One
There are words and then there are words. Words that can bind hearts, break a marriage, rupture an empire. Words that burn in your mouth like black peppercorn, that crack the soul like bone, that linger in the air until the Day of Reckoning’s trumpets shred mountains to cotton and break the earth like an egg. Words created the dizzying spiral of our worlds—The Creator of Heavens and Earth … He but says “Be” and it Is—and so too, will they destroy it.
But for now, I call out my sister’s name and hope it draws my quarry nearer. “Dunyazade!” My slippers skid across the time-polished floor of Bam’s citadel. “Dunya!”
As my call fades around a corner, I hear a protesting voice. “… The Khwarezmid forces and Oghuz armies have each been expanding into Persia. Seljuks are falling before them in battle. Your wife’s father, Sultan Toghrul, and the Seljuk Empire itself stand on the brink of defeat.”
“Do not forget the Franks, calling themselves Crusaders, still besiege Acre. Sultan Saladin has appealed again for aid.”
I can make sense of only about half of what is being said. We have heard that the Franks have renewed their assault on the Muslims of Jerusalem, but that is a drama so far away it might as well be another world. The Oghuz and the Khwarezmids, though, are twin menaces much closer to our hearts, wild people rapidly gnawing away at our Seljuk Empire—although they are yet parasangs north of Kirman, each occupied with defeating Sultan Toghrul and his emirs.
“We shall see to it that my father-in-law receives aid. My wife will have it no other way.”
I recognize this voice immediately. The Malik.
Rounding the corner, I collide with a knot of men. Papers fly as my feet skip, my slipper slides, and I claw at the faience wall behind me for support. The Malik steadies me, his fingers curling around my shoulders. Behind him, his advisers’ faces twist in disapproval. A pair of scribes scurry to gather the sheaves drifting down like snow.
A furious blush heats my cheeks. I step away from the Malik, my shoulders hot and cold where he touched them.
“Apologies,” I mumble.
The scribes dart veiled glares at me.
“Are you searching for your sister, Shaherazade Khatun?” The Malik tucks a lock of black hair, jostled loose by our collision, into his jeweled turban. The impulse to tug it forth again, feel its cool silkiness slide against my palm, suffuses my fingers. I clench my hands tightly.
I drop my eyes. Nod.
Even nine years after his wedding, over eight years living alongside him in the Arg-e-Bam, and knowing him for each of my nineteen years, I still struggle to articulate myself in his presence. Before his majesty and kindness, I feel my veins blossom and hot blood dissolve my muscles and bones. I could be left for a formless heap at his feet.
He laughs fondly and I feel foolish. I wish I had turned the corner and careened into anyone else, or better yet: glided past the Malik, demurely inclining my head.
“Halt your search. You will not find her until she wants to be found.” He gives me a knowing look. Dunya’s reluctance to my lessons is infamous, a joke that apparently has risen to the Malik’s ears. “But do me a favor and find Fataneh Khatun.”
I nod, trying to recover the grace I have lost. Judging from the councillors’ eyes, the effort is not well received. I am sure Baba will hear of this. Still, the Malik’s eyes twinkle with gentle amusement.
“Your father told me part of a story you told him,” the Malik calls as I retreat.
I whip around, my heart hammering.
He smiles. “I should like to know the ending, someday.”
“I—I … I should find Fataneh Khatun.”
How could Baba have told him? I duck and flee, and the drumbeat of my heart drowns all sound.
* * *
I must admit: the Khatun frightens me. The Malik can praise her sweetness and beauty to Paradise and she can win the people’s hearts by endowing mosques and madrasas, but since her earliest days in Bam, she has held herself aloof, aware that she is a creature of ground pearls and gold dust, too fine to associate with those of us formed of clay.
Still, at the Malik’s order, I search narrow halls and wide chambers, the cool, dim baths and the sun-hot gardens, the harem’s shaded corners and the wide-open polo fields. I even hesitantly knock at the door of the quarters Fataneh Khatun shares with the Malik, as a pair of guards, armored in shimmering chain mail, look on stonily.
I trail from one end of the Arg-e-Bam to the other, passing servants and clerks and secretaries, all those who power the citadel, until finally, I stand before a door of sweet cedar etched with interlaced stars. I push into the room.
Empty, save for scattered rugs and dusty benches.
