by Martin Dukes
“We’re all too close to my brother,” sobbed Kashifah. “Surely we shall be drawn in, if he falls.”
“Hussain is the key,” said Nusrat softly, stroking her sister’s hair. “He has won a great triumph but his victory is a precarious one, given the Sultan’s present state of mind. If the Grand Vizier feels that the Sultan is beyond control, or fears that his own life may be in danger, he will act. Until then… who knows?”
There was a chilling atmosphere of fear and crisis in the palace. Rumours, the currency of uncertainty, rippled through apartments and corridors like a troubled pool into which stones have been cast. The Sultan was said to have hidden himself in his own apartments, dressed from head to foot in black and with his face and hands blackened with soot so that his mad red eyes were all that could be seen of him. It was said that one of the great nobles, Haroun bin Rhaman, had fled with his sons to the Emir of Punt and was raising an army there. It was also said that the moons were approaching each other and would collide, that a two-headed calf had been born in Pemba, that a rain of fish had occurred at Ur-Tash, on the desert’s fringe, and that the end of days was approaching.
There was a constant stream of visitors to Kashifah’s apartment as friends and relatives came to share knowledge and to discuss the events that were shaping their futures. Some people stayed away, as they thought it too dangerous to be seen with the Sultan’s blood relatives now. Everyone said that if the Sultan should fall, his family might be found guilty by association and share his fate. Hussain’s many hidden eyes were more wakeful than ever, and Murad’s secret police were more active in their investigations.
Cousin Nuria came to visit one afternoon, together with her younger sister and their attendants. She settled herself in the lounge, demanded cakes, lemon juice and, it being a sultry day, a fan for one of her servants to waft over her.
“I cannot tell you when I felt more agitated,” she told her audience, dabbing at her brow with a silk kerchief. “Surely the sky will come crashing down before a semblance of normality is restored to this mad house we call home. My pulse, my pulse,” she sighed, extending her wrist for Nusrat to examine. “It is so irregular as to cause my father’s physician the gravest of concern. My heart hammers in my breast one moment and the next is so sullenly slow in its duty I fear I must breathe my last. I thank God my connections with the Sultan are more distant than your own. Surely you must fear for your lives.”
Kelly exchanged a wry glance with Nusrat. For years Nuria had made much of her blood relationship with the Sultan’s family. Her father’s wealth enabled her to enjoy every comfort that life could provide, but the prestige of the Sultan’s name had added to her status and her pride. And now that name hung heavy on her, its lustre dulled by the horror of events. She wished she could be rid of it.
The porter came to summon Nusrat and Kashifah to the door, where another party of relatives had arrived, leaving Kelly alone with Nuria and her sister. Alone unless you counted Nuria’s servant, that is, who continued to waft the visitors with a large fan of feathers. But servants in Zanzibar were socially invisible. They existed only insofar as the functions they performed required them to. Kashifah’s servant girl, Nahla, came in with a tray of tea and cakes, bringing with her Tanya, who had followed the cakes and their delicious smell all the way from the kitchen.
“And what will become of you?” asked Nuria, regarding Kelly coolly, and with a curt nod of greeting to Tanya. “Strangers like yourselves are very vulnerable, don’t you think? I have heard that you are… resented in some quarters.”
Kelly shrugged. She didn’t much care for Nuria.
“Maybe things will settle down,” she said.
“Hah!” scoffed Nuria. “And what can you know of the politics of Zanzibar? You are a stranger. How do you presume even to express an opinion?”
Kelly bit her lip, wishing that Nusrat and Kashifah would come back. Nuria’s sister, a pale, silent girl with a deformity in one foot, looked at her blankly. She rarely spoke in Nuria’s presence, which suited Nuria just fine, apparently. She merely nodded or shook her head as circumstances dictated.
“Will you have a cake?” Kelly asked, in order to fill the awkward silence that had momentarily settled over the room. “These little ones are very good… Aren’t they, Tanya?” she asked rather loudly and with a stern glance as Tanya took two from the plate.
