Finally we are allowed to leave. I know I should give Fadina a piece of my mind, but I just want to escape. Out in the hall, Fadina grabs me so hard that her nails bite into the soft part under my arm. “I told you she was in an absolute frenzy about Saturday,” she whispers. “I can’t believe you did that! And now she’ll be in a terrible mood all evening and I’m the one who will suffer for it!”
“Fadina,” I protest.
“Don’t you ‘Fadina’ me, Diyet! If I don’t get a slap out of this, it will be the intervention of the Holy One!”
I have already gotten a slap, and it wasn’t even my fault. I pull my arm away from Fadina and try to walk down the hall without losing my dignity. My face is hot and I am about to cry. Everything blurs in tears, so I duck into the linens and sit down on the hamper. I want to leave this place, I don’t want to work for that old woman. I realize that my only friend in the world is Kari and now we are so far apart, and I feel so hurt and lonely that I just sob.
The door to the linens opens and I turn my back thinking, “Go away, whoever you are.”
“Oh, excuse me,” the harni says.
At least it will go away. But the thought that the only thing around is the harni makes me feel even lonelier. I cannot stop myself from sobbing.
“Diyet,” it says hesitantly, “are you all right?”
I can’t answer. I want it to go away, and I don’t.
After a moment, it says from right behind me, “Diyet, are you ill?”
I shake my head.
I can feel it standing there, perplexed, but I don’t know what to do and I can’t stop crying and I feel so foolish. I want my mother. Not that she would do anything other than remind me that the world is not fair. My mother believes in facing reality. Be strong, she always says. And that makes me cry harder.
After a minute, I hear the harni leave, and awash in self pity, I even cry over that. My feelings of foolishness are beginning to outweigh my feelings of unhappiness, but perversely enough I realize that I am enjoying my cry. That it has been inside me, building stronger and stronger, and I didn’t even know it.
Then someone comes in again, and I straighten my back again, and pretend to be checking towels. The only person it could be is Fadina.
It is the harni, with a box of tissues. He crouches beside me, his face full of concern. “Here,” he says.
Embarrassed, I take one. If you didn’t know, you would think he was a regular human. He even smells of clean man-scent. Like my brothers.
I blow my nose, wondering if harni ever cry. “Thank you,” I say.
“I was afraid you were ill,” he says.
I shake my head. “No, I am just angry.”
“You cry when you are angry?” he asks.
“The mistress is upset at me and it’s Fadina’s fault, but I had to take the blame.” That makes me start to cry again, but the harni is patient and he just crouches next to me in among the linens, holding the box of tissues. By the time I collect myself, there is a little crumpled pile of tissues and some have tumbled to the floor. I take two tissues and start folding them into a flower, like my mother makes.
“Why are you so nice to me when I am so mean to you?” I ask.
He shrugs. “Because you do not want to be mean to me,” he says. “It makes you suffer. I am sorry that I make you so uncomfortable.”
“But you can’t help being what you are,” I say. My eyes are probably red. Harni never cry, I am certain. They are too perfect. I keep my eyes on the flower.
“Neither can you,” he says. “When Mardin-salah made you take me with you on your day off, you were not even free to be angry with him. I knew that was why you were angry with me.” He has eyes like Fhassin, my brother (who had long eyelashes like a girl, just like the harni).
Thinking about Mardin-salah makes my head ache a little and I think of something else. I remember and cover my mouth in horror. “Oh no.”
“What is it?” he asks.
“I think … I think Fadina did tell me that the mistress would be in, but I was, was thinking of something else, and I didn’t pay attention.” I was standing at the access, wondering if the harni was around, since that was where I was most likely to run into him.
“It is natural enough,” he says, unnatural thing that he is. “If Fadina weren’t jessed, she would probably be more understanding.”
He is prescripted to be kind, I remind myself. I should not ascribe human motives to an AI. But I haven’t been fair to him, and he is the only one in the whole household sitting here among the linens with a box of tissues. I fluff out the folds of the flower and put it among the linens. A white tissue flower, a funeral flower.
