Ammar said, “Sir…”
Ibn Marwan held up a hand. “No, you wait. There is more. I am also visited by a representative of the Amir of the best gambling houses in Karkh. The Amir has complained. Why? Because he pays people more important than me to keep the police and the marketplace inspectors out of his business. Yet you send Tein into one of his establishments, with some woman, without my permission, to question them.”
Ammar took it.
“I had to posture a bit to the Amir’s man about the scholars. I said that, no matter the protection he enjoys, the scholars cannot be touched. The man graciously said he’d handle the trouble on his end.”
Ammar stammered, thinking he was speaking in Tein’s defence, “We have, uh, we have evidence gathered from that visit, that one of the prostitutes there may have killed the Imam.”
“You will be relieved to know, then, that we have her in custody.” He looked at a paper on his desk, then lifted his head. “Chandi. She is already in the cells below.”
“What?”
“As the man said, they would handle it on their end. So the Amir had her brought to us with the same man to explain. I didn’t ask how they got it out of her, but she did not look in particularly good shape. She confessed to them that she got the poison from an herbalist she knew, some man from Sind, like her, apparently. He has also been arrested. She had poisoned cookies made and sent them home with the Imam. He ate them and died. Case closed. I suppose we have Tein to thank for the resolution of the case, but at what cost?”
“But, sir, she may not have done it. There is also evidence that the Imam’s wife or brother-in-law could have poisoned him. And…”
Ibn Marwan held up his hand again to stop him. “They already complained of you to al-JarJara’i’s office. You got out of it, but you want to get back into it? Do you want me to be executed by the vizier’s command alongside you? The prostitute confessed. The herbalist will confess; we will make sure of that. I will not send it on to the Chief, though. I’m not risking his attention on us. No, we’ll leave them in the cells below and let them rot.” He looked at Ammar so as to make his point perfectly clear, “You will not be involved.”
Ammar forced himself to speak again, “Sir, we have a witness saying that the wife paid to have the slave poisoned, to abort her child.”
Ibn Marwan slammed his hand down on the desk beside him. “Stop!”
Ammar shuddered as if he had been slapped with the broad side of a sword.
“I won’t hear anything more about it. We’re done.”
Ammar began to feel sick to his stomach, churning, and dizzy. He put his eyes on the couch several steps from him and managed to put one foot ahead of the other. He sat down onto it and put his head between his knees.
Ibn Marwan mocked him, “I guess you thought you were a dead man. I don’t want any more of your cock prancing among the hens around here. Don’t think I didn’t notice that Tein solved this case, not you. How do I know that hasn’t been the case since he started working under you? I could get rid of you at any moment and be just as well off.”
Ammar did not answer, he tried to focus his eyes on the pattern of the carpet between his feet. His head felt like it would explode and his turban was all that was holding it in.
“When you are ready to lift your head, tell me about the murder of the cursewriter.”
He forced himself to look up. He thought his head was going to split right open from the pain. He managed to say, “We have one of the men who did it in the cells, but I know who the others were.”
Ibn Marwan replied, “Would you say you are among them?”
He winced. “Yes.”
Ibn Marwan sat back. “Ammar, no one cares about the cursewriter.”
Ammar stared at him. “I care.”
Ibn Marwan said, “I care about the reputation of this office.”
“It was Barbahari’s men who paraded her.”
Ibn Marwan nodded. “Barbahari’s men are a problem, but that’s more complicated.”
He wanted to get out of the room, but he knew he was meant to ask, “What do you want me to do?”
“Question the one in custody, get what you can out of him. Pass those notes on to me. It’s not a matter for Grave Crimes.”
“Don’t pursue the other men?”
“Did you hear me? This is a problem of public control and challenging the state. Not our office. Now, get out.”
Ammar stood, wobbling only slightly, and made it through the door, then past Nuruddin who called after him lazily, “That was a close one, Golden Boy.”
