Alamut (3 page)

When she first awoke she didn’t know where she was or what had happened to her. She pushed aside a blanket which the girls had used to cover her while she slept and sat up on the edge of the divan. She rubbed her eyes, then stared at these young women’s kind faces, illuminated in the multicolored light. It was already late afternoon. Miriam crouched down on a pillow beside her and offered her a dish of cold milk, which she emptied greedily.

Miriam poured more milk from a colorful jug, and Halima drank this down in one draft too.

A dark-skinned girl carrying a gilt tray approached and offered her a variety of sweets made of flour, honey and fruit. Halima ate everything in front of her.

“Look how hungry she is, the orphan,” one of the girls said.

“And how pale,” another observed.

“Let’s put some blush on her cheeks and lips,” a beautiful light-haired girl suggested.

“The child has to eat first,” Miriam rebuffed them. She turned to the black girl with the gilt tray. “Peel her a banana or an orange, Sara.”

Then she asked Halima, “Which fruit do you prefer, child?”

“I don’t know either of them. I’d like to try them both.”

The girls laughed. Halima smiled too when Sara brought her bananas and oranges.

She soon felt overcome by so many delicious things. She licked her fingers and said, “Nothing has ever tasted this good to me before.”

The girls burst into uproarious laughter. Even the corners of Miriam’s mouth turned up in a smile as she tapped Halima on the cheek. Halima could feel the blood starting to beat in her veins again. Her eyes shone, her mood improved, and she began to speak openly.

The girls sat around her, some doing embroidery, others sewing, and they began asking her questions. Meanwhile, Miriam had pressed a metal mirror into her hand and started painting her cheeks and lips with blush and her eyebrows and lashes with black dye.

“So, your name is Halima,” said the light-haired girl, the one who had advised coloring her cheeks. “And I’m called Zainab.”

“Zainab is a pretty name,” Halima acknowledged.

They laughed again.

“Where do you come from?” the black girl they called Sara asked her.

“From Bukhara.”

“I’m from there too,” said a beauty with a round, moon-shaped face and ample limbs. She had a delicate, rounded chin and warm, velvety eyes. “My name is Fatima. Who was your master before this?”

Halima was about to answer, but Miriam, who was just then applying color to her lips, stopped her.

“Hold on just a minute. And all of you … stop distracting her.”

Halima swiftly kissed the tips of her fingers.

“Stop that,” she scolded her. But her scowl wasn’t quite convincing, and Halima could clearly sense that she had won their general good will. She glowed with satisfaction.

“Who was my master?” she repeated when Miriam had finished coloring her lips. She inspected herself in the mirror with obvious satisfaction and continued. “The merchant Ali, an old and good man.”

“Why did he sell you if he was good?” Zainab asked.

“He was penniless. He’d lost all his money. We didn’t even have anything left to eat. He had two daughters, but their suitors cheated him out of them. They didn’t pay him a thing. He had a son too, but he disappeared, probably killed by robbers or soldiers.” Her eyes filled with tears. “I was supposed to become his wife.”

“Who were your parents?” Fatima asked.

“I never knew them and I don’t know anything about them. As far back as I can remember, I lived in the house of the merchant Ali. As long as his son was still at home, we managed to get by. But then the bad times came. The master would moan, pull out his hair, and pray. His wife told him to take me to Bukhara and sell me there. He put me on a donkey and we went to Bukhara. He asked all the merchants where they’d take me and who they’d sell me to, until he met one who worked for your master. This one swore by the beard of the Prophet that I would live like a princess. Ali settled on a price, and when they took me away he started crying out loud. So did I. But now I can see that the merchant was right. I really do feel like a princess here.”

Misty-eyed, the girls glanced at each other and smiled.

