Caliphate (17 page)

The judge opened a heavy volume and began to read, verbatim: "If I came across a rape crime, I would discipline the man and order that the woman be jailed for life . . . because if she had not left the meat uncovered, the cat wouldn't have snatched it.

"If you get a kilo of meat, and you don't put it in the fridge or in the pot or in the kitchen but you leave it on a plate in the backyard, and then you have a fight with the neighbor because his cats eat the meat, you're crazy. Isn't this true?" The judge looked up for confirmation. All the men present nodded their heads with the wisdom.

Continuing, the judge said, "If you take uncovered meat and put it on the street, on the pavement, in a garden, in a park, or in the backyard, without a cover and the cats eat it, then whose fault will it be, the cats', or the uncovered meat's? The uncovered meat is the disaster. If the meat was covered the cats wouldn't roam around it. If the meat is inside the fridge, they won't get it."

The judge cleared his throat, then looked left and right for agreement from his two co-judges.

"It is the judgment of this court that the slave girl, Petra bint Minden, shall be taken from this court to the pens reserved for slaves for sale, that she be auctioned next Friday to the highest bidder. That the proceeds from that sale shall go first to the court's fees, then to her current owner, Abdul Mohsem. As for the boy, Fudail, who suffered injury in the attack by Abdul Mohsem's daughter Besma, we judge that no recompense is due him and further adjudge that he and his two friends, Hanif and Ghalid, shall each receive thirty lashes on the soles of their feet—"

At this patent injustice al Khalifa gasped with indignation.

The judge sneered. "And if you interrupt this court again, woman, you shall be next in line for lashes after your son and his friends."

"They won't even let me see her," Besma wailed to her father.

"I gave those orders," Abdul Mohsem said. "It would do neither of you any good to be together again."

The Moslem girl's eyes flashed with anger. "We will be together again, father. I love her like my own child and I will not be separated from her."

"You will never see her again."

"Let me tell you something, father," Besma said, her voice very firm and sure. "If you do not go and buy her back, bidding against yourself if necessary, you will never have a moment's peace out of me." Besma turned away, went to the bookshelf, and withdrew Abdul Mohsem's prized Koran. This she held flat in her left hand, placing her right above it. "This I swear, father. If Petra is not returned here and
freed—
Do you hear me? Freed!—I shall become the greatest whore in the province, a greater whore even than that vicious slut you wed. I will bring shame to our clan that will last until the final generation. There will be no cave deep enough to—"

Of its own accord Abdul Mohsem's hand lashed out, slapping his daughter across the mouth with a force hard enough to spin her to the floor. "I am your father and you will be silent."

Besma smiled through her pain. "You can silence me now, father. Do you not think my voice will carry when I writhe in heat under slaves and stable boys? Bring me back my friend!"

"
It will not happen!
"

Again, listening from around a corner, al Khalifa thought,
Perfect.

There was really nothing in Islam to prevent a slave from owning a slave. Shamsuddin Iltutmish, for example, a sultan, had been the slave of a slave. Thus, Ishmael, armed with the money Besma and Petra had saved towards Petra's freedom, went to the slave barracks not far from the crooked tower.

"Please buy her, Ishmael," Besma had begged, pressing the coins into his hands. "Buy her so that we can free her. Don't let what is planned for her happen. She's too pretty. You
know
what they'll sell her to be."

He'd agreed, of course. He'd never really been able to deny Besma anything. And when she'd said, "I would give you my body for your enjoyment, if you thought you could make use of it," his heart had melted.

"I will try," he'd promised, then added, with a very sad smile, "I wish I could take you up on your offer."

At the slave barracks, Ishmael walked from cell to cell, looking for Petra. Though the cells were full of wretched, hungry, dirty and miserable slaves, and even though some of them were women, Petra was not among them. Ishmael looked for the barracks master or the chief slave dealer to ask about her.

"The reddish-blond
Nazrani
?" the slave dealer shrugged. "She's too choice to let rot down here. Or she will be, once her bruises and scratches heal. In any event, I'll get a much better price for her all dolled up and in proper clothing. Still, if you want to inspect her, she's upstairs." He pointed as a flight of stone steps. "Remember," the dealer cautioned, "look but don't touch."

Bowing his head and thanking the dealer, Ishmael made his way up the stone steps to a corridor. There were perhaps a half dozen doorways, each of them barred. He called out, "Petra?"

A pair of small, delicate hands appeared at one of the barred doors. "Ishmael, is that you?" a desperate voice called out.

He ran to it . . . and stopped dead once he saw. Suddenly, the purse at his belt seemed very light indeed. Clothes, hair, face . . . despite the bruises, Petra had been transformed from a skinny twelve-year-old into something—

"Beautiful," Ishmael said, despairingly. "They've made you
beautiful
. Allah have pity; I'll never be able to buy you for Miss Besma now."

They hadn't moved Mahmoud from the hospital at Erfurt to the
Kreisskrankenhaus
Kitzingen until he'd come out of the coma and shown some fair progress towards recovery. This had taken six days. On the seventh he was moved. By the ninth, he was spending almost as much time awake as unconscious, though a fair amount of that awake time was spent in pain and nausea. Three days after that the hospital pronounced him well enough to go home with Gabrielle. The next day, she'd picked him up.

"I can't stay here anymore, Gabi," he said, on the drive home.

