When I turned around, Zaynab was looking at me; she quickly averted her eyes. A pigeon sat on her shoulder, pecked at her gray hair. Her robes were mottled with telltale white streaks. “Would you . . .” Again she seemed shy. “Would you like a cup of sharbat?”
It would have been rude to refuse. I followed her into the shade of the pavilion.
The carpets, scattered about the floor, were faded and frayed and littered with feathers. White droppings splotched the tiles. It smelled musty. Of bird. Yet it was a fine room, with designs in green and brown tiles on the floor and in purple and blue on the high ceiling. Like earth and sky, I thought.
Humming a tuneless tune, Zaynab poured water into a bowl and hastily scrubbed two clay cups. The wash water turned chalky white. Bird droppings in the cups? It seemed likely, because now two more pigeons flew in and joined the one pecking at Zaynab’s hair. I watched warily as she ladled sharbat from an earthenware jar. Still, she didn’t seem really crazy—except for the reckless jaunt across the roof and the birds on her shoulders and that imaginary bird she had talked to. Unless you counted terrible housekeeping as a sign of craziness. Which Auntie Chava probably would.
Who was this Zaynab? I wondered. What did she do here? Why had she saved me from the Khatun? Or . . . had she saved me?
“Here you go, my dear,” Zaynab said, handing me a cup of sharbat.
My dear. That was what she had called the imaginary bird. Still, the sharbat looked clean enough. I had half feared to find a feather floating in it—or worse. Sipping, I found that it was sweet and good.
I smiled at Zaynab. “This is delicious,” I said. “Thank you.”
She nodded, smiled, ducked her head, then quickly turned and scattered some seeds on the tile floor. The birds on her shoulders fluttered down and began pecking; four or five new pigeons sailed in through the windows and joined them. Zaynab sat staring at the pigeons, humming softly to herself. Abruptly, she broke off and looked at me.
“Do you like views?” she asked.
“Views?”
“The view,” she said. “Over there. We can look. If you want. You don’t have to unless you want to.”
“I’d like to,” I said.
We crossed to a window and silently looked out. The whole city lay before us—beige flat-roofed buildings, studded with bright domes and spindly minarets. The sun, low in the sky, cast long shadows and bathed the highest points in golden light. To the east, like a deep blue silk scarf, lay the river. And beyond, along the horizon, stretched a row of green hills. My mother had grown up beyond the green hills, I suddenly remembered.
The boats and carts and buildings looked tiny from here. Like toys. Much tinier than they had looked from Auntie Chavas terrace. Toy people jostling in the streets. Toy donkeys and toy camels. A toy herdsman with his flock of toy goats.
I tried to find the pathway through the city that would take me to Uncle Eli and Auntie Chavas home. But everything looked different. I could recognize a few landmarks—the tanning pits, the domed roofs of the bazaar, the minaret of a nearby mosque—but I couldn’t piece the whole city together and make sense of it.
Nor could I make sense of the palace roof. The harem, I knew, lay in the middle, but where? I found the garden with the cypress and boxwood trees, but try as I might to match the bumps and hollows in the roof to places I knew, I could not.
Zaynab was looking off into the distance, still humming. I waited in vain for her to say something—anything.
Through the window screen, I caught a glimpse of the pigeon houses. Something I had once heard . . . “Do you . . . keep the messenger pigeons?” I asked.
Zaynab cut off her humming abruptly. “I and my grandfather before me.”
I sipped my sharbat, searching for something else to say, hoping that she would say something. But she was humming under her breath again. Then she said as if to herself, “Pigeons are easier than people.”
What could I say to that? I tipped back my sharbat, finished it. “I . . . should be going back to the harem. Is there another way down . . . besides ... um . . . besides . . .” Now I sounded like the crazy one. But Zaynab rescued me from my own awkward tongue.
She took my cup and led me out to the terrace. “This way.” She pointed to a long, narrow stairway that wound down into darkness. “You’ll come out near the harem kitchens. The door is unlocked.” Zaynab paused, then added, “I would be glad . . . if you would visit me another day.”
