by Jane Johnson
“Oh my,” Nima said suddenly. Her cheeks were flushed; sweat beaded on her forehead. She ran a hand through her hair. Were those grey streaks there yesterday? Zohra wondered. Well, of course they were. No one goes grey overnight.
“Take a rest, Ummi. Go, sit in the shade in the courtyard, out of all this heat.”
“No time for that. We must finish these and then get the qidreh on.” Nima wiped her forehead, then carried on cutting and filling and crimping like a woman possessed.
Zohra felt powerless. There had been nothing she could do to dissuade her mother from hosting the feast. Nima had been insistent, partly because she wanted to impress her sisters-by-law. Their husbands were well-to-do importers, whereas Zohra’s father was an invalided veteran, and they had to scrape by on whatever Malek sent home from his wages as a soldier in Salah ad-Din’s army. But really, who cared what the aunts and cousins thought of them? Zohra didn’t.
She found her thoughts drifting to the man she’d met at the perfume stall. Nathanael, the doctor’s son. What a strange-looking creature he was. All that curly black hair and that bold, bold look in his eyes. And the way he had laid a kiss on her palm! No one had ever touched her like that. A Muslim girl was sacrosanct: to be touched by any man was haram, forbidden. And yet the doctor’s son had behaved as if it were entirely normal, and no shame at all. He was a mystery, a fascinating, disturbing mystery …
“Zohra, wake up! It’s as if you’ve been in a dream all morning. And, oh! Look at the mess you’ve made of those. Well, it can’t be helped now. Quickly, take them down to the oven, and don’t forget the dough.”
Zohra loaded up a tray, made their symbol in the dough and, with it held precariously on her head, ran to the communal oven down the road to leave the ma’amul and flatbreads to bake, only to find that the oven was full: everyone was celebrating. The next oven had a queue that stretched around the corner, and so she ran down the hill to a third bakery she located only by the spiral of woodsmoke that rose from its fire.
“Leave those with me,” an old woman said, taking hold of the tray. Zohra recognized her with despair as the Widow Eptisam, an incorrigible gossip. She had an eager, rabbity face with protruding teeth, and eyes that constantly darted from one thing to another. “I’ll put them in as soon as my own come out, it would be my pleasure, binti.”
“No, it’s fine. I’ll wait.” Zohra didn’t want to be beholden to her. But the widow had a firm hold on the tray, so in the end, rather than have to stay there and be talked at for half an hour, she left the pastries and dough with the old woman and turned for home.
As she passed a junction of alleys an idea nagged at her: if she followed one of them down the hill she would come to the Street of Tailors, where the doctor’s son, Nathanael, lived. The idea of his proximity made Zohra flush.
All this time—the best part of three months since she had encountered him in the bazaar—she had toyed daily with the possibility of following his impudent instruction to come to his house, and daily, she had retreated from imagining what might happen if she did.
Zohra had been brought up to believe that a good angel sat on one of her shoulders and a bad angel on the other, and that every decision involved a struggle between the two. So far her good angel had prevailed—during daylight hours, at least—but she could feel the pull of the bad angel now. Or perhaps it was the djinns with which Nathanael had threatened her.
When Salah ad-Din’s army had reclaimed Akka there had been chaos for a while, and she had barely dared to set foot outside. But it had not stopped her thinking about Nathanael bin Yacub before she went to sleep each night, and in her dreams. Wicked thoughts, wanton thoughts. Thoughts that shamed her in the light of morning. She prayed for the strength to stop thinking about him, but it seemed that Allah had his mind on more important matters than one girl’s perverse infatuation.
