Minutes began to pass, hours to flow swiftly away. Time stretched beyond Zahra’s measure. Outside the cell chanting and shouting went on for several hours, but before nightfall most of the people went off to their homes, to eat and drink, kiss their children, relish their freedom. Zahra leaned against the wall of the cell, her head tipped back, in a trance of waiting.
The brutal daylight faded to the cool darkness of night, and then the damp chill of early morning. From time to time Zahra startled from her trance into awareness of how hot she was, or how cold, but those physical details seemed unreal, secondhand, like symptoms someone else was describing.
By midday of the next day she was on her knees, unable to stay on her feet, and not caring. She looked down at her hands, her arms, and distantly recorded the fact that her skin was terribly burned, though she had no sensation of it. She was no longer perspiring, but she didn’t know it. She also didn’t know whether she was hot or cold, burning or drowning. She only knew she was waiting. She strove for patience.
The next time she was truly conscious, she was crouched on the bottom of the cell, bent double, her forehead resting in the dirt. That made her laugh. She fumbled at the dirt to brush it away, but her fingers would not obey her. They were as thick and senseless as sticks.
Again she laughed, but she didn’t know if any sound came from her dry throat. Her tongue was parched and stiff, and felt as if it were choking her. She tried to swallow, but nothing happened. She tried to breathe, but no air came into her lungs. Were her eyes open or closed? She couldn’t tell anymore. She tried to blink, to test them.
She looked up, out of the roofless cell. A dim face, outlined by stars, looked down at her from the dark sky. Was it night again already? And who was this, bending to her from the darkness?
A gentle hand took hers, lifted it.
She put up her other hand to her visitor, seeking. The face was hard to distinguish. If only her eyes would really open. But it didn’t seem to matter. The visitor’s hands were soft and firm and cool. They lifted her up, right out of the cell. They lifted her right out of her body.
With a sigh of pleasure at the ease of it, Zahra floated up into the cool night air.
On the ground below her, people were still gathered around the cell, but she gave them no thought. A sweet breeze healed her ruined flesh, and the gentle hands drew her farther up, so far that she could no longer see the stone prison, the people, the ground. Her eyes began to clear at last, and she focused on the face above her. “Nura? Is it you, Nura?”
The face smiled, and the features shifted. It was Nura! And they were moving so fast now, the cool breeze giving way to the smooth darkness of space, stars glittering everywhere, almost too bright to bear. How lovely, how unutterably lovely, to fly like this, to soar far from the dirt and stones of Irustan, to float, free of all restrictions.
“Nura!” Zahra cried, in a voice full of joy at seeing her beloved teacher once again. They floated side by side, suspended in the beautiful starry landscape. Nura held out her arms, and Zahra drifted into them, propelled only by her thought, her longing. The embrace was as sweet as any she had ever known. Together, arms intertwined, cheeks touching occasionally like flower petals brushing together, the two of them left the bonds of Irustan behind, to voyage among the brilliant stars.
forty-four
* * *
Qadir was not present for Zahra’s progress to the cells. When Pi Team came for her, she insisted he go home, and he was too weak by then to resist her. The Simah’s own car carried him to the house, and the driver had to assist him inside.
Ishi had expected never to see Qadir again. She exclaimed with joy, and flew to meet him. When she saw how weak he was, how ill, her joy turned to fear. She called for Marcus, and between them they got Qadir into the large surgery. Ishi asked no questions, concerned only with getting him on the medicator immediately. It was Lili who dealt the blow.
Lili banged the inner door and came to stand, black silks billowing, in the large surgery. “You see, Ishi?” she cawed.
Qadir lifted his head weakly from the pillow. He said, “No, Lili, wait,” but her screech drowned out his feeble voice.
“I told you so!” she cried, her whole figure shuddering with virulent emotion. “And now she’s gone to the cells!”
Ishi’s hand was on Qadir’s wrist. It froze there. She saw him close his eyes, and she stared at his trembling, almost translucent eyelids. In the ghastly silence Ishi heard the precise click of the medicator pump, and then the uneven beats of her own heart as she tried not to understand what Lili meant. Who had gone to the cells? What was she supposed to see?
