The Jealous

by Laury Silvers

  “Her brother?” Tein asked.

  “He came every Friday for prayers and a meal afterwards.”

  Tein asked, “If she had family, why…”

  Hushang went to take another sip of wine, then put the glass down instead. “She liked the work. She was a tough one. She’d go with him on Friday and take the meal. She loved her brother, but she wasn’t going to leave this world.”

  Saliha tipped her head to Tein. “We’re not all lost girls you know, waiting to be rescued.”

  The man nodded and glanced out the window.

  “Her brother,” Tein asked, “what’s his…”

  Hushang stood suddenly. “Chandi!” He said to Saliha, “She’s just outside. Let me get her for you, maybe you can take her to your man in the Police.” He rushed out the door.

  Tein stood just as quickly after him, knocking the table hard and spilling what was left of the stew. “If she’s been to Grave Crimes, she might recognize me. This ends now. I have to get you out of here.”

  Saliha grabbed his arm from where she was seated. “No, Tein. Do you want to give up on Mu’mina for my sake? Chandi won’t recognize me! Only men brought us Farzaneh’s body to wash.” Her eyes widened with insistence. “I knew I recognized the guard. He was one of them! Thank God, my face was covered when I came in.”

  “What? I don’t understand.”

  “Tein, I washed her for burial. I washed Farzaneh’s body.”

  They looked out the window. Hushang was speaking to a beautiful, copper-skinned woman in a warm, but coarsely woven men’s gown. He gestured toward the tavern. Tein stepped out of view so she couldn’t see him.

  She stood and made her way to the door. “The one who carried the woman from the hospital can’t see my face, but she will recognize you.”

  Tein tried to pull her back. “Maybe there is a way out back for me. You go out the front. If they ask, say I changed my mind.”

  Shaking his hand off, she insisted, “No. Wait here.” And she walked out the door to the courtyard before he could stop her.

  Chapter Twenty

  It was nearly dark by the time Tansholpan and Mu’mina were marched by guards out of the Round City, across the boat bridge into Rusafa, and to a cell in Qadi Ibn al-Zayzafuni’s home meant for those awaiting trial in his court. Tein had told them not to worry, but the guards taunted them that the judge’s cell would be worse than the one they’d left. “You’ll be begging to be executed after one night in that sewer!” After crossing the bridge, they turned onto the river road and stopped before a three-story mansion on the river. The guard laughed as he knocked on the gate. “You’ll be knee-deep in river water and have to sleep standing up!”

  The judge’s guard opened the gate to the house and took control of them from the police guards. He pushed the two around the side of the house and up a stairwell. Tansholpan thought, We’ll not be in water after all. They came out into a long hallway. The guard stepped ahead of them, unlocked a heavy arched double-door and pushed Tansholpan and Mu’mina into the room that would be their cell. Tansholpan let out a small cry and looked to the girl. Her eyes were wide. This was no prison; this was a guest room fit for the Caliph himself. The only difference to her was that the door could only be bolted shut on the outside. So this is how the wealthy waited for their day in court.

  A magnificent oil lamp stood on the floor. The copper had been shaped into a Solomon’s Seal three hands wide. Wicks lay across the gutters in each of its six points. Not just that. Seven copper lanterns hung from the beams in the roof and swayed with the breeze coming from the balcony, pin pricks of light scattered throughout the room.

  Why her? Why Mu’mina? Rooms like this were not for the likes of them. The guard, too, was surprised. “Who are you two to be getting this?” He looked them up and down. “They should take you both to the stables to scrub you down.” He tipped his head to a door on the farther side. “They shouldn’t even let you bathe in there. God knows they’ll have to burn all of it after you’ve gone from the vermin you’ve brought with you from the prison.”

  The young guard’s accent made him out to be from the countryside, where she didn’t know. Her Arabic was not good enough for that, but it wasn’t a Baghdadi accent. His shoulders and arms were bulky like he’d grown up lifting sheep and goats. His muscles strained under the black robe of his uniform.

