I go with the doorkeeper to look outside. The crowd has been transformed into orderly lines of men standing shoulder to shoulder, while women cluster at the edges and in the doorways of shops. Like ripples of waves on a bay, the men bow, hands to thighs, then drop to their knees and touch their foreheads to the ground. At the end of prayers, they look to their right and left. “Assalamu alaikum wa rahmatullah,” I hear them say to each other before rocking back on their heels and rising to their feet. “Peace and the mercy of Allah be on you.” Though I have often seen Jamil at solitary prayer, there is something magnificent about so many people stopping at the same time to remember the Holy One, and I am momentarily envious that I am not a part of something so beautiful.
There’s a momentary calm in the square, but the gaiety soon resumes, and people pour into Jamil’s courtyard. Servants scurry with platters heaped high with roasted meat while others ladle cups of a brilliant pink liquid.
“Is it wine, Mama?” Eliana asks. I shake my head. Though most Muslims believe the prohibition in Islamic law is only against intoxication, I know that serving wine publicly at such a time would cause talk.
“Let’s go find out,” I say, glad for something to do, now that Jamil has been caught up in a crowd of people eager to greet him. We take a small, cautious taste from the cups we are handed.
“Ummm,” Eliana says. “Berry?”
“Grape, maybe—or plum?” I turn to the server. “What is this?” I ask.
“Hibiscus flower,” she says. “With a little clove.” Flowers, I think. What a perfect way to drink in beauty.
The meats on each platter are prepared a different way—here vaguely like cinnamon and there like smoked peppers, pungent with flavors at once sour, sweet, pungent, and spicy. Eliana turns up her nose at a few, but I find the whole feast reassuring. Something tells me if they eat and drink like this, there will be much more to like about Granada.
That night, Eliana and I sleep in a separate apartment in Jamil’s house. He comes to me after she has fallen asleep, her belly distended with more food than I imagined she could swallow. “What do you think of my city?” he asks, running his fingers through my hair, which still hold the dust of the road.
“It’s overwhelming,” I say.
“Is overwhelming good?”
“I think so.” I try unsuccessfully to hide a yawn. Jamil smiles. “I have a few friends I still need to visit. It’s Eid al-Adha, and I don’t want to hurt their feelings.” He kisses me. “Sleep well, my love.”
I am so exhausted I have to muster strength to get up from the chair I collapse into after Jamil leaves. This is the first time he hasn’t wanted to be with me during those precious hours while Eliana sleeps. I am here alone, without another soul who knows who or where I am. Is it because it’s Eid al-Adha and his first night home, or is his life in Granada going to be full without me?
You’re tired, I tell myself. Stop imagining things to worry about.
The candle flickers and goes out, and as I listen in the darkness to the muted sounds of revelers in the streets, I feel so small I could almost disappear. My new home. Will it ever feel that way? Numb and exhausted, I slip quietly into bed so as not to disturb my daughter’s dreams.
***
After Eid al-Adha, Granada sleeps. A few days later, a page from the Alhambra arrives at Jamil’s house with an invitation to the palace the following afternoon. Making my way during the Eid through the crowded squares of the quarter known as the Albaicín gave me little opportunity to notice anything except where my feet would step next, and I am happy for the chance to ride in a sedan chair and take my first good look at the city.
We pass through streets of low, whitewashed buildings surrounding the souk. I watch two women come out of the shadows in flowing robes and diaphanous veils, holding hands up to their foreheads to shield their dark eyes from the winter sun.
A man goes into the souk, balancing on his head a stack of folded carpets. Even though they must weigh almost as much as he does, he walks with the casual gait of someone carrying nothing at all. Another grizzled old man leads a donkey burdened with saddlebags carrying crimson and russet-colored spices and a sack of dried mint leaves still on their woody stems. A boy dashes by with a bag from which protrude the now familiar salt-washed loaves so delicious they put all other bread I have tasted to shame.