A closed door stands in the back. A bubbled glass window looks onto a courtyard where pink flowers and green leaves are aflame against an adobe wall. From the courtyard garden, I hear leaves rustle, wind sigh.
Once, there was a pari queen, fair as the moon, who possessed all she could desire. She possessed one more thing: a festering secret that could destroy all she held dear …
A thud against the courtyard door snaps me to the present.
And another.
A woman’s satisfied breath and a man’s relieved groan. Of its own volition, my hand pushes the door, and a man and woman tumble at my slippers. In the sunlight’s eager glare, they are a conjoined entity. I catch the woman’s smooth shoulder, the man’s dusky thigh. Shame sears me.
I smile politely at the floor, damning myself for opening the door. I am on the verge of offering greetings, but the woman glares at me. And her eyes. A distinctive green famed throughout Kirman. Squeaking, I close my own and back into the room.
I try to repress the scene, but it unfolds before me again and again. I wish I had tried any other room, opened any other courtyard door. Or had not, like a simpleton, opened this one, when it was volubly clear that I was not meant to see what was occurring behind it.
I examine a pore in the floor, the minuscule puckers and shimmering mica flecks, but I follow their movements out of the corner of my eye. Neither the man nor the woman attempts to explain as they tighten their trousers, pull down their robes. They do not even look my way. As if I am nothing. A landed bird, a blown leaf. I wish I were.
The man I do not recognize. He appears generic enough: dark hair, dark eyes, dark skin, a handsome cut to his cheekbones, a sharp nose like a hawk’s. I cannot determine his pedigree or rank. He could work in the kitchens, toiling in smoke and fire, or be a visiting emir, traveling from province to province to offer his sword. But the woman … this woman, rutting where any passerby could discover her, is the Malik’s wife, Fataneh Khatun.
They exit. First him, and after several moments, her. They pass me, smelling sweet, of flowers and musk. Their footsteps trail down the hall.
A gust slams the courtyard door shut and finally, I breathe. When the tap of their slippers fades, I step into the hall. An iron-hard grasp clamps around my arm. The Khatun’s face looms, not remorseful as mine would have been, but angry, defiant. Her gold rings gouge my flesh. I pull away, but her grip is unyielding. My mouth dries at the manic glint in her eyes.
Despite her small stature, she strong-arms me into the room and kicks the door shut.
She grabs my chin, no gentleness in her touch, her full lips steely. “Shaherazade.” She drawls my name, elongating the alif near the end.
I do not know which I fear more: being alone with her or being discovered by someone who would wonder what was passing between us. I do not know whether I would be able to lie—whether I should lie.
“Clumsy Shaherazade. Little Shaherazade, the girl who stumbled at my wedding, tripped gracelessly on pearls before the Malik.”
My face reddens. For a moment, I am a child again and the Khatun is the embodiment of all I could never hope to be.
Fataneh Khatun smiles and her voice silkens, a soft rope around a softer throat. “The daughter of Vizier Muhammad, a widower with two daughters? I am sure he worries about finding husbands for you and your sister. Perhaps I could arrange suitable matches to ease his mind? Or I could slip to the Malik how deserving your father is of a few new landholds and iqta’?”
She releases my arm and the blood tingles back. She pats my head, ringing my skull. “Let me make myself clear, jaan,” she hisses. “If you speak of this to anyone, your head will be the first on the chopping block, followed by your sister’s and your father’s. That, I vow to you by Allah.”
I drop my eyes and nod. I hope that is enough, that she will leave me alone, that this will ebb into nightmare. My family’s lives are not worth divulging what I have seen.
“Good girl.” She pats my head again, pat-pat-pat, as if she would drive me into the ground like a nail into wood.
My skin jumps as new footsteps fall on the floor. The stride is heavy, the sole thick. Fataneh’s breath catches.
The Malik, finally free of his retinue, enters. “I thought I heard voices.” His grin is easy. A small measure of relief trickles through me: he is not suspicious. Lighting on the Khatun, who watches me grimly, his eyes shine with pleasure. “Well done, Shaherazade! You have found my wife!” As though I have pulled off a particularly daring shataranj maneuver.
Smiling weakly, I murmur, “Yes,” and rush into the hall, away from these trapdoors. Behind me, the Malik and Khatun laugh. I do not know at what.
It was a dream. It was a dream.