She gazed in the direction of the Street of Tailors. You couldn’t see the top of the street from where she stood, just a confluence of roads where half the houses lay empty, while others were in the process of being rehabilitated. Salah ad-Din, generous to a fault, had offered safe passage to any Christians who wished to leave Akka and make a life elsewhere—and not just safe passage, but also a purse of gold so they might re-establish themselves outside the caliphate. There had been rich ransoms acquired when Jerusalem fell, many gold treasures appropriated and melted down for coinage. Still, it was hard to imagine any other conqueror being so magnanimous in victory. And so, many Franj had taken up the offer and abandoned their homes, leaving whole neighbourhoods half-empty. Merchants and traders, or functionaries like her cousins Rachid and Tariq, had swooped on the vacated houses like locusts on a cornfield and were now all puffed up with self-importance, as if grabbing what they could made them better than those who stayed where they were. It was one of the reasons Zohra was not looking forward to the family gathering: the women would spend all their time discussing the bargains they had made in the market over this carpet or that set of copperware for their new quarters. They were so boring, Zohra could happily have seen them all carried off, kicking and screaming, in the back of the Franj carts.
The thought of the trials to come fed her bad angel the strength it needed to sway her decision, and suddenly her feet were carrying her down past the little street market, past the spice trader, and the old man who sold chickpeas and flour and rice, and the one who gave you a bunch of fresh herbs for nothing if he liked the look of you, past the tea shop where old men sat outside all day long, nursing their glasses while their conversations—like their tea—turned increasingly bitter. It irked Zohra that men could sit around while women’s chores stretched to infinity. They had so much more freedom. Aisa and Kamal didn’t have to clean the house or help with the laundry. They weren’t expected to prepare meals or even to fetch the shopping, and they were praised for their smallest efforts, like spoiled princes. As for Sorgan, all he did was eat whatever she and her mother cooked, sleep, then demand more food. Still, a little voice inside her reasoned, if you were a boy from a military family, you’d have been sent off to war like Malek, expected to kill or be killed. There wasn’t even one small part of Zohra that hankered after that.
She turned the corner and there it was: the Street of Tailors, though there had been no tailors here for years. All the houses were residential, most occupied by Jewish families, and for that reason alone Zohra had never walked down here before. But it did not appear forbidding—quite the opposite. Pretty wrought-iron balconies jutted from the walls in a way you would never see in the Muslim quarters of the city, where the women preferred to keep their gaze turned inward to the courtyards. Bright flowers cascaded from these balconies: bougainvillea and hibiscus. Pungent geraniums splashed red as blood against the sunlit walls. A tortoiseshell cat lazed in the shade between doorways, yawning widely as Zohra passed.
The door with the hand on it.
Her recollection was a bit hazy, apart from the feel of his lips, hot against her palm. Even now, remembering, her knees felt shaky.
She came to a halt. A blue door, paint flaking in the sun. She walked on. A studded wooden door. On the other side, a recessed door painted a dark red, its knocker in the form of a lion’s head. The end of the street was in sight now. Had he given her the wrong address on purpose? He had seemed so sure of himself. Perhaps he accosted girls all the time. She almost turned around, feeling like an idiot, hoping no one had seen her. But she had come this far. I’ll just walk to the end, she told herself. Then I’ll go back and wait for the bread and pastries to come out of the oven. It was almost a comfort to know there was something so ordinary to follow this absurd excursion.
The last house had looked abandoned; someone had nailed a piece of wood across the door. She hardly dared look beyond it. Her heart began to beat faster. If it looked like the right door, would she dare to knock? And if someone opened it, what would she say? She walked on, in a sort of dream. A tall, narrow window with a curved, decorative iron grille ove
rtopped a large studded door, and in the middle of it was a brass knocker in the shape of a hand, fingers hanging down, like a hamsa, the Muslim good-luck charm they often called the Hand of Fatima, to commemorate the Prophet’s daughter. That couldn’t be right. Even so, she reached towards the knocker. But before she could lay a hand on it, the door swung outward and a woman came out. She had a handsome figure and a mass of springy black hair tied back in a spangled red kerchief, revealing long, silver earrings. Dark, almond-shaped eyes fixed themselves upon Zohra, who gave a little yelp of surprise.
Now she wished desperately she could be anywhere else in the world. So he was married. Nathanael was married, and playing a game with her. And suddenly she realized to whom he must have given the other two of the four pieces of amber-musk he had bought at the perfume-seller’s stall. What a fool she was.
The woman stepped out into the sunshine. “Hello,” she said. “Were you looking for the doctor?”
