The Jealous

by Laury Silvers

Ammar snorted. “Fine. Those men are dangerous. I don’t know what they’re planning.”

  “Why don’t you do something about them?” She demanded.

  “I can only ‘do something’ if they’ve committed a grave crime. If I get the word from above, I can pick them up and throw them in jail without so much as a hearing. But I can do the same to you if someone who doesn’t like you has the power to command me. So watch yourself.”

  Tein sighed. Whoever got Barbahari’s men released from jail would also make sure a crackdown against the men would never come.

  The Seer gave Ammar a dismissive nod of her head. Her assistant pulled at her to leave, but Ammar asked the Seer before they could go, “Why didn’t you know what he had in his hand?”

  “My re’ya told me he had his flabby piece of meat in his tiny hand! But he also told me that if I said so, I’d be dead now.” She stuck her chin out at him. “I didn’t need my re’ya to tell me, though. Men like that always have their cocks in their hands. I knew the moment he asked.” Her assistant pulled at her again, and they walked away. The Seer called back to them over her shoulder as they moved deeper into the market, “So don’t worry about me, Police.”

  As they disappeared, Tein turned to Ammar, laughing. “See!”

  Putting his hand on Tein’s arm, Ammar said, “Tein. She was right. The man told me so himself.”

  “Well, I doubt he told you it was a flabby piece of meat in a tiny hand!” He raised his eyebrows. “She’s an expert at reading people, Ammar. I can’t believe you are falling for this.”

  Ammar ignored him. “Look, Barbahari’s men are up to something. It’s not our job to police public morality, but Ibn Marwan needs to pass this information on. I’ll tell him later. Right now, we have to go get that cursewriter.”

  Tein couldn’t see a way out of it. His only hope was that the talisman makers and cursewriters wouldn’t turn on each other. If they did find her, he hoped she’d confirm that the talisman was not meant to kill.

  They went back through the Market Gate to the farthest end of the square outside where the talisman makers, cursewriters, and soothsayers sat. Only a couple of women were huddled together in front of a small fire in a brazier. The little cutpurse with the ratty turban was standing nearby, trying to get some of the heat. A warning must have gone out to scatter. There was no Turkmen woman anywhere.

  Ammar cursed under his breath.

  As they approached, one of the women pulled up her niqab. “What do you want, Police? Here to harass us like those animals with their turbans wound like Hanbalis but their mouths filled with filth?”

  Tein watched the boy. He moved in even closer to listen. Tein realized that his scrap of turban was twisted under his chin. Was this boy playing at being one of Barbahari’s men? Or were they using him as a spy? He yelled, “You back off, this is police business.”

  The boy bent down and picked up a rock and threw it at him. Tein caught the rock in his hands and pretended to throw it back at him. The boy turned on his heels and ran as fast as he could into the market.

  Ammar bowed his head. “Auntie, we apologize. Have these men been around much?”

  She pulled her wrap more closely around her. “They came the other day and dragged off Abu as-Sari, the old Jew, and beat him savagely for throwing the sticks.”

  “Did anyone tell the Marketplace Inspector?”

  “What would he do?” The women looked at him as if he were stupid.

  “He could have told us. Assaults are our jurisdiction. I’ll look into it.”

  “We’ll see if you do or do not.” One of them scoffed.

  Tein asked, “If everyone else has run off because of those men, why are you still here?”

  “To take their business!” The woman who showed them her face exclaimed, “God is generous! That old witch Tansholpan’s gone!”

  “Tansholpan?” Ammar asked, “Is that the Turkmen woman here who writes talismans?”

  She looked him up and down. “Ya Rabb, may she be in deep shit!”

  Tein gave up on the hope the women wouldn’t turn on each other.

  Ammar laughed. “Why?”

  “All the people line up behind her. They say her curses are very powerful.” She wagged her finger at him, “But it’s gossip.”

  “Why do people say that? What does she do?”

  “Nothing.” The woman tipped her chin. “She writes out talismans and wraps them up in leather like the rest of us.”

  “There must be something,” Ammar pressed.