“Thank you … Akhmim.” It is hard to say his name.
He smiles. “Do not be sad, Diyet.”
* * *
I am careful and avoid the eye of the mistress as much as I can. Fadina is civil to me, but not friendly. She says hello to me, politely, and goes on with whatever she is doing.
It is Akhmim, the harni, who stops me one evening and says, “The mistress wants us for bismek tomorrow.” It’s not the first time I’ve been asked to stand in, but usually it’s Fadina who lets me know and tells me what I’m supposed to do. Lately, however, I have tried to be kind to Akhmim. He is easy to talk to, and like me he is alone in the household.
“What are we supposed to be?” I ask.
The harni flicks his long fingers dismissively, “Servants, of course. What’s it like?”
“Bismek?” I shrug. “Play-acting.”
“Like children’s games?” he asks, looking doubtful.
“Well, yes and no. It’s been going on a couple of years now and there are hundreds of characters,” I say. “The ladies all have roles, and you have to remember to call them by their character names and not their real names, and you have to pretend it’s all real. All sorts of things happen; people get in trouble and they all figure out elaborate plots to get out of trouble and people get strange illnesses and everybody professes their undying affection. The mistress threw her best friend in prison for awhile, Fadina said that was very popular.”
He looks at me for a moment, blinking his long eyelashes. “You are making fun of me, Diyet,” he says, doubtful.
“No,” I say laughing, “it is true.” It is, too. “Akhmim, no one is ever really hurt or uncomfortable.”
I think he cannot decide whether to believe me or not.
Saturday afternoon, I am dressed in a pagan-looking robe that leaves one shoulder bare. And makes me look ridiculous, I might add. I am probably a server. Projections are prettier than real people, but they aren’t very good at handing out real food.
I am in the mistress’ quarters early. The scent of some heavy, almost bitter incense is overwhelming. The cook is laying out real food, using our own service, but the table is too tall to sit at on the floor, and there are candles and brass bowls of dates to make it look antique. Without the projection, the elaborate table looks odd in the room, which is otherwise empty of furniture. Akhmim is helping, bringing in lounging chairs so that the guests can recline at the table. He is dressed in a white robe that comes to his knees and brown sandals that have elaborate crisscross ties, and, like me, his shoulder is bare. But the harni looks graceful. Maybe people really did wear clothes like this. I am embarrassed to be seen by a man with my shoulder and neck bare. Remember, I think, Akhmim is what he is, he is not really a man or he wouldn’t be here. The mistress wouldn’t have a man at bismek, not in her quarters. Everyone would be too uncomfortable, and Mardin-salah would never allow it.
Akhmim looks up, smiles at me, comes over. “Diyet,” he says, “Fadina says that the mistress is in a terrible mood.”
“She is always in a terrible mood when she is nervous,” I say.
“I’m nervous.”
“Akhmim!” I say, laughing, “don’t worry.”
“I don’t understand any of this playing pretend,” he wails softly, “I never had a childhood!”
/>
I take his hand and squeeze it. If he were a man, I would not touch him. “You’ll do fine. We don’t have to do much anyway, just serve dinner. Surely you can manage that, probably better than I can.”
He bites his lower lip, and I am suddenly so reminded of my brother Fhassin I could cry. But I just squeeze his hand again. I’m nervous, too, but not about serving dinner. I have avoided the mistress since the incident with the cleaning machine.
Fadina comes in and turns on the projection, and suddenly the white marble room glows around us, full of servants and musicians tuning up. I feel better, able to hide in the crowd. Akhmim glances around. “It is exciting,” he says thoughtfully.
There are five guests, Fadina greets them at the door and takes them back to the wardrobe to change. Five middle-aged women, come to pretend. I tell Akhmim their character names as they come in so that he knows what to call them.