  He walked over to one of the beds where clothes had been laid out. These were fabrics Tansholpan had never touched in her life. She’d only seen clothes like this up close when the wealthy women came themselves to ask for curses that they could not entrust to their slaves or servants. The guard was none too happy about the clothes, either. He lifted a long rectangular red scarf that floated away from his rough hand. It was silk patterned with flying birds with glorious wingspans. The guard pushed the scarf at her. “Cover your hair old woman! Just because no man can put a kid goat in you doesn’t mean you should be letting your hair hang the way it does.” He turned on her, “What are your men like that they don’t know how to keep you in line?”

  In the yellow light of the oil lamps, he had the face of a child. Soft, feminine, and innocent. No, it was like a woman who had never lived. His wide brown eyes had large black irises like the houri girls of Paradise. Should I tell him, she thought, that he is, with all his muscles and ugly manhood, no better than one of the young creatures meant to be a virgin fucked over and over and over again into eternity?

  They waited along the wall for him to leave. Mu’mina had her hands flat against it as if she thought she could spring away in flight if he came near. She did not have to worry. Tansholpan knew how to kill a man like that. Turkmen girls grew up learning to wrestle just as the boys did. Each one of them a warrior, an archer, a spear-holder. It wasn’t all weaving and animal husbandry, for God’s sake. She could, especially now in her old age when she would be underestimated, move around behind a man, even when he’d laid hands on her already, and catch his throat in the crook of her arm and press it shut for good. But she kept her back to the wall, too. Let him think he was their master. No need for you to prove yourself on us, boy.

  He finally left the room after looking them over, as if to say that he had decided not to rape them. He wouldn’t do that. Not this one, she thought. He loves his purity. But the threat of rape, that was delicious to him.

  She heard the bolt slide into place and tried to take Mu’mina’s hand, but the girl pulled it away with a jerk.

  Tansholpan walked ahead of her, past a tray heaped with every sort of fruit, cheese, and bread, all beyond her imagination, to the room where they would wash. Mu’mina followed her. The scent of jasmine so filled the room that she caught its scent before they even entered. She took a deep breath, savouring it. A long, oblong tub made of hammered copper sat in the middle, each dimple in the copper catching the light of the lanterns. There were only four small lanterns but that was better. No need to see how filthy they were. A thick carpet was covering the whole floor. She supposed the wealthy didn’t worry about such fine things getting wet.

  There were no servants to help them, but the tub had been filled already. She touched the water. It was hot, the kind of water that got all the pain out of your bones. The first would get a clean bath. She walked around it. There was a tap at one end to empty the tub’s water to a sluice that went out the wall facing the Tigris. A copper kettle too big to be carried by one person sat on a beautifully wrought brazier, water simmering over hot coals.

  She saw light flickering beyond and realized there was a third room. She left Mu’mina beside the tub and went in. She laughed. “A latrine!” There was a hole in the floor and pots of water next to it for washing and squares of old cloth in a pile on a small table. She looked out the small window. It was too dark, but she could smell that the dung collector needed to come by and clean out the catchment below. So this is how it’s done in the big houses? She turned to the girl, “I was in the baths two days ago, you get in. I’ll use this kettle here to wash up w
hen you are done.” She pointed to towels folded on a bench along and squares of soap and a loofah and left the rooms.

  Two glorious beds had been laid out for them on either side. Beds. Not bedrolls. Not mattresses filled with straw, either. She lifted back the linens and felt it. It was feather with something firmer within. She sat on it. It had to be feather surrounding wool. And the food laid out for them? There were soft and hard cheeses, nuts and fruit, dried and fresh, laid out on a low tray in the centre of the room. There were soft, moist dates speckled with fennel seed. Pomegranates were cracked open to reveal the red jewels within. Apples had been sliced and rubbed with vinegar so they would not brown. There were dried melons and grapes, a mountain of grapes. The tray was as wide as her arms could stretch, and it shone like silver. Its edges were inlaid with bone and red and orange gemstones. She laughed with pleasure when she saw the bread. There were loaves made from white flour, still warm from the oven and not even burnt around the edges. Next to them was a bowl of quince jam flavoured with saffron and sugar.

  A large bowl and pitcher was set out for washing hands on its own tray near the food. She kneeled before it. The rug gave beneath her, soft on her old knees. She poured water into the bowl, and the scent of citron hit her, tingling her nose. She rubbed her hands together in the water until they were clean enough, and wiped them dry on the hand towel folded beside it, then set about the food.

