The Mapmaker's Daughter

by Laurel Corona

  Look at your mouth!

  Are you trying to pull your eyes down to your chin

  Without using your hands?

  That’s one. And another:

  I whisper too low to be heard, “What a beautiful woman Tarab is.”

  She scowls at me, disagreeing as always with everything I say.

  The latch opens on the door, and Jamil enters. The touch of his hand on my shoulder is better than any words. I remove the pins from my hair, letting it tumble over my shoulders in an invitation to my lover.

  ***

  On this balmy summer evening, people in rowboats sing and call to each other as Jamil and I walk along the river to the pavilion. Above us loom the dark ramparts of the Alhambra, topped by a tiara of lights from the palace inside the fortress walls. A full moon hovers over the hill of the Albaicín, caressing the whitewashed houses with pale light.

  “Granada is beautiful enough to break the heart,” I say to Jamil, not sure exactly what I mean. A passing torch lights his face, and I see the glint of white teeth as he smiles.

  “I didn’t think I could love it more, until I brought you here,” he replies. His eyes scan the dark Alhambra walls, the torchlight of the riverfront pavilion, the glittering moonlight on the water.

  Granada nestles like a white-skinned woman

  In a bed of dark mountains.

  I make love to her with my eyes, my heart,

  Though she is not true to me alone.

  His aquamarine eyes are gray in the low light. “It’s not a very good poem,” he says, but like all the verses he makes up on the spot, I think it is perfect.

  The pavilion is an open arcade surrounding a courtyard. People are milling around the steps leading to the arcade, for everyone in Granada is welcome to listen, though only the privileged may take seats inside.

  The singing girls have just finished performing, and they scurry, giggling, to several rough-looking guards, who keep the crowd at a distance. I sit with a few other women, apart from the men, as one after another recites his poems. I grow more tense as each one to sit down brings my own moment nearer. Finally, Jamil rises and gestures to where I am seated. There’s no stopping this wild idea now, but oddly, the inevitability calms me, and I walk forward as if held up by a cloud.

  I’ve changed my mind about attacking Atib bint Haqim. The night is like velvet, and I cannot hold onto hard thoughts. “Granada is beautiful enough to break the heart,” I say, reciting the poem I have been writing in my head since Jamil and I walked along the riverbank.

  “The moon above her a pearl

  Set in a sky of sparkling diamonds.

  A demanding mistress, she adjusts her white skirts

  As she settles back against the hills.

  Pointing to the peaks of the Sierra Nevada,

  She says, ‘If you love me, bring them to me!

  I’m thirsty and the melting snow will cool me.’

  Many would die trying,

  Just to hear the sound in her throat as she swallows.”

  I open my eyes again and I see Jamil’s glowing face. Emboldened by my success, I look straight at him.

  “How can you be so cruel?

  After a night of wine and love

  You shut your lids in sleep,

  Stealing my most precious jewels—The sapphires that are your eyes.”

  Jamil throws his head back with a hearty, pleased laugh before replying.

  “Cruel, my love?

  I’ve put them away for safekeeping.”

  He shuts his eyes then opens them again.

  “Here they are. I’ve brought them back to you.

  They ask to see nothing but your beauty.”

  No one wants us to stop. It’s a favorite pastime here in Granada, listening to two people declare their love, or sometimes their enmity, in extemporaneous verse. When my mind grows so weary that I can think of nothing more to say, I stand silently and take him in with my eyes. Jamil gives me the exaggerated bow he would offer a queen. Then he takes my hand and leads me away.

  “Do you want to stay awhile?” he asks when we reach the edge of the courtyard. The singing girls have gone back in, and I hear the rhythm of the drums and cymbals and the wild, soaring voice of a woman singing an Arabic love poem.

  For a moment, I want to stay to enjoy my success, but a wash of exhaustion makes me lightheaded. “No,” I say. “I want to go home.”

  The night air cools my flushed face as we walk in silence toward the river. Stopping in moonshade under an ancient oak tree, he takes me in his arms. “You were magnificent,” he says. “How can I be so lucky to have such a woman love me?”

