With the word, “doomed,” Tein felt as though a hand had reached into his chest and held his heart, freezing him and spreading numbing fear throughout his body. He held perfectly still. If he made the wrong move, he was sure it would crush his heart between its fingers.
“You will play your part in bringing her to God’s end.”
Tein said through the gripping fear, “I can save her.”
“Could you save your mother?”
The fingers loosened from around his heart, and warmth slowly spread back through his body. He found his voice, “I did, at times.”
“Not when you wanted to most.”
“No.” His chest tightened again.
“You couldn’t have, even if you had been there.”
He insisted, “I might have.”
“Only if God had wanted it.”
“Please, Uncle. I don’t want to argue with you. I love you.”
Nuri laughed and pulled at Tein’s sleeve, saying, “There’s no argument here.”
The laugh flowed through Tein, pulling him back to his Uncle’s embrace. Tein lay down and stared at the clouds driven forward by a wind so high they could not feel it. The grasses around them bent this way and that from a swirling breeze off of the canal.
Nuri lay down beside him and recited a line of poetry,
In my love of You
I have kept frequenting a place,
which bewilders those hearts
that settle there.
Tein listened but didn’t know what he was supposed to understand. Nuri was a father to him, but Tein knew he was not a good son. Nuri had taught him to wrestle his temper down when he was just a boy. Nuri taught him that a man’s strength was not in his anger but in his generosity. Look at me, he thought, I’ve failed him, and he has never failed me.
Nuri broke through his thoughts, “I watched you as a child. You observed the crowd swirling around your mother like a master. You could feel them moving. You knew their every movement. You knew where trouble was rising and you moved toward it. I watched you disperse trouble. I know what you’ve had to do.”
“I failed her.”
“Life or death meant nothing to your mother, only God. She held herself back around you and Zaytuna. She only drew away from you to be alone with God with no worry.”
The implication hurt. “We were her worry.”
“Yes.” Nuri explained, “She told me that she begged God to take her.” He looked up, remembering, “She told me that she begged, ‘Oh Lover of the obedient, how much longer will You keep our cheeks in the dirt? Awaken us!’ But God gave you two to her instead.”
“I thought it couldn’t get worse.” Tein laughed bitterly.
“Listen. You had a purpose in holding your mother here. God’s purpose. You protected her. Just not how you think.” He got up on one elbow and looked at him. “Stop imagining that you know what it means to protect. Examine yourself and see what your purpose is in every moment.”
“My purpose was to let her die on time.”
“You did what you should. You left Baghdad when you should. Zaytuna needed to learn to walk on her own and you became a brother to the empire. You became a husband and a father, if only for a time. You fought rightly for us.”
What pride could he take in being a ghazi, if he left his sister behind? If he could not protect his wife and child? What did being a frontier fighter do but put brutal form to the anger he carried with him every day? What nobility was there in it if all he’d done in the end was become police? So he had become an accomplished killer and an oppressor of the people. Noted.
Nuri touched Tein’s arm. “What is ithar?”
“Are we in school, Uncle?”
“Yes.”
Tein said impatiently, “To think of others’ needs before your own.”
“You know it all, then.”
Tein felt it as the dismissal it was, and panic rose up and bound his chest. He reached out for Nuri in desperation, holding Nuri’s thin arm in his large hand.
Nuri looked into Tein’s eyes. “A man is not the owner of anything in this world. The man who fashions himself one is a coward. He steals the rights of God for himself and wields God’s names brutally to control what he believes is his. What is most men’s jealous protection other than this? No one is more jealous than God! When this sort of man thinks of others’ needs, it is only to serve his own.”
Tein’s hand went slack, letting go of Nuri’s arm. “Is this what you think of me?”
“I think that you have sacrificed yourself for others your whole life. But you believe you know best what you should have done then and what you should do now. That makes you someone who thinks he owns a bit of this world, or should, and tries to control it.”
“So everything I’ve done, I’ve done for myself.”