Lili drew a rasping breath, and Ishi threw up an arresting hand. She stared down at Qadir. He opened his eyes, and she saw in them what she most feared to know.
“Is it true?” she asked in a whisper.
Qadir’s eyes flooded with the easy tears of an old man.
Ishi leaned on the edge of the exam bed, supporting herself with both hands. Her arms shook, and the room grew gray around her. Lili said something else, but her harsh voice was muffled by the same fog that clouded Ishi’s vision. She worked to breathe, labored to stay on her feet.
She waited, jaw clenched, for her vision to clear. When it did, she checked the medicator readout, then drew a blanket over Qadir. She spoke to him calmly, as if her chest weren’t burning with pain. “You’re exhausted,” she said. “And you need hydration. The medicator is taking care of that. Then you must eat something, and go to your bed. Cook will fix some broth.”
“Ishi,” he moaned. “I’m so very sorry.”
“I know.”
“I wanted to go with her. By the Prophet, I wish I was with her now! But she wouldn’t allow it. And she’s . . .” he faltered, and choked on a sob. “She’s so much stronger than I.”
Ishi patted his hand and turned away from the bed. He grasped her hand, holding her back with a strength she had thought was gone. “A message for you,” he said. Tears ran freely down his face.
“Tell me later,” Ishi said. She knew her voice was rough, but she couldn’t help it. She had to be hard as stone, cold as sandrite, or she would break apart, shatter to pieces.
“I want to tell you now, while there’s time,” Qadir said.
Ishi held his hand. “You have time,” she said. Her eyes flicked over the monitor. The medicator had begun a sedative.
“Perhaps. But listen.” He tried again to lift his head, but he didn’t have the strength. Ishi pulled an extra pillow from beneath the bed and tucked it under his neck. “Ishi. She said to tell you that she loved you from the first day you came to us. To tell you to be a fine medicant. And she asked me—asked me to find you the kindest husband possible.”
Qadir’s mouth twisted in agony, but Ishi’s features felt as if they were set in stone. Somehow, young as she was, she knew this was not a sorrow to be expunged with tears. This grief would run through all her life, a deep, slow river of pain.
“I will, my Ishi,” Qadir went on. His eyelids fluttered and closed now as the medicator calmed him. “1 will do everything she said. 1 promise you . . .”
His lips still moving, but his voice inaudible, he fell alseep. Ishi put up the bars on the bed and turned to leave the surgery. She was startled to find Lili standing in the doorway.
The rush of anger was welcome. “Listen to me, Lili,” she snapped. “You are never, never to come here again. Never. I don’t care if you’re dying!”
Lili took a step back. “You can’t do that. I’m part of the IbSada household!” she quavered.
“You betrayed Zahra. She’s going to die, because of you!”
“Not because of me,” Lili shrilled. “Because of her sins!”
Ishi stepped forward to bring her face very close to Lili’s veiled one. “I do not ever,” she hissed, “ever want to see you again, or hear your voice. If you come into my clinic, I’ll throw you out myself.”
“You wouldn’t!” Lili cried.
&
nbsp; For answer Ishi took Lili’s arm and propelled her, bodily and with force, out of the large surgery and down the hall to the small one. Ishi was as tall as Lili now, although far younger. Her fury made her strong. She dragged the older woman through the inner door and thrust her into the hall beyond. “Never again,” she shouted, and she shut the door in Lili’s face.
Ishi stood for a moment, breathing hard, staring at the closed door. Then, slowly, she went down the hall to Zahra’s office. She stood by the desk, looking around at Zahra’s things.
Where was Zahra now? Was she at the cells yet, or enduring that horrible progress, people shouting, calling names? When she went in the cells, how she would suffer! She would grow hot, and perspire, until her body had no more moisture to give up. Her skin would burn, her flesh would be on fire, her throat and mouth would be as dry as the desert. The pain, the thirst, would be unbearable! Would she cry out, beg for mercy?
No. Not Zahra. Zahra would face her fate with courage, with dignity. And she, Ishi, would do the same. The future stretched before her, empty of her teacher’s love, but full of the work Zahra had taught her to do. Childhood was over. It had not ended as early as it did for some Irustani girls, but this was its end. She would not weep. There was work to be done.