  I try to explain with my lips, my tongue, and the softest nip of my teeth that the fortunate one is me.

  I come home thinking everything is perfect. I am in a cocoon that starts in my comfortable bed with Eliana, takes in the Jewish quarter, and spreads out to the Albaicín, where Jamil lies asleep. It wraps around the palace of the Alhambra and finds its boundary there—a world just the right size for me.

  Before Eliana goes to sleep, we say the prayer she recites every night. “Kuatro kantonadas ay in esta kaza. Kuatro malahimes, kuatro angelines,” it begins. There are four corners in this house, four angels. May they guard us from fire and flame, from evil speech and sudden death.

  Four corners. Four angels. It is enough protection for two more years.

  GRANADA 1458

  The message to me at the palace is so stark that I know at once something terrible has happened. “Please come to my house.” I recognize Jamil’s hand, despite the uncharacteristic scrawl. “I need you.”

  I rush to the Albaicín in an early spring rain and see the somber face of the gatekeeper. “What happened?” I ask, but he won’t tell me. Inside the house, I see Jamil’s head buried in his arms as he slumps at his desk.

  “Jamil?” He does not look up. “Jamil?” I say again, touching his shoulder. “What is it?”

  He raises his head. His face is as pale as milk, and his eyes are so swollen I am not sure I would have recognized him in the street. “It’s Sawwar,” he says, barely able to get out the name. “He’s dead.”

  A wail escapes from deep inside me before I can shed a tear. “He can’t be,” I say with the logic of fools. “He’s too young.” Jamil points to the open letter on his desk and I recognize Rashida’s hand.

  My dear brother,

  I am sending this by the fastest horse and rider we have. I take comfort in the fact that until he arrives, you will be blissfully unaware of what I must tell you, and I weep that his speed will end your peace all the sooner.

  A terrible accident has befallen your son. He was out with another boy setting snares and shooting partridge in the fields below Ronda. When it grew late, they took one of the shorter cliff routes instead. The other boy told us that Sawwar dropped the string of birds he was carrying. It caught on a ledge just below the trail and he thought he could get down safely to retrieve it. The rock was loose and he slipped so suddenly that the ledge could not hold him.

  He lay there so perfect and quiet at the bottom of the cliff, as if he were just a dusty boy taking a nap. I pray death took him quickly before he felt pain or fear or understood his fate. We brought his body to Ronda and buried it the following morning, according to our law.

  We are waiting for you when you are able to come. Perhaps grieving together will provide some comfort to us all.

  May Allah grant you peace,

  Your loving sister,

  Rashida

  I sit heavily on a stool, holding the letter in my hand. The house servants are hovering nearby, some weeping openly and others numb and still.

  “Get out!” Jamil stands up suddenly, gesturing wildly. The jarring tone is so unlike him that they freeze for a moment before hurrying away. When we are alone, he holds me so tightly I would have cried out if I did not also need a way to hold on to this world.

  Eventually he pulls away and, like sleepwalkers, we go into the bedro
om and lie down fully clothed. He stares up at the roughhewn ceiling, saying nothing. He’s lost his wife and child already, and I wonder if all life’s wounds have been torn open again. I silently drape an arm over his chest because there is nothing—not one thing—that can be said in such a moment.

  I cannot imagine how he feels. To do so, I would have to picture Eliana dead. I think of a saw cutting through a rope, the last threads fraying and pulling away, sending what I most treasure into the abyss. I picture Sawwar watching as the stones he and Jamil are throwing plummet out of sight. He’s smiling and happy, and then suddenly he is falling, falling, growing smaller as he nears the bottom…

  I bolt to the nightstand where a pitcher of water and a wash basin are kept. The contents of my stomach splash loudly into the bowl as I retch until I collapse sobbing to the floor.

  ***

  At Ronda, we go through the motions of life but find no comfort in it. I visit the baths. Jamil goes riding with the men. My daughter and I take walks and help Rashida around the house. Eliana has never dealt with death before, and every flicker of comprehension makes her cry. He must have been scared. It must have hurt. He’s not coming back. I hover over her in ways she’s not used to, worrying about a scratch or a flushed cheek, as if death may not yet have had its fill of children in the town.

