“That’s right—may Allah favor his future.”
“We can’t go in there.” Another statement.
“No. But I could take him a message if you like.”
“I’m a girl.” She was very definite about this, though I could see her little mind working strenuously at something behind the intelligence of her big brown eyes.
“Would you like me to take Prince Muhammed a message?”
“But Abdullah?”
“Yes, love?”
“How can you be here with me?”
“I will always be with you, my dearest,” I promised wildly.
“I mean, aren’t you a man?”
My silent struggle for the right answer allowed her to rattle on elaborations.
“How can you be here with me and also go to Muhammed? And with Father and out in the market? And here with me and Mama?”
It is the nature of God she’s trying to grasp, I thought with bitterness. Finally I said as simply, as unemotionally as I could, “I am a khadim, mountain spring.”
“What does khadim mean?”
Khadim means what I am and all I’ve suffered, seemed too broad, yet too circular an explanation even for a three-year-old. “It means ‘servant,’” I said instead.
“But not any kind of servant.” She was definite again. “A servant who wears long fur robes and has no beard. And yet no breasts like Mama.”
I rubbed the straggly hair on my chin in shame and said, “Yes.”
“Aunt Safiye says Muhammed must be...cir...cir...” She struggled for the word and then found cut instead. “Muhammed must be cut first before he is a man.”
“That’s right.”
“And until he is cut, he can still come and visit us sometimes.”
“That’s right.” My heart lightened. She was leaving the painful subject.
“Were you never cut?” No. I was wrong. “Is that why you can come and go as you please?”
I flinched. “I was cut, sweetheart. Only much, much worse than your royal cousin will be, inshallah. And that’s why I’m a khadim.”
She allowed me to walk her a step or two further, then she stopped again. “Could you cut me?”
“Sweetheart!”
“Cut me like you were cut so I can come and go, too. I would like to do that.”
I found my knees sunk to the floor before her like dead weights. I folded her precious little form into my sable-furred arms and held her tight, pressing the firm little globe of her head into my chest, stroking her braids, her little back possessively, releasing the already-too-feminine smell of her to fill my mind. Hunger that was all life had taken from me fed at last on her.
“I can’t do that, sweetheart.”
“You are a servant. I order you.” She pushed me away firmly. Her feet in their too-large slippers scuffled, trying to escape me. “Or I will sell you in the market.”
Only the comedy of adult insistence dwarfing her tiny body allowed me to laugh instead of crying. “Then I must go to the block which, by Allah, would kill me. Still I cannot cut you.”
I remembered the possibility of rape. My lady had once equated that with what gelding was for a man—only worse, because it could happen over and over again. I needn’t burden Gul Ruh with this weight of feminine life. But I did swear to myself she would never know the possibility as long as I drew breath.
My little lady read my thought, at least part of my thought. I guess my face always softened when the image of Esmikhan passed behind it. “We needn’t tell Mama if you think it best,” she said. “And I’d be brave. I promise I wouldn’t cry. Not too much.”
Tears mixed with laughter in my eyes, blinding me. “I can’t. As Allah is my witness, no power on earth can do that. And I wouldn’t cause you such harm even if I could.”
“Why? Why?” she insisted, anger setting her on the verge of tears as well.
“Because...because, thank Allah, you are a girl. When I was your age, I was a boy.” That was a difficult thing to say, with all the memories it conjured, and I blinked against them.
“Oh.”
“This girl business again,” echoed behind the syllable.
Gul Ruh was silent a moment, thinking. Into the pause drifted the princes’ recited words:
“In the Name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful. Be mindful of your duty to Allah and reverence the wombs that bear you. Men are superior to women on account of the qualities with which Allah has gifted the one above the other. Verily, Allah is High, Great.”
“Why?” she repeated, intensity dropping the word to a whisper.
“Because,” I said helplessly. It was too big a question for me to answer. “Because it is Allah’s will.”
No sooner had I said this—an answer I had meant only to be as safe, trite, and formulaic as any other recital of such words—than the full wonder of the theology hit me. I felt myself shaking on the hard marble floor of that harem corridor at the mighty, ineffable, incomprehensible power eternity hides in such moments.
“Poor Abdullah,” Gul Ruh said, reaching up a little hand to gently touch the curse of my naked face. “Did you cry when they cut you?”
“I did, little one.” I choked, the memory breaking through my body with physical force. “And screamed and cursed Allah, begging him to let me die.”
“Are you sorry now you didn’t die?”
“No, dear heart, no. I—” And this was the first moment I realized it myself. “—I thank Allah every time I look at you.”
In my mind, my thought went forward. I was even grateful I was such a man as I was, for no other being on earth save only her mother could have been present, nay, responsible both for her getting, when the sanctity of harem walls was defied, and at her birthing. And there was her teething, her every step which no man saw, no man but the Divine—and Abdullah the khadim.
“I thank Allah, too,” she said, in the perfect faith of a child.
Still shaking slightly, I got to my feet and took her little hand in mine. Dear Allah, I was going to spoil her rotten!
“Come, my heart,” I said.