He got out into the middle of the arcade road and stood facing the mosque at the centre of the city. He would not die. His mother would not be shamed. He would not lose his job. The prostitute and the herbalist would suffer, whether they did it or not. He had harmed so many and there was no justice. Why was he not permitted to be martyred like Hurr to pay for what he’d done? He felt sick again. He stumbled back to the side of the road and squatted, feeling himself close to retching. A pain struck him in the side of the head as if he’d been stabbed straight through and what little he’d eaten that day came up at his feet.
He felt a hand on his back but couldn’t look. Then the hand reached in and grabbed him by the collar of his cuirass and lifted him up. Lifted him so that his feet left the ground. He flailed trying to turn around to fight, to break free but couldn’t. He looked around wildly. Why isn’t anyone stopping this! And only then he realized he wasn’t in the Round City anymore. He was dangling above the centre of a great expanse of marble floor with empty marble benches surrounding it, each row higher than the one before it. The hand let go and he fell hard, hitting his elbow on the stone. He grabbed his arm, touching his elbow then extending it. Pain shot through it, but he could move it. It wasn’t broken. He could fight.
He scrambled up to standing and turned in circles, feeling his scabbard at his side, ready for him. Where the benches had just been empty, he now saw jinn of every type taking up a seat, surrounding him. A woman in a red gown and a gazelle’s head sat at the feet of a black eagle with human eyes and twitched her ears at him. A man with a monstrous chest and a human head with two faces kept turning around and around so both sets of eyes could get a look at him. An animal with an armoured back and long nose, curled over on itself and grasped red berries from a basket next to it, feeding them one by one into the human mouth inset into its belly. Ammar touched his throat for his talisman of protection. It was gone.
At the far side stood an empty throne, large enough for ten men. An ostrich and a child with taloned feet stood on either side of it. A humming, twittering, and buzzing as if bird-bees were encircling him, filled his head. He saw the creatures coming to attention. The animal put aside its basket of berries and watched the throne. A whorl of sand and smoke hovered over the throne and slowly took shape into a man of vast stature. His skin was a purple, so dark it was nearly black, then it shimmered to the deepest red, then alabaster white, then purple again. His head carried a turban heavy with jewels of every size and colour, a great red ruby set in gold at its centre.
The Ostrich called out, “Sit in attendance. Sit in respect. The court of our King Mazin is open.”
The jinn in the assembly slapped and clapped and pounded their benches and the marble floor creating a din so extraordinary Ammar’s body shook from the sound of it.
King Mazin roared, “You have offended the jinn. What do you have to say in your defence!”
The hand that had grabbed him by the cuirass, threw him to the ground. He stared at the marble, afraid to look up, unable to speak, wanting to vomit.
The child with the taloned feet had crossed the vast distance between him and the throne and knocked his turban off his head, then whispered in his ear, “Don’t throw up in our court, you beast. Answer our King!”
Ammar choked on the words, “What do I say?”
The assembly laughed, the laughter rolling through them like a wave that crashed onto hi
m and knocked him flat to the ground. King Mazin roared again and the jinn fell quiet.
Ammar raised himself to all fours. He lifted his head to the King. “God forgive me for offending you and your court! Forgive this human. What have I done?” Then he dropped his head, “What have I not done?”
The King’s voice whirred and thrummed, “Not knowing is part of the offence.” He tipped his hand to the ostrich beside him, who craned its neck and shook its wings and feathers, until every feather had fallen to the ground revealing a woman with bumpy pink skin and white hair tipped in black, rising from her head like a fan. She wore loose leather pants, a leather tunic, and a leather cuirass. A sword was belted to her side. He saw the hilt of the sword, and immediately reached for his scabbard. It was empty. The woman had it.
Her voice was like honey spiked with shards of glass, “We will explain, so you will understand your suffering. That fool of a Turkmen woman, so like you, had power that she used in utter arrogance. She decided she would save the slave without listening to the girl’s own desires. Throughout her life she refused to listen, serving only her own lowest interests and calling it justice. She thought she knew better than the master who took her under her wing! Oh, she got what she deserved, smeared in shit and her head smashed in.” She sniggered, “We doubt she thought her prayer to free the slave girl would call us to address her suffering. Only God’s forgiveness can save her now.”
