The Emerald Embrace

by Briskin, Jacqueline;

  Because of my pregnancy and then David’s attacks of summer croup, I had never attended the Nile Festival. The opportunities for me to leave the harem were rare. My anxiety faded into eager curiosity as the long procession snaked down from the Citadel. Far ahead, amid fluttering green pennons, rode the Pasha and his sons. I couldn’t make out David because the harem eunuchs were waving large mirrored ostrich fans to hide us from the crowd.

  We filed through narrow alleys that were shaded by matting, then spilled into a huge square. A bobbing sea of turbans and black habarah hoods surged in the direction of the river.

  A man on horseback was momentarily pressed into our parade. At first his face was hidden by a Bedouin’s white burnoose. Then, he turned to stare at me and I recognized the aristocratic grandee’s face.

  It was Rais Guzman!

  Egyptian women ride high-backed men’s saddles: as recognition jolted through me, my thighs tensed on either side of the mare. She rose up, pawing her front hooves. Grooms shouted, steadying her.

  The corsair captain gazed directly into my eyes.

  Despite my veiled anonymity, I could swear he recognized me. More. He had expected to see me. But how? Ahmed had gravely explained that the Enlightened Ones had gone to immense effort to keep my origins secret. And the harem staff, however much they gossiped within the cream-colored walls, kept silent outside.

  Rais Guzman’s thin mouth formed a greedy smile. My skin prickled with loathing. Yet, seeing him roused a swarm of never completely dormant questions. Stephen. Who was he? And where was he? Stephen … did he still remember that night when hot, fragrant African breezes had swept our naked, entwined bodies?

  A group of Bedouins on spirited, slender horses caught up with Rais Guzman and he joined them, moving ahead of us.

  The grooms had calmed my horse back into her gentle lope. As I gazed after the tall rider, a superstitious fear shivered within me. Had I truly seen him? Or had an evil djin taken on the form of Rais Guzman?

  We came to the bridge that spanned the empty Khalag Canal. To our left stood the earthen dike that held back the raised waters of the Nile. On the banks crowded hundreds of thousands of people. Old and young, male and female, free and slave, Jew and Coptic Christian and Islamic. The dirty rags of fellaheen brushed against the glimmering robes of mighty sheiks. Water sellers poured from their goatskins into brass cups, vendors fried fish on their braziers. Story tellers loudly promised tales of great wonder. One shrill, witchlike voice screeched, “Aphrodisiacs! For this night of joy buy my aphrodisiacs!”

  A green damask tent, dome-shaped and well over a hundred feet long, was reserved for the harem. Servants helped us off with our robes and veils as we arrived, offering us sherbets deliciously cooled with snow from the distant mountains of Lebanon, snow that under quilts had survived weeks of caravan travel across blazing deserts.

  The small boys that still lived in the harem came rushing in. David hurled himself from his twin half brothers, racing to me.

  “Mama, I ride Almanack!” he announced, his eyes an excited blue. “And tomorrow, I in charge of the festival.”

  “Truly, darling?”

  “I say when to cut the dam, and Father tell it,” he reported with huge and innocent pride.

  I couldn’t resist hugging his small, sturdy body to mine.

  Suddenly, I remembered the dreamlike glimpse of Rais Guzman. Were he a malign spirit, there was but one way he could harm me. Through David. He was not wearing his good-luck charm, I recalled anxiously. So I rained kisses like protective amulets on his sweat-dampened face and neck.

  “Put me down, Mama,” he ordered, wriggling.

  Ruefully I obeyed. He ran to Uisha, who gave him his favorite orange sherbet. Between gulps he announced his part in tomorrow’s ceremony. Everybody was smiling at the small, bright-haired figure, and I was reassured. Everybody loved David. What possible harm could come to him?

  Twilight fell. David and the other boys scampered off to join the men. When it was fully dark the harem donned veils and robes to venture outside.

  The Pasha came toward me, holding a drowsy David. “Join us, Naksh,” he said.

  I followed him to his state barge. As soon as we boarded, oars splashed and we glided away.

  That night, the last of my content, had an enchantment that I’ll never forget. Fireworks showered silver and gold in amid the huge stars. Jewel-colored lanterns of the numerous boats were reflected in the dark, swollen river. Music and happy voices drifted by.