How unusual to smell such aromas in a city! The streets and alleys of Lisbon are fetid with the odor of rot and excrement. Here the pavement is swept clean, and sewers wash away the waste that would otherwise be tossed in the street.
We cross the Darro River on one of several bridges connecting the Albaicín with the palace. Looking up to the right, I see the Alcazaba, a massive fortress with rose-colored walls, windowless except for a few slits near the tops of its crenellated towers. Straight ahead is a palace of the same glowing stone but with hundreds of windows and open arches punctuating its austere walls.
Behind the Alhambra, the Sierra Nevada rise up against a cloudless, winter sky. The palace complex, impressive as it is, looks like a stack of tiny boxes against the towering snowfields and dark, jagged peaks. I try to remain calm by reminding myself that even the powerful among us are insignificant compared to mountains and sky. I tell myself I am arriving with the dignity of someone who has been asked to come, but my mind has no power over my racing heart and sweaty palms.
The sentry recognizes the carriers and waves us through into a huge courtyard with patterned gravel paving and a massive blue-and-green-tiled fountain, where a man in a rich velvet cloak and fluttering pants waits to escort me. A few men mill around conversing, while servants and grooms tend to people arriving or departing the palace.
He leads me down a long street lined with stores and workshops with upstairs living quarters for artisans and laborers, and through arbors and garden paths. Despite the snow in the distance, I’m told Granada rarely gets frost, so even in winter, the flower beds are splashed with hundreds of shades of green and every imaginable color of blossom. I hear songbirds and catch the scent of jasmine in the air, and everywhere I see and hear water. It splashes in fountains inside fish ponds and shallow reflecting pools, cascades in channels along walkways, and trickles in shallow grooves down the center of stone staircases.
We reach the palace and enter a long, open-air corridor. My jaw drops. The vault is carved as delicately as lace, dropping like a petticoat down the walls. Light streams through the arches, dappling the yellow, blue, and green tiles on the lower walls and illuminating the graceful Arabic inscriptions that run the length of the corridor. “It is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen,” I say to my escort.
He smiles. “You have just begun to see the beauty of the Alhambra.”
We continue through corridors and rooms and across courtyards where towering filigree-covered arches collect golden light on Quranic verses and interlocking arabesques. Eventually we come to a large double door guarded by sentries. “The Caliph’s quarters,” my escort says, motioning me through. “He’ll spend only a moment with you. When his grandchildren are brought in, you will leave with them.”
My heart is skittering in my chest, and only the knowledge that Jamil is inside with the Caliph keeps my knees from giving way. Inside I can see nothing but the broad outline of a platform on the far side of the room. Behind it, tall windows let in blinding sun, blocked only by thin lattices on the shutters. Sparks whiz across the ceiling like shooting stars from a basin of mercury that slaves are rocking in a beam of light.
When my eyes adjust, I see that Muhammad the Ninth is not on a throne but on a carpeted dais, lounging on a couch covered with silks that glint in the sunlight as if he were enveloped in a cloud of gold.
Jamil whisks me away from my escort and brings me forward to get my first close look at the Caliph of Granada. I know to expect an old man—in the complicated and cutthroat politics of Granada, he has been in and out of power Jamil’s whole life—and it is his grandchildren by one of his younger wive
s whom I will tutor. Still, this man is so ancient his skin looks like an old saddle, and his wizened face seems disproportionate to the huge turban covering any hair he might still have.
His reedy voice brings the room to attention. “Ahlan wa sahlan. Welcome to Granada.”
“Salaam,” I say. “Ahlan bik. I am honored to be here, and I wish for nothing more than to have my service please you.”
A disturbance on one side of the room causes me to look away. A group of young women have entered and huddle whispering among themselves. Their eyes are lined with kohl, and they are dressed in translucent silk trousers and veils, wearing nothing above the waist but a tight band over their breasts. One of them has eyes like emeralds, with hair the color of apricots. A Berber like Jamil, I recognize, but with Slavic blood as well, from soldiers of fortune who came in earlier times. I’ve noticed this everywhere in Granada, how some people have skin like ebony and others the creamy white of a jasmine blossom, with the most startling combinations of features—blue eyes in a dark face, or black eyes in a fair one. Their hair ranges from gold to russet to black so dark it glints of blue.