  I am grateful when Jamil says it’s time to return to Granada, time to get on with life after Sawwar. On our last day, we sit in the garden together and watch the sun set over the same fields Sawwar roamed the last day of his life. “This changes everything,” Jamil says. My stomach knots at what I think may be coming. “Sawwar was my heir, my only child,” he goes on. “I have to think about that now.”

  “What do you mean?” I ask, putting off for just a moment the answer I already know.

  “I must have a son.” He takes my hand. “Before this happened, things were simple. I had Sawwar and you, and I didn’t need anything else. Now, I have to decide what I’m going to do.” Pulling back his hand, he turns away to avoid my eyes.

  A blackness comes over me as my mind whirls. I take in a few deep breaths to make the awful feeling go away. “I must marry again,” Jamil says. “I must have another child. Several, to ensure—” His eyes fill with tears, and he chokes back a sob. When he has composed himself, he takes my hand again. “You know I want that wife to be you.”

  “Jamil, I—”

  I feel slain by the facts. I am too old to breed a large new family, but my other reason is even more compelling. “You know that any child I have must be raised as a Jew.”

  He gives me a long, searching stare, as if debating whether to try to get me to change my mind. “I know,” he says with a sigh, “but as a Muslim, I could marry another woman without having to give you up. Perhaps you could be my chief wife and I could wed another as well—a younger one, to bear my children.”

  “I can’t allow that.” My heart twists with pain at what I must say. “You cannot get what you need by marrying me, Jamil. And I think—” I swallow hard. “I think we should not talk about it anymore.”

  We stay in our separate tents on the way back to Granada. When we arrive, he asks to be alone for a while to ponder his future. I am relieved to comply.

  A week later, Jamil asks me to come to his house. His face is grim and sleepless, and he greets me with a stiff embrace. “Sit down,” he says, motioning to a chair.

  Any questions I have vanish in one agonizing realization. “You’re getting married,” I blurt out, wanting to cut short the torture of an explanation.

  He looks surprised. “How did you know?”

  “I sensed it. Then it’s true?”

  “I see no other way.”

  “Who is she?” The answer flashes into my mind, but I wait for him to say it.

  “You know her,” he says. “I’m marrying Noor.”

  Tarab has gotten what she wanted. The Jew from Portugal turned out to be no threat to her plans after all. I’m filled with loathing so intense I want to scream, claw, smash, tear at the hateful face I see in my mind. But I don’t move. Instead, I take in one deep breath and then another, to fill the void left behind as my life bleeds away.

  “I will always love you,” Jamil says. “And if I could ask you to stay in my life without offending you, I would, but I know I cannot.” He takes me in his arms. “I am so sorry.”

  I feel the tears rising, and I surrender to them, lingering in his embrace until I reach a strange sense of calm about what I cannot change.

  I pull away and see his cheeks are wet and his eyes mournful and drained of life. “I can’t bear to think we have already made love for the last time,” he says. “Could we—?”

  I feel a surge of emotion so raw that I want to say yes, to have him inside me, to pay attention as I never have before, so I will remember forever, but something in me is so close to breaking that I know I must run from this house as quickly as I can.

  “No,” I say. “It’s better this way.” Without another word, I run out the door, across the courtyard, through the gate, and out of his life.

  I pull my veil over my face so no one will see me, although in this part of Granada, no one is likely to care who I am. The backs of my knees feel independently alive, pushing into my kneecaps as if to fell me, to leave me broken in the street, my grief and humiliation complete.

  I should have known.

  I should have known.

  I am an unmarried woman who went off to be with her lover and is now abandoned. Better I had stayed at home in Queluz. Judah, Simona, Toba, Mushtaq—what will they think of me now? How will I face a gloating Tarab?

  I tell myself I was not abandoned, that I chose to come, that I am the one who forced it to end, and Jamil loves me still. A slip of Sawwar’s feet, and more than one life tumbled out of control.

