blessings. I am hot, tired and hungry, for we have not yet eaten our evening meal. I am grumpy, too. Surely I should have seen this new aunt by now? Why am I at the back of the crowd?
At last the crowd begins to thin a little and I catch my first glimpse of Imen, my father’s future wife. She is all curves and blushing smiles, with pink cheeks and bright eyes. She has tiny feet and hands, and stands well under my father’s shoulder. I am about the same height and I am only ten. My mother is much taller than her. It is clear Imen is fond of good food and sweet things, and that one day she will attain the quivering mass of my aunties. I am sure my aunties have chosen her for this very reason. Her hair is long and shines silken in the sunset. Although she is shy now, I can see that she does not hold back from affection. She accepts with enthusiasm the many hugs and kisses and blessings as they fall all around her, and she looks truly happy. She even smiles at my mother. My mother looks away.
***
Our household prepares for the new bride. Rooms are set aside for her and the servants who will come with her. The house is in chaos as new carpets and cushions, drapes and a large bed are carried up to the rooms, which have been cleaned and repainted, their plaster carving and painted ceilings newly touched up. My mother keeps to her rooms, refusing to attend meals. Hela must carry all her meals to her and often they return uneaten. Meanwhile I try to find out more about my future aunt, and why she has come into our lives. The servants’ whispers are, as always, most enlightening. I crouch in stairwells near the kitchens where I can hear our cook expounding her theories. Hayfa always has tall tales to tell, and the other servants act as her willing audience.
“She didn’t give him a son, did she? What did she expect?”
She is always my mother when Hayfa or any of the other servants speak about our family. The other servants nod, their hands full of their appointed tasks but their minds mulling over the new turn of events which is causing all this extra work. The slaves whisper translations to one another of Hayfa’s words. Some speak our tongue better than others, and they pass on her speculations to those slaves who have not yet learnt the subtleties of our language. Hayfa approves of this, as it increases her audience, and so she allows suitable pauses for her words to be fully understood. When she sees comprehension dawning on the slaves’ faces she continues.
“A man has the right to expect a son,” she says wisely. “And Allah knows the poor man has shown patience. One daughter she gave him, just the one child, and she is fully ten now, almost a woman. No sign of another child. That woman takes care of her bedding but I would say it is more than likely that she no longer has her courses.”
That woman refers to Hela, my mother’s handmaiden. Hela is the same age as my mother. She came with my mother when she was married to my father. I believe she served her family from when my mother was a girl. Hela is devoted to my mother. She takes her duties seriously and stands over her like a guard, always watching, always ready. If my mother is in a room there is a certainty that Hela is close by. You may not see her at first, but she will be there, ready to serve. Where my mother is tall and slender, beautiful and regal in her bearing, Hela is built like a man, with broad shoulders and a thick waist. Not fat, for she would never indulge so much in the pleasures of life to attain such a state, but strong as an ox. Her thick dark hair does not fall down her back as does my mother’s, it is wrapped up in a plain dark cloth. When Hayfa talks about Hela she has more than once reminded her listeners that an ox is an excellent worker, loyal and strong, but that should it be badly treated it may well turn on those who torment it and kill them outright.
“And after all,” she always finishes triumphantly, “who knows what an ox is thinking?”
This always leads to wise nods around the kitchen. The servants steer clear of Hela. She is not included in their whispers and giggles, she is obeyed without question as a senior servant, but she is not liked. Just as the servants are wary of my mother, so they are wary of Hela, for they know that she is my mother’s eyes and ears and that Hela, to all intents and purposes, manages our household.
They approach Hela only when sickness or injury fall upon them. For she is a healer, it is well known. Her hands are sure and certain when a bone must be re-set and her face does not respond when her patients scream with pain as bone grates on bone as she finds its resting place. She knows the properties of many herbs and traders seek her out, coming to our house and asking for her by name to offer her far-flung remedies to add to her collection of tiny boxes and bottles, kept safe in her own room.
She is educated, and this make the other servants distrust her even more. “She reads, you know,” they say, making faces at one another. “Like a scholar.” Scholars are men of learning and wisdom, not serving-women.