  She folded her long sleeves back so she could dig in freely. There was no need to wait for Mu’mina. She said aloud to herself, “I’ve never had white flour bread, let me have that first.” Then she reached across for the jar, “And jam.” She’d only ever had the scent of saffron at the marketplace. Her friend, Fatiha, teased her that only a curse meant to kill the Caliph could be bartered for a few of its delicate stems. She tore off a piece of bread, revealing shiny white gaps where the leavening had made it rise like nothing she’d ever seen. She pulled at a bite of it with the sturdy teeth on the right side of her mouth and chewed. It was soft and sour, substantial and good.

  She took her wooden spoon out of her robe pocket and laid it beside the delicately hammered spoon next to the jam pot. She laughed lightly, saying to the old thing, “We’ve come far, you and me. From tents on the plains to this palace on the Tigris. I think you deserve to go into that pot of jam, don’t you?” She dipped the thick edged spoon into the jam pot, filling its bowl, and then stuck the whole thing in her mouth. Tansholpan savoured the depth and warmth of the saffron’s golden subtlety, the brightness of the quince holding it like a jewel. She swallowed and laughed again. She laughed so loudly that her gut began to jiggle, then she began to cackle, cough, and cry from the pleasure of it all. She called out to Mu’mina, “Get out here before I eat all this jam!”

  Mu’mina came out not long after, wound in one of the towels, so wide and long that it dragged behind her, looking all the rich lady except her shorn head. No, not a lady, Tansholpan thought. The golden light caught her high cheekbones with those extraordinary scars lining them to draw the eye just so, the elegant shape of her skull exposed, lifting her as if she were a glorious black bird from another world, unknown even to Tansholpan herself. The words burst out of her, “You come from royalty! You are nothing if not a queen! Bilqis, the Queen of Sheba, before she was under the thumb of King Solomon!”

  Mu’mina looked at her harshly. Tansholpan wrinkled her brow, not understanding. It was a lovely thing to say! What woman wouldn’t want to be compared to Bilqis? She shook it off and pushed herself up away from the food. She met the girl beside the bed, and they sorted through the clothes. Tansholpan took a large gown, a beautiful white muslin with soft and delicate embroidery on the edges, and a robe in red quilted silk to cover herself and went off to the bathroom to wash.

  When she came back out, she saw that Mu’mina had also chosen one of the muslin gowns. The embroidered sleeves fell out delicately from the wide-sleeves of an outer robe, woolen and striped in different shades of green. She had wrapped her head in the red silk scarf that the guard had handled. She was kneeling before the food, reaching over the large tray to take a piece of dried melon.

  “Take a small bite only, see how it goes down,” Tansholpan warned her.

  Mu’mina looked at her askance.

  Tansholpan took up a small copper pitcher with a long-nose. “Have you had this?”

  The girl nodded, then closed her eyes as she took a large bite out of the melon.

  Tansholpan filled a glass with the dark, milky liquid speckled with poppy seeds and looked at it in the light. She sat down then took a sip, wincing at its sickening sweetness.

  Mu’mina said, “It’s awful,” then indicated another pitcher on the tray. “There is plain water in that one.”

  “Thank you.” Tansholpan raised her eyebrows.

  Without looking at her, Mu’mina asked, “When you went into a trance, for the curse I got, using that instrument you played…”

  “The kobyz.”

  “Were you born like you are? Did your people know?”

  “Yes.” Tansholpan tore off another piece of the white bread.

  “What did your people do about you?”

  She took a moment to think about how she should tell the story. Mu’mina should know that she understood what she was going through. She, too, had been stuck by forces beyond her control and had found a way out.

  “I was small. My father was out with the men, hunting. I saw through the eyes of the deer he was after. I heard his footfall and saw my father raise the bow to me. I was gripped with fear and fled without thinking. My body, the deer’s body, leapt and the arrow flew by. I turned and tried to tell him that I was his daughter. I heard myself bleating, screeching in the deer’s voice. He raised his bow again and I ran into the woods. Then I woke up to myself. My mother bent over me. I was trembling, cold and hot all at once. I told her everything.”