  “You’re alive. You have your daughter. You will survive this,” I say aloud, not caring if anyone hears. But my voice is hollow, and my heart says otherwise. I want to be swallowed up so I don’t have to think, don’t have to feel anymore.

  I reach home, not knowing how I put one foot in front of the other, and fall onto the cool covers of my bed, letting out a cry as piercing and ragged as a blade being sharpened on rock. Over. Gone. Forever.

  ***

  My anguish at Noor’s upcoming wedding is so great that I am certain I am dying. Tarab’s happiness is so unseemly that Mushtaq scolds her openly, forcing the mean-spirited woman into an insincere apology to me, which only makes things worse.

  Jawhara tells me I can stay home until after the wedding if it is too much to bear, but I don’t want Tarab to have that victory. Though merely drawing breath is as painful as if through an aching tooth, I force myself to go to the palace to tutor Zubiya. One afternoon, I make a stop at the gypsy camp north of town to buy a cure for melancholy and lovesickness that leaves me so empty-headed I don’t feel anything at all.

  The only good in all of this is that Tarab will live in Jamil’s house, and I won’t have to endure the aftermath of her triumph. I stay at home the day of the wedding, and I try to picture a palace without Tarab rather than Noor and Jamil dressed in their finery at their wedding banquet, Noor and Jamil taking a festooned sedan chair to his home, Noor and Jamil going into his bedroom, Noor and Jamil…

  Noor and Jamil.

  ***

  The scab on the wound is tested painfully when Tarab comes to the palace to visit three months later. Noor always comes with her, and I stay in my quarters, unable to bear the conversation. Today, Tarab is alone and I hear her say that Noor is feeling ill. “My daughter is expecting a child,” she says, looking up at the latticed window where she knows I am watching.

  Such proof of her presence in the bed Jamil and I shared is more than I can stand. I go to the window that looks out over the city, desperate for the air that seems to have been sucked from the room. My eyes light on Jamil’s roof on the hill of the Albaicín.

  “You bastard!” I say. “How could you do this to me?”<
br />
  I don’t mean it. At least, most of me does not. He offered me the place Noor holds now, and I chose my future. Still my heart is bleeding so badly I’m surprised my clothing is not soaked red. For a moment, I pity the young woman, so unable to meet him as an equal. How hard he must be working to be as happy as he was with me.

  Is Jamil standing in his courtyard now, looking up at the Alhambra and wondering where I am? He knows which window is mine. “You made your choice too,” I say, sending the thought to him as I shut the lattice screen.

  GRANADA 1459

  Noor brings her infant son, Ahmad, to the palace a month after his birth. I am afraid to look at him, for fear I will recognize Jamil’s eyes or his thick, golden-brown hair. But Ahmad looks no more like one of them than the other, and I murmur along with the rest of the women, that with such parents, it’s no surprise he is a beautiful baby.

  I watch with odd detachment Ahmad’s progress in the first months of his life. I’m as excited as the rest of the women when he recognizes me, and I smile back with sincere pleasure. I am happy for Noor, because I know what it means to be a mother, and from time to time I even forget the miserable truth behind this delightful child’s existence.

  By summer, another pall hangs over my life. The caliph is gravely ill. Muhammad has no son to succeed him, and in the Caliphate of Granada, the outcome would be unclear even if he did. The only certainty is that a new family and a new chief wife will take over the Alhambra, just as Mushtaq had done years before.

  No one will pack anything now, so Death will not think it has been invited, but eventually Jawhara and her children will go with Mushtaq to their ancestral home in Almería. There they will live inside the Alcazaba, a fortress overlooking the sea.

  “You’re welcome to come,” Jawhara tells me almost every day. “Zubiya will be bereft without you and Eliana. Please say yes!”

  I am not tempted by the offer. Zubiya’s marriage has been contracted, and in a few years, she will leave for her husband’s domain near Málaga. Eliana, now thirteen, will eventually marry as well, and if she moves away, I will be alone here in Granada. But if I accept Mushtaq’s and Jawhara’s offer, I will serve for their amusement once Zubiya is gone, and nothing more. That’s not enough of a life for me.