  “Sometimes, she brings out that jooza of hers to impress the customers.” She leaned over to her friend and asked, “What does she call that thing?” The other woman shook her head. She turned back to Ammar, “She plays it upright in her lap, rubbing its strings with a bow. She goes mad, swinging about. It’s nothing but a show. But don’t you know, people fall for it.”

  Tein looked at Ammar. It was just as the Imam’s wife described.

  “Do you know where she lives?” Ammar asked.

  She smiled at the other woman, nudging her. “Subhanallah, she is in trouble!”

  Tein answered, “We’re not sure.”

  “If she’s in trouble, I’ll tell you. Otherwise, you can give me some coin for the information.”

  Ammar answered, “She’s in trouble.”

  “Good. She lives in the neighbourhood behind Crow’s Square.” The woman tipped her head at Tein. “He’ll know where it is,” then cackled at her joke, nudging her friend again who looked up at Tein, her eyes wild with fear.

  Tein bit his tongue, then noticed movement again. He turned to see that the boy had snuck back. He threw another rock at Tein and ran off across the square away from the market.

  Ammar said to Tein, “Let’s go. It’s not far.”

  Chapter Nine

  The sun-dried brick houses leaned on each other for support, each wall holding up the wall of another. If one were to fall, eaten away by rains because just one person was too lazy to keep up with the constant daubing of mud and stuffing of grasses into the weak spots, they would all go. The fog from the Tigris and canals had burnt off, but each house Tein had gone into seemed colder and damper than the last. Tein leaned against a wall in the sun, taking the weight off his bad leg. He took a deep breath in and let it out slowly. His chest was tight. He stood up and moved to the next doorway. “Assalamu alaykum. Baghdad Police.”

  Before he said, “Police,” he had heard movement inside. Now, nothing.

  “You’re not in any trouble. We’re looking for a witness to a murder.”

  Nothing.

  “We’re asking for your own safety.”

  Nothing.

  He couldn’t walk away, or every house in the neighbourhood would know that they did not have to answer. “I’m coming in.” He ducked through the low doorway. The room was dark. There were no windows. The only light came through the door and gaps in the mud-daubed reed roof.

  An old Christian man stood before Tein, shielding his wife. She had pulled her yellow wrap around her and over her head so Tein couldn’t see her face. The old man’s back was bent to one side from work and age. His knobby shoulder joints stuck out from his thin yellow qamis and robe tied up with knotted rope. But he held his own for his woman, defiantly silent. Tein took a step back to show the man he wasn’t going to hurt them, although there was barely space for the three of them in the room. There was nothing but one reed mat laid out and a bedroll neatly folded in the corner. Their cooking pot and water jug sat beside it, and a small bag of food hung from a peg on the wall.

  “I’m looking for an older Turkmen woman who writes talismans. She has information about the murder of a religious scholar.”

  Nothing.

  His chest tightened again.

  It was so quiet, he could hear Ammar saying around a corner, “Have you seen the Turkmen woman who writes curses?”

  When he and Ammar had entered the cluster of small houses and asked the first questions, all conversation sto
pped. From house to house, the word spread, and they were shut out. This wasn’t how it usually went. Every week they went door to door looking for witnesses, asking questions, confirming accounts. They’d been ignored. They’d been told to fuck off. They’d had answers whispered to them where the neighbours couldn’t see. But most often, anger and resentment would spill out into the street, one party accusing another, declaring to all that they had been wronged and the wrongdoer stood before them and before God. But today? It was silence.

  Tein’s throat was becoming as tight as his chest. He forced the words out, “We know she lives here.”

  Again, nothing.

  He gave up. He stepped back through the doorway and left without saying anything. He stood in the middle of the alleyway. He took deep breaths, one after another until his throat and chest loosened again.

  Steeling himself, he approached the next house, but his chest tightened again. He breathed through it until he could say through the doorway, “Assalamu alaykum. Baghdad Police. You are not in any trouble. We are looking for a witness to a murder. I’m coming in.”

