The Emerald Embrace

by Briskin, Jacqueline;

  “You say he laughed when you mistook him for a merchant. Why, then, has he ordered you not be at harem functions?”

  “It’s his idea of a joke. Or a game. He wants me to send for him—he gave me this.” Clasping the kitten in my healed left hand, I searched through the baubles in my jewel box for the ring. “I can’t make out the inscription,” I said, holding it up.

  For once Ahmed’s gravity deserted him. His eyes goggled in shock and awe. From the silken alcove across the room, he said, “It’s engraved, ‘Allah’s servant, Mohammed Ali.’ The lettering is reversed. Naksh, that’s the Pasha’s signet ring, and I’ve never before seen it off his finger.”

  My surprise was as great as Ahmed’s. A signet ring is any ruler’s most cherished jewel. I set the kitten on a big floor pillow, examining the unchased silver and drab carnelian. The ring’s lack of ostentation forced me to a kind of reluctant respect.

  Ahmed sat straighter. “Return it to the Pasha immediately,” he said.

  I had stayed awake, moving restlessly on my divan the long night, thinking of the ring. Though I hadn’t known its true significance to the Pasha, I had accepted that in giving it to me, he had forced me to make the choice. To return it to the Pasha meant that I offered myself willingly. And willingness would betray my love for Stephen.

  “Ahmed,” I sighed, “don’t you understand what sending it means?”

  “Of course I do,” he said. “And it’s time, Naksh. Your escapade yesterday should have proved to you that this harem is your fate. You’re here forever. Reason says you must begin your new life.”

  “Reason?” I cried. “Reason? What’s reason got to do with wanting a man?”

  Ahmed calmly ignored my outburst. “In Tripoli, I explained that you were to make the Pasha sympathetic to Western ways. But I didn’t explain why.” He twined his long, slender fingers. “I belong to a group called the Enlightened Ones. We wish to open Egypt to the Western world. If she has Western engineering skills, machinery, if she trades with the West, there will be vast change here. Powerful factions, as you can well imagine, are against us. They fear any change. The Pasha sits in the middle. On one side he sees the benefits. On the other, he remembers too clearly that seventeen years ago, in 1798, Napoleon conquered Egypt, and then Great Britain battled him for it. Two Christian powers fighting over us like dogs for a bone.”

  “The Pasha,” I said, “is himself a conquering soldier.”

  “He didn’t conquer Egypt. He didn’t need to. After the French and British went on to their other battlegrounds, our country was left weakened to the point of anarchy. The Mameluke warlords grew yet more vicious, grinding us down. Finally we Egyptians went to the Pasha. We begged him to take over the government.”

  “I never knew that.”

  “All that matters to me, Naksh, is Egypt. Egypt!” Ahmed’s white face blazed with fervor as he exposed the single passion that swayed him.

  “Many think Egypt was the cradle of civilization,” I murmured.

  “Yes. We Enlightened Ones are striving to return her to greatness. The Pasha’s the only man who can accomplish this. Already he’s worked marvels. But he needs the West’s skills, machinery and ideas.”

  “I admire your goals,” I said, staring down at the plain ring. “But what do they have to do with me?”

  “My fate doesn’t permit the normal feelings of a man toward a woman. But I have eyes. You’re voluptuous of body, radiantly beautiful of features. You move with a rare sensual freedom. You must be utterly irresistible to the Pasha.”

  The Pasha certainly hadn’t acted smitten. He had enticed me into making a fool of myself, laughed at me, teased me maliciously. There had been that one instant, though, when he had gazed into my face as if imprinting it on his memory.

  “He has wives and concubines fawning on him,” I pointed out.

  “You’re the one he gave his signet ring. You can influence him.”

  “He’s already let me know he scorns the Christian world.”

  “You’ll open his eyes. He’ll see the spirit you showed in rescuing Uisha, your bravery and intelligence.”

  “Ahmed, Ahmed,” I sighed. “Don’t you see how ridiculous this is?”

  “Why ridiculous?”

  “You’re making too much of everything.”

  “That token says I’m not.”

  “He saw me less than a half hour.”