My mother relies on her. She never has to ask for an item, only to stretch out her hand without even looking, for Hela will always be ready to drop it into her palm. When my mother retreats to her rooms Hela accompanies her, and only she is allowed to speak with her, to bring her food and clothing. The slaves leave water outside the door and it is taken inside by Hela, then left outside again when she has done with bathing my mother. She it is who goes on errands for my mother, walking swift and sure in the mazes of the souk, returning with little packages of this and that, secrets of which we know nothing. When my mother wishes to visit the hammam it is Hela who goes with her to the hot dark rooms to wash her, rub down her fine skin, massage her with delicate oils, comb through her long hair with rose-scented cleansers. I hear them talk to one another sometimes in my mother’s rooms, their voices low and hard to overhear, for their words are indistinct. They do not raise their voices, only continue the slow steady murmuring that teases my sharp ears.
***
The rituals have been going on for days, even weeks by now. There have been meetings, parties, gifts, discussions and the painting of henna in intricate swirls. In just a few days Imen will leave her father’s house and come to my father as his bride, her hair crowned in a golden headdress. She will be his new wife, my mother’s sister, my aunt. The servants have their own views on this and Hayfa is holding forth again. The slaves’ allotted tasks do not seem to be any closer to completion.
“The new one, Imen – she’s here to provide a fine strapping boy. Maybe several. I had a look at her the other day when she was in the souk with her mother. A fine girl. Young. Wide hips. Plenty of fat on her.” Hayfa outlines this figure with her hands in the air and nods her approval. “Imen will bear him many sons for sure.” She lowers her voice slightly. “If she lets her.”
“What do you mean?” one of the younger servants asks, her eyes wide. The others lean in. I come down two more steps, silently edging closer but still hidden.
Hayfa shakes her head slowly, as one who has seen all manner of things in this wicked world. “Do you think she will stand by and watch?” she asks. “You think she will open her arms and say, ‘Oh, sister, welcome to my home. Bear my husband many sons with my blessing!’? Of course not. I would not be Imen for all the carpets in Kairouan.”
“But what can she do?” This from one of the men.
Hayfa considers. “I don’t know,” she admits finally. This breaks her storytelling spell. “Back to work, now, all of you standing about here cluttering up my kitchen with your gossip and nonsense.”
They begin to disperse. I get ready to make my getaway before any of them come up the stairs. But before I turn away I hear Hayfa as she mutters while scooping out oil from a jar close to me. I hold my breath and press my back against the wall. No-one else hears her but me, and later I will remember what she says and feel a cold river run through me.
“Allah knows I am a good and honest cook, but if I were Imen I would not eat what was laid before me in this house.”
I turn and run up the stairs, past my mother’s bedroom door and back to my own room.
***
Imen arrives at last, soft and blushing. She is kind to the servants, who love her at once. She gives few orders, always glancing towards my mother to get her tacit approval for even the most minor of requests. But the servants would find ways to obey her even if my mother withheld her consent, for who would not wish to please such a sweet little mistress, one whose voice of command is gentle and whose smile of thanks is radiant?
Our routine changes. My mother is now absent from most meals. The only meals she attends are the important ones, when there are guests. Then she descends, a princess amongst mere commoners, elegantly dressed, her beauty undimmed. Frequently on these occasions it seems that Imen is indisposed, and does not join us, leaving my mother and father to greet guests as they have always done, as though nothing had changed. But at breakfast it is Imen who sits by my father’s side, who passes soft warm bread smeared with honey and butter, who pours tea and whose hair is somewhat dishevelled, her smile tender as my father wishes her a good day before he leaves the house.
***
At first I stay away from Imen, as my mother does. I think that my mother will be pleased if she comes to hear that I do not care for Imen, that she will see that I am her ally against this newcomer. But my mother stays in her rooms and I find it hard to avoid Imen. When I come to eat breakfast she is there, smiling, offering me sweet orange juice, fresh breads with honey. While I eat she pours herself more tea and stretches back on the cushions to enjoy the dappled sunlight of our courtyard.
“I have something for you, Zaynab,” she says one morning.
I look up and see her pointing to a covered basket.
“Open it,” she says, her eyes bright.
Inside the basket is a tiny tabby-brown kitten.
“It will need feeding with milk,” she says. “It is still so young.”
She shows me how to dip a little scrap of cloth into milk and drip it into the kitten’s mouth, gives me some soft cloth from the chests in her room to line the basket and make a warm little nest for it. She has the servants bring fresh milk every day in a special container just for the kitten and giggles with me when it grows old enough to explore and is afraid of its own shadow or overbalances on our wall. My mother will not let me feed her songbirds, but Imen strokes my kitten and when I kneel by her side to hear it purr she strokes my hair too, and after a time I forget that I should be my mother’s ally, for my mother does not smile whatever I do and Imen laughs so easily, it is easy to laugh with her.