  A woman in a tattered wrap cowered in the back corner of the room. Her trembling child was between her knees, a delicate-limbed boy with his arms wrapped around his mother’s waist. Her thin arms were around her boy as if Tein had come to snatch him away.

  He saw the boy and his mother as if he were watching them from the outskirts of the graveyards where his mother preached, where he circled the crowd, looking for anyone who might go too far in their zeal, or fall into fear of her, and hurt them.

  For a split second, his mind reeled, and the woman’s face transformed into his mother’s. She was no longer a cowering stranger, but wore the gleaming face of his mother as she fell into ecstasy. The shaking boy with his shaved head became Zaytuna. Her face was buried in their mother’s lap, her long black hair spread out, longer than he remembered, into tendrils entangled in the rough reed mat and crawling through to the dirt floor. They were too far away for him to reach. He could hear people gathering behind him. They streamed around him, straight through the door of the tiny room, falling one by one at his mother’s feet. They trampled Zaytuna’s hair to get to her. He could hear Zaytuna whimpering as they tried to pull her out of her mother’s lap to get even closer. Then their mother let go of Zaytuna. She stretched her arms out to catch them all up in her glorious outpouring of love and deliver them to God herself. Tein tried to lift his arms to grab the men in front of him and pull them back to get at Zaytuna, but his right arm was stuck at his side.

  He looked down at his arm to see why it would not move and saw that his hand held his dagger, freed from its sheath at his waist. He looked back up. The room was empty. His mother and Zaytuna were gone. The woman was crying, begging him to not hurt her and her whimpering child.

  What have I done?

  He put his dagger back into its sheath. He wanted to reach down and rub the child’s head to break the fear, but he knew it would be taken as a threat. Men had patted his head like that when he was a boy, sizing him up, seeing if he’d present a problem.

  Tein was suffocating. He left the dark room for the light of the narrow lane, hearing the boy crying behind him.

  Ammar was there, leaning against the wall across from him. When he saw Tein’s face, he pushed off the wall and took hold of his arm. “What happened in there?”

  Shaking off Ammar’s hand, Tein nearly pushed him back against the wall. He wanted nothing more than to walk away from him, from this, and be done with all of it.

  “Okay, okay.” Ammar took a step back, hands up.

  Tein pulled himself together well enough to say, “No one is talking.”

  “This is new.”

  “What do we do?” He looked down the lane for a way out.

  Raising his voice so people in the neighbourhood could hear him, Ammar said, “We’ll have to come back with the watchmen and beat the information out of them.”

  Tein closed his eyes, a wave of nausea washing through him. He knew that it was an empty threat, but the neighbourhood didn’t. Not that Ammar had not hit men with the broad side of his cherished Yemeni sword, or threatened them with its edge when needed. Not that he himself hadn’t beaten men down or held them hanging by their throats to get what he wanted from them when less force, more carefully placed, would have been enough. The thought of it made him want to throttle himself. What have I become? He turned on himself, answering his own question, Become? You’ve been brutal all your life. Bile rose into the back of his throat. He swallowed it down.

  Ammar asked, “The Square?”

  They walked in silence through several tight alleyways, winding back to the small main square where shopkeepers had set out small stands of fresh vegetables, grains, and beans. There was a tavern masquerading as a gathering spot for old men to sit and talk while drinking watered-down juices out of clay cups. Tein looked at the tavern and wanted nothing more than to keep walking to it and sit down to drink the rest of the day.

  Ammar stopped in the middle of the square so they could not be overheard. “Tansholpan’s curses must be potent.”

  Tein eyed the tavern. “They’re definitely afraid to give her up.”

  “We should drag that cursewriter that’s got it in for her over here to show us.”

  “Aren’t we done here?” Tein sounded desperate.

  “I still have to interview the men in the butcher’s case.”

  “And me?”

  Ammar looked worried. “We still have to have her.”

  He said what he should, “I’ll keep looking.”

  “You don’t need me?”

  “Go.”

  Tein started feeling better out in the open now that Ammar was gone. He shook off what he’d seen in the woman’s house, saying to himself, You barely slept last night. You aren’t going to end up in the madhouse. You need sleep. And a drink. First, find the woman. Let her prove that the talisman couldn’t have killed the Imam, in a language these people understand.