  The door pushed open and Uisha brought in a hamper, and began quietly, efficiently replacing clothes in the carved cedar press. The sweetness of the fresh laundry smell spread around the room.

  After a minute Ahmed said, “Return the ring.”

  I said, “One quite ordinary girl won’t change the course of Egypt.”

  “A woman’s influence has altered empires,” he said. “All I ask is that you become part of the Pasha’s life. Be with him.”

  Be with him.… I remembered Stephen’s strong, slender body against mine, the wild sweetness of love. I dropped the ring back in the box. The silver made a small, hard tinkle amid the gold jewelry.

  Both Uisha and Ahmed were watching me.

  “You’re acting against your every interest,” Ahmed said. His contralto was cold. “Let me point out your position. You’re a slave—and the Pasha’s concubines are free. You’re a Frank—and Franks are despised. The Pasha refuses to see you unless you return the ring—and so to all outward eyes he’s rejected you. His household considers his opinion law.”

  The kitten was caught in a silk tassel, and I bent to untangle the tiny claws.

  Ahmed stood. At the door he halted. “The harem’s spite,” he said portentously, “can be dangerous.”

  Ten minutes after he left, one of Lullah Zuleika’s serving women arrived with an invitation to the Great Kadine’s apartment. Lullah Zuleika’s moon face flashed with concern. “Naksh, when you met the Pasha, an evil djin must have been in your room, working a mischief. There’s no other explanation. The Pasha’s sent word that you shouldn’t be about when he visits.” And in her unhappiness for me, she hugged me to her.

  It was early February, and at the end of April the Great Kadine’s oldest daughter would be married. Bright silks fluttering about her rotund body, the Kadine moved swiftly on her small feet from harem kitchens to pantries to storerooms to the sewing pavilion. She—with her daughter—spent hours receiving merchants. Her kindness to me grew abstracted.

  Everyone else was pointedly spiteful.

  The Syrian kadines warned their children away from me. The concubines spat to avert the evil eye when I passed. The princess would command the servant carrying her vermeil scent bottle to shake more vigorously. “The smell of Frank is unpleasantly thick around here,” she would say loudly.

  At every meal Uisha had to wait an hour or so at the kitchen until a cook deigned to notice her mute presence. The food on my round brass tray was invariably cold, usually leftovers.

  When Uisha and I returned from the bathhouse or from walking in the harem courtyards and rose garden, we would find the room ransacked, clothing strewn about and the papers on which I practiced my calligraphy torn. I feared for the safety of the white Persian kitten, whom I had named Ramses. We always took him out with us. In my loneliness, I grew more and more attached to the silken, mischievous little animal.

  I lost weight. In March, during my woman’s cycle, my nerves gave way entirely, and I had a spell of uncontrollable shaking.

  Though it was a warm afternoon, Uisha put a quilt around my shoulders, and brewed me camomile tea. My hands trembled and the liquid spilled.

  Uisha gripped one fist, gesturing a physician’s bag. It occurred to me that other than Lullah Zuleika’s distracted greetings, not one word had been addressed to me in over a month.

  “I don’t need a doctor, Uisha,” I said through chattering teeth. “Don’t look so worried. I’ll be all right.”

  But the shaking continued.

  Uisha went to the jewel box and took out the silver and carnelian ring.


  “No!” I cried vehemently. “Uisha, don’t you understand? I gave my promise to another.” My voice shook as violently as the rest of me. “I’ll never return it, not while there’s breath in my body!”

  Eleven

  Friday, April 27, was the wedding of the daughter of the Pasha and Lullah Zuleika to the Wahhabi leader Abdullah ibn Sa‘ud. That evening, as always in Islam, there were two celebrations, one for men and another for women.

  The Pasha would be at both. I, therefore, hadn’t been invited to the harem festivities. In the deserted main courtyard, I waited with Uisha (who held Ramses) to watch the bridal procession. Colored lanterns cast jewel tones in the night while pink and green pennons stirred in the soft, warm breeze. From the direction of Lullah Zuleika’s gardens drifted mouth-watering aromas and the babble of feminine voices and laughter.

  Beyond the high, cream-colored walls came the deeper roar of male voices: the vast Citadel courtyard was filled with the Pasha’s two thousand quests.