* * *
The Simah wanted Zahra to be forgotten, buried without ceremony. But after a day of rest, Qadir’s strength returned in full. His proffered resignation was twice refused by Onani, and he decided to use his position to dictate a great funeral, a memorable event. He and Ishi planned it together. They saw to it that it was highly publicized, and they knew that curiosity alone would fill the Doma with people.
Five days after Zahra’s body was taken from the cell, her coffin rested on the dais in the center of the Doma. It was liberally draped in scarlet silk. Boughs of mock roses were cut and laid around it, their vermilion blooms drooping in the heat.
Qadir would speak from the dais, next to Zahra’s coffin. The break from tradition was in itself a kind of challenge. The Doma was thronged with people, many of them the same who had jeered Zahra’s progress to the cells.
The men stood, curious and silent. Their red mourning rosettes stood out brilliantly against their white shirts.
The women were on their knees around the dais, scarlet and crimson and flame-colored silks pooling about them, veiled heads beginning already to sway in the anticipated excess of grief.
Ishi had thought she would be alone in this crowd. But as she knelt at the head of the dais, a flurry of whispers came from behind her. There was a gentle pushing and rearranging. She turned her head to her left to see what was happening.
Kalen, her tall, thin figure unmistakable, had come to kneel beside her, and with Kalen was Rabi.
Ishi felt her right hand squeezed beneath her drape, and she turned to that side to see Camilla leaning close. “I’m so sorry,” Camilla breathed. “So terribly sorry. I should have gone with her ... I didn’t know what to do!”
Ishi murmured, “You know she wouldn’t have allowed it.”
Kalen was already weeping, tears soaking her verge. “I feel awful, I’ll never get over it!” she sobbed.
Rabi said, “Hush, Mumma, hush. Not so loud, not yet.”
Ishi looked up at the dais. Qadir was mounting the stairs. His steps were slow but his back was straight. His fringe of hair had whitened noticeably in the last week. He put his hand on the carved white coffin and closed his eyes for several minutes. When he opened his eyes he regarded the assembly gravely for another minute before he began to speak.
His voice was strong, deep with emotion. “The medicant Zahra IbSada,” he called clearly, “lies before you, judged and condemned by Irustan, executed according to our tradition. This you know already. You also know that criminals are not usually celebrated in a public funeral service. But these crimes, and this criminal, were far from usual.
“Zahra IbSada was not an average woman. She was my wife, and I shall never cease mourning her. Her life and her death tell us something about Irustan, and about ourselves.
“Zahra was a medicant of great intelligence and courage and compassion. She was utterly devoted to her calling and to her patients, and she fought for both with a bravery many a man might envy. But while Irustan gave her the tools to heal, Irustan withheld from her the power to follow that healing to its close. She grew weary of repairing injuries, and then having those injuries repeated. She could no longer bear to heal a woman’s beaten body, knowing she would have to send the woman back to be beaten again. She couldn’t tolerate the suffering of children inflicted on them by their parents or their guardians. And she couldn’t turn away a patient because someone else— Irustan—deemed that patient unworthy of treatment.”
There was a rustle and murmur among the crowd. This was not the eulogy the people expected, nor the scene they had come for. The veiled, kneeling women stared up at the chief director. The men behind them began to be restive, muttering, whispering. Qadir scanned them all with weary eyes, his chin outthrust.
“I should have helped my wife,” he said loudly, over the rising voices. “I should have done more to set those things right. And now I call on all of you, men of Irustan, to help me.” A silence. “1 also call on the women of Irustan—”
At this a voice burst from deep within the ranks of men. “Shame! Blasphemy!”
Another man yelled, “You’ve been diverted, Chief Director!” and a knot of men around him repeated, “Diverted! Blasphemy!”
Qadir couldn’t make himself heard over the din. He held up his arm for silence, but the voices rose and swirled around him.
The women looked about them in shock, and some clung together, frightened by the tide of anger rising behind them.
Qadir now held up both his arms, but it did no good. Ishi wrung her hands in frustration. Their carefully planned speech, their elaborate ceremony, was falling apart.