"In Kitzingen, you mean? Why? There's no trouble here."

"No . . . I mean in Germany. I mean in Europe."

"But where would you go? Where would
we
go?"

"I am thinking . . . America, if we could get in there."

"America," she sneered, not at her lover but at the thought. "Why ever would anyone want to go to America? I couldn't, I mean I just
couldn't
abide it. I think you're still distraught and not thinking clearly. Just because some thugs attacked you—"

Mahmoud sighed.
How to explain?

"It's not because they attacked me personally," he began. "It's that they attacked me as a Moslem, not even caring that I am not much of one. Now you think it's an isolated incident, I am sure. But it's not. How long do you think it will be before they, or people like them, attack another?"

Before she could even begin to form an answer he said, "I would be surprised if it hasn't happened already, a half dozen times. And even that isn't the main problem."

"Then what
is
'the main problem'?"

"My people will begin to strike back. You've heard the sermons; you've read the papers I've shown you. Troubles are coming here, troubles are coming to all of Europe.
Bad
troubles. People like me, reasonable people, are going to run. And who will be left? The lunatics. And don't tell me about self-fulfilling prophecies; some prophecies are self-fulfilling
because they're destined to come true
."

"I can't go to America," she said definitively. "Canada, maybe."

"Canada's as badly off as Europe," he said. "Lunacy is coming there, too. Australia?"

"Too militaristic," she answered, "too much in the Americans' camp. Too much a willing tool for American imperialism. Why, anyway? Why are you so certain everything's going down the tubes."

"Because my people could fuck up a wet dream," he answered, putting his head down in his hands. "And I'm beginning to think that yours can, too."

It didn't appear to Mahmoud to be a very old church, certainly nothing like the age of the town. Stuccoed off-white, with three inset crosses framing a niched statue of its namesake, the church's roof was red tiled. A blocky square tower jutted out from the left. Mahmoud entered the church by passing under a small overhang, likewise with tiled roof, the whole being held up by twin columns. His footsteps were still a little unsteady, the legacy of his beating.

It was a decidedly odd feeling, entering a Catholic church. There were some in Mahmoud's native Egypt, of course, and rather more Coptic churches. Yet he'd never been in one.

In the dim shadows toward the front, by the ornate altar, Mahmoud saw a priest going about some inexplicable business. He cleared his throat, nervously, causing the priest to turn.

"Can I help you, my son?" the priest asked.

"Possibly . . . sir," —for Mahmoud didn't yet know to address the priest as "Father"—"just possibly."

"We must be open and tolerant towards Islam and Muslims because when we become a minority, they will be so towards us."

—Jens Orback, Swedish Minister for Democracy,
Metropolitan Affairs, Integration and Gender Equality, 2004

"Twenty-three dinar, seven dirhem is the bid. Do I hear twenty-three, eight?"

Petra stood, ashamed, her face down. The auctioneer reached out to lift her chin with his whip, but when he saw the tears he let her face fall again.

She was not naked, precisely, but the auctioneer had disrobed her sufficiently to permit the bidders to see the budding promise of her body. In effect, she was down to what passed for an inadequate bra and with a thin wrap around her hips. This was not exactly in the best spirit of Islam, but, on the other hand, she wasn't Moslem.

"Twenty-four dinar," shouted a bearded, robed factor whom Ishmael didn't recognize.

"Twenty-four, five," answered Ishmael, and that was as much as Besma had been able to scrape up. In other circumstances, Abdul Mohsem would have freed the girl for less. It was beyond his power now.

"Twenty-seven," shouted the factor, obviously tired of the game and sensing that Ishmael was at the end of the resources he had to spare.
What does an obvious eunuch care for owning a girl like that?
the factor wondered.
Perhaps he, too, intends to whore her out. No matter, she'll make a better whore when she's trained by my staff.

Ishmael shuddered. That was the last of the money Besma had given. He had his own, the scrapings of years intended to purchase his own liberty. Where would he ever come up with . . .

"I have twenty-seven. Do I have twenty-eight? Twenty-seven . . . twenty seven . . . going for . . . "

"Thirty!"

Petra looked up from the platform on which her wares were being paraded. She knew how much Besma had had to spare, down to the last thin
fil
. If Ishmael was bidding more...? Petra looked directly at Ishmael. Through her tears of shame she smiled warmly at him, in thanks.

"Thirty-five," said the factor. His glance at Ishmael showed that he was plainly annoyed that this tiresome game continued.

Ishmael gulped. "Forty."

Without the slightest hesitation, the factor said, "Fifty," sneering at the presumptuous slave as he did so.

"Sixty." Ishmael's face looked stricken. He could not go much higher.

A man, his face covered, stepped up beside Ishmael. The slave felt a nudge. A heavy purse was pressed into his hand. Abdul Mohsem's voice said, "This is what I could come up with on short notice. Two hundred and twenty dinar. If the bloody bank had been open, I'd have gotten more. You can raise your bids up to that amount. All I'll lose by it is the auctioneer's fee."

"I never before realized that my master is also a saint," Ishmael said.

Abdul Mohsem said nothing, but, shaking his head, he turned away and left the auction house. He thought,
I'm no saint. I'm weak. If I'd been a saint I'd have disciplined that little bastard, Fudail, myself. Instead I let someone else do it and
look
what I've done. Allah forgive a stupid man.