Nuria sniffed. “I suppose I may, although your kitchen staff have as much to learn about pastry as your little friend has about manners. I would have thought you’d been in Zanzibar long enough to know that guests are always served first.”
“Sorry,” said Tanya cheerfully through a mouthful of cake. “There’s plenty left.”
At this point, Nahla, who was always painfully nervous in Nuria’s presence, stumbled and tipped the plate so that a number of cakes and pastries cascaded into Nuria’s lap. Chaos ensued. Nuria squealed and lurched to her feet, even as Nahla endeavoured to scoop up the cakes.
“Stupid, stupid girl!” shrieked Nuria. “This silk is new on. This garment is worth more than your filthy, clumsy hide.”
She snatched up her sister’s stick and lashed at Nahla, who threw herself whimpering at her tormentor’s feet. A flurry of blows rained down on Nahla’s back, accompanied by a stream of curses. Tanya and Nuria’s sister looked on in horror, and Nuria’s servant dropped her fan. A surge of outrage rising in her breast, Kelly stepped forward and snatched at the stick.
“Stop!” she cried. “Are you crazy?”
There was a brief tussle, a whirl of action, and then suddenly Nuria was on the floor, clutching at her face.
“Don’t you do that!” shouted Kelly furiously, casting the broken stick into a corner. “Don’t you dare do that. She’s a human being.”
Alerted by the commotion, Kashifah and Nusrat came hurrying into the room.
“She struck me,” accused Nuria in a tremulous voice, pointing a finger at Kelly. “She struck me, do you hear? This stranger you have nurtured in your bosom. This is how she rewards you.”
“What has happened here?” asked Nusrat, frowning and regarding Kelly anxiously.
Kashifah and the servant helped Nuria to her feet. Nahla crept away and stood wringing her hands in the corner, eyes cast down.
“Nahla dropped some cakes and she went crazy, beating her with a stick… I stopped her,” said Kelly bluntly.
“I was disciplining a servant,” snapped Nuria. “And this… this presumptuous milkskin dared to assault me. I demand that the servant be whipped.” She turned to Kelly, her eyes narrowed with fury. “And I demand that you cast out this viper in your midst.”
“No one’s got the right to do what you were doing,” responded Kelly angrily, conscious of a prickly red flush rising in her cheeks. She clenched her fists at her side. “She made a mistake, that’s all.”
“She’s a servant, a menial,” said Nuria. “How else do they learn? You have a lot to learn about our customs.”
“I don’t want to learn any more about your stupid customs,” said Kelly bitterly. “Your customs stink.”
There was a long moment during which Kelly and Nuria regarded each other with a steely glare.
“It is not your prerogative to discipline my servant,” said Kashifah at last.
“Well, somebody must,” sneered Nuria. “Especially if you insist on maintaining a disorderly house.”
“I think you’ve said enough,” said Nusrat, opening the door wide meaningfully.
“And I shall not forget that I, a guest in your house, was assaulted by a stranger.”
“I did not assault you,” said Kelly, her face pale with fury but thinking nevertheless that giving Nuria a good sharp punch in the face would do both of them the world of good.
“Well, there we shall differ,” said Nuria, and then, with a gesture to her sister, “Come, sister. We shall go. Nor shall we further injure our reputations by coming here again.”
She swept through the door, chin held high, pursu
ed by her silent, limping sister and their servant. Kashifah went after them but Nusrat remained, surveying the room and the spilt cakes bleakly.
“And what are you gawping at?” she demanded suddenly of Nahla. “Get it cleared up.”
“I’ll help you,” said Tanya, reaching for the tray.
“You will not,” said Nusrat sharply, taking it herself and throwing it at Nahla’s feet.
Kelly’s eye met Nusrat’s and at that moment their relationship was altered. An invisible barrier rose up between them, a barrier of mutual incomprehension. For months, like someone walking into the ocean, Kelly had gradually been immersing herself in the life and culture of Zanzibar, stepping deeper and deeper until that ocean had almost closed over her head, until it had seemed almost more natural than the world to which she belonged. But now it was suddenly alien once more and she was cast up like driftwood on that far, foreign shore. She realised with bitter suddenness that she could never be at home here.
