The Jealous

by Laury Silvers

  Her back stiffened. She was stuck for words. She and Mustafa were meant to walk home together and talk. She could not go to this man’s home and sit with his women. Her best clothes were not good enough for anything other than being their washerwoman. She looked at Mustafa, trying to convey her discomfort, but he simply smiled and nodded to her. She didn’t reply, which they took as assent, and began walking along the mosque road, deeper into Rusafa and further away from the bridge that would bring them back to Karkh.

  Ibn Salah addressed her, “I found the sermon edifying.”

  Her lips were tight. What could she say? That she had barely been able to hear it and what she had heard inspired her to curse the imam, indeed them all, before she stopped trying to listen entirely?

  Mustafa must have sensed her mood, he broke in, “Zaytuna is aware of the case we were discussing. She has, on occasion, been able to help the police in their investigations. It would be helpful to me if you included her in our discussion.”

  Ibn Salah’s eyebrows raised. “Truly?”

  She wanted to spit the word back at him, but she kept her mouth shut for Mustafa’s sake.

  “Well, then,” Ibn Salah said, “I would like to clarify a point from our earlier conversation.”

  “Yes?”

  “I believe I might have left you with the impression that I was unhappy with the outcome of Imam Hashim’s hearing. I was not. I was concerned that Qadi Abu Burhan’s relationship with Imam Hashim would overshadow the case unfairly. If so, I would have appealed it to the Mazalim High Court for examination by the Chief Judge. Despite the judge’s obvious preference for the defendant, Imam Hashim, the ruling was not unfair in and of itself.”

  Zaytuna was confused.

  Mustafa said, “I thought you were angered by the result.”

  “No. I was angered by the threat that scholars should not have to face charges brought by the vulnerable against them, and their retribution on my family for doing just that.”

  “But…” Mustafa said.

  “Let me explain, I petitioned the court to address the harm being done to her. Ideally, a pious young woman such as that should be freed. Slavery is not ideal for such people, except in cases where the family who cares for them values their worship and helps them preserve it.”

  Zaytuna’s mind was screaming, ‘Such people’! So, then, there are people who do and do not deserve to be enslaved!

  Mustafa was focused on Ibn Salah. “But you said that if she killed the Imam, it would be understandable.”

  Ibn Salah explained, “Yes, I did. For the behaviour she had to endure previously.”

  Zaytuna’s eyes were on the ground, and her mind was racing. Previously? As if the harm had ended! Her voice rang in her ears. She looked up. Both men were staring at her, Ibn Salah concerned and Mustafa horrified. She realized she had spoken her protest aloud, not to herself. She straightened her back and would not be ashamed. “Fine, then,” and went on, demanding, “Don’t you think he still took her as he liked?”

  “Ah,” Ibn Salah said, bowing his head and taking a reasonable tone, “I grasp the misunderstanding. His taking her as he liked was not the source of the harm. The source of the harm was the interruption of her obligatory worship. Qadi Abu Burhan’s ruling solved the problem. The harm done to her was now in her own control. If she did her prayers on time, then her obligations to God would not be interrupted when he chose to be with her.”

  Zaytuna’s face grew hotter with his every word, “But she did not want to have sex with him!”

  He spoke slowly, “A woman’s ‘wanting’ or ‘not wanting’ is no arbiter of what is best for her once she is married or enslaved and thus is not a matter of legal redress. It is harm that we must address, and harm was addressed in this case.”

  She looked at Mustafa, but he did not say anything. His face was hard and his eyes were on the road ahead of them. She replied to Ibn Salah just as slowly, “No. The harm is in her not wanting.”

  Ibn Salah stopped walking, and Zaytuna turned to face him. Mustafa carried on a few steps, then turned back. She took one look at his blanched face and knew all was lost. He was not going to support her.

  “Fascinating,” Ibn Salah said. “Your position is that even when a man has sexual rights over a woman, her want should be the determiner of whether or not they engage in sex; otherwise, there is harm, or, would you even argue, rape?”