  He eyed the alleyways leading to neighbourhoods they had not yet questioned. But each time he meant to step toward one of them, his chest began to tighten. He was stuck in the centre of the square. It felt as if the square itself was closing in on him. Everyone was looking at him. A large, black policeman in the centre of everything. He could taste their fear and spat on the ground to get it out. Twinkling lights began to crowd the edges of his vision, and his head began to buzz. He wanted to pull the turban off of his head and rip his knife belt off of his body and throw it at the people staring at him. He had to get out of there. He strode out of the square to the main road, pushing past anyone in his way, nearly knocking them down, as if they were trying to keep him from drawing breath itself.

  On the main road, he pulled aside a woman with reeds in a bundle on her back. “Canal! Where’s the water?” She shook in fear and stepped aside for him, pointing to his left. He thought he could see water there. The light was brighter. There had to be a canal. The road to the canal started to open up, but as it did, more people crushed onto it. He rushed past them, shouting, “Police, get out of my way.” He pushed a man aside. The man turned to hit him, then seeing his black turban moved to make space. Tein heard the man spit in his wake. Finally, he could see the canal, the light reflecting off the water forced him to raise his hand to shield his eyes.

  Tein tried not to knock over the men and boys carrying goods as he ran down the path. He pushed past them on the landing, where the round reed-boats and skiffs were being loaded and unloaded, to where the landing gave way to tall reeds. Forcing his way through the muck and reeds, he grasped at them, pulling some aside, kicking others down, scraping his feet even through his thick sandal straps. The reeds were hard as wood so late in the year and sharp as knives when cut. He frantically tried to pull one of them from its bed, then pushed it away. The reeds opened up ahead of him onto a patch of tall grasses waving softly in the breeze. He saw a man sitting among them.

  Hundreds of bi
rds flew out of the grass before him, breaking left and right into the sky, stunning him into stillness. He held his hand up to shield his eyes from the sun and watched them circle to the man. They tried to settle around him, but the man waved his arms, shooing them away. Then he stood, towering over the grasses, and faced him. “Tein, my son, you’ve come to visit me.”

  Tein stepped back, grasping a long reed behind him to steady himself, the way a child holds the finger of his father. He was crying. “Uncle Nuri.”

  Nuri held his arms out to him. “Come, come.” The muck of the reed bed gave way to soft earth. Tein walked gently through the grasses, keenly aware that he was crushing them with every step. He fell to his knees before his uncle, the pain from his thigh shooting through his hip, the moist earth soaking through his sirwal. Nuri kneeled with him and took Tein in his arms. Tein shuddered, and Nuri shuddered with him. Sorrow flowed through them like a wave. Then Nuri took a deep breath, and Tein breathed with him until calm washed through him with every exhale. Finally, Tein let go of his uncle and sat back in the grasses. He wiped his face with the heel of his palm.

  “I know about the enslaved girl,” Nuri said.

  Tein was undone. “Does everyone talk?”

  “Yes.” He added, “You cannot save her.”

  “There is no one else but me.”

  Nuri frowned. “God is her Protector.”

  “Uncle Nuri, let’s not do this.”

  “Do what?” Nuri’s voice took on an edge.

  “Uncle, please.”

  “Say it.”

  “Her master raped her. Where was God?”

  “With her.”

  “And God was with her rapist, too.” It was a statement, not a question. He was used to this kind of talk from them, his mother, the aunts and uncles, and Zaytuna. At least Saliha didn’t bother with it. Nuri knew how he was, that he couldn’t stand it. Why was he doing this to him?

  “You saw what became of him.”

  “Uncle Nuri. I don’t want to show you any disrespect.”

  Nuri tucked his head back, “How could you disrespect me? God jealously guards those in His care. He punishes those who harm His beloveds whether you believe it or not. He also pushes away those who try to elbow in, thinking they can take His place. Who are you that you think you can save anyone? You are doomed to failure in this protection business. You are his servant, nothing more.”