  When David fell asleep, the Pasha gently settled him on a pillow near the already sleeping twins.

  “Come, Naksh,” the Pasha said, drawing me to a ladder. Atop the cabin stood a topaz silk kiosk.

  “What’s the pretty little tent for?” I asked.

  “It’s part of the celebration. Did any of the books by learned Western scholars explain the history of the Nile Festival?” He was teasing, yet there was an odd note of hoarseness in his voice.

  “It’s very ancient.”

  “Very. But I’ll warrant you never learned the legend of the Pharaoh’s part in it. Unless he made love on this night, the crops were blighted. A fertility rite. So no matter how wearied he was by important matters of state, he had to force himself. For Egypt’s sake.”

  I gripped the ladder’s guide rail. Though the Pasha’s intent in bringing me aboard should have been obvious, I hadn’t thought about it. He often slept in my apartment, but he would wait for me to initiate our love making, for unless I was touched by that vicarious passion, I would lie tense and unyielding in his arms. The act was physically painful to me. My frigidity was like a wound, I couldn’t bring myself to speak of it and was grateful that he never questioned the crazy pendulum of my bodily responses.

  I halted on the top rung.

  “You don’t want the fellaheen to prosper?” he asked. “The poor farmers need your help, Naksh.”

  And with this he took my nerveless hand, pulling me inside. An oil lamp turned the small enclosure into a shimmering topaz bubble through which the laughter of the men on the state barge came unmuffled. My apprehension was sharpened by embarrassment. Surely, I thought, every man out there realizes why the Pasha’s brought me here.

  Silent, I let him lift my veil and take off my robes. In my diaphanous blue bodice and loose green trousers, I stood still as marble.

  “Tonight,” he said huskily, “we make love because I want you, not by will of this.” He touched the Emerald Embrace.

  Blinking with surprise, I peered at him. How had he divined the necklace’s power over me?

  He kissed me, his hands cupping my breasts tenderly. I felt nothing. Ah God, I thought in shame. I’m as mutilated as any eunuch.

  From the riverbanks floated the sound of nuptial rejoicing: “Loo, loo, loo.” The age-old hymeneal.

  All at once the golden feathers around my throat began to warm my cold flesh. The hieroglyph-inscribed falcon pressed against my bosom, and it seemed that I stood below the crimson sails of the royal riverboat embracing a lean, hawk-nosed man. Gusts of desire shook me. My mouth opened. Returning his kiss, I caressed the length of his back, feverishly arching against him.

  My desire was too urgent to waste time undressing. I pulled him back into the pile of silk cushions, unlacing my harem trousers, tugging them down, and when he crushed on top of me, I parted his garments, reaching for his hard, throbbing penis. As the heat of him touched my opened flesh, my vicarious frenzy turned delirious. My womb tilted to receive him completely, we both gasped and then we were meshed in an intricate rhythm that was as old as the Nile. He wanted to stretch the exquisite pleasure with imsak, but I wanted the swift madness that is the culmination of love. Crying aloud in my pleasure, clutching at his back, rising to meet him, I wound my legs around his hard, pounding buttocks, urging him to thrust deeper and deeper and deeper, and then, without warning, my body seemed to liquefy, and I surrendered utterly to the ecstatic spasms, and there was only a quivering blaze of glory on the ancient
river, nothing else in the universe.

  Slowly our breathing quieted.

  “That should ensure a bumper crop,” he said. The joke was made in a taut, eager voice, as though he expected a reply.

  I decided he wanted the truth. “I … Pasha …” Humiliation swallowed my voice. “I never realized you knew about the Emerald Embrace.”

  Obviously it was not the answer he had hoped for. His expression hardened and he gave me a malicious smile. “Sometimes, Naksh, you’re more woman than any I’ve ever known, and then again you can be the ice heiress of the ages. I’ve often thought about the matter, but in my oblique Eastern way have kept silent. I never realized it was the necklace. How does it make you enjoy me?”

  “I don’t really understand.”

  “You don’t wear it to bed, so it’s not physically necessary.”

  “No,” I whispered. “It’s a mysterious kind of link between me and that yellow-haired woman. Remember? I told you about her.”

  “Do you need a vision of her?”