  Inside the harem, music swelled.

  First came the eunuchs, triumphantly beating drums and playing flutes for a culmination they could never attain, then a multitude of veiled female slaves bore hampers and carved chests filled with the trousseau. The bride’s sisters and half sisters, ranging from toddlers to near grown, also in habarahs and veils, danced around the young bride. She was swathed from head to toe in embroidered pink silk as she walked slowly under a canopy of pink gauze held aloft on golden spears. Finally; surrounded by a galaxy of body servants, came the four kadines. As they passed, one turned toward me.

  I shrank deeper into the shadows.

  The younger kadines, in their black and white, were indistinguishable, so I cannot say how I was so positive, yet I knew the woman looking at me was the princess.

  The noisy, jubilant procession moved into the courtyard on its way to the palace of Abdullah ibn Sa‘ud. The tall gates closed.

  Uisha and I were alone with the dark-liveried eunuch guards. Slowly we went back to my room.

  On the low table was a round brass tray. It was set with a platter of delicate Nile fish from which rose a curl of steam. Hot couscous. Bowls of vegetables. A heap of the flat, pancake-sized bread that in the East one uses in the place of cutlery—by tearing off a piece and capturing a morsel of food to eat sandwich style. A rich, dark slab of the cake made of Fezzan dates was dessert.

  Uisha and I turned to one another in surprise.

  “Lullah Zuleika must have thought to send me some of the wedding supper.” In my lonely state, this kindness brought me close to tears. And though, after months of cold scraps, this was a feast, I found I had no appetite. “You eat it, Uisha.”

  She shook her head. She made up one of the divans in the alcove, and helped me disrobe. She left the tray.

  I didn’t touch it.

  Sometime during the night I woke to the procession returning from leaving the bride in her new home. Happy voices sounded, and the concubines’ laughter echoed in the wide corridor of my building. There was a small clatter in my room, but Ramses often left his basket to prowl, so I thought nothing of it. I went back to sleep.

  Yellow sunlight coming in odd shapes through the pierced shutters woke me. Yawning, I sat up.

  Ramses lay next to the low table, his long, silky white fur matted in his vomit. His golden eyes were open and glassy. His front legs were stretched out.

  He was dead.

  One glance at the tray told the story. The Nile fish was eaten on one side to the bone, and on the brass next to it was a streak of dried, whitish vomit.

  Uisha slept outside my door, as do all Eastern body servants, but my scream awakened her. She burst in. Her eyes horrified, she stared at the kitten.

  “I heard him last night,” I said dully. “The fish was poisoned.”

  She held her hand to her mouth, staring at me. For the first time I realized that the fish had been intended for me.

  Taking the basket I’d quilted for the kitten, I studied poor Ramses. He must have died in considerable agony, for his small claws were dug deep into the pile of the Ispahan carpet. As I extricated him, I was crying. But also icy prickles ran up into my scalp. I was very afraid. Who had sent the tray? Surely not Lullah Zuleika. I almost heard Ahmed’s contralto voice: The harem’s spite can be dangerous. Other than the Great Kadine, it could have been anyone, including an emissary from Ahmed—or the Pasha himself. I placed the small, stiff corpse in the basket, covering it with my best rose silk kerchief.

  Uisha cleaned up the mess. As I washed and dressed, she bent over the clothes chest. I couldn’t see what she was doing, but I guessed she was taking money from my purse in the jewel box, for I heard the tinkle of metal.

  She left with the kerchief-covered basket.

  She was gone so long that worry pierced my shock. Around noon she returned with oranges and foolah beans.

  “That was a good thought, going out to buy food,” I said, relieved.

  She turned away. Touched by her intense loyalty, I forced myself to eat, but all the time I was thinking obsessively of the few dinars remaining in my purse. How long would it be before I was dead?

  Around dusk I tried to distract myself by reading one of the books that Ahmed had given me. I heard brisk footsteps. A draft swept the warm room, momentarily flickering the oil lamp.

  The Pasha came in.

  After my first baffled shock at seeing him, I thought how ordinary he looked, the adversary in my long, lonely struggle. As he crossed the room to me, though, I felt that vital energy.