“Ah!” the caliph says. “The qiyan! My singing girls!” They start forward, carrying flutes, drums, and finger cymbals, but he waves them back and turns to me.
“Tell me,” he says, “is mapmaking among your many talents?” I am startled by the suddenness of this new topic, but my voice, to my relief, comes out calm and forceful. “I’m afraid not. I tried when I was young, but my father hid his paints and inks so they wouldn’t be wasted on someone with little promise.”
The sultan chews on a fig, taking his time as if no one is there at all. “What a pity,” he says, “and an even greater one that your family’s greatest work is in France, where, I dare say, they do not appreciate the Catalan Atlas as much as we would.”
If only he knew, I think, picturing my family’s copy of the atlas hidden away among the possessions I brought to Granada.
A noise from behind distracts him. Two children come in—a girl around eight and a boy about two years younger—attended by a small woman with eyes like black olives behind her veiled face. “What is life for, if not to have grandchildren?” he asks, gesturing in their direction without looking at them. The boy fidgets, and the girl gives him a nudge to quiet him.
“I hope for that someday, Insha’Allah,” I tell him, “but I will be waiting a while, because my daughter is still the age of these two.”
A smile darts at the edges of the caliph’s mouth, and I am relieved that I seem to have found the right thing to say. He looks at the children and flicks his hand in my direction. “Greet our guest,” he commands.
“Are you our new tutor?” the boy asks, after bowing to me. His confident and demanding tone reminds me of Eliana, and I can’t help but smile.
“I am,” I tell him, “and you must be Qasim.” I look to the girl. “And Zubiya.”
Qasim shrinks back—shy, perhaps because a stranger knows his name. Zubiya’s large, gray eyes look me over with the frank and open curiosity that is the prerogative of children. “Go with her, then,” the caliph says, shooing them away with a sweep of his hand. The children back away respectfully before turning to their attendant, who has come up to stand behind me.
“I am Ana, one of the children’s slaves,” she says. “Please come with me to the women’s quarters. The family is waiting to greet you.”
As we leave, I hear the rhythmic tapping of finger symbols and the slow beat of a drum. I turn to watch a few of the singing girls seat themselves cross-legged on the floor, their trousers billowing around them. The others have raised their hennaed hands and are swaying their hips in time to the drum, making slow twirls and dips as they sweep in front of the caliph.
A small hand slips into mine, and Zubiya looks up at me. “They’re very pretty, aren’t they? I wish I could dance like that.” Ana hisses faintly to quiet her.
“No one wants to teach me because the girls who do it are all slaves in the harem,” Zubiya goes on, ignoring her. “They say it wouldn’t be decent, but—” She gets up on tiptoes, and I bend down to hear her. “I dance in my room when no one is looking,” she whispers so close to my ear I can smell the scent of orange candy on her breath. “Would you like to watch me sometime?”
I smile at her, remembering my own youthful fantasies. “Very much,” I say.
We follow Ana through a courtyard bordered in myrtle bushes and taken up almost entirely by a reflecting pool. On the white walls, huge drapes of silk billow with every puff of air, and around the walkway, carpets and cushions are strewn for those who wish to linger. “Look,” Qasim says, the first words he has said since we left the caliph. He settles on his stomach at one end of the pool. “You have to get down low, or you can’t see it.”
“Oh, do!” Zubiya says, lying down next to her brother. I crouch and look across the pool, not wanting to appear undignified, but Qasim insists I get so low my cheek touches the ground. From that level, the building on the far end is reflected in the pool, down to every filigreed arch. “It seems so real,” I say.
“Real water,” he laughs, splashing his hand and destroying the illusion.
“Qasim!” Zubiya whines. “You spoil everything!”
We walk through more filigreed arches onto a patio Ana calls the Courtyard of the Lions. “The women and children live in the buildings around it,” she tells me as the children run ahead through an open entryway into a garden I can see just beyond.