“Thank you,” I said. But I didn’t think I’d come. Zaynab was strange.
I was nearly past the first curve when Zaynab called down to me. “Marjan?”
I turned back. Sun streamed all around her into the dim stairwell.
“Watch out for the Khatun. She’s not your friend.”
It wasn’t until I was back inside the harem that I realized I’d never told her my name.
* * *
Dunyazad came to see me in my room after evening prayers. It was hard, now, talking to her. She was careful, polite. But there was none of the warmth that I had felt from her before. None of the liking.
She wanted to know how to find the storyteller in the bazaar, and I told her as well as I could, though I didn’t remember exactly where he had been. Somewhere near the carpet bazaar, by a fountain. It had been a long time ago. I had been lost. Also, he might have changed places. Or moved to another city. Or died.
I wanted to let her know what I had overheard, about the Khatun preparing the copper-haired girl to take over Shahrazad’s job. Although I didn’t know how to do it. Dunyazad would wonder how I knew, and the truth was odd enough that she might be suspicious. I told her anyway.
She just looked at me. Then she said, “Might as well get a donkey to tell him stories.”
So, I thought, after Dunyazad had left, I must have guessed right about what she and Shahrazad were planning. They would send someone to look for the storyteller. Someone who could come and go in and out of the harem. Someone—I hoped—with a good memory. You can’t send just anybody to get stories and have them do a good job.
But if he couldn’t find the storyteller . . .
A sick, sinking fear dragged at me. He had to.
If he couldn’t. . .
Dunyazad would think I was to blame. She would think that I had lied to protect myself from the Khatun. She would think I didn’t care what happened to Shahrazad, since the Sultan would never marry me.
She didn’t know me at all.
* * *
The next morning, right after dawn prayers, I lighted my lamp and made my way toward the corridor that led from Shahrazad’s quarters to the Sultan’s bedchamber.
For once, I was not alone. Flickering lights, all moving in the same direction, drifted through the dim courtyards and hallways—an odd, silent pilgrimage. I recognized the beak-nosed woman who had taken me to the baths, and a woman who had bought one of Auntie Chavas brooches, and a few of the children who had listened to the story of the fishes. I followed them to a courtyard staircase that led up to the alabaster corridor I had seen that first day. A cluster of people—fifteen or twenty, I guessed—sat or stood in pools of light on the wide marble steps. There was the gazelle girl with her pet, and the copper-haired girl. There were two eunuchs: one old and bitter looking; another young, with a sad, gentle face.
You would think that women gathered in this way would talk—to gossip or exchange confidences or simply pass the time. You would think that children would have trouble holding their tongues. But this group was strangely hushed.
I stood at the rear, near the bottom of the steps. No one seemed to notice. But then the young eunuch with the gentle face turned round to look at me. And smiled.
Was he Shahrazad’s ally? I wondered. The one they were sending to find the storyteller?
But now there was a shifting in the crowd, a sigh. I looked up to see the gold-clad eunuch walking toward us, moving through the arch. With Shahrazad and her sister behind.
She lives! My heart gave a
glad little leap.
Shahrazad turned and smiled. A public smile. A queens smile. Her glanced skimmed over the crowd; she didn’t seem truly to see anyone. I was hoping that she would smile especially at me. That she would . . . what? Thank me in front of everyone? Summon me to her quarters?
But she didn’t.
She moved with her sister through the arched doorway and into her rooms.
When I looked about me again, the steps were empty. Just a few people remained in the courtyard. As I watched, they disappeared through one arch or another until only the gazelle was left. He sniffed at the air, took a hesitant step, then pranced lightly across the square. When he vanished through an archway, I stood listening to the echoing clicks that his hooves made on the tiles.
* * *
They didn’t summon me that day. And all the time I worried: Had they found the storyteller? If they had, did he know the rest of the tale? Shahrazad had said she could stretch out the part I had already told her for three more nights. Now only two were left. If she didn’t have the tale . . .
Dread clung to me like a damp gown. I wished there were something I could do.
