Soar, don’t settle. The words pour into my heart as if their force had been held back by walls in my mind as thick as those of the palace in front of me. Not like an ox or mule, I tell myself. Like a lion.
12
VALENCIA 1492
My body is too old and dry to waken as it once did at the thought of Jamil, but the hair on my arms rises so quickly I can almost hear it crackle as he comes up behind me.
“You’re here,” I whisper.
“Habibi,” he says. “Yes, my love.”
I rise to my feet, my heart aching with joy and sorrow. “I was hoping you might still be alive,” I say as his arms envelop me. “I wrote to your wife to ask, but she didn’t answer.”
He doesn’t reply. He doesn’t need to. Only the spirits of the dead can visit the living, and I knew the moment I sensed his presence in this room that he did not survive the last days of the Christian siege of Granada. Though ashamed of my selfishness, I am glad he is here.
“Your family too?” I whisper.
“Two of my granddaughters jumped from a tower to avoid being touched by Ferdinand and Isabella’s soldiers. The rest—”
It feels as if all the air in the room has been let out in one desolate sigh. “The poor had little to eat during the siege, and once disease found us, it had a taste for the rich as well. My wife…” He is silent for a moment. “I loved her, Amalia. She was a good woman.”
Tears spring to my eyes. “And your sons?”
“Both dead.”
Ahmad. My heart floods with memories, and the cracks in the skin of my face sting with tears. The room hums with silence, as if some barely heard music has died.
“Allah in his mercy made me welcome death.” His breath is hot on my shoulders. “I am at peace now. I came to comfort you.”
The skin on my back prickles like a puff of breeze passing over water. “You are always here,” I whisper. “My love for you is written in my bones.”
His smile warms the air as he speaks.
“What do scholars and sailors know of the shape of the world,
With their astrolabes, their spyglasses, their calculations?
The shape of the world is the fullness of your breasts,
As you lie on your side and I trace my finger between them.”
The white sheets on the bed…the warm Andalusian sun pouring in from the garden…the smell of oranges and jasmine. My body, still young enough to be supple, and his so strong, so firm beneath my touch…
He takes my wispy hair in his hands and crushes it between his fingers, tingling my scalp and neck. “I remember when you wrote that for me,” I tell him. “How close we came to never meeting.”
His finger is on my lips, stopping me from going on. “I would have found you,” he replies. “Didn’t you feel it in the air the day we met? The inevitability of it?”
I remember getting up, my book falling from my lap, as if I had just caught sight of someone long delayed for whom I had been keeping watch. “I was waiting for you.” I whisper.
“And I came. Perhaps your sighs were carried on the breeze to Granada and I heard you calling.” He teases the laces on my dress and I look down to see they are untied. “You told me to come, and I did.”
The brush of his lips on mine is as soft as the toes of angels dancing. “The barriers in life are false,” he whispers. “We have always been together, even before we met. Then, now, and forever, I am with you.”
QUELUZ 1451
I try to sound offhand when I ask Judah about the Muslim courtier I met at the palace, but I don’t think he is fooled. I am far more interested than I should be in someone who, like many others, is passing through on court business.
I can’t get my mind off him. His eyes are blue-green like the water in the coves at Sagres, in a face like glowing copper. I imagine the contours of his arms under his filmy silk tunic, the strong thighs apparent from the lightness in his step. I wonder if he has hair on his chest and whether it is coarse or fine. And then I picture it all again.
A few weeks later, I come with my daughter to Judah and Simona’s house at midday for Shabbat dinner. We enter the compound gate just as an unfamiliar horse is being led away by a groom. From inside the house, I hear the boisterous sounds of men greeting each other.
“Who’s here?” Eliana asks, dropping my hand and hurrying toward the open door. “It’s a man,” she says, coming back to me. “With a big cloth over his head.”
Jamil. My hand strays to my hair, but it is too late to rush home to make myself more presentable. My heart pounds as I walk into the house.