  She didn’t mean to, but she heard herself screeching, “Yes! And that is exactly what she said! He raped her,” then added with sarcastic venom, “even after the ‘legal harm’ was addressed.”

  He took a step back from the force of her words, his brows knitted in worry. He looked at Mustafa to intervene. Mustafa only looked between the two of them in shock. She kept her hands flat by her side to keep from slapping them both.

  Ibn Salah turned to Mustafa and said, “Perhaps today is not a good day for lunch, your cousin is quite upset. We can meet in the morning to discuss these matters.”

  Mustafa turned and looked at Zaytuna. She could see he was no longer confused nor shocked. Colour had returned to his face and he was furious with her. She took a step back. He had never once in his life looked at her with such censure. They had disagreed. They had fought. But never had she seen this look. She exclaimed, “God protect me!”

  Mustafa answered Ibn Salah, but had his eyes on Zaytuna, “My cousin feels things deeply. She speaks from her heart. I apologize to you for the tenor of this conversation.” He turned to Ibn Salah, “I assure you all will be well, or I would send her home without me. Most important, the enslaved girl’s case must be addressed. I beg of you, if it would not inconvenience your family, that we go on.”

  Ibn Salah bowed to Mustafa, never looking at Zaytuna, and said, “Then please come ahead, we are just there on the right.”

  The two men walked on while she stood still, wanting to run screaming in the other direction. But she found her feet following them, walking behind them, until she was through the door to his home. A servant, or is she a slave, she thought bitterly, guided her into a room off of the central courtyard in which three women sat on couches around a low table, while two boys played with wooden horsemen on the floor beside them.

  The servant spoke to the eldest woman quietly. She looked Zaytuna up and down, then smiled and graciously called her over to sit with them, “My dear, my dear! What a blessing from God, come and sit.”

  Zaytuna walked to the table, hardly knowing how she moved. She only came to herself as she sank into the thick couch and felt the softness of the silk covering the cushion under her hand. The women smelled of jasmine and vanilla and wore richly embroidered, quilted gowns, their hair uncovered. She did not compare the roughness of her clothes and head wrap, but instead straightened her back. Her mother was a greater woman, a queen who sat beside God’s throne, a finer woman in her rough woolen shifts and wraps, than these women sewn up in gold thread and skin so pale they looked like they never left the house.

  She could only just hear the men talking in the courtyard through the thick curtain that covered the arched doorway. As much as she hated Ibn Salah, she was furious all over again because she was barred from hearing the facts of the case alongside Mustafa. She wondered if he would share them with her, or if she was no longer “sensible” enough to warrant inclusion in their debates about women’s lives.

  The elder woman had been speaking to her and she realized she’d not heard the introductions and did not know their names. She tried to focus on what the woman was saying, “My son says you are the cousin of his guest? Are you married?”

  “No, not married. He isn’t my natural cousin; we were raised together.”

  “Ah,” his mother said.

  Zaytuna watched her search for an acceptable definition for their relationship given that they were out in the street together without a chaperone. Then his mother found it. “You are milk-siblings, alhamdulillah.”

  She sorely wanted to tell her that she and Mustafa had not,
in fact, nursed from each other’s mothers to make them as good as blood-siblings, just to see her reaction. Instead, she nodded in assent.

  Ibn Salah’s sons began to complain from their place on the carpet that they were hungry. Their mother shushed them, then returned to look at Zaytuna, eyes wide, like a lamb to slaughter.

  Ibn Salah’s sister raised her hand to a servant, waiting across the room, then said, “You were at Friday prayers? We never go.”

  “What would you do in the mosque my daughter other than expose yourself to men who are not in a position to marry you?”

  “You would have me expose myself to men in a position to marry me?” His sister stifled a laugh.

  Her mother slapped her hand lightly. “You know that is not what I meant.”

  Leaning in toward her mother, she assured her, “Of course not.”

  Ibn Salah’s wife quipped, “No one is in a position to marry her.”

  The women laughed at this comment, leaving Zaytuna at a loss.