I went for a long walk through the harem to keep myself from going crazy. No one stopped me from exploring, and soon I could find my way around. The lived-in parts were scattered throughout the harem and parceled out—I guessed—according to where people stood with the Khatun. Her favorite servants—the copper-haired one and the beak-nosed one—lived in magnificent suites of rooms. Women with children seemed to have more than one room as well. But most of us lived in tiny rooms, even though many fine ones stood empty. And, aside from the Khatun and her favorites, no one lived very near to anyone else. It seemed as if the Khatun was trying to keep the rest of us apart.
But the children didn’t want to stay apart from me. Three of them found me after their midday naps and pestered me to tell them a story, then more children appeared as if by magic as I spun the tale. It was one I had made up. I decided to try it, see how it went. When I finished, a boy who had come in late began to beg for another story. Then they were all begging, even the gazelle girl. She even offered to let me pet her gazelle. I told them three more stories—including another one I had made up. I attempted some of the voice-and-body things Shahrazad had done, but I couldn’t do them half as well. The children were begging for more when their mothers shooed them away, saying I must need a rest.
But I truly didn’t mind.
The next day just after dawn, I again watched Shahrazad emerge from the Sultans quarters. Alive! But only one more night remained of the Julnar story.
And still she didn’t summon me.
Was that a good sign? Or bad?
The children found me earlier this day and pestered me even longer for stories. When my voice grew hoarse and I told them to come back the next day, the gazelle girl—her name was Mitra—followed me about, talking about her pet, telling me the names of everyone in the harem and what she thought of them, until her aunt called her away.
Even so, I had plenty of time left over to worry that afternoon. Nothing much happened in the harem, other than the morning pilgrimage to see Shahrazad. You could hear the moazzen calling for prayer three times a day. Twice a day, food appeared in my room. I had never seen who brought it; I was always wandering.
My mind went round and round about Shahrazad’s dilemma and I was filled with an ever-growing sense of helplessness and doom.
At last, after afternoon prayers, I returned up the spiral kitchen stairway to Zaynab.
I still couldn’t make up my mind about her: whether she was crazy or a spy for the Khatun. But that terrace—away from ghosts and conspiracies, away from the perfume-heavy air of the harem—drew me.
She didn’t seem surprised to see me. She looked up, blinking, when I came out of the stairway, and her face lit with a smile. She was holding a pigeon cupped in her hands; as I watched, she released it into the air. I gazed at the bird sailing over the tiny toy city and felt, just for a moment, that all my cares and worries and grievances were but toy things, too, and that life was truly peaceful and safe.
Zaynab did talk to her birds, I found. But it didn’t seem crazy.
It seemed as though they listened.
Chapter 8
On the Wrong Side
LESSONS FOR LIFE AND STORYTELLING
Sometimes, when you listen to a story, you get a new idea of what’s possible in the world. I don’t mean just strange customs and faraway places—though you can learn a lot from those. What I mean is that you can get a new idea of what’s possible for you—something you never thought of, or you never saw very much in real life.
When I’m scared, I like to think about the brave people in stories I know. And I think, Maybe I could be like that.
Late in the afternoon of my third day in the harem, Dunyazad appeared while I was telling the children a story and summoned me to her sister. I had to break off in the middle. When the children complained, I told them they would have to be like the Sultan and wait for the next day.
I couldn’t tell from Dunyazad’s expression whether they had found the story or not. She seemed guarded, her emotions carefully veiled. She didn’t trust me anymore. But one look at Shahrazad’s face told me everything.
They didn’t have it.
“We . . . couldn’t find him, Marjan,” she said, as I rose from kneeling at her feet. “We don’t know if we were looking at the right fountain, or . . . Might he have moved from that place?”
“It’s . . . possible,” I said. Though entertainers usually staked out the same spots for years, they did sometimes move.
“My sister . . . she has an idea.”
I turned to Dunyazad. She was looking down, away from me, as if she were studying the pattern of the carpet.
“She wanted to go with you,” Shahrazad said, “but I forbade her. It will be . . . dangerous.”
She waited, then, silent. Dangerous. As if I would object to a thing because it was dangerous. As if she hadn’t faced danger every night for nearly three years.