Ishi couldn’t bear it. Zahra’s death would not, must not, be marked by a useless riot! She leaped to her feet.
Camilla tugged on her dress. “Ishi! Ishi, get down! What are you doing?”
Ishi pulled her skirt free. She walked swiftly to the steps of the dais, and up, coming to stand by Qadir’s side. The men saw her, and they began to fall silent, one by one. The yells and the shouting died away, and the Doma was silent, awestruck by the nerve of one woman who dared to stand before them all.
Qadir nodded to Ishi, then looked out at the upturned faces. In a level voice, he finished his speech. “Three centuries ago, the Irustani came a great distance to a new world. A new prophet arose among us. But Irustan is not new. It’s the same Irustan that it was on Earth, and it hasn’t changed in all its years on this new world. It is in the nature of life to change and grow. Men and women of Irustan, let us resolve to grow, and if that means change, so be it!”
His final words rang in the great space. A few more insults answered them. One or two brave men cried agreement with Qadir. But most simply stared, their faces sullen, unmoved. The men who would carry the coffin moved toward the dais, and the ranks of people parted to make a path. Qadir sighed and stepped back.
But Ishi knew it was not enough. She understood, with every bit of instinct she possessed, that there had to be more. There had to be something no one could forget, something that would forever link Zahra’s name and memory to the beginning of change.
She had no time to think. It was not permitted for any woman to speak in public, and if she tried, they would only shout and yell, drown her out. There was one thing, and only one thing, she could do.
Swiftly, lest anyone leap to the dais to stop her, Ishi tore open her rill, and then her verge. Finally, more slowly, she pulled the entire cap and veil from her head. Her straight dark hair fell in a sheet down her back. Her bare cheeks flushed. She lifted her chin and looked out over the crowd.
There was a collective gasp from the men. A few of the women kneeling around the dais cried out in shock. A man shouted, “Dishonor to your house!�
�� and others took up the cry. Qadir stared at Ishi as if he had never seen her before.
The ranks of men surged and swelled. It seemed they might storm the dais and pull Ishi down. She shivered with sudden, physical fear. Two men actually stepped among the kneeling women, making their way toward her.
Ishi was transfixed by the unthinking hatred that distorted their features. She could almost feel their rough hands seizing her, dragging her down to the tiled floor. She took a quick breath and held it, watching them come.
Another indrawn breath sounded from hundreds of throats, and every head turned. Ishi looked to her right, to see what attracted them.
At the head of the dais, where she had been kneeling, Camilla Bezay now stood upright. She was unveiled. Kalen IhMullah was also standing, and was at that moment removing her veil with a flourish of scarlet silk. A heartbeat later, Rabi pulled her veil off too. There was a roar of low-pitched voices.
Ishi gazed about her in a wide circle, hardly believing her eyes. At least half the kneeling women got slowly to their feet. One by one, like flowers opening sluggish petals, they unveiled. Dark hair, light hair, a few redheads, appeared above the scarlet mourning dresses.
They were young women, old women, middle-aged women. Some were beautiful. Some were plain. They were strangers to Ishi and to each other, but they were sisters all. Ishi looked down at them, meeting brown eyes, blue eyes, gray and green eyes, trying not to miss any of them. She saw Zahra in every face.
Distantly, Ishi was aware that the Simah was shouting, that some men were screaming invectives. Angry men tried again to step among the women. Even the still-veiled women leaped to their feet to block their path. The men fell back, astonished by the resistance, shouting, shaking their fists. Ishi held her breath, fearful for the women at the rear, but a few men put their backs to the women’s rows, facing outward, a ragged defense against the throng.
Qadir signaled to the pallbearers to climb the steps. They lifted the white coffin from its plinth and carried it down, its scarlet draperies drifting about their legs. They made a slow passage across the Doma and out into the heat of the day. Qadir followed, his head bowed, leaning on Ishi. Behind them the women began to ululate and sway on their feet, shrill voices drowning out the last protests of the men. Ishi looked back once at the incredible sight of the unveiled Irustani women. Then she turned her eyes forward, to follow Zahra to her resting place.
The Terrorists of Irustan Page 38