The ostrich woman gestured to King Mazin, her arm opening to him like a wing. “Our King graciously protects those vulnerable ones whom you fools have made to suffer.” She folded in her arm and stepped down from beside the throne and strutted across the court to him. She craned her head down, close enough to peck his eyes out. He covered his head with his arm. She said directly to his face, “We tried Imam Hashim for his crimes and executed him. It was a surprise and a pleasure that the prostitute gave him the poison that made him witness the act. An even worse death matching his crimes!”
She stood up and unfolded her arm, in a slow wave to the cheering crowd. “You challenged our ruling and harmed the very one our King had guarded so jealously!”
The assembly slapped and pounded so hard the floor shook.
He asked in confused terror. “She is…she is one of your own? She consorts with jinn?”
“Oh, you fool.” She laughed. “A girl loved by Lady Fatima herself, may God be well-pleased with her, ‘consorting with jinn’?” The woman looked back to King Mazin who inclined his head to her. “On the contrary, we executed the Imam in the Lady’s honour.”
Ammar lay his cheek on the cool marble floor, he trembled. “Lady Fatima asked you…”
King Mazin roared, “Ask us? She does not ask us. It is only that we hope she will be pleased.” He gestured to the ostrich woman. “You may explain.”
“Our people offered to sacrifice ourselves at Karbala and were declined. Imam Husayn turned down the offers of sorcerers and talisman makers. He stood on the plain, with his people, alone. We learned from that. We no longer ask. We only do what we can when the opportunity arises.” The woman spread her arms out, her fingers extending one by one, and screeched, “Lift your head!”
He sat up shaking, his hands up, begging for mercy.
“You knew we had judged him, yet you pursued the girl. You were rightly afraid of us, but a blameless girl scared you even more!”
King Mazin laughed, the smooth purple of his skin shimmering into black with small scars down his nose and across his cheeks. “Do you fear me more now?” Then Tein’s face shimmered over the King’s own. “Or now?”
Ammar choked, “My friend…”
The woman hissed, “You are no friend to him.”
Tears streamed down his cheeks. “What will you do to me?”
King Mazin sat back, relaxing into his throne. “You would be pleased to be executed for what you’ve done. You want the chance to martyr yourself for your deeds.”
The ostrich woman laughed. “Like Hurr!”
The crowd joined her mocking him, “Like Hurr! Like Hurr!”
The King leaned forward. “You want martyrdom? No, not for the likes of you. You will pay by living.”
The jinn stomped and slapped and screeched, barking, and yelling out in pleasure at his sentence. He looked around the court and it began to spin. He tried to sit down to stop the spinning, but he collapsed in a heap on the floor, hearing nothing.
A hand shook his shoulder. “Ammar! Ammar!”
He opened his eyes, afraid of what he would see. Trembling, his clothes were soaked through with sweat, but he saw he was back in the city. Tein was beside him.
Nuruddin was leaning in the doorway, unimpressed. “He lives.” Then pushed himself off the frame and went back inside to his office.
Tein tried to help Ammar sit up.
“I can do it,” he said as he got himself up to sitting against the wall. “I need a minute, then I can walk.”
Tein said, “You fainted. What is your punishment?”
He didn’t dare tell him what happened, instead he said, “I keep my job. I do not die. I’ve been punished by living with what I’ve done.”
Tein leaned against the wall and slid down to sit beside him.