“My master cried, too, when he sold me,” Zainab said. “I wasn’t born a slave. When I was little some Turks abducted me and took me to their grazing lands. I learned to ride and shoot with a bow and arrow like a boy. They were all curious because I had blue eyes and golden hair. People would come from far away to look at me. They said that if some powerful chieftain found out about me, he’d probably buy me. Then the sultan’s army came and my master was killed. I was about ten years old at the time. We were retreating from the sultan’s soldiers, and we lost a lot of people and livestock. The master’s son took over the leadership of the tribe. He fell in love with me and took me into his harem as a real wife. But the sultan took everything away from us, and my master went wild. He beat us every day, but he refused to submit to the sultan. Then the chieftains made peace. Merchants came and started to trade. One day an Armenian noticed me and started to dog my master about me. He offered him livestock and money. Finally the two of them came into the tent. When my master saw me, he pulled his dagger and tried to stab me, so that he couldn’t give in to the temptation of selling me. But the merchant held him back, and then they closed the deal. I thought I was going to die. The Armenian took me to Samarkand. He was revolting. It was there that he sold me to Sayyiduna. But all that is long past …”

“Poor thing, you’ve endured a lot,” Halima said and stroked her cheek compassionately.

Fatima asked, “Were you your master’s wife?”

Halima blushed. “No. I mean, I don’t know. What do you mean?”

“Don’t bother her with those questions, Fatima,” Miriam said. “Can’t you see she’s still a child?”

“Oh, what happened to me was bad,” said Fatima, sighing. “My relatives sold both my mother and me to some peasant. I was barely ten years old when I had to become his wife. He had debts, and since he couldn’t pay them, he gave me as payment to his creditor, but he didn’t tell him that I’d already become his wife. So my new master called me all kinds of abusive names, beat me and tormented me, and screamed that the peasant and I had cheated him. He swore by all the martyrs that he would destroy us both. I didn’t understand any of it. The master was old and ugly, and I’d shake in his presence as though he were an evil spirit. He let both of his former wives beat me too. Then he found himself a fourth one and he was as sweet as honey with her, but he’d just beat the rest of us all that much more. Finally we were saved by the leader of one of Sayyiduna’s caravans, who bought me for these gardens.”

Halima looked at her with teary eyes, then she smiled and said, “See, in the end you came here, and things are all right.”

“Enough storytelling for now,” Miriam interrupted. “It will be dark soon, you’re tired, and we have work to do tomorrow. Take this stick and wash your teeth with it.”

It was a thin little stick with tiny, brush-like fibers at one end. Halima quickly understood its function. They brought her a dish with water in it, and when she had finished this task, they took her to a bedroom.

“Sara and Zainab will be your companions,” Miriam told her.

“Good,” Halima replied.

The bedroom floor was covered with soft, colorful carpets. Carpets covered the walls and were hung between the low-lying beds, which were covered with tastefully embroidered pillows. Beside each bed was an artfully carved dressing table with a large silver mirror affixed to it. A five-candled gilt candelabra with strange, twisted shapes hung from the ceiling.

The girls dressed Halima in a long white gown of delicate silk. They tied a red cord around her waist and sat her down in front of the mirror. She could hear them whispering about how sweet and pretty she was.
They’re right
, she thought,
I really am pretty. Like a real princess
. She lay down on her bed and the girls put pillows under her head. They covered her with a feather quilt and left on tiptoe. She buried her head in the soft pillows and, in a state of fairy-tale happiness, fell blissfully to sleep.

The first rays of daylight shining through the window awoke her. She opened her eyes and saw the designs on the wall hangings, woven in bright colors. At first she thought she was still with the caravan. On the wall she saw a lance-bearing hunter on horseback chasing an antelope. Beneath him a tiger and a buffalo faced off, while a black man carrying a shield shoved the point of
his spear at a raging lion. Beside them a leopard stalked a gazelle. Then she remembered the previous day and realized where she was.

“Good morning, sleepyhead,” Zainab, who had just propped herself up in bed, called to her.

Halima looked at her and was astonished. Her hair poured over her shoulders in ample locks and shone in the sunlight like pure gold.
She’s more beautiful than a fairy
, she thought. Enraptured, she returned her greeting.

She looked toward the other bed, where Sara was sleeping, half naked, her full dark limbs shining like ebony. The conversation woke her too, and she slowly began to open her eyes. They glinted like two dark, white-irradiated stars. She fixed them on Halima and smiled at her oddly. Then she lowered them again quickly, like a feline confused by a human stare. She got up, went over to Halima’s bed, and sat down on it.

