The Steel Seraglio (50 page)

She stepped within the reach of Jamal’s sword, and he couldn’t decide in that surreal, frightening moment whether it was a gesture of trust or one of contempt—whether she knew he would not strike her or was only certain that if he tried she could disarm him before he offered her any hurt.

She kissed him on the cheek.

“Be well,” she said. “Find a place a long way from here. Marry, and have children. Try out what life is like, before you flirt with other people’s deaths again.”

He laughed—or at least, he made a sound that started out as a laugh. “An assassin tells me that!” he said.

Her hand caressed the back of his neck, and for a moment he was a twelve-year-old boy again, howling and weeping to the night sky because the stone in his sling had just stopped a man’s breath forever. He shuddered at the touch of that unwelcome spectre, the ghost of his own childhood.

“A friend tells you that,” Zuleika murmured in his ear. “Goodbye, Jamal. And good fortune follow you—so long as your steps don’t lead you anywhere within ten miles of Bessa.”

He was barely aware of her leaving. And he had forgotten, now, about the silver he had come here to collect. He remembered the bottle of poison, though, and took it with him: he felt that the right state of mind might not be too far away now.

He left the city by the Southern gate, unchallenged and seemingly unnoticed: either his description had not been given out, or else Zuleika had ordered that he should not be accosted.

In Ibu Kim, where he fetched up after six months of wandering, the roughnecks he took up with called him
Bir Hatain
, the Two-Faced Man, because he seemed to alternate between two states: stasis (which they thought was somnolence) and savagery (which they thought was courage). They misread him on both counts, but the name pleased Jamal, and he affected it for a while.

But he knew there was a third face in him somewhere, not yet revealed.

It’s an expression. A commonplace. It comes close to being a metaphor. Time is envisioned as a seed that flowers; a moon waxing to its final, perfect roundness; a woman who gives birth.

But the fullness of time is only ever perceived in its aftermath: fullness is defined by endings, and known retrospectively.

Bessa grew, and was great, and its fame spread. Seasons came and went, and although no man or woman can ever know the paradise of the Increate, where loss and suffering are inconceivable, still most things were good. And this goodness lasted long enough that it came to seem, at last, like the natural state of affairs. Peace and plenty stood over Bessa like invisible caryatids, holding up the sky.

In remembering that time, I hold it in my cupped hands like water: I drink from it, and I feel as though I can never be thirsty again. But as to how long it endured, I cannot truly say. I who see all things can still sometimes refuse to see certain things in their true relations. Bessa is timeless for me. I choose to keep it so.

Yes, the calendar was different in those days. So was the span of human life. Upheavals in the way we perceive the universal dance upset, too, our perspective upon our own lives. The geological revolutions that stand in your past and my future make my past as intangible to you as your future. When you reach for us, you find that the water has shown you only your own reflection. When I speak to you, my voice is distorted by our mutual incomprehension, our irreconcilable alterity.

So long we lived. So bright.

So soon it ended.

There came a day when Fouad went out for an evening ride and came back to Bessa slumped over the neck of his favourite horse. “I’m dizzy,” he said, and was dead before they pulled him from the saddle.

Issi finally stepped away from the body, shaking his head. “I told the old fool not to go out galloping on his own!” he said, his voice unsteady.

“Never too old,” said Gursoon quietly.

She sent word to Fouad’s tribe, and a surprising number of cousins, nephews and nieces came to the city. They gave their kinsmen a splendid funeral, with drums, songs and loud keening. His last surviving brother, bent and grey, lit the pyre, and kissed Gursoon on both cheeks before riding back into the desert to scatter his brother’s ashes, as befitted a nomad.

After that, the Jidur and the House of Laws became Gursoon’s home. She would leave her lodgings at dawn, have breakfast with one of her grandchildren and spend the morning at work, meeting trade delegates, discussing building projects with the council, and once a week acting as judge in the city’s disputes. In the afternoon she wrote letters, or helped her daughter in the school she ran in the old seraglio quarters. But when the sun dipped behind the dome of the old palace, it was her signal to stop for the day.