  His sister explained, “I am all the scandal, I will not marry. They complain that all I do is write poetry and ignore men who are chosen for my benefit.”

  Zaytuna looked at her, amazed. A woman like her. But why? She seemed so happy and secure in herself. What had Zaytuna done but push away a good man she’d known her whole life into the arms of another woman because she was in too much cursed pain to accept him? If she had the easy confidence of this woman, maybe things would be different. Her anger turned to exhaustion and she felt like she might cry. She set her jaw and opened her eyes. I will not cry.

  The servant came in with a pitcher, basin, and a towel for them to wash their hands before the meal. The girl was a well-fed Arab from the countryside, dressed in clothes far better than her own. Her wrap was around her waist like an apron, and her headscarf tied behind her head, allowing a straggly braid of reddish-brown hair to hang down her back. The wrap and scarf were in matching material, a beautiful block-printed repeating design of large red flowers, so many petals you could fall into them, like twenty roses become one rose. The girl placed the basin before Zaytuna first. Zaytuna flinched, then held out her hands over the basin. The girl poured a thin stream of warm water from the long-nosed pitcher over them. She rubbed her fingers together and then around her palms. She didn’t know how women like this washed their hands in front of others, at a table like this, but she refused to be ashamed. If it was wrong, so be it. The servant put the pitcher back and offered her the towel to dry her hands. She took it from her, drying them completely and handed it back. The servant placed the basin before Ibn Salah’s mother, who, Zaytuna, was relieved to see, washed her hands in the way she had herself.

  Ibn Salah’s wife asked, “Are you married?”

  Zaytuna allowed the pain of the situation to show on her face, a look as if a terrible secret had been wrenched from her, and said, “God in His wisdom has made me barren, no man will have me because of it. Walhamdulillah, my cousin,” nodding to the old woman, “my ‘milk-brother’, Mustafa has taken pity on me and cares for me now that my own mother and father are long passed, may God have mercy on their souls.”

  Ibn Salah’s mother and wife gasped. His wife tried to reach across the table to her to comfort her. But his sister only looked at her, one eyebrow raised with a critical smile, as she washed her hands. Zaytuna nearly yelled aloud at God, Protect me from these women!

  Ibn Salah’s wife spoke, her voice strangely cheerful, given Zaytuna’s revelation, “God’s wisdom is gracious. I never see my Abu Mubarak, he is so busy with work. You are better off as you are.”

  The women sat in awkward silence as the servant retreated to bring in the food. Zaytuna could hear Mustafa’s voice in the next room and became angry at that again, too.

  Mustafa watched in awe as servant bore a large platter for the men heaped with lamb shank stewed with gourd and apricots and large rounds of white flour bread. Ibn Salah tore off a piece of bread and put it before Mustafa, then picked up the shank before him and placed it closest to Mustafa in the communal dish and said, “Please, bismillah, eat.”

  Mustafa replied, “Thank you, bismillah ar-rahman ar-rahim,” and tore off a piece of the bread, dipping it into the stew. Mustafa, so distracted by the case they had been discussing, placed it unthinkingly in his mouth. The moment he tasted it, he sat up and turned and looked at Ibn Salah with a look of wonder on his face, at the depth of flavour, the delicacy of the spices.

  Ibn Salah smiled and gestured again to take another bite, and he took his first. They ate in silence. Mustafa was grateful. He did not know how he could talk and eat this food at the same time. It would be a sin to deny the beauty of the meal and a sin to enjoy it while speaking of Mu’mina’s case. Mustafa ate more than he intended, more even than he could manage, and finally said, “Alhamdulillah.”

  Ibn Salah laughed lightly. “I won’t insist you eat more, you seem sated.”

  Mustafa looked at him guiltily. “God forgive me, I have lost touch with the Prophet’s example of only filling one’s stomach one-third with food. May it be a compliment to your home.”

  “Our cook has a golden hand. But the Prophet, God bless him, peace upon him and his family and companions, ate heartily when there was gourd in his stew.” Ibn Salah winked at Mustafa. “Since today we ate gourd, there is a sunna for your indulgence.”

