I knew she spoke truthfully. And how many times had she made similar reproaches but I had been too driven on my course to hear? I heard now and saw besides what two months of lonely grief had done to her. She’d lost weight markedly, and this was not just from the holy month of fasting. Yet the loss of weight seemed no more geared to getting her up off her cushions than the gaining of it had been. The deflated flesh sagged back onto those supports as if it was too weak and lifeless to ever budge again.
This was the woman I’d married. In a mystical, symbolic sense, yes, it was true. She was incomplete without me, and my life had no meaning without her. It had been that way since I’d first knelt at her side and answered her question, “What is he like, this man I must give my body to?”
“There’s no man I’d rather be a slave to,” had been my reply and with those words, we’d become slaves together, yet together, freer than that man who owned us, who’d never learned how to need another and was now dead.
I knelt beside her once again, oblivious of the crowd in the room with their gossip and needlework. I took her little hand in mine, her stumpy little hand that was now like five little half-stuffed white sausages, and promised her, “No more revenge, by Allah.”
“Thank you, Abdullah,” she said, and smiled as if it were a rare new practice. She closed her eyes and laid back on her pillow, perhaps to take her first sleep in two months.
I rose to leave her thus, but then stopped to ask after Gul Ruh. “I don’t see her in the room.”
“No. She doesn’t spend much time with us old ladies. You know that.”
Yes, I had known that before, at home. But here in the palace, where did she go?
“I don’t know. But you’ll find her. I know you’ll take care of her for me, Abdullah.” Esmikhan slept.
I had no idea of all the nooks and crannies, rooftops and cellars the renewed palace might provide for a young woman to hide in. And she’d had two full months in which to find the very best one. My few inquiries were met with cither a shrug or (and my heart pounded with sudden fear) “Gul Ruh? Who is she? Is she that short dumpy girl the Lady Safiye has laying out her clothes these days? No, I didn’t even know we had a girl called Gul Ruh.”
It rapidly became clear that my young mistress had spent very little time with her mother and the others in Safiye’s main room since her arrival.
I knew no other plan of action than to start at the farthest kiosk and work my way from top to bottom throughout all the harem looking with the eyes of a child. I had done this once before: I remembered the terrible fire and prayed God might allow me to find her so unharmed as on that first occasion. If she should be found with her cousin Muhammed again, that would have very different implications this time than last. But I knew very few people for whom those implications would be all together bad. Still, some of the horrible panic of that ancient .search came back to me and I moved as quickly as I could without, I hoped, jeopardizing any thoroughness.
I entered a part of the palace I’d never been before. A drafty hall ran between slaves’ dormitories deserted now in favor of the braziers and blankets in the main rooms downstairs. Then I heard something that made me forget all about Gul Ruh.
I heard a couple murmuring Persian - the language of love—between themselves as a native tongue. Most of it I understood simply because there are words well-known to one even with a cursory know ledge of the love poets.
“No, no. Please, no,” she said.
“Why?” asked he.
“He will know.”
“He will not know. How should he even guess? There is no danger of children…”
“But we can’t. You—”
“My love, I have told you before. The cutter was merciful. Most merciful. I can still give us both the greatest of pleasure. Much greater than you’ve ever known with that old man. The pleasure of the open roses in the gardens of Harun ar-Rashid.”
Here I heard her give a little deep throated groan. I think the word pleasure in Persian is so construed of both light and dark sounds that even a stone would find itself constricted at the mere whisper, “pleasure”.
“But perhaps the knife was not so merciful after all,” he continued, with a note of angry frustration in his voice. “lf only you knew what I have endured all these months. So close to you and yet so far.”
“My love, my diamond, my jewel. Don’t you think I have endured it, too? By Allah, yes. But we must not. It is our Fate. It is not to be. Not yet. Wait until I am free and then…”
“You will go back to Persia and I—I will still be here in the belly of the heretic beast.”
“No, no. I have wealthy family and friends in Persia. We will raise your ransom.”
“And we shall live happily ever after with ‘our’ children, another man’s sons?”
“Yes. That is the bargain my brother bought with his martyr’s blood.”
“But have you seen her make any move to fulfill her side of the bargain?”
“No, not yet. But she will, I know. When Murad dies. Even she dare not move until Muhammed is safe upon the throne.”
“Allah grant it may be tomorrow.”
“Hush now. I shall have to be going soon or I shall be missed. Recite just one more verse and then we must say good-bye.”
The man obeyed, dropping his voice for the recitation until I could no longer hear the individual words. Still, I guessed it must be that most common of love