Jamil’s back is to me, but when he sees Judah look in my direction, he turns around. His eyes crinkle in a smile, and again I am not sure what is more remarkable—his teeth, white and even as a row of pearls, or his astonishing eyes.
“Our distinguished visitor from Granada has taken me up on my offer to join us for Shabbat!” Judah’s voice booms with pleasure as Simona sets another place at the table.
“Are you Jewish?” Eliana asks, taking in Jamil’s unusual appearance.
“No,” he says, smiling down at her. “I am Muslim.”
Eliana screws up her face. “What’s a Moosman?”
“You aren’t being very polite,” I tell her, but since a child’s Sabbath is not to be spoiled by criticism, I am gentle in my chiding. “You haven’t even told him who you are.”
“Don’t you worry about that,” Jamil tells her. “I haven’t told you who I am either.” He sweeps down in an exaggerated bow, as if he were greeting a princess. “I am Abu Sawwar Jamil ibn Hasan,” he says, “at your service.”
Eliana giggles. “That’s a lot of names!” From the roses in her cheeks I can see she already likes him.
Jamil turns to me. “Senhora Marques. It is a pleasure to see you again.”
“The pleasure is mine,” I say, and feeling suddenly bold, I tease him. “No bow for me?” He grins and repeats the gesture while my daughter giggles from her new perch in Judah’s arms.
Jamil turns to Eliana, who is snuggling against Judah’s bearded chest. “We worship the same God, though we call him by different names,” he tells her. “And I’ve come to share the peace of the Sabbath with you. ‘Shabbat shalom,’ I believe you say.”
“Shabbat shalom,” Eliana repeats, wiggling to signal she wants to be let down. “Would you like to see the birds in the garden?”
Jamil gives us the look of someone helpless against the wishes of a child. Taking the offer of her hand, they go off, leaving Judah and me alone.
“You are not unhappy I invited him?” he asks.
Embarrassed, I look away. “My daughter obviously likes him.”
“And so do you, if I am a good judge of such things.” Judah’s eyes are twinkling. “He’s a widower with a young child. You have that in common. And he’s an honorable man too, from everything I hear. One of the caliph’s most trusted diplomats.”
“I—” I sigh with frustration, wishing I knew what I thought. “But he’s not a Jew.”
“No, and that would be a problem if you wished to marry, but is that what we’re discussing?” Judah clasps his hands behind his back and rocks from the balls of his feet to the heels, as he always does when he is interested in something. “It’s not my place to meddle or even suggest what you should do—unless it violates our covenant with God, and then you would be sure to hear from both me and my wife.”
Simona. Had they been plotting this encounter together?
Judah goes on. “As a widow, you have some choice in your life, because—how shall I put it?—your maidenhood doesn’t require protecting.” He looks away, embarrassed by the personal nature of his comment. “There are ways to keep the respect of others and live one’s own way with dignity. You are made by the Holy One of flesh and blood. The senses have their place, and God means us to be happy.”
What is he saying? I want to rub my ears to see if perhaps I have misunderstood.
“I’m not suggestin
g anything,” Judah says, reading the thoughts that must be written on my face. “There could be problems ahead if you were to—to mean something to each other. And you have your daughter to think about. Still, you and Jamil might have—what should I say?—an interesting friendship.” His solemn eyes are offset by the teasing crook in the corner of his mouth. “I remember your poem, Amalia. You wondered what comfort there might be for you in this world, but I’m not sure you are paying attention to where you might find it.”
Eliana comes back, flushed with excitement. “Jamil can—what did you call it?”
“Whistle,” he says, smiling first at her and then at me.
“Whistle!” she repeats. “He made the birds come to him!”
More than the birds, I think, not daring to look him in the eye.
***
Eliana’s glow is caused by more than excitement. She takes a longer nap than usual, and when she wakes up, her skin is hot and her throat is sore. We don’t wait for the end of Shabbat to leave, and though home is only a few steps away, she begs to be carried. I am not strong enough, and seeing my distress, Jamil offers to carry her himself.