  Mustafa laughed uncomfortably, knowing that Zaytuna would disagree.

  Ibn Salah reprised their conversation, “Is there any chance she is not guilty?”

  “My old friend, Tein, insists that she is innocent. He argues that it is unlikely that she killed him, and certainly not in the way she believes. Her confession is based on her own misunderstanding, but she will not hear otherwise! She will not retract her confession beyond saying that it was involuntary. My understanding is that she wants to be held responsible for it in this life rather than pay for it in the next.”

  “Her fear of God is commendable, but she must not be allowed to confess to a crime she did not commit. You must understand that I cannot speak for her as her representative if she is present to address the plaintiff’s accusation of murder herself. If she affirms her written confession orally, she will be found guilty and sentenced.” He took a moment to think. “But there may be a way. I could put myself forward as her representative, despite her presence in the court, by claiming that she is not intellectually capable of speaking to her confession.” He nodded in satisfaction at his solution. “She is a woman, a slave, and black, it will not be difficult.”

  Mustafa was stuck in-between the horror of the comment, made so easily and implicating the capacities of those who were family to him, and the hope that using such a ruse presented. He was never so glad that Zaytuna was not with him.

  Ibn Salah continued, “Barring exculpatory evidence, I can dispute her confession and introduce doubt. We must hope that evidence pointing in other directions will come to light.”

  “But surely it should be enough that there is insufficient evidence to determine her guilt?”

  Ibn Salah said, “There are many ‘ifs’. If her confession is set aside. If Ibn al-Zayzafuni is willing to hear the case. And if your friend is permitted to give evidence as an expert to the unreliability of her confession and other possible means of murder. He must be investigated for his trustworthiness first, though. He may not be approved.”

  Mustafa became afraid. One look at Tein’s drinking habits and he would be denied. “No, it would not be my friend. It would be his superior, Ammar at-Tabbani. Ammar is an honourable man. He is a ghazi; there should be no trouble there.”

  Ibn Salah picked a piece of lint from his wrap. “That will hold weight, but the police are not considered reliable overall.”

  Mustafa surely saw the reason in that, most were thugs. But not Ammar, and not Tein, despite his weaknesses.

  “I believe Ibn al-Zayzafuni will be willing to entertain these doubts in his court. He and I have discussed his longing for the days under the Umayyads
when judges were as King Solomon in his court, asking questions of those presenting evidence to get to the truth of the matter. He has railed that a judge’s acumen is limited to simply weighing the evidence before him rather than determining the truth for himself.” Ibn Salah frowned. “Privately, and do not share this, he has called the present system no better than a judicial marketplace, litigants coming and going before him so quickly that he can see as many as fifty cases a day.”

  “And the fate of the cursewriter?”

  “That is another issue.”

  Mustafa said, worried, “I don’t know if they have the talisman or not. Will they need it?”

  “If the judge is so inclined, he could have the talisman maker investigated for a new trial of heresy even if Mu’mina is let go. She would have no way to defend herself without the evidence of the talisman herself. God knows there is nothing wrong with written prayers of protection, but we don’t know that is what she wrote.” Ibn Salah pivoted, his eyes alight with new interest, “My son is working for a Chinese man, new to Baghdad. He is producing prayers of protection to hang on the wall using the technique of block printing.”

  “A Chinese man?” Could it be YingYue’s father?

  A servant came in and placed a tray of small pastries before them. He had only ever seen them in shops. Gazelle horns. Almonds ground with white sugar and butter, then baked in a thin pastry shell. So out of reach had they been to him until now, he had not realized that he had craved them. He looked at the pastries and realized he could now afford them and smiled.

  Ibn Salah lifted the tray to him. Mustafa took one. The crust flaked away with his first bite. He savoured its delicate filling, sighing with pleasure.

  Ibn Salah smiled. “My cook is from the Maghreb. She makes these for me, although they can be found in the shops. I’ll have some of these wrapped for you to take home with you.”

  Mustafa smiled at the thought of it and asked, “The man your son works for, what is his name?”