The musicians start playing; projections, male and female, recline on projected couches. I know some of their names. Of course, they have projected servers and projected food. I wish I knew what the scenario was, usually Fadina tells me ahead of time, but she doesn’t talk much to me these days. Pretty soon the mistress comes in with the real guests, and they all find the real couches, where they can talk to each other. First is bread and cheese, already on the table, and Akhmim has to pour wine, but I just stand there, next to a projected servant. Even this close she seems real, exotic with her pale hair. I ask her what her name is and she whispers, “Miri.” Fadina is standing next to the mistress’ couch, she glares at me. I’m not supposed to make the household AI do extra work.
The first part of the meal is boring. The mistress’ friends get up once in awhile to whisper to each other or a projection, and projections do the same thing. There’s some sort of intrigue going on, people look very tense and excited. Akhmim and I glance at each other and he smiles. While I am serving, I whisper to him, “Not so bad, is it?”
The two lovers I turned off are at this dinner, I guess they are important characters right now. The mistress’ friends are always there, but the projections change so fast. The girl is apparently supposed to be the daughter of one of the mistress’ friends. It will be something to do with the girl, I imagine.
Almost two hours into the dinner, the girl is arguing with her lover and stands up to leave—her eyes roll back in her head and she falls to the marble floor, thrashing. There is hysterical activity, projected characters rushing to the girl, the woman whose character is supposed to be the mother of the girl behaving with theatrical dignity in the circle of real women. The male lover is hysterical, kneeling and sobbing. It makes me uncomfortable, both the seizures and the reactions. I look for Akhmim, he is standing against the wall, holding a pitcher of wine, observing. He looks thoughtful. The girl’s lover reaches onto the table and picks up her wine glass while everybody else watches him. The action is so highlighted that only an idiot would fail to realize that it’s supposed to be important. The “mother” shrieks suddenly, “Stop him! It’s poison!” And there is more hysterical activity, but they are too late. The lover drinks down the wine. The “mother” is “held back” by her friends, expeditious since the other characters are projections and she would look foolish trying to touch them.
I am embarrassed by the melodrama, by the way these women play with violence. I look back at Akhmim, but he’s still observing. What does he think, I wonder.
There is a call for a physician, projections rush to and fro. There is a long, drawn-out death scene for the girl, followed by an equally long death for the lover. The women are openly sobbing, even Fadina. I clasp my hands together, squeeze them, look at the floor. Finally, everything is played out. They sit around the “dining room” and discuss the scenario and how masterful it was. The mistress looks drained but pleased. One by one the women pad back and change, then let themselves out until only the mistress and the “mother” are left.
“It was wonderful,” she keeps telling the mistress.
“As good as when Hekmet was ill?” the mistress asks.
“Oh, yes. It was wonderful!” Finally they go back to change, Fadina following to help, and Akhmim and I can start clearing the dishes off the table.
“So what did you think,” I ask, “was it what you expected?”
Akhmim makes a noncommittal gesture.
I stack plates and dump them on a tray. Akhmim boosts the tray, balancing it at his shoulder like a waiter. He is really much stronger than he looks. “You don’t like it,” he says finally.
I shake my head.
“Why not, because it’s not real?”
“All this violence,” I say. “Nobody would want to live this way. Nobody would want these things to happen to them.” I am collecting wine glasses, colored transparent blue and rose like soap bubbles.
He stands looking at me, observing me the way he did the women, I think. What do we look like to harni? He is beautiful, the tray balanced effortlessly, the muscles of his bare arm and shoulder visible. He looks pagan enough in his white robe, with his perfect, timeless face. Even his long curly hair seems right.
I try to explain. “They entertain themselves with suffering.”
“They’re only projections,” he says.
“But they seem real, the whole point is to forget they’re projections, isn’t it?” The glasses ring against each other as I collect them.
Softly he says, “They are bored women, what do they have in their lives?”
I want him to understand how I am different. “You can’t tell me it doesn’t affect the way they see people, look at the way the mistress treats Fadina!” Akhmim tries to interrupt me, but I want to finish what I am saying. “She wants excitement, even if it means watching death. Watching a seizure, that’s not entertaining, not unless there’s something wrong. It’s decadent, what they do, it’s … it’s sinful! Death isn’t entertainment.”