“Just tell me what it is,” I said, “and I’ll do it. I would do anything for you.”
* * *
The next morning, after the moazzen’s call to dawn prayer, Dunyazad came to fetch me. I was expecting her. We had gone over the whole plan the afternoon before in Shahrazad’s quarters. Now Dunyazad didn’t say a word, only put her finger to her lips, signaling me to hush. She peeked out into the hallway; I followed her down the stairs and into a small wood-paneled room. Gently, she pushed on one of the panels. A soft click. The panel became a door that swung silently in toward us.
She motioned me through the opening, into darkness. I turned to watch as she came in after, as she grasped a latch on the door and pulled it shut. Then I couldn’t see anything at all.
I felt her moving past me, breathed her perfume. It smelled fresh, like rain. Then she took hold of my wrist and tugged me behind her through the passage.
I was afraid that my bad foot would thump too loudly on the hard stone floor. I was afraid that I would trip and fall. I ran one hand along the wall for balance—I felt wood, then stone, then wood. Dunyazad let go of my wrist, and now I could just barely see the back of her. We turned a corner; light seeped in through a carved sandstone screen in the wall. When we had passed, it grew dim, then dark again.
It was like that in the passage. Tar black, and then dimly lit when we came upon screens of wood or sandstone, or metal grillworks, or odd little cutouts in the walls that must, I thought, be part of designs on the other side.
I kept wishing for a lamp, but of course we couldn’t use one. It would shine through the holes; people might see us going by. Anyway, Dunyazad seemed to have memorized these dark passages with her feet.
Unlike the first day she led me through the hidden passages, we didn’t go in and out of the main part of the harem. Dunyazad went fast, still—too fast for my liking. But now she grabbed my wrist from time to time and steered me.
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At last, she stopped. It was in one of the dark places; I ran into her with an “oof!” and then whispered that I was sorry.
“Shh!” she said. I could hear her fumbling at something, and then a click, and there was a crack of light down low that grew into a square. We crawled—Dunyazad first, then me—through the small, low doorway into Shahrazad’s suite.
Shahrazad came forward to greet us, motioning us to be quiet. I kissed the floor at her feet and, rising, saw the chest behind her, the one they had spoken of the day before. It was the size and shape of a small coffin, made of dark-varnished rosewood, with a deep, complicated design carved on its lid. One of its hinges had twisted and pulled away from the wood, and a long, raw scratch scarred the front panel.
“It saddened me to do that,” Shahrazad said, looking at the scratch. “I’ve always liked this chest. But. . .”
But if the chest weren’t damaged, she couldn’t send it out of the harem for repair.
Shahrazad handed me a pair of sandals and a veil—a fine full-length black veil, made of heavy slubbed silk. It made me uneasy, the veil. It would mark me as a rich woman. And rich women, though they might go to the bazaar from time to time, would have male relatives and eunuchs with them.
“Do you have . . . another veil?” I asked her. “One not so fine?”
The sisters exchanged a glance. “It’s mine,” Dunyazad said. “It’s the least fine one I own.”
Now Dunyazad embraced her sister and made for the hidden panel door. She stooped to go through it, then turned back to me. “May Allah keep all hateful things from you,” she said. I couldn’t read in her voice whether she truly meant it or not. Then she disappeared into the passage; the panel clicked shut behind her.
Shahrazad was opening the chest. “I put pillows inside,” she said. “I got in myself to see how it would feel. You can breathe; some of the carving on the lid goes all the way through. Do you see?” She pointed to a pattern of holes on the inside of the lid. A moment before, with the lid closed, I had not seen that they pierced it through. “My legs were cramped,” Shahrazad went on, “but you’re not so tall as I. Anyway, you won’t be in there long. The cabinetmaker’s shop, they tell me, is not far. And remember, they’ll come to pick you up before sunset prayers. They lock the harem gates at dusk. Don’t be late, Marjan—no matter what! Oh! and . . .” She reached inside her sash. “I almost forgot. Here.” She put three heavy gold dinars in my hand. I gaped at them. “Isn’t that enough?” she asked.
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