When the light struck the woman, Zohra saw at once that she was older than she had at first seemed, maybe the same age as Nima, for although there was no discernible grey in her hair, on her pale skin was a wealth of tiny lines, lines that told of decades of laughter and worries.
She shook her head. “I was looking for Nathanael.” It was done, and her fate was sealed. She waited, rooted by leaden legs, for destiny to unfurl itself.
The woman smiled, a wide, frank smile, her eyes merry crescents. “Ah, I see. But my dear, you are too late. You should have come before.”
Zohra felt a chill. What did she mean? Was he dead? Surely not. She seemed so cheerful.
“You must be the girl Nat met in the marketplace, on the day the news of Hattin reached the city.”
Zohra nodded dumbly.
“We expected you weeks ago.”
“I … I couldn’t come.” What was she supposed to say? She wasn’t sure whether to be flattered or dismayed that Nathanael had talked about her to this woman.
“Come in, out of the sun. It’s too hot to be standing in the street.”
Zohra followed her into the cool shade of the house. It smelled different to her own home, not of cooking and boys, but of sharp, acidic, medicinal scents that stung the nostrils, and of something pungent and waxy. Out of the harsh sun, it took a while for her eyes to adjust. She took in carved wooden chairs, colourful wall-hangings, a tatted striped rug, a huge jug of flowers. Tasselled cushions lay here and there; candles in ornate silver holders were clustered on a low table; piles of books and scrolls were scattered as if they were simple debris rather than rare and precious objects. This home was like a palace—a small but perfect palace.
“What is your name, child?”
“Zohra.”
“I am Sara, Nathanael’s mother. Zohra and Sara—the same names in different languages. Isn’t that lovely?”
The woman took Zohra’s hands between her own. Zohra felt the calluses on them: working hands, big and practical, warmth flowing from them. Suddenly, she felt quite at ease, not a Muslim girl intruding into a Jewish house but a welcome visitor.
“How old are you, my dear?”
“Seventeen,” Zohra said. Then, “Is Nathanael here?” she asked.
Sara shook her head. “I’m so sorry, no, he’s not. Sit down. I’ll bring some tea—or would you prefer something cold? Some pressed lemon, or some watered wine?”
“A little watered wine would be lovely.” This woman seemed so sophisticated, she did not want to seem gauche by refusing.
By the time Sara returned, Zohra was already regretting her choice. She took the glass with trembling fingers and touched her lips to it. The wine tasted both bitter and sweet, but not unpleasant. She swallowed and felt it slide coolly down her throat, leaving a burning tingle behind. Wine was like nothing she had ever tasted before. She was reminded that in the Thousand and One Nights bad women drank wine often, and then came to grief.
“Nathanael is in Jerusalem,” Sara said. “He left yesterday.”
Zohra’s tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth. She could think of nothing to say, the disappointment was so keen. Jerusalem was a week’s journey away. She took another huge gulp of the wine and almost choked. “When will he come back?” she managed at last.
“He’s gone to study at the institute. Medicine, like his father. I expect he’ll be back for visits.” Sara smiled.
They sat quietly for a while, Zohra trying not to cry, drinking her way steadily to the dregs of her glass because she didn’t know what else to say or do. Then she got to her feet and handed the empty vessel back. “I must get home.”
“Come back any time,” Sara said. “Now you know where we are. I’m sure Yacub would be delighted to see you again.”
Zohra promised that she would visit, though her voice sounded faint and distant even to herself. At the front door, she touched the hamsa.
“Why do you have a Hand of Fatima?” she found herself asking. “I mean, I thought only Muslims had them …” She wanted to bite her tongue off for saying something so clumsy. It must have been the wine.
“We call it a Hand of Miriam,” Sara said. “And if you look you’ll find them on the doors of old Christian houses, too. They’d call it a Hand of Mary. You see, we’re none of us so different, are we? Do come back and see us, Zohra. You’re always welcome.”
Zohra ran nearly all the way home, reaching the corner where the Armenian sisters spent the day on their doorstep, their sharp eyes on the lookout for anything they might trade as gossip, before realizing she had forgotten to collect the bread and pastries and had to run back down to the third bakery and endure the scolding of the Widow Eptisam.