“Last night when Zainab and I went to bed, you didn’t notice us,” she said. “We kissed you, but you just murmured something ill-tempered and turned your back.”

Halima laughed, though she was almost frightened by the other’s gaze. She could also see the light down that covered her upper lip.

“I didn’t hear you at all,” she replied.

Sara devoured Halima with her eyes. She would have liked to hug her, but she didn’t dare. She glanced furtively toward Zainab.

Zainab was already seated at her mirror, combing her hair. “We’re going to have to give yours a wash today,” Sara said to Halima. “Will you let me wash your hair?”

“That would be fine.”

She had to get up so her companions could lead her to a separate washroom.

“Do all of you bathe every day?” she asked incredulously.

“Of course!” the other two laughed. They immersed her in a wooden bathtub and splashed her playfully. She shrieked, dried herself with a towel, and then slid into her clothes with a pleasant, refreshed feeling.

They ate breakfast in a long dining hall. Each of them had her own place, and Halima counted twenty-four in all, including herself. They sat her at the head of the table next to Miriam, who asked her, “So what do you know how to do?”

“I can embroider and sew, and I know how to cook.”

“What about reading and writing?”

“I know how to read a little.”

“We’re going to have to work on that. And what about verse making?”

“I’ve never learned that.”

“Right. You’re going to have to learn all that and quite a bit more around here.”

“That’s fine,” Halima said happily. “I’ve always wanted to learn things.”

“You should know that we enforce strict discipline when it comes to lessons. You will be no exception. And let me warn you about one other thing. Don’t ask questions about things that aren’t directly related to your studies.”

Miriam struck Halima as much more serious and strict than the day before. Still, she sensed that the older girl liked her. “I promise I’ll obey you in everything and I’ll do everything just the way you tell me,” she said.

She could sense that Miriam held some favored rank among all the others, and she grew curious about this, but she didn’t dare to ask questions.

For breakfast they had milk and sweet pastries made with dried fruit and honey. Then each of them was given an orange.

Lessons began after breakfast. They went into the glass-ceilinged hall with the pool that Halima had admired the day before. They sat around on pillows, each of them with a black tablet resting on her crossed legs. They got their slate pencils ready and waited. Miriam pointed to a place for Halima to sit and handed her her writing implements.

“Hold it like you see the others doing, even though you don’t know how to write yet. I’ll teach you later, but for now you can at least get used to the tablet and pencil.”

Then she went to the doorway and with a mallet struck a gong that hung on the wall.

A giant Moor holding a thick book entered the room. He was dressed in short striped trousers and a cloak that reached to his feet but was left open in front. He was shod in plain sandals and had a thin red turban wrapped around his head. He let himself down onto a pillow prepared for him and sat facing the girls, his weight resting on his knees.

“Today, my sweet little doves, we continue with passages from the Koran,” he said, piously touching his forehead to the book, “in which the Prophet speaks of the joys of the afterlife and the delights of paradise. I see a new young student among you, clear-eyed and avid for learning, hungry for knowledge and pleasing to the spirit. So that no drop of wisdom and holy learning escapes her, let’s have Fatima, clear-witted and sharp, repeat and interpret what your careful gardener Adi has so far managed to plant and cultivate in your little hearts.”

This was the same Adi who had brought her to these gardens yesterday. Halima recognized his voice immediately. The whole time he spoke she valiantly resisted an urge to laugh.

Fatima lifted her lovely, rounded chin to face the teacher and began reciting in a sweet, almost singing voice, “In the fifteenth sura, in verses forty-five to forty-eight we read, ‘Behold, the god-fearing shall come to these gardens and to the springs: enter in peace, for indeed we shall take the ire from
their hearts and they shall sit down on pillows with each other. They will feel no fatigue and we shall never cause them to leave …’ ”

Adi praised her. Then she recited several other passages by heart. When she finished, he said to Halima, “So, my silver doe, fleet-footed and avid for learning, did you hear in the pearls of your companion and older sister what my skill, my depth of spirit has sown in the bosoms of our gentle-eyed houris and nurtured into fulsome buds? You must also blow all childishness out of your heart and listen intently to what my holy learning reveals to you, so that you can be happy both here and in the afterlife.”