There was always more work to be done, of course. But on occasion she could permit herself to rest and look about her. These were, many said, the glory days of the city. Their cloths, their embroidery, their works in metal, clay and above all, ink, were sought throughout the region. Local sultanates were so eager to trade with them that Zeinab and her daughter Soraya were offered fair prices at the start of negotiations. Bessan poets, musicians and dancers (for whom Gursoon had set up a practice room in the old palace) were prized performers in the festivals of other cities. And the harvests flourished. Bessa had become the chief trader of saffron: Walid and Dip, the city’s chief cooks, had invented so many dishes featuring the spice that old Imtisar complained she was sick of the colour yellow.

Imtisar herself had never been busier. It was she, along with Anwar Das in his rather different way, who was most responsible for what they thought of as the city’s public face. Known envoys, from established trading partners, would deal with Gursoon directly, or with Issi or Zeinab, who could give immediate answers to practical questions. But the new approaches, the tentative diplomatic initiatives from the further cities, or from the sultans who had hoped until now that this wild freak of nature, a city ruled by women, might simply vanish, given time . . . they were met by Imtisar. She would entertain the bemused ambassadors to wine and cakes: queenly in her silks and jewels, impeccable in her courtesy and concern for her guests’ prickly feelings, and so effortlessly in control that neither condescension nor threat seemed possible in her presence. To such men, Gursoon never appeared. Imtisar would sometimes refer to her as “our sultana,” suggesting a being as regal as herself, but more forbidding. In reality, Gursoon was known in Bessa simply as the Speaker of the Council, a title that seemed appropriate to one who now, by tradition, opened each meeting—though, as she sometimes complained, that might be the only time she was able to speak before the final vote.

She had been feeling her age, Gursoon admitted to herself. She could no longer move quickly, and had begun to suffer from shortness of breath. Nafisah, the oldest of the town’s physicians and a veteran of the desert days, believed that she was ill, but thought the malady a slow-moving one. She advised little treatment beyond rest and regular meals; counsel which Gursoon was happy to take.

She sat with Farhat outside the bakery at the side of the council house, sipping coffee and eating Fernoush’s pastries as they looked over the square in the late-afternoon light. It was the favourite haunt of many of the older women, though fewer were left each year of those who had first gone out into the desert. Warudu, Adiya, the old councillor Efridah, even Maysoon the potter had succumbed to old age, passing on their work to their children or apprentices. Gursoon was grateful that her old friend at least had been spared to her.

She was tired that day, and uneasy. She had foregone her midday rest to help out at the school, where Hayat needed someone to help the little ones recite their numbers while she took an older group. She had visited the kitchen to talk of old times with Rashad, who insisted on helping his son to cook the midday meal for the children though he was supposed to have retired years before. And she had dealt with the day’s letters. It was one of these that was causing her concern; she handed it to Farhat now.

“What do you make of this?” she asked.

Her friend turned the letter over in her hands. There were two sheets: one of poor-quality parchment, closely written on both sides; the other, which had enclosed the first, on much finer-grade vellum, with a single line of greeting. Farhat whistled when she saw the seal.

“Kephiz Bin Ezvahoun!” she said.

Honoured lady,
the Caliph had written,

My agents have intercepted this, which I believe will entertain you. I trust, as always, in your continued health and prosperity.

“A very polite message!” said Farhat, eyebrows raised. Gursoon did not return her smile.

“Read the letter,” she said.

The writing was crabbed and tiny; Farhat had to squint at first to make it out. Her eyebrows rose again as she read.

Report on the Polity of the City of Bessa

My Lord,

In furtherance of my commission, I here submit a full account of the individuals most responsible for the workings of this unnatural city. My regrets that some of the matter I must submit will be, of necessity, unseemly.

First, Lord, you must know that the women employ a number of male operatives to extend their web of corruption outside the bounds of the city itself. In Agorath I was frequently told of one Mir Hussein, who works to establish ever more lucrative trading agreements between the merchants there and those of Bessa. In Saruquy a similar function is performed by one Abdullah Rafiq.