My father has begun to smile when Imen is nearby. He seems happier, walking more slowly, speaking more kindly to the servants. His wrinkles, which were beginning to appear as the years went by, seem to be fading. Once as dusk descended I ran to his rooms to call him for the evening meal and found him buried under a pile of soft giggling silks, which turned out to be Imen, who blushed mightily when she saw me. My father only laughed and kissed her forehead, then rose and came with me to dinner. We had guests that night and Imen sent word that she was unwell and begged to be excused. My father accepted the sympathies of the guests with a charming smile while my mother, by his side as always when we have guests, said nothing.
***
Sometimes I see Imen drinking from a wooden cup, a faded reddish colour marked with worn carvings. I asked her once what it contained and she lowered her lashes a little and said that she hoped it would help her bear many brothers for me. Then she giggled and chased me round the courtyard with a long feather she had found from the storks who roost on the rooftops of Kairouan, seeking to pin me down and tickle me.
But the liquid in the cup must have worked its magic, for Imen smiles ever more broadly and now my father is very tender with her. Where before my mother ordered our food to her liking and Imen never presumed to countermand her orders, now my father has decreed that all food must be ordered by Imen. Everything must be to her tastes. My mother says nothing but bows her head and is seen even less, spending her days tending to her songbirds, whom I can hear tweeting. All our household now revolves around Imen. She giggles over all the fuss but enjoys her new status, basking in the petting from my aunts and the foods she craves. Sometimes she turns a little pale and clutches at her stomach, sometimes I even hear her retching, and servants hurry to her with clean cloths and fresh cool water, but the aunts only laugh kindly and say everyone must suffer so to bring forth a healthy child and he must be a boy to cause his mother such grief already. Then they offer Imen perfumed drinks to take away the sour taste of bile and fan her as she reclines on the soft cushions by their side. They amuse her with stories and the city’s gossip and recite endless permutations of names that might suit my unborn brother. Imen still sips from the carved cup, but now it contains tonics for her baby’s health, to make him grow strong within her ever-increasing belly.
“What shall you name him?” I ask.
Imen stretches out her bare toes in the dappled morning light of our garden and yawns. “I think your father has a name for him,” she says, smiling. “He said he had kept it for many years for his first-born son.”
I look down. “He will be pleased to have a son,” I say.
Imen reaches out and pulls me to her. Her pale pink robes enfold me and her body’s warmth spreads out from her to me. I tuck my feet under her cushions and lean my head against her.
“He will be grateful to have a kind grown-up daughter who can take good care of a baby brother,” she says. “Think how much the baby will love you – a beautiful older sister to follow about and play games with. It is good for children to have brothers and sisters. When we are all old and wrinkled the two of you will be young and strong and will share your festive days together with your own families.”
I cannot imagine pretty Imen being old and wrinkled but I smile anyway.
“Perhaps,” offers Imen, “you might give a second name to your brother. What is your favourite name for a boy?”
To make her laugh I think up dreadful names, names that sound like they are only fit for a slave or a peasant boy. She laughs until she cries and then she gets the hiccups and I have to bring her water to sip to make them go away.
***
It is night and I am fully asleep when Myriam shakes me awake. At first she is in my dream, one of the street boys tugging at my sleeve as he shows me new hiding places in the souk’s maze of streets. Then I am pulled from my dream and open my eyes in the darkness. I yelp, for Myriam’s face, too close to mine and lit by a dim lamp, is like some terrifying djinn, one eye hidden altogether, the other bulging outwards. Then I am awake and puzzled. It is far too dark even for dawn prayers. The light dims as Myriam moves away from me and grabs a plain robe which she throws at me whilst struggling to unroll our prayer mats.
“Pray.”
I hold the robe, sit up in bed. “What?”
“Pray!” Myriam hisses back.
She does not raise her voice as she usually would, nor ask me if I need my ears stretching like a donkey to hear her better. She has succeeded in unrolling the mats and is taking her place on one of them.
I climb awkwardly out of bed, pull the robe over my sleep-warmed naked body which is now beginning to tremble in the cool night air, then kneel beside her. “It’s not dawn yet,” I say crossly. “The call to prayer won’t come for hours.”
Myriam ignores me and begins to pray. I follow along with little grace and much mumbling. I stumble over words that ought to come smoothly, since I have been repeating them for many years and overbalance so that I knock my head too hard on the floor. The prayers seem to go on forever, far longer than usual. At last I see she intends to keep going all night and I stop, sitting back on my heels defiantly.
“I’m not praying anymore unless you tell me why we’re praying in the middle of the night.”