“Diyet!” he says.
Then the mistress grabs my hair and yanks me around and all the glasses in my arms fall to the floor and shatter.
* * *
Sweet childhood. Adulthood is salty. Not that it’s not rewarding, mind you, just different. The rewards of childhood are joy and pleasure, but the rewards of adulthood are strength. I am punished, but it is light punishment, not something that demands so much strength. The mistress beats me. She doesn’t really hurt me much, it’s noisy and frightening, and I cut my knee where I kneel in broken glass, but no serious damage. I am locked in my room and only allowed punishment food: bread, tea, and a little cheese, but I can have all the paper I want, and I fill my rooms with flowers. White paper roses, white iris with petals curling down to reveal their centers, snowy calla lilies like trumpets and poppies and tulips of luscious paper with nap like velvet. My walls are white and the world is white, filled with white flowers.
“How about daisies,” Akhmim asks. He comes to bring me my food and my paper.
“Too innocent,” I say. “Daisies are only for children.”
Fadina recommended to the mistress that Akhmim be my jailer. She thinks that I hate to have him near me, but I couldn’t have asked for better company than the harni. He’s never impatient, never comes to me asking for attention to his own problems. He wants to learn how to make flowers. I try to teach him but he can never learn to do anything but awkwardly copy my model. “You make them out of your own head,” he says. His clever fingers stumble and crease the paper or turn it.
“My mother makes birds, too,” I say.
“Can you make birds?” he asks.
I don’t want to make birds, just flowers.
I think about the Nekropolis. Akhmim is doing his duties and mine, too, so he is busy during the day and mostly, I am alone. When I am not making flowers I sit and look out my window, watching the street, or I sleep. It is probably because I am not getting so much to eat, but I can sleep for hours. A week passes, then two. Sometimes I feel as if I have to get out of this room, but then I ask myself where I wou
ld want to go and I realize that it doesn’t make any difference. This room, the outside, they are all the same place, except that this room is safe.
The place I want to go is the Nekropolis, the one in my mind, but it’s gone. I was the eldest, then my sister, Larit, then my brother, Fhassin, and then the baby boy, Michim. In families of four, underneath the fighting, there is always pairing, two and two. Fhassin and I were a pair. My brother. I think a lot about Fhassin and about the Nekropolis, locked in my room.
I sleep, eat my little breakfast that Akhmim brings me, sleep again. Then I sit at the window or make flowers, sleep again. The only time that is bad is late afternoon, early evening, when I have slept so much that I can’t sleep any more and my stomach is growling and growling. I feel fretful and teary. When Akhmim comes in the evening with dinner he bruises my senses until I get accustomed to his being there; his voice has so many shades, his skin is so much more supple, so much more oiled and textured than paper, that he overwhelms me.
Sometimes he sits with his arms around my shoulders and I lean against him. I pretend intimacy doesn’t matter because he is only a harni, but I know that I am lying to myself. How could I ever have thought him safe because he was made rather than born? I understood from the first that he wasn’t to be trusted, but actually it was I that couldn’t be trusted.
He is curious about my childhood, he says he never was a child. To keep him close to me I tell him everything I can remember about growing up, all the children’s games, teach him the songs we skipped rope to, the rhymes we used to pick who was it, everybody with their fists in the center, tapping a fist on every stress as we chanted:
ONCE my SIS-ter HAD a HOUSE,
THEN she LEFT it TO a MOUSE,
SING a SONG
TELL a LIE
KISS my SIS-ter
SAY good-BYE
“What does it mean?” he asks, laughing.
“It doesn’t mean anything,” I explain, “it’s a way of picking who is it. Who is the fox, or who holds the broom while everybody hides.” I tell him about fox and hounds, about how my brother Fhassin was a daredevil and one time to get away he climbed to the roof of Kari’s grandmother’s house and ran along the roofs and how our mother punished him. And of how we got in a fight and I pushed him and he fell and broke his collarbone.
The Year's Best SF 12 # 1994 Page 19