The house was in chaos by the time she returned, for her cousins had all arrived early and were milling about the kitchen. Nima was flustered, having been caught in her work clothes with her hair askew and smears of oil and flour on her face, while both her sisters-by-law wore immaculate robes glittering with embroidery fresh from the best seamstresses in Damascus, heavy gold earrings and alarming quantities of kohl, as if they were attending a wedding rather than a family meal. Zohra held out the tray of baked flatbreads and pastries, but Nima pushed it back at her, eyes flashing. “My daughter will entertain you while I change!” she said sharply, then lowered her voice so that Zohra alone could hear. “Make them tea and settle them in the guest salon, and don’t waste another second.”
Zohra sighed and accepted her punishment. “Aunt Mina, Aunt Asha, Cousins Khalida and Jamilla, come and sit in the cool, and I will bring you mint tea.”
Khalida and the aunts let themselves be bustled out of the kitchen—they did not want to spoil their expensive silks—but Jamilla hung back, and turned burning eyes upon Zohra.
“Have you heard from him?”
Zohra felt her heart stop. How could she know about Nathanael? “What?”
“Have you heard from our burning coal?”
The Burning Coals of Islam. After the Battle of Hattin, Malek’s heroism had been recognized: Zohra’s brother was now a burning coal, a member of Salah ad-Din’s personal guard.
She shook her head. “No, we’ve not heard from Malek in a while. There was a messenger last month.” The messenger came every month with a pouch of coins; the last one had come all the way from Jerusalem. It was all that kept the jackals from their door. “He was fine then. The messenger didn’t mention him taking any wound.” In fact, he hadn’t mentioned anything at all; the money had arrived without a note.
Even the thought of Malek had a physical effect on Jamilla. She caught her breath, her eyelids fluttered, colour caught in her pale cheeks. It was such a shame about her arm, Zohra thought. She would have been almost pretty if it hadn’t been for the withered limb that hung flaccidly at her side. You could hardly tell under the stiffened silk of her sleeve, but when they were children her brothers had teased her mercilessly, calling it her “witch arm” and pretending to be terrified lest it touch them. And yet Jamilla had always idolized Malek, making excuses for his cruelty or
thoughtlessness: he can’t help it, he’s a boy; he can’t show his real feelings, it’s unmanly …
“I wish he were coming.” Jamilla looked down, smoothed the silk at her slim waist with her good hand. “I put on my best robe.”
Zohra felt a flood of sympathy. “He would compliment you were he here, I’m sure. Here, help me with the tea.”
They made mint tea and carried it through to the guest salon. Zohra poured it from a great height towards the little decorated glasses—but the wine, or the feelings her visit to a forbidden house had stirred up, made her hand unsteady. Tea splashed everywhere, making the aunts exclaim and shield their skirts. She served them in order of seniority. Aunt Mina. Aunt Asha. Jamilla’s elder sister, Khalida. Jamilla. A glass for Nima. One for herself. Then she fled away to splash cold water on her face and try to calm down. She changed into her good kaftan—the sky-blue silk with the silver trim—put her hair up under a white scarf and went to the kitchen to dust the pastries with sugar and powdered cinnamon. She was trying so hard to make them as pretty as Ummi did that when a pair of hands encircled her waist and an unmistakably male body pushed itself against her she bit her tongue, which always protruded when she concentrated. Before she had a chance to scream or fight free, a pair of hands travelled to her breasts and squeezed hard. Just like that—as if testing fruit at the souq.
She turned, ready for a fight, thinking it was Kamal or his horrible friend Bashar. But instead she found her cousin Tariq grinning at her defiantly. The wine rose to her head once more. In a fury she flung herself at him, hitting him hard on the chest, leaving fist-shaped marks in powdered sugar on his smart damson robe.
Tariq laughed and caught her wrists. “You’ll need to get used to it, cousin. When we’re wed I can do to you whatever I want. And I shall want to do a great deal. I like a girl with a bit of fight in her.” His eyes travelled over her lasciviously. Then, with her wrists imprisoned in one of his big hands, he ran the other down over her abdomen to her crotch, jamming his fingers hard between her legs.