  “I’ve only seen her twice. And she wasn’t wearing it either time. Maybe she owned it—I just don’t know. I have a strange feeling it acts as, well, a taut wire that we’re both holding. And sometimes it conducts the vibrations of her love for the Pharaoh.”

  “And that’s when you want me?”

  “Yes.” My voice sank to a barely audible murmur. “When I’m, uh, happy, I’m always aware of her love for him.”

  “And the rest of the time, being aware only of me, you’re the ice heiress?”

  “The act’s been painful ever since …” I couldn’t finish. It seemed cruel to reproach him for what had happened more than three years earlier.

  “The Ceremonial Alcove?”

  I flinched, nodding.

  “Then it seems Lullah Zuleika’s right about the power of djins,” he said, touching the necklace. “I suppose I must send another purchase fee to the antiquarian. After all, didn’t he sell me both a piece of jewelry and a love charm?”

  I wondered how he could joke at my sad emptiness.

  “Well, so much for my fond and foolish belief that sometimes we shared pleasure,” he said defensively.

  I realized then that he wasn’t mocking me but himself. The topaz silk around me blurred and my eyes filled with tears for him. How awful it must be for him to learn all this. It’s a good thing, I thought, that he doesn’t love me. “Pasha, we share other things. We have David. And though you irritate me, I do enjoy your company.”

  The lamp flame glinted in his pale gray eyes. “Naksh, aren’t you overdoing the flattery?”

  I sat up, burying my face in my hands. “I’m not a woman at all,” I sobbed.

  He stroked my hair. “What happened was my fault, Naksh,” he said in an odd yet gentle tone. “Mine. I have a compulsion to repay every wrong—or what I consider a wrong. But this is a vow, Naksh. I’ll never hurt you in any way again. And I won’t blame you for being either the ice heiress—or my sweetest joy. Now, beloved, dry your tears.”

  He handed me a kerchief.

  “That’s better,” he said in his usual bantering way. “Naksh, arrange yourself. The public Nile celebration begins at sunrise.”

  The barge gave a gentle bump and men’s voices shouted. We had docked.

  And so began our endless day of torment.

  Three

  A half hour later the tarnished gray that precedes dawn showed over the Mokattem Hills, but meshals continued to flare in the Khalag Canal. Diggers with short hoes were chopping away hurriedly at the dam while a ragged line of laborers, carrying the heavy baskets of displaced earth, trotted off to throw their burdens on the banks.

  The green damask pavilion awoke, and the Pasha’s womenfolk straggled out. Even his youngest girl grandchild, an infant in arms, was veiled. We resembled a flock of captive crows in our black habarahs.

  By contrast, the Pasha and his retinue, who were already mounted and facing the dammed back Nile, shone with barbaric magnificence.

  There was no mistaking the Pasha for an ordinary merchant now. His towering green turban glittered with emeralds, his yellow satin robe shimmered and diamonds sheathed his curved sword. More diamonds shone in the harness of his tall black stallion. The only sign of the man I knew was his shoulders, held high as if he were shrugging in amusement at his own display.

  His sons and ministers were dressed almost as splendidly. To his immediate left sat David, in cloth of gold, on the brightly caparisoned Almanack, whose reins were held by two stout grooms.

  A boat docked.

  The crowd hushed, expectant. Hawkers ceased crying their wares, dervishes no longer whirled.

  In this sudden stillness I noted a group of Bedouins directly behind the cordon of guards around the Pasha. Apprehension stirred within me, and I couldn’t understand why until I realized that the Bedouins reminded me of yesterday afternoon’s glimpse of Rais Guzman. Had I really seen him?

  From the small boat stepped a white-bearded man in drenched robes. It was the Prefect of the Nile. He bowed low to the Pasha.

  “O Chosen among Chosen, see my wet robes,” he cried out in a booming voice amazingly deep for one so thin and old. “On this night have I plunged into the river.”

  The crowd muttered apprehensively—yet eagerly.

  The Pasha’s gravelly tones reverberated above the other voices. “What did you in the Nile?”

  “I rubbed the sacred nilometer with saffron and nutmeg, cleansing the marble that I might read the height of the flood. It is duly recorded, O Chosen among Chosen.”

  Raising a roll of parchment, he stepped toward the Pasha. His drenched robe left marks like snail tracks. The Pasha leaned down for the scroll.