Chapter Thirteen
Two days later a ship docked in the port and the passengers it was carrying filed out onto the dockside as the stevedores began unloading cargo from its hold. Amongst them were a small group of mariners who had survived the wreck of their ship a few weeks previously. Amongst them was Jemail bin Afzal.
“I thought you were dead,” Kelly told him a few hours later.
“We all thought you were dead,” said Kashifah.
“But I am not,” said Jemail, eyes shining, his face split by the broadest of grins. “God has spared me and I stand before you a wiser man. The things I have seen…”
“You must tell us,” said Nusrat, ushering him through into the inner courtyard, “But not here where half the street can wonder at your tale. Come, let us find a place on the terrace. Nahla, tell the kitchen we have company for lunch.”
The porter had brought news of Jemail’s arrival. Kelly’s first reaction had been to hurry to the street door and throw herself into his arms, rather than await him in the courtyard as decorum demanded. It had been so wonderful to feel herself enfolded in his embrace once more, to hear his soft voice, his warm breath in her ear; these things she had dreamed of so many times since news had reached Zanzibar of the shipwreck.
“It is so good to have good news,” laughed Kashifah as an excited crowd of servants and relatives gathered in the courtyard.
“I dreamed of this,” Kelly told him, stepping back to look up at his smooth, handsome face.
“I too,” he said, taking her hand and kissing it. “How many times I dreamed it. And now it is real.”
“We must hear of your adventures,” came Nusrat’s voice, breaking into the small, private bubble of consciousness into which they had withdrawn. “Was your ship driven onto a lee shore as they say?”
“It was,” said Jemail, reluctantly tearing his gaze away from Kelly’s.
“Come hither,” beckoned Kashifah. “This tale deserves hearing in a better place than this. Come through to the terrace, where we may sit and hear at leisure.
The party passed through the house and out onto the terrace whilst Jemail told of the surprised delight of his own family to see him return safe and well. Kelly followed a pace behind, feeling surprise of her own not only at the intensity of her joy but also the speed with which it had ebbed away. It was not that she was not happy. Certainly she was. To see Jemail safe and well was a delight she had thought never to experience again. And yet once the first surge of emotion had ebbed away it was to find that a more cautious affection prevailed in her heart.
Jemail’s ship had been driven upon a hidden reef at the height of a violent storm. The ship quickly broke up and most of its crew had perished. Jemail and two other survivors had clung to some fragments of the vessel, and this, driven by surging waters over the reef, had carried them to the shore of a barren and unpopulated land. After many adventures they had fallen in with a party of goat herders who had taken them in and looked after them. Nevertheless, it had taken them some weeks to find their way to a port and make the passage back to Zanzibar.
“You are so thin!” Kashifah told him. “I trust you will stay for lunch so that we may endeavour to put some flesh upon your frame.”
“So long as you do not offer me goat,” said Jemail with a wry smile. “I should consider it a kindness.”
For all his easy affability and charm it was quite clear that Jemail had come visiting with one fixed purpose, namely to see Kelly alone. Still, it was some time before the obligations of polite society could be discharged and Jemail could walk alone with Kelly in the garden.
“I hear that terrible things have been happening,” he told her as they paused beneath a rose arbour. “That the Sultan is transformed into a monster and all go in fear of their lives.”
“It’s true,” she said, twisting the stem of a flower round her finger absently. “Shaquira’s dead. They say he killed her with his own hands. Who knows what’s going to happen next?” She looked up at him suddenly. “What will happen to us, Jemail?”
“Us? By us, you mean…?”
“I mean us – you and me. But I also mean us, me and my milkskin friends.”
Jemail raised a hand to stroke her cheek. The knuckles were still scarred with half-healed cuts, she noticed.
“You are hardly milkskins now. The sun has caressed you. Your complexion is scarcely to be distinguished from my own.”
“And yet we are different, you and me,” said Kelly deliberately. “Very different.”