I wind up the Fire Tower and burst onto the rampart. Mountain wind cools my brow. I wish the sun’s glare would scorch my memory. I try to fold away what I have seen, to press it into a tight bundle, seal it in a box, tie it with a cord, and tuck it away in the dark creases of my mind.
I open my eyes to a blue sky above and the earthen warren of the town of Bam below—its bazaars, mosques, and madrasas, the verdant cotton fields and pistachio groves rimming the town’s walls, the Jebal Barez Mountains and desert beyond.
Then, like a knife, a fear darts through the dark and cuts my careful packaging: What if the Malik finds out? What if he discovers his wife’s unfaithfulness, learns that I knew of it and, like an accomplice, concealed it? I gulp down ice-cold panic and begin wrapping the memory away again, more tightly than before.
Two
Morning sun spills through lattice shutters like clarified butter, warming my freshly bathed skin. With a surreptitious glance at Gulnar, my maid, I slip into a tunic to hide the plum-colored bruises left by the Khatun’s rings. Despite concerned probing by Dunya and Baba, I have managed to keep the Khatun’s secret for more than a week, but it squirms in my stomach like a cat in a sack.
I sit on a floor cushion, a clouded silver mirror propped before me. As Gulnar plaits my hair into dozens of fashionable braids, a knock sounds against the door.
“Come in!”
Baba swoops in. “Kafi,” he says to Gulnar. She bows her head and departs.
My father sits behind me and begins expertly weaving my hair, parting and combing and twining. Closing my eyes, I remember the months after my mother’s death when I would allow only him to touch my hair as she had. His fingers still retain the old skill. My throat grows hot with memory.
“O Baba, don’t! You’ll ruin your fine suit!” My father, in readiness for court, is garbed in the finest of fulgent blue linen, which glistens like silk.
The mirror reflects his smile. “Shaherazade jaan, you have been avoiding us. What is the matter?”
I meet my father’s gaze in the mirror and see in it a profundity of understanding and kindness. I cannot meet it for long. “Baba … I have a secret,” I whisper into my lap.
“Can you not tell me?” he asks patiently, selecting another lock and splitting the strands in three.
“I’m afraid, Baba.”
His fingers tighten on my braid. “Of what?”
I pause. As much as I long to unburden myself, this knowledge is combustible, a chimera of Greek fire. “I can’t tell you.” My fingers lace tightly in my lap.
He looks at me with patient, world-weary eyes. “Is there anyone you can tell, jaanem?”
Thinking of Shahryar, I flinch. It is a heavy burden to deliver heartbreak, especially when the Malik has lost so much already. “No, Baba.”
“Now that is untrue,” Baba says to mirror-Shaherazade.
My reflection arches an eyebrow.
“Pray on it, Shaherazade. When we mortals can find no counsel among our own, it is to Allah we must turn.” Finishing the last braid, he rises and dusts his brightly striped trousers. “I must meet with the Malik, but I will pray that Allah helps you find a solution.” He stops before the door. “Know this: so long as I am here, you have nothing to fear. My attention is always yours.”
My smile, put on for Baba’s benefit, dissolves as he departs. The secret sinking in my bowels, I turn my choices like a silver dirham. The Khatun is a sinner who threatens my family and betrays a husband who would pull down stars to weld a diadem for her hair if she asked. She deserves no protection. And if I am discovered as an accomplice to her treason? She can damn me but she cannot protect me, not then. I would be a fool to place my life in an adulteress’s hands.
I drum my feet. From a chest, I retrieve a leather-bound book, The Incoherence of the Incoherence, assiduously calligraphed in Córdoba and shuttled along routes through the Maghreb and Cairo and Jerusalem and Baghdad to sit in my hand in Bam. I brush my fears away. Nothing will happen. The Khatun will stop, the Malik will never discover her, she will never tell him. No one will ever know I was involved.
Unless …
Unless I am not the only one who has discovered her. Unless there’s a cabal of servant girls and sweeper boys who have encountered Fataneh and whom she has bullied into silence. But that silence can break, an egg dropped from a nest, and the secret can spread, quick and viscous. What did she do with her lover? Rip off his head like a spider finished with its mate? The Incoherence of the Incoherence slips from my hand and falls open, red and black ink swirling across its pages.
Copyright © 2023 by Jamila Ahmed