  He pulled it open, reading, “‘There is no God but Allah. In His mercy and perfection He exists forever. He is the single God whose prophets are Moses, Jesus and Mohammed. Allah, in His mercy, has blessed Egypt.’” A long pause before he continued. “‘The Nile has risen to sixteen ells.’”

  The crops would be rich!

  The multithroated roar drowned out a cannon salvo. The Pasha’s retinue cheered exuberantly. Tears of happiness streamed from Lullah Zuleika’s kind eyes, the kohl running so it smudged her white veil. The Syrian kadines and the concubines clutched one another with cries of beatitude. My glance fell again on the Bedouins. They were curiously unaffected by the mass rejoicing. Tense, they watched the Pasha.

  Ahmed, his smooth face grave, carried in both hands a large leather pouch filled with gold coins.

  Lullah Zuleika, wiping at her eyes, moved near to me. “I wish the Pasha would not continue the custom of throwing money,” she said.

  “The people would be furious,” I replied. “Lullah Zuleika, you yourself told me it’s an old, old part of the Nile Festival.”

  “You weren’t here last year. Four children were trampled to death.” She gave a deep sigh. “It is bad luck to tempt evil spirits by changing customs. But Naksh—four children.”

  The sky was pink. The workers in the canal, having thinned the dam to a mere foot at the top, scurried up the embankments.

  The Pasha raised both arms to signal a small, intricately painted boat near the dam. The boat, its gilded oars flashing in the swollen river, headed toward the dike.

  The Pasha looked down at David.

  It was the moment my son had anticipated with such pride—his part in the ceremony. Shifting with excitement in his miniature saddle, he looked up at his father, his small features ablaze with love and admiration.

  “Now,” he cried out in an attempt to copy the Pasha’s harsh tones.

  All around I heard his name murmured fondly.

  The Pasha lowered his arms.

  The rowboat moved forward, pressing into the narrow crust of earth that held back the water. Oars battled in unison, forcing the prow into the restraining dam.

  The minute hung like eternity. Then the earth crumbled. Into this narrow breach came a trickle. And with a thunderous roar, the Nile
waters dissolved the dike. The river flooded into the empty Khalag Canal.

  The fragile, painted craft rode on the curling white crest. It floundered in the torrent. A groan went up. Should the boat overturn, it would be construed as an evil omen for the crops. But the oarsmen struggled valiantly, and the boat righted itself. Everyone sighed with relief, turning to the Pasha.

  Keeping his tall black stallion in check with his knees, he hurled a fistful of gold. The coins landed far beyond the protective cordon, and the crowd surged in that direction.

  There was no reason, none at all, for anyone to break into the ceremonial square. Yet as the Pasha threw out his second handful of gold, there was a scuffle.

  The Bedouins were shoving at the fierce-mustached Citadel guards. Shots rang out. And suddenly the holiday crowd became a fear-crazed mob.

  People. Shoving, propelling. Pushing. Bucking. Struggling. Swirling like the racing waters. People pressing around the Pasha’s retinue. I couldn’t see the small pony or its rider.

  “David!” I screamed.

  The crowd buffeted me as I tried to see my son.

  Lullah Zuleika grasped my arm. “Naksh, it’s dangerous. Come inside the tent.”

  “David!” I gasped. “You said last year four children were killed!”

  She swept up a granddaughter. “The Pasha and Ibraham will watch over David. There are a thousand guards. The good djins will protect him.”

  “Oh my God! He’s not wearing an amulet!” Never before had Lullah Zuleika’s beliefs seemed more valid. “He’s in terrible danger!”

  My panic endowed me with more than mortal strength. Pushing past a huge eunuch, I became part of the senseless surging. A bony beggar clasped at my rich wool habarah, scrawny hands tore at my fine white muslin veil.

  Clad in my diaphanous bodice and loose harem trousers, the gold and green collar encircling my shoulders, jeweled bangles about my white arms, beringed, perfumed, I must have seemed an expensive whore or a licentious dancing girl. A filthy hand gripped the Emerald Embrace, and ancient gold cut into my flesh, but the lotus clasp held. Another hand tugged lewdly at my bodice. Buttons popped, baring my breasts. I was pinched and mauled, yet completely unaware of it—later to my amazement I discovered my torso was black and blue. I forced my way on.