“As a boy, you wanted to save your mother and sister for yourself. You are no different now.”
Tein looked at him and said, “I have been brutal.”
“You have.”
“How do I stop?” Tein sat up.
“You will stop as you give up owning this and owning that. You will protect when you stop believing that you are the divine Protector.”
Tein looked down, unable to face him.
Nuri pushed his shoulder, ending the conversation. “Tein, listen to me. There’s a green grocer. A man with a ridiculous turban in Balkhi Square, just beyond the Thorn Bridge. Have you ever seen this man?”
Confused, Tein looked up. “What?”
“Find him, and you’ll find your talisman maker.”
“How? I don’t understand.”
“I know everyone in Baghdad.” Nuri smiled. “I don’t sit in that house like your uncle, Junayd, talking about God in words nobody understands anymore.” He smiled more broadly, slapping his chest. “I’m a man of the streets.”
Tein knew he should laugh, that his uncle was trying to get him to laugh, but he couldn’t.
“Go there.”
Tein nodded.
“Remember what I said about ithar.”
Tein stood. “I don’t know how to do what you say.”
Nuri stayed where he was in the grasses. “We’ll see.”
Tein bent down to grasp Nuri’s hand to kiss it, but his uncle pulled it away and shooed him off. Tein made his way back through the grasses he’d walked on so gingerly before. They looked trampled as though cattle had been driven through them. He felt sick. He reached the reeds and heard hundreds of wings beating behind him. He turned to look back at Nuri, still sitting in the clearing, as the birds settled in the grasses around him.
He picked through the reeds and made his way up the hill and back to the square. A watchman was leaning against a wall eating an apple. Tein called out to him. The watchman straightened himself, took two more quick bites out of the apple, then put it in his pocket. They met in the middle of the square.
Tein said, “Go to the office of Grave Crimes in the Basra Gate and tell Ammar ibn at-Tabbani to meet Tein in Balkhi Square, by the Thorn Bridge, immediately.”
Chapter Ten
Tein and Ammar stood in Balkhi Square. Small shops were jammed into every available bit of space. Barefoot boys strained as they pulled small carts with goods for delivery. Poor women draped in faded wraps stood in groups chatting or in deep negotiations with sellers of carrots and onions. A barefoot man in short sirwal and a moth-eaten woolen wrap thrown around his shoulders sat beside a careful pile of dung patties, hawking, “Fire! Dung! Fire!”
They had walked around the square twice and still had not seen a green grocer by Nuri’s description.
Ammar asked, “You said this was a trustworthy lead?”
“Yes.”
Tein’s eye was on the tavern on the far side of the square. A tall man with a black turban pulled his head back quickly inside to avoid being seen. It was a watchman sneaking a drink on duty. He thought, I wish I were with you, brother. Ammar tapped Tein on the arm and pointed to one of the produ
ce stalls. There he was, emerging from the back of his shop. The grocer waved the woman who had been tending it through the door and shut it behind her. He was a middle-aged man, slim as a post, but average in every other way except that he was wearing a comically large green and blue turban. Worse, he wore it around a conical green quilted cap, like a judge.
Ammar laughed. “Fits the description.”
“Yes, he does.”
Ammar strode over to the shop, hand on the hilt of his sword. Tein hurried behind him. The grocer did not have a second to think or run.
“Baghdad Police. We’re looking for a Turkmen cursewriter. You aren’t in any trouble if you help us find her.”
The grocer lifted both hands in submission. He backed up slowly between the nearly empty boxes holding his produce, a few withered-looking carrots, leeks, onions, and garlic, yelling, “I don’t know where that horror of a woman is! If I knew I would hand her over to you myself! She drove my wife out of my arms and back to her family with her curses!”
Ammar followed him in, crowding him against the door to the backroom. “You must know something. Tell us and we can handle her for you. You’ll not be bothered by her again.”
