She stopped me outside the door. “I told you I knew my own son,” she said triumphantly.
I was in a much better mood that day than I had been when I’d left her in the park. Gul Ruh was strong and had caught but a small cold from her adventure and the sniffles were now all but gone. The gossip, too, seemed to have stayed its tongue at least until it could be seen what Abd ar-Rahman meant to do about the matter. In order to be among the first to learn of his reaction, I stopped to hear Umm Kulthum out.
“Betula went to her brother as soon as we got home,” she said, “and explained to him that it was all her fault he had had to play hero that afternoon. This only confirmed the impression my son already had that Gul Ruh was the helpless victim.
“You should have heard him! ‘So light in my arms,’ he said. ‘So pale and shaking as if my very touch might kill her.’ He saw the accident now not only as Betula’s fault but somehow as his own as well. That his sister is wanton is his fault—he’s never been stern enough with her. That he had gone splashing into the water, too, that is his fault. He knew there were strange women about. They had their own eunuchs who could have saved her just as well. But he had to make a fool of himself and invade another man’s property and a virtuous woman’s modesty.
“Well, there is nothing for it now. To recover the honor of our whole family, from Betula up, he must do the honorable thing. He must send his brothers to the Sultan with a request for Gul Ruh’s hand.”
Umm Kulthum took my elbow and spoke confidentially now. “He talks in brave words like honor and guilt because he is shy and a coward to mention what he really feels, love. That he should go against reason and fall for a girl on no better pretext than that he has seen her face and felt her in his arms—that offends his manhood. He grows red and white at the very thought, stumbles clumsily, then retreats to the safety of his books.
“But I can tell. Soon enough he is back in the mabein. He can’t read any more, you see. He rails at Betula and threatens to beat her. She simply laughs at him, for she knows it is his excuse to be close to women, a thing he finds himself longing for in spite of his better judgment. A thing he is as yet clumsy at. Oh, they will be so happy!”
And so certain was Umm Khulthum of how her plan must work out that she almost forgot to conclude with “Inshallah.”
“Allah willing,” I added to her wish and then noticed that during our conversation, Gul Ruh had arrived. I don’t know how much of our talk she heard, but she was radiant in cloth-of-gold. Her beautiful brown eyes, cleansed by a brief bout with a light fever, sparkled now with crystal-clear health. And perhaps there were tears of excitement there, too.
Unlike her usual manner, Umm Kulthum said nothing to the girl in greeting. She had been announced in Safiye’s sitting room and must not delay. But she did pause long enough to produce a sprig of Judas blossom from her bosom which she proceeded to stick fondly into Gul Ruh’s hair where it looked lovely against the rich black braids. Nobody said it, but it was plain whose hand had picked that sprig. It looked like his hand in a caress, thin and pale and gentle with timidity.
Gul Rah accepted the flowers gratefully and bowed to kiss Umm Kulthum’s hem as a daughter-in-law does to her new mother. Umm Kulthum straightened the sprig once more and then went in to the interview. Gul Ruh and I were left to pace nervously outside the door.
We did not have long to wait. Usually when the proposal has been made, the girl is sent for and given time to dress in her finery before being presented and told the news. I thought Gul Ruh would have to be constrained from springing in too soon and seeming immodestly anxious to be a bride. But as it happened no constraint was necessary. It was not a maidservant who came to the door, but Umm Kulthum herself. She swept by in tears, looking neither right nor left. Gul Ruh and I followed after as close as we dared come to the grief we had seen in that face. It was only when she was safely in the custody of her own eunuchs at the door of her sedan that Umm Kulthum turned to us again.
She did not look at us, but at the gilded and tiled intestinal halls in general as her voice echoed off them. “By Allah, may there come grief to this house to match the grief that they have given to us this day and then I shall be satisfied!”
A man could be killed for uttering such treason. Only a mother bereaved was understood to be so out of her mind that she was forgiven.
“Take your son’s suit elsewhere,” she had been told briefly and in no uncertain language. Safiye was in the room with Esmikhan and it was Safiye who had done the talking. “In the second month of Rabia, less than two months from now, my son Muhammed will be circumcised. Soothsayers have already chosen the day and preparations are well under way. This time, as Allah is true, the day will not be put off again, for my son is now a man and ready to take on a man’s responsibilities. As soon as his manhood has healed, he will take a wife. A wife that is worthy to stand beside a Sultan, not this rabble