Farhat looked up. “Who are these men he talks of? I’ve never heard of them.”

Gursoon smiled briefly. “Oh, they’re both Anwar Das. He feels some areas of his work are best kept separate.”

I met one of these agents briefly in Heqa’a: a man named Bashar Hudhayfah.

“And Hudhayfah?” Farhat asked.

Gursoon nodded. “That’s one of his.”

The man was shabbily dressed but plausible, and seemed astonishingly well-connected. He ran it seemed, a stable of whores—your pardon, Lord—the better to bring the weaker-minded traders under his control. I myself was accosted by one of these women, a brazen creature of many wiles and considerable persistence. I need not say that her blandishments had no effect on me.

“Needn’t he, though?” Farhat said. “Our Bethi doesn’t give up that easily.”

Within the city, the obstacles to our endeavour are more clear-cut.

First, the sultana herself. Few are permitted to see her: it is said that she is a woman of ferocious character but siren-like beauty, whose very face, if unveiled, would cause a man to lose his wits. Her name is Gursoon. I have heard that in the inner circle of the city she is given a different, more arcane title, but I could not learn what this was.

She is represented in the audience chamber by her regent Imtisar, an older lady, but still possessed of considerable grace and beauty. She is an effective ambassador, Lord: she has the manners and the modesty of a great lady of our own city, and while speaking to her it is easy to forget the abominations which must occur daily within Bessa’s walls. In the event of an invasion of the city, I would recommend that this lady and her maidens be captured if possible, and not killed.

The leader of the army is a different creature entirely: a madwoman, it seems, more beast than woman, who is reliably reported to have killed over a dozen men. I saw her with my own eyes, lining up women and men together to drill with swords. She is immensely tall and well-formed, and seemed indeed to be capable of fighting like a man. She must be our chief target; but when your generals encounter her I would advise caution. She has no notion of mercy, nor yet of decency. The name of this harridan is Zuleika.

These are the main individuals we must consider. There are some three or four others, of lesser risk to us. The woman-general is supported by another female named Umayma, scarcely less witch-like in demeanour, who is also said to be a terrible fighter. She too would need to be killed expeditiously. An old man named Issi arranges many of the trading missions from the city, and is treated with unusual respect: I surmise that he may be responsible for the network of agents in other cities with which I began this report. His deputy appears to be a woman named Zeinab: a hard-faced market haggler as brazen as her sisters, but no threat as a warrior.

The women are also reputed to be served by a prophetess, who warns them of future dangers, but I saw no sign of such a one during my visit. Those claiming to have consulted her went not to the palace, nor even to a temple, but to the city’s library, where as far as I could see they did nothing more than speak to one of the women working there, sometimes staying to consult a book. (The promiscuous teaching of reading to the whole population is one of the more alarming signs of this city’s complete fall from good order.) I believe that the talk of prophecy is merely a bluff put about by the sultana to frighten the city’s enemies, and can be discounted as a factor which might influence our plans.

Lastly, Lord, you instructed me to report on the council chamber of Bessa, and to determine which of these women it is who makes their laws. This was both simpler and more difficult than I had anticipated. They meet in a single-roomed building next to the Jidur, unadorned, with neither dignity nor defences. I needed no concealment: anyone is allowed into their discussions, without distinction of rank or even age. I saw one day a group of school-children sitting on benches at the back of the chamber, for all the world as if they were attending to the debate.

But for the debate itself: such a name can scarcely be applied to the chaos I witnessed there. The noise was that of a cattle market, rivalling the Jidur outside; and indeed, I heard many of the same arguments and proposals advanced in both, sometimes even by the same people. There was neither leadership nor decorum, so that I could form no judgement of who, in fact, was making the decisions. There were never fewer than ten people present, and sometimes seven or eight times that number. Women and men alike would raise their voices; the only order was provided by a little fat woman at one side who allotted turns to the speakers, though she seldom spoke herself. When it seemed all had spoken their fill the little woman would call for a vote, and all present would raise their hands, or not. Then another woman wrote down what they had agreed.