The man lowered his voice, glancing at the shop on his left, “I told you, I don’t know where she is. She only held off destroying my business because I agreed to let my woman go.” Then loudly, “I don’t know where she is!”
Tein leaned over the stacked boxes. “Who is it over there that you want to hear your protests?”
The man’s face drained of colour, and his eyes opened wide, he ticked his head to the left without saying anything. Ammar looked back at Tein who nodded and stepped out of the shop. Ammar stayed with the grocer while Tein scanned the square to read the situation. The grain seller to the grocer’s left looked like he was ignoring them, but was observing their movements well enough. He was leaning against a barrel, using the tip of a small dagger to clean his nails. The narrow sleeves of his short robe were rolled up and his knife belt kept his robe close to his body. Nothing to get in the way of a fight. Tein could see by his stance and the natural, yet controlled way he held the knife that he knew how to use it. He was protecting someone within.
Tein stepped back into the green grocer’s shop. The door at the back cracked open. A woman’s arm came out and slapped at the grocer’s arm, trying to get a hold of his sleeve to pull him into the back room. Ammar took hold of his other arm. “What was this about your wife being driven off?”
The man whispered, “This is my second wife. Now my only wife, thanks to that sorceress.”
“Ah.” Ammar addressed the woman behind the door, “Let him go, we’re not going to bother him. In fact, I’d like to buy some carrots for my own wife, who, as it happens, has not left me.”
The woman pulled her hand back and shut the door. The grocer side-stepped past Ammar to one of the stacked boxes. “How many would you like? I can give you a good price in thanks to your service.”
“I’ve changed my mind. I’ve changed my mind about having a wife, too.” Ammar said in a clear voice as he left the shop, “You let us know if you hear anything. Tell any watchmen. Tell him to take the news to Grave Crimes by the Basra Gate.” Tein and Ammar stood at the shop’s edge in the square. Tein knew Ammar would have seen the grain seller’s knife. They approached his stall, understanding their roles without having to say a word. Ammar stopped where he could fall back with one step and pull his sword from its scabbard. His hand was not on the hilt, but it could be in the barest of a second. Tein held back. He could move in any direction to apprehend the man if he decided to push past one of his barrels into the square or take on Ammar. He hoped there was no laneway behind the shop, but that was unlikely in this neighbourhood. More likely, all he had back there was one room with no windows and light that he used to store goods or sleep if he had nothing else.
Ammar asked the grain seller, “How’s business?”
The man stood up, relaxed still, his arms beside him, but had turned the knife around in his hand, pointing behind him so he could stab down or slice across in tight quarters.
“The way you’re holding that knife,” Ammar tipped his chin at it, “you look to be a fellow ghazi. Take a look at us and ask yourself if you can win this fight. Ask if she’d want you to die for her. Put the knife down and bring her out.”
The door to the back of the shop opened, and there she was. She was calm but looked exhausted. Her craggy face sagged, pulling her mouth down into a deep frown. She said to the man, “No one will be harmed on my account.”
He put the knife down on the barrel behind him and held his hands up so they could see. He bowed his head. “Forgive me, sister.”
She wore the red and black coat with the lapels, like the Imam’s wife had described but was much lighter-skinned. What had the Imam’s wife said? She was as dark as a “withered date.” This Turkmen woman was burnished by the sun and wind, that’s all. Curse these people. She was missing her cap; her hair was greasy at the roots and tied in long thin braids, each one knotted off with colourful wool. Some had come undone, and straggles of oily grey hair lay against her dirty coat. She looked like she had slept in the back last night with nothing between her and the dirt floor.
“Nothing to forgive.” She said, “I should have crossed the bridge like Yulduz told me.”
Tein blurted out, “Yulduz?”
“Yes. She told me about you. A black man as big as Solomon’s Gates coming to get me. She told me to curse you for it.”
Ammar looked between the two of them.
“You are Tansholpan.”
“Should I curse you?”
Tein shrugged but could see Ammar stiffen out of the corner of his eye.