I think Myriam might ignore me, or yell at me. She does neither. She sits back on her heels and I see her face is streaked with tears. She sits still for a moment or two while the tears roll down her cheeks and then speaks, very low, as though afraid of being overheard. “Imen is ill.”
I frown. “She looked well last night when we went to bed.”
Myriam shakes her head. “She said she was indisposed.”
I shrug. “She always says that when we have guests.”
Myriam nods. “But she started to have pains. She thought it was the sickness again.”
“I thought that was only at the beginning. She hasn’t been sick for ages.”
“Yes. She should have told one of us. We would have known something was wrong. She did not know the sickness should not come now. She had pains like knives in her belly.” Myriam mumbles something else, which I don’t catch.
“What?”
Myriam speaks a little louder. “Blood.”
“Blood?” Even I know this is not a good sign.
Myriam nods again. “She started to bleed. Her maid got scared and called for help. The doctors are with her. Everyone is awake.”
I turn my face towards the door and strain my ears. I have very good hearing, but if everyone is awake then the house seems unnaturally quiet – in the daytime you can barely hear a conversation for all the noise that goes on – clattering pots and pans, feet running up and down stairs, orders being shouted out. Now there is only silence. I look back at Myriam, frowning. “I can’t hear anyone.”
“They are all praying,” she whispers, her face pale in the darkness.
I say nothing, but prostrate myself, the words suddenly coming to me, begging for His kindness, for His mercy, for any help He can offer to Imen as her crimson blood drains away in the darkness and my baby brother’s life is lost.
***
As the cold pale light grows the streets awake. The dawn prayers are called and there is a brief lull before the bustle of the new day begins in earnest. Only our house is quiet. In the coming days we will find ourselves mourning twice over; for my brother who did not even have a name and for Imen, whose gentle nature was not strong enough to withstand the agony that gripped her, nor the tide of blood, which swept her away as though she was dust in the road.
***
Many, many months pass before our house seems normal again. My mother sits with us at all our meals again, and my father’s hair is a little more grey. The rooms that were Imen’s are not used for anything, their doors are kept shut and the dust is allowed to settle around the spiders, who rebuild their webs and await any foolish flies who mistake Imen’s windows for a true entrance to our house. The flowers Imen had planted around her windows fade and wither, for no-one comes to water them.
***
I miss Imen. I miss her love of good food and her sleep-ruffled hair. I miss her perfumed robes in pale rippled colours, so different from my mother’s dark magnificence. Most of all I miss her giggle, her embraces given without warning or reason, her delight in my father and his happiness with her. He is quiet again now, and I have not seen him smile for a long time.
I sit in a cushioned alcove in our courtyard and rip leaves into small shreds, following their marked-out pathways. There is no-one now to share these mornings with and I am bored.
My father is leaving the house, going to one of his workshops. As he leaves he crosses the path of Hela, who is carrying breakfast to my mother. They see each other and pause, then speak in low voices.
I lean forward to hear them. I am curious, I rarely see them speak to one another. My mother issues all commands to Hela and Hela barely speaks when others are present. My father and she do not pass their time conversing with one another.
“I have spoken with her father.” I hear him say.
Hela shakes her head. It is a quick sharp movement, a direct refusal of whatever my father is proposing. A servant should not defy their master, my father would be within his rights to reprimand or even strike her. He does neither, only looks down at his hands.
“There will be only one,” says Hela. “You must resign yourself.”
“It is not only that,” he replies. “It is…” but he does not finish his sentence, he seems unable to find the words.
Hela holds up one hand, the other still balancing my mother’s breakfast, now going cold. “There will be no more new wives in this house,” she says, and turns, walking away from him into the house, towards my mother’s rooms.
My father stands still for a moment, looking down at the tiles of our courtyard. Then he makes his way out of the gates of our home, heading towards his workshops.
***
Sometimes I still go alone into the souks, but the street boys seem to have grown up all of a sudden. Many now work hard every day, fetching and carrying heavy loads. Some are apprenticed to their fathers or to a trade. By evening they are too tired to come to the great reservoirs and play at servants and amirs, and so I sit alone in the middle of the vast expanse of water and gaze over the side of the pavilion at my rippled reflection.
My face is becoming more like my mother’s as time goes by, and I know that people say that I will be a great beauty like her. I gaze at my face in the water and hope that I will still look like a street girl – with untamed hair and a wide smile. But however often I look my hair grows ever faster and more silky, my eyes become wider and darker, my limbs longer and more graceful. I am becoming a woman.