He brings her inside and lays her down, and for a moment, we stand awkwardly by my bed. “I must leave,” he says. “It doesn’t look proper.”
Brushing Eliana’s hair from her face, I kiss her forehead as she drifts off to sleep. “I think she’ll be fine, if you want to stay for a moment.” I look around, though I’m not sure at what. “I’m afraid I can’t offer you much, since it’s still Shabbat and I can’t prepare food, but I do have some bread and jam, and a bit of wine.” Suddenly the intimacy of the house unnerves me. “Or perhaps we could go outside and watch the sunset.”
He smiles. “After cooking as good as Judah’s wife’s, I’m glad you don’t insist I eat again.”
Wisps of smoke rise from the chimneys of my Christian neighbors preparing their Saturday supper. The bark of a dog and the cries of birds readying for the night are the only intruders on the silence. The low, green fields are splashed red with poppies as they ripple upward toward the mountains of Sintra. The clouds absorb the light of the setting sun, glowing scarlet and gold above the jagged, black outline of the peaks.
“Look at the wheat,” Jamil says in Arabic,
“Bending before the wind
Like squads of horsemen
Fleeing in defeat, bleeding
From the wounds of the poppies.”
He turns to me. “Do you know Ibn Iyad? He was a poet centuries ago.”
Can this be happening? Can I be standing where I once watched the stars, wanting nothing more than to have someone by my side, and now with a handsome man reciting poetry to me? I breathe out slowly to calm myself. “I’m sorry to say I don’t know much about poetry except what I translate. My education was far more practical.”
“Nothing is more practical than poetry,” he says with a quizzical smile. “It teaches us how to be human.”
The sun is now below the horizon. “Shabbat is over,” I say, relieved to have something to tell him. I pick a poppy from the base of the wall. “We always end it by smelling something fragrant and wishing each other a sweet week. Poppies don’t smell, but—”
He closes his eyes as I put it under his nose. “Have a sweet week, Jamil,” I say, trying out the way his name sounds on my lips. When he opens his eyes and catches me staring at him, I don’t look away. He thinks for a moment, then speaks.
“In the sweetness of this moment with you,
Fields of flowers, having only color and scent,
Hang their heads in embarrassment.”
“Did the same poet write that?” I ask.
“I made it up just now. A gift for you.”
For a moment, I think he is going to kiss me, but instead he turns to look at the remnants of the setting sun. “I am asking myself, ‘Can there really be such a woman?’” His voice is so soft it seems he is talking to the air, and I’m not sure if I should respond. What would I say? That I don’t know what he means? That the way he says the word “woman” makes me aware of the body under my clothes?
“Eliana will wake soon and need you.” He searches my face. “May I call tomorrow to see how she is?”
“Of course,” I say, surprised at the tremor in my voice.
He laughs. “After all, neither of us has to worry about going to church. There are some benefits to being who we are.”
Eliana’s cry drifts from the bedroom. “I must be going,” we say in unison and laugh at the coincidence. I watch through a crack in the door as he walks away, then I crawl in next to my daughter, to fasten myself to this world by holding her tight.
***
I don’t see Jamil the following day. Instead, he sends a court page with a letter.
“The king has requested my company, and I cannot get away,” he has written in a beautiful Arabic hand. “As I rode to Sintra last night, I recalled a poem by Ibn Hazm.
“Have you come from the world of angels, or from this?
Tell me clearly now, for I’m perplexed and looking silly.
I know without a doubt that you are the kindred soul
Which had to bond with mine it so resembles.
I find no logical proof of your existence,
Save only that I see you here before me!
And if my eye could not take in your being, I would say
You are pure mind, authentic and sublime.”
I see that there is writing below, but I cannot absorb any more, and I put the letter down. Who could be that special? The stories I used to read with Elizabeth and Beatriz about the princess whose indifference breaks hearts, the aloof maiden who spurns love—perhaps they acted as they did because they knew a suitor’s ardor would not survive the truth of their ordinariness.