She asked, “Aren’t you afraid of me?”
“Sorry, no.”
“Yulduz said you were godless.” Tansholpan added, saying almost as an afterthought, “May God bring a spark of faith to your heart and may it set fire to longing for Him.”
“If my mother could not light that fire, I doubt your prayers will.”
Ammar interrupted, “Enough, let’s go.” He waved her forward, saying to Tein, “Take her.”
She pulled back. “No one touches me.”
Ammar asked, “You won’t run?”
“I’ll come. Are you bringing me to the girl?”
“First, we have to question you, then yes.”
Tansholpan nodded. “Fine.”
They started toward the main road out of the square, one on either side of her.
Ammar stopped, then spoke over her to Tein, “Go get that watchman out of the tavern and straighten him out. I want his name.”
Tein raised his eyebrows, mocking, “You’ll walk her back alone?”
“Catch up. No drinking.”
Tein didn’t bother objecting. It’d only be admitting he wanted it.
Tein watched them go, then crossed to the tavern. The old men sat on stools, cups before them, eyeing him with wine-soaked eyes. He called out into the shop, “Watchman, come out. You’ve been seen.”
He stood in the doorway, drunk. Tein waved him forward. “Come on, it’s a long walk back to the Round City, you’ll have time to sober up.”
The watchman slurred, “My office is on Qayyari road.”
“But my boss wants you to come with me. He’s going to have you drawn down.”
The man grabbed the doorway to hold himself up as he leaned back to get the insult from his throat to spit at Tein, “Zanji! Come with you! Drawn down?” He grasped at the black turban half-cocked on his head and threw at it Tein. “Take your black turban. I’m done.”
Tein let the turban hit him without reaching for it or flinching. It hit the ground without Tein so much as looking at it. But it hit its mark, a wave of exhaustion washed through him. “Don’t go back to your office, then. They’ll have news of you.”
“I’ll go for the wages owed me.”
One of the old men tugged the watchman down. “Sit do
wn and shut up.”
Tein replied to the old man, “Not likely.”
He left the watchman in the tavern, making his way out of the square, returning through the small streets and alleyways as quickly as he could without betraying his limp. Not far from the Fruit Seller’s Gate, he saw the Turkmen woman’s bright red robe and bare head in the crowd. She was as tall as an average man, and stood well over Ammar. He wasn’t touching her, and she wasn’t looking to get away. He caught up behind them, close enough to see that Ammar was walking with a strange gait, pulling to the left away from her then correcting back. It was slight, but it was there. Ammar was afraid.
Tein fell in beside Tansholpan. She did not acknowledge him but kept walking straight ahead. Ammar nodded at him. Tein wanted to mock him for being afraid of her. He was putting these women’s lives at risk because he saw them as unworthy of justice. And him, who was he to Ammar? When would Ammar decide that he was not worthy, that he was too African, too unbelieving? Too lost?
Ammar suddenly stopped and looked behind him, searching in the crowd.
Tein asked, “What is it?”
“I heard somebody calling out to me. The same thing I heard before.”
“What?”
Ammar turned around twice, searching, and didn’t answer.
“What?”
Looking hard at Tansholpan, Ammar pushed ahead. “Nothing.”
As they were partway up the bridge leading into the Basra Gate, the wind whipped around and pulled at Tansholpan’s robe, loosening her sash and blowing her long grey braids every which way. She clutched at her robe so it would not blow open and raised her hand to her hair. Tein watched as Ammar nearly fell off the wide bridge as if her gesture were a ritual calling of demons. Tansholpan herself almost stumbled back from the wind. Tein put his hand behind her, without touching her, in case she needed help. Ammar looked at him, for just a moment, wild-eyed with fear, then it passed. Tein had seen that fear on the battlefield. They’d all had it. But for something real before them. Men with battle-axes and swords screaming forward against them, not an old woman with empty threats.
The Jealous Page 13