“Yet so much alike,” said Jemail earnestly, taking her hand and drawing her closer. “All the time I was struggling to keep my head above the crashing surf, all the time I wandered parched beneath the baking sun in a strange land – all these times you were in my thoughts. You were like a beacon to guide me home. Without the thought of you, without the affection I nourish in my breast for you, I fear I should have perished there. I wish I could be sure that you will always be there for me. Dare I hope that I may perhaps kindle in your heart the flame that you kindle in mine?”
Kelly felt awkward. What might have struck her a little while ago as touching and charming struck her now as… well… embarrassing. Something had changed. All those nights she had wept into her pillow as she mourned his death seemed distant now; abstract, as though they belonged to somebody else. She cast an internal eye across her feelings and found there relief in great measure and affection too, but nothing to set her pulse racing in the way it once had.
“I am betrothed, you know,” she said, a note of apology in her voice.
“To Alex, yes, I knew that,” he said, a frown clouding his face. “I know not why, I had not considered that… You had not… I dared to hope that… Oh, dear. My tongue betrays me.”
Kelly took both of his hands in hers and looked up into his eyes.
“Dear Jemail,” she said. “I thought about you a lot, too. I was really worried about you, and when I heard your ship had gone down I thought I would just burst because I was so sad. I’m so glad you made it back. So glad.” She squeezed his hands. “But I don’t want you to go building dream castles over me, if you know what I mean.”
“I confess I do not, I hoped in the future…”
“I think you might have been hoping for too much,” interrupted Kelly softly. “If you were thinking that you and I might have any kind of future together, I’m too young for that kind of stuff. At least in my world I am. Anyway, I’m kind of an alien here, yeah? We’re getting out just as soon as we can. Things are getting too hot here. Maybe you should get out, too.”
Later that day Zulfiqar announced to Alex that he had visitors. Alex was surprised to find himself confronted by Kelly and Tanya, and even more surprised to find Jemail there, too.
“Yeah, he survived,” said Kelly matter-of-factly as Alex gaped, momentarily at a loss for words. “No thanks to you, though.” She beckoned to Zulfiqar. “Get us some drinks, would you, Zulfiqar, there’s a dear.”
“Hi,” managed Alex weakly at last. “Uh, hello
Jemail. You made it then.” He felt himself blushing with the awkwardness of it all.
“Yes, he did,” answered Kelly, before Jemail could open his mouth. “But you’re still dumped, so don’t go getting any ideas.”
“Good to see you,” said Henry cheerfully, going up to shake Jemail’s hand. “We thought you were feeding the fishes.”
“Not I,” said Jemail with a grin, shaking Alex’s hand in return. “My family is one of the old clans. It takes more than a puff of wind and an early bath to end our days.”
“Wow!” said Alex, feeling genuinely enormously relieved after the initial shock had worn off. “I can’t tell you how glad I am to see you.” He pumped Jemail’s hand enthusiastically, at the same time wondering guiltily whether Kelly had filled him in as to the reason for his sudden despatch to Persia. A certain smug tilt to Kelly’s chin suggested she was enjoying his discomfort.
“We’re moving back in,” she said. “Me and Tanya. I’m thinking we need to stick together just now. What with what’s been goin’ on and all, you know?”
“Of course,” said Alex, thinking furiously. “What’s brought this on then? I thought I was, like, you know, persona non grata.”
Kelly wrinkled her nose. “Yeah, well you are, whatever that means. But I’m thinking we need to be heading for the exit.”
Alex glanced warily from her to Jemail, who raised his eyebrows.
“It’s okay,” said Kelly. “You can trust Jemail. He’s going to help us.”
“Time to go then, is it?” asked Henry, taking a bite from an apricot. “And I was having such fun.”
“You know it is,” said Kelly grimly.
“But where can we go?” asked Tanya, tugging on Kelly’s sleeve.
“I shall secure you a berth on a ship sailing to Zanjd,” said Jemail. “I have spoken to my brother, Rakesh, who says that all vessels to other destinations are searched. The Sultan fears that his enemies will flee abroad. The small coastal vessels that ply the channel to Zanjd are not so closely watched, since the Sultan has a firm grip on Canopus. Once in Zanjd you might travel overland to Punt, perhaps.” He shrugged. “It is not an elaborate plan.”