The Eighth Day
Chapter Thirty
Nuri’s shrouded body lay beside the wide grave. Tein helped Mustafa lift him from the bier and lower him down to Nuri’s son, Husayn, and his nephew, Bariq, who stood inside the grave, waiting. Husayn took his father’s shoulders out of Tein’s hands and lay him down, while Mustafa lowered his legs to Bariq, who did the same. Husayn loosened his father’s shroud to expose his face. He squatted as best he could and took his father’s cheeks in both hands to kiss him for the last time. Husayn then turned his father’s body on its side, leaning him against the grave wall, and laid Nuri’s head on a brick for a pillow, facing the niche dug out as a qibla facing Mecca. He checked again that there were no sharp stones under him. Then he looked out of the grave, tears streaming. Tein and Mustafa took him by his hands and pulled him up and out, then Bariq. The men did not brush off the dirt from the grave on their clothes, but wore it, instead, as if it were a cloak laid on their shoulders by Nuri himself. Husayn took a handful of soil and laid the first blanket of earth over his father, reciting the verses of the Qur’an,
From earth We created you.
He grasped another handful of soil,
and We will return you to it.
Then a third,
and We will resurrect you from it.
Bariq followed, then Junayd. Junayd bent down and took a handful of soil, then Ibn Ata, then Sumnun, then Shibli, one by one all the men from the community came forward. All who knew him lined up, the beggars and shopkeepers, and those who nobody knew. Once covered, the men stamped down the grave so there was no perceptible mound.
Then his son stood forward. “God, he is your servant, the son of your servant, who testified that there is no god but You, and that Muhammad is your servant and Messenger, but you know best. If he was one who performed beautiful deeds, then increase them. If he was one who performed ugly deeds, then disregard them. God, do not refuse us his reward in kind nor try us as he was tried.”
Winding his way back through the crowd, Tein pulled shaggy breaths, needing to get away from the sea of bodies. He heard Junayd reciting from the head of the grave,
Alif, Lam, Mim, this is the book in which there is no doubt.
Tein looked out at the low, thick walls of the cemetery where the poorest of the poor had dug in small hovels to sleep and the make-shift lean-tos and tents of those just better off nearby. He wanted to pull his turban off his head and scream. He wanted to pour a jug of wine into the gaping hole within him. He wanted to grasp Saliha and pull her away from the cemetery and find someplace to love her until the world forgot about him.
He saw his mother’s grave in the distance next to the two date palms they had planted and watered as children. He wanted to walk to her and tell her that Uncle Nuri
was more of a mother to him than she ever was and now he was gone. He was sobbing and he didn’t care. What good were you to us? As he thought the words, he wanted to pound the realization out of himself. He looked back toward the women in wild-eyed sorrow. Saliha was watching him, but he couldn’t read her face He said from the emptiness within him, desperately, I am yours.
The crowd began to turn and move, the men walking around the women to pass first, Junayd and Husayn leading with Ibn Ata and Sumnun. As they passed him, the uncles put their hands over their heart to him, acknowledging each other’s grief. He heard Junayd say to them, “Half of Sufism is gone.”
Tein thought, Half of me.
Tein saw Mustafa walking just ahead of the women with YingYue’s father. YingYue was not far behind them, walking apart from the men but keeping her father and Mustafa in sight. That’s that, then. Zaytuna and Saliha had disappeared in the crowd. Mustafa caught sight of Tein and said something to YingYue’s father. YingYue came running up to take his place. Mustafa left them for Tein, hitting him with an embrace so hard that Tein stumbled back half a step. Tein wanted to grab him by the arms and push him off. The warmth of his brother’s love crowded his grief and he could barely breathe from it. Finally Mustafa let go of him and stepped back, in tears, “Tein. How are you holding up?”
“I’m not,” he admitted.
“So much has happened.”
Tein nodded, then asked, “How is Mu’mina? Is she settling in with Ibn Salah’s sister?”
Mustafa’s eyes opened wide. “Allah! After Uncle Nuri was injured, then this, I forgot to say! She’s left! As soon as the papers were signed, the money paid for her freedom, she left without saying a word to anyone. Ibn Salah’s sister said she wouldn’t speak to her on the way home. Then she snuck out. No one saw her go. She only took the warm clothes and boots they had left for her.”
Tein looked toward his mother’s grave, a sinking feeling in his gut, and said, “She’s freed and puts herself in more danger. Does she even know what will happen to her, alone on the road?”
The Jealous Page 40