In the entry, I hear whispers from the upper floor and look up to see several windows covered with lattices of carved wood. One of the shutters moves, and I know I’m being watched. Someone giggles, and a stern voice tells her to hush.
I climb the stairs to a walkway overlooking a garden enclosed on all sides by the apartments of the caliph’s chief wife and female relatives. I can see Qasim and Zubiya playing hide and seek among the sculpted bushes as Ana takes me around one corner and into a huge room.
Several women about my age come to greet me, but one who looks to be about fifty, whom I take to be Muhammad the Ninth’s chief wife, Mushtaq, stays in her chair. Another woman about ten years her junior stares at me before whispering something in Mushtaq’s ear.
“Ahlan wa-sahlan.” The first to reach me takes my hand with her delicate fingers. “I am Jawhara,” she says, “the mother of Qasim and Zubiya, and this is my friend Rayyan.”
“Ahlan biki,” I reply. “I’m pleased to meet you. Your children are truly charming.” A girl of around fourteen has been hiding behind them, and Rayyan gestures her forward. “Don’t be so shy, Noor,” she says. The girl looks up through dark lashes, and when she raises her face, I have to stop myself from gasping.
She is without a doubt the most beautiful human being I have ever seen. Her eyes are the same aquamarine as Jamil and Rashida’s, but her skin is much lighter, almost tawny in hue, and so flawless it is hard to resist reaching out to touch her cheek to see if it as cool and dewy as it looks. Her nose is narrow and straight and her lips, without a touch of added color, are so roselike I can imagine the scent of a summer garden on her breath.
“Fursa saeeda,” she says. “I am pleased to meet you.” I see a hint of color rise in her cheeks, and my heart goes out to her for being so painfully shy that even in the privacy of her home, she can barely manage to speak.
Jawhara and Rayyan bring me over to meet the chief wife and the other woman with her. Mushtaq smiles warmly, but I can see by the difficulty with which she shifts her weight in her chair that she is painfully afflicted in her joints.
“Introduce me, Noor,” the other woman commands in a brittle voice.
Noor’s cheeks color again. “May I present my mother, Tarab,” she says.
“Tarab is one of the caliph’s nieces,” Rayyan adds. “Our honored chief wife is her aunt.”
Tarab’s eyes remained locked on me. “Fursa saeeda,” I tell her. She nods and says nothing.
Jawhara takes me by the arm. “It
’s almost time for dinner,” she says. “Would you like to see your quarters first, and the lesson room?”
My quarters? Prickles of sweat break out on my forehead. Why had I not asked about this before? I assumed Eliana and I would live by ourselves in town. Jamil can’t visit me here, not within reach of the prying eyes of people like Tarab. The thought turns my ribs into claws around my heart.
What has Jamil told them? Do they know about Eliana at all? Will these strangers be her family? Will Tarab bully her with her eyes as she has already done with me? I fight the urge to run downstairs, past the fountains and pools, through the gardens, beyond the outer walls, and back to Jamil’s house in the Albaicín. My mind races back further as I reverse Eliana’s and my journey until we are back in Queluz, safe in our own beds, as if none of this ever happened.
Jawhara stops at a closed door. “This is where you will stay,” she says, opening the latch. Like a sleepwalker imprisoned in a dream, I go inside.
17
VALENCIA 1492
I was wrong to fear the open door that beckoned me into my new life. What I walked into so blindly when I accepted the Caliph’s invitation to tutor his grandchildren was not easy and often unpleasant, but I remember the sounds, colors, and smells of Granada with greater vibrancy and clarity—and yes, happiness—than many of the things I have experienced since.
If I were standing at this moment in an orchard in bloom, the fragrance could not compete with what comes to me by shutting my eyes and remembering the gardens of the Alhambra. The palace, the city, the magnificent mountains at its back, and the fertile vegetation surrounding it were so intoxicating that everyone there believed that Paradise hovered just out of view.
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