  Uisha, who was mending one of my bodices, bowed low and slipped out.

  This time I knew how to behave. I assumed the formal harem pose, clasping my palms together over my bosom, throwing back my head.

  The Pasha raised an eyebrow. “Very fetching, Naksh. A pity we aren’t at a reception.”

  I dropped my hands. “But … why are you here?”

  He blinked, surprised, then held up his right hand. On the little finger the signet ring shone dully.

  I recalled Uisha bending over the clothes press, the small tinkling sound from the jewel box. The hot anger in my bosom was quelled by understanding of her motives.

  The Pasha was watching me. “Didn’t you send it?”

  I hesitated. If I told him the truth, that Uisha fearing for my life had sent it, what would he do to her? To me? “Yes,” I said. “Of course.”

  Still watching me, he stepped into the alcove. He sat on the sofa covered with crimson velvet, lowering a hand indicating that I, too, should sit. He watched me decide how far from him I could sit. His mouth twitched down on one side wryly. Feeling an obstinate child, I sank onto the yellow satin floor pillow. His dusty boots smelled of horse. The natural odor roused in me a poignant nostalgia for home, and I realized how sick I was of the harem’s eternal oversweet perfumes.

  “All right,” he persisted. “What made you send the ring back?” His grin was infuriating.

  “I wanted the pleasure of your company,” I snapped. “You’re irresistible.”

  He chuckled. “My idea is that Ahmed, or another of the Enlightened Ones, used the confusion of the wedding to get hold of it and return it. But what I cannot figure out is why you should lie about the matter.” He paused. “But then again, you are far from your home, cut off from your old ties. Maybe you’re lonely.”

  I looked up. His voice had been amused, baiting almost. But—and this could have been a trick of the oil-lamp flame—his gray eyes were sympathetic.

  I drew a steadying breath. “Pasha, you have so many women. I’m well … not very unusual. What would it matter to you if I weren’t here?”

  “What merchant would ever part with so valuable a property?”

  “If you let me—and Uisha, too—go, I’d pay you back every dinar we’re worth,” I said, wondering how far the Dutch government’s mysterious obligation to Stephen went. “Double.”

  “A very interesting proposition, Naksh. Unfortunately there are but two ways
for a woman to leave a Pasha’s harem.” He held up his thumb. “One. A wife may be divorced according to the Islamic faith.” He raised his index finger. “Two—and this is distinctly less pleasant. A faithless woman is put in a sack and drowned in the Nile.”

  From the way he spoke, I guessed that drowning would be his method of ridding himself of unsatisfactory women. So he had nothing to do with the poison, I thought. But this realization was swept away by my more urgent concern. “You are the Pasha!” I cried. “You make the laws.”

  “I don’t break them,” he said.

  My hands were shaking. I clasped them in my lap.

  He leaned forward. “Naksh, listen to me. My most cherished act has been writing a code that governs everyone. Do you realize what this means? For the first time in history, all Egyptians are governed by law. The Mamelukes were soft, corrupt mercenaries. They extorted a man’s wealth, took his women, killed, maimed. Their whim was law. Now we have legislation that rules us all. Statutes and codes that nobody is above or below. Not even me.”

  Compelled by his intensity, I stared into his face. What a mass of contradictions he was. An absolute ruler who wrote the decrees then refused to put himself above them. He wore drab clothes yet ruled an opulent harem. The story of the slaughtered Mamelukes was true, but he joked about it. He could be imperious. To deal with him was like walking on quicksand. The only thing I knew about him for certain was that I dreaded his touch.

  He seemed to read my thoughts. “You’re trapped here, Naksh. But it’s not the end of the world. Some even consider my embraces pleasurable—all right, they might be flattering me. In any event, I won’t hurt you tomorrow night.”

  Twelve

  The three layers of my aquamarine silk robe rustled as I followed the Ethiopian eunuch who lit my way along the warm darkness of the fountained courtyard. A web of diamonds connected by gold chains so artfully narrow that the glittering gems appeared to have fallen by chance on the blond mass covered my head. The embroidery of my robe made Rais Guzman’s magnificent court gown seem like grossly careless workmanship, and my gauze night shift was so sheer it might have been spun by fairy hands.