  “And your father?” Mu’mina asked.

  “He forced me to live in the old shaman woman’s tent with her bones, claws, bits of fur, and drums. I hated it. Her food was not like my mother’s. Her blankets smelled of the herbs and bones she boiled. I tried to escape three times but my father took me by the ear and dragged me back. So I learned the kobyz from the old woman, so she would think she taught me something. She did teach me. I learned how to leave my body whenever I liked. I would play the kobyz and go visit my mother. I smelled the meat and bulgur cooking. I saw that she missed me. So I snuck out of the tent one day and told my mother what I planned. She held me, sobbing, and told me not to do it. She said I must stay. I did it anyway. I pretended I had lost my gift so I could live with my mother again and learn to wrestle and fight and weave like the other girls. The old woman made me take the kobyz with me, but she let me go.”

  “So,” Mu’mina said, “you thought you could do as you liked with such a powerful gift.”

  Tansholpan pulled her head back at the words, but more so the dismissive tone, objecting, “I was smart.”

  Mu’mina did not answer. Her silence a rebuke Tansholpan did not understand. Why wouldn’t this girl speak? She pushed her, “Who shaved your head?”

  Mu’mina glared at her. “Imam Hashim’s wife thought it would stop him from coming to me.” She turned back to the food. “If that would have worked, I would have shaved it myself.”

  “You sat still for it!”

  Mu’mina looked at her as if she had lost her mind. “She had a razor in her hand.”

  Tansholpan raised her eyebrows, thinking she’d have done something.

  Mu’mina grasped another piece of melon. “Why did you make a talisman to kill the Imam?”

  “I didn’t write it to kill him.” She explained, “I wrote it to free you. If that is how you were to be freed, then so be it.”

  Mu’mina’s voice was cold, “I didn’t ask you for that.”

  “Don’t you want to be free!” Tansholpan’s anger flared.

  Mu’mina looked her in the eyes, unflinchingly. “If I wanted to
have the blood of another human being on my hands, I would have killed him myself.”

  “I don’t understand you.” Tansholpan stood in frustration.

  Mu’mina gripped the table. “You did what you wanted. I’m paying the price.”

  “But you will be freed!”

  “You filthy, stupid dog.” Mu’mina hissed, “At what cost to my soul?”

  “You speak this way to me after all I’ve done for you!” Tansholpan began to shake as she looked down on the girl.

  Mu’mina’s voice rose with each word, “You put a man’s death on me. Then you, you and all these people deny me the right to pay for it in this life by execution. You all have damned me in the next!”

  “I’ve freed you!” Tansholpan shouted, “I can see it. I have the vision. You do not.”

  She turned her back to Mu’mina, took off her robe, got into the bed, and pulled the covers over her as she turned toward the wall to end this conversation. She fussed with the linen. What a thing to accuse me of! She turned over, unable to get comfortable in the soft bed, then turned back to the wall. She pulled the covers up over her head, grumbling. Then she smelled roses. The linens were scented with rose water. She took in the scent. Focusing on it soothed her. That girl, she doesn’t know what’s right for her. She’ll see. Then she’ll wish she thanked me. It’ll be too late, then, so God forgive her. She’s not the first girl to give me a piece of her mind and regret it later. She took a deep breath, then another. Observing her breath, she finally felt the softness of the feather bed hold her. She rolled onto her back and snuggled down into the covers. She wanted to feel every bit of this bed before she died. Who could deny her a few of the pleasures of this world before she traveled to the next? I don’t have much, she thought, but I’ll take this.

  Tansholpan opened her eyes with a start, wondering that she’d slept at all. She had fallen asleep without realizing as she lay in bed trying to savour every moment, waiting for moonrise so she could see its light cast on the Tigris. Now it was morning and she had to face this ungrateful girl. She hoped a good night’s sleep in such luxury brought some sense to her. Of course, Tansholpan reasoned, she is angry over all that has happened to her. She needs someone to blame. Tansholpan accepted the burden of it. I will be that for her, then. But she was still reluctant to turn and face her. There was a sharp knock at the door. She shot up and yelled, “Ho! You wait! We’re not dressed!”