“As I wrote out this poem, I realized I cannot lie to you,” Jamil has written below. “I am staying away for another reason. If you wish to see me, I will come next Sunday, but my passions are not easily left behind, and, dear lady, I shall bring them with me or it would be best not to come at all. If you are agreeable, and the weather permits, we can go riding. Judah tells me you are quite the horsewoman. At your service, Jamil ibn Hasan.”
Judah. Of course. The Zohar advises against taking a widow to wife, because the spirit of her first husband can plague the second. “Do not cook in a pot in which your neighbor has cooked,” the ancient rabbi Akiba warned. There’s no future Jewish husband to save myself for, no blood kin to tell me what to do, and no one who will be harmed by my going for a ride with Jamil and seeing where it leads. I pick up a quill to pen my reply.
***
The following Sunday, Jamil arrives with a mount the same color as Chuva, who died several years ago, and I wonder again whether Judah has been filling Jamil’s head with details about me. Eliana is happy to run off to the Abravanels, especially since Chana and Rahel have not yet taken their children back to Lisbon.
“I thought we might ride up to the ruins of the fort,” he says. “Have you been there?”
“It’s the first place I went when I got here,” I tell him. At the time, I could barely contain my excitement at the thought of finding Jews evicted from Sintra living together in a deserted palace, but when I got there, the fort was a ruin, and the town’s few Jews had been back in town for years.
It doesn’t take long to reach an arched entrance that still has rusty bolts and splinters of rotting wood from the sturdy doors that once protected the fortress. Against the inside walls of the plaza sag the ruins of weather-beaten shacks, hastily constructed of rough stone and wood. Makeshift chimneys leading up from blackened hearths jutting through toppled roofs.
“Did you know the Jews were once forced to live here?” I ask Jamil as we water our horses from a cistern of rainwater. “These are the houses they built.”
He takes in the dreary sight. “Whenever I feel insulted among Christians, I remember the many places where my people have the respect they deserve. I can’t
imagine what it’s like not to be treated with dignity anywhere.”
“Jews don’t spend much time thinking how good things could be if this world were a different place,” I say with a wry smile. “We’re usually just grateful it’s not worse.” I take my horse by the reins. “There’s a lovely place near here to sit. We can have our meal and let the horses graze.” Jamil’s eyes are bright, as if something has pleased him. He takes his horse and follows me.
Grass and wildflowers have taken over what was once a busy square, where Moors sat on stone benches watching people come and go. Guards once paced the mossy ramparts that lead to crenellated towers looming above us. The castle is above the clouds today, and the plaza is a brilliant, sun-dappled green. Jamil takes down the food we have brought and lays a brightly patterned rug underneath a tree.
He pulls out a leather wineskin and a small cup into which he puts a little for me before tipping back his head and squirting a thin stream of red wine into his mouth. I lay out the torn end of a loaf from yesterday’s Shabbat dinner, and Jamil produces two dry sausages.
“I can’t eat that,” I tell him. “I don’t know what’s in it.”
Jamil smiles. “Don’t worry. I have the butcher’s word it’s kosher. The Prophet Muhammad—sallallahu ëalayhi wa sallam—commands us to keep many of the same dietary laws you do.”
“May Allah honor him and grant him peace?” I ask, turning his Arabic into a question.
“Muslims honor the prophets—Jesus, Moses, and the rest. When we speak their names, we ask God to grant them peace.”
Jamil cuts me a piece of sausage, and the smoky taste of paprika and pungent garlic invades every recess of my mouth. I crush a juniper berry between my teeth and its resinlike flavor mixes with the sweet taste of the meat. “It’s delicious,” I say, as he cuts me another slice.
“You’re quite trusting.” He holds it out to me on the tip of his knife. “Eating sausage just on my word that it’s all right?”
“Trusting?” I hope to sound lighthearted, but my voice comes out solemn and husky. “I’m here alone with you, aren’t I?”
His eyes are penetrating, and my comfort vanishes. What does he want from me? Have I made a mistake coming with him? I look to my horse, grazing in the shadows of the rampart walls, and wonder if I should get away as quickly as I can.
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