One of them was both larger, though not taller, and somewhat older than the others, he had a flowing beard which was tied in two braids, in a style which he had adopted from the local inhabitants, as a means of keeping it out of his way. He surveyed the group, noting that one man was still ill from a fever two days before, and that another was showing signs of being disgruntled, because he scowled with every sip of the lukewarm draught.
There was just enough light for him to scribble a short note to his oldest daughter, who, since the death of his wife in childbirth, had been the lady of the household. Her uncle was the trustee, of course, but his little Shahzadeh had shown a remarkable ability to manage the affairs. In truth his younger brother did little more than sign what needed to be signed, which pleased them all.
bi-ism Allah al-raman al-rahim:
I know it is your birthday today, and I am hoping that I will be home for your next one. It is almost light, it is another day like any other for us, as this siege of Pradesh has dragged on. I do not see how it can end soon, for the city was well supplied. However, our allies are virtuous, and glad that they have our aid.
Pray for me, as I pray for you.
Insha-Allah that all promises made and all covenants kept.
He closed it, sealed it, and sent the sick man back to have it mailed off and told him to wait the day back at the main camp. No sense in having everyone become ill from one ill man. That was the way that Kurush Parand thought – to join both what was humane and what was expedient. He often worked men harder than others, the some 80 under his command were often seen stripped to the waist during the day, and were often working past dusk – but only because the preparations might save them.
At this point he looked out over the massed camp and the siege lines. What he saw displeased his eye. In the center was a high walled city, built of brown and grey stone, with high turrets and strong bastions that jutted out. A top these battlements were many men, well armed with spears, and with many heavy ballistae set at regular intervals. The pennants were still high and clean, replaced each few days with regularity.
Around the edges were trenches, with defensive works. There should have been sharpened stakes, but there were not. There should have been more bunkers, but there were not. There should have been regular patrols, there were few. Instead the army of the Vedic Sultan of Peridistan was a ragged assembly of young men, old warriors beyond their time, and mercenaries from the Caliphates. The Islands had sent a few cavalry, which were of little use in a siege except for communications. It was the Caliphate of Kentauri, his home country, that had responded to the call to put down the revolt – for so it was called, though of course it had been longer than living men since the schism had allowed a Vedic Kingdom to break away from the Empire of the Faith.
His own troops were of middle quality, Al-Quareshi, his home city, was known for sailors, poets, necromancers and traders, not soldiers. He, himself, had not been a soldier in some time, but the experience of three hard campaigns is burned into brain and bone, not memory. His habits were still good, and he set the men to improving his small part of the war. Setting stakes and digging a second bunker, cleaning out the water, preparing weapons. The sun now blazed rapidly above the horizon. It was a green, and the air was ashen in the mouth, the wind was from inland, and the smell of sulfur was particularly strong. The green sun persisted even after the first hour, it was to be one of those days, when the wind dropped there would be a touch of a flurry of a black brackish ash that tasted of salt. The weather here seemed to include rocks that fell from the sky as well as rain.
The morning’s work done, and the day staying overly warm, he set the men to rest in the shade – having thought to bring canvas that he could stretch over the trench this was easy. He sent one man for more water and then began to keep the log.
They might name this the Boredom War, without any exaggeration. It was lasting too long, and this siege was costing a fortune. It was time to fight or go home.
The day passed that way, and a deep green sun ended the light.
- - -
Late that night, in that deep pit of darkness between the long dusk and the twilight of dawn – there came a sound. The first part was familiar, it was a clacking sound of catapults. He looked to his own section of the defenses, every man not on watch was in a bunker, he felt no qualms, the lead and rock missiles would fall, and do little damage. It was why they were built. It was a waste of ammunition to shoot in the dark, and at first he shrugged. Then he stopped. It was not like the defenders to waste anything, they had been cautious. He then did not hear the heavy thunks and clanking of missiles landing. Instead, it was like the sound made when a wagoneer drops sacks of flour or potatoes on the ground. It was a muffled thud.
He tugged at his aid, “Sound alert in bunkers. Have everyone set to defense. Arm bows and make ready.”
His aid ran off, he also told two sentries to do so. His section was soon awake and preparing, the scraping sounds of armor being put on, the creaking of crossbows readied.
And then they could hear a new sound, screams of agony, and pain. Something was wrong, something was very, very, wrong. And that rattled his gut. It was not that he was not a brave man in his head, but he knew that his intestines sometimes gave way when they ought not. But now was not a time to worry about this. He tugged two men and sent them in opposite directions along the trenches, and told them to report. It was not long afterward that a messenger arrived saying that there would be a retreat, that the entire west side of the siege was broken and there was terrible slaughter. He was not to repeat it, but there were stories of men strangled by the air.
“I will not retreat. Stop with this message and send another. Move westward until you meet the enemy, fight for the glory of the Shanenshah, for we must hold this night.”
He then gathered up his own men and began moving towards the fighting, which was not growing audible with shows and clanks. But, as yet, no whir of flights of arrows. Night fighting was considered the greatest skill in the arts of war, and men who could move through the dark and be lethal, were accounted to be the most skilled of soldiers. He had but little training, but it was well enough. The air still hung heavy with sulfur, and while he knew no Homas of Fire, it was clear that risking torches would be ill advised.
So it was into a desperate combat by night. He began having them move, both along the main trench, and through the messenger’s trench, gathering men up, and convincing them to make a stand. “Else we will be killed as we flee.” A few looked at him distantly.
“It’s death there, the very air grows up and strangles. There are dozens laying, untouched by steel.”
It was this moment that made his head turn from cool logic to cold blood. He would, he brushed aside the fear, and it felt as if his mind had become separated from his body and all was distant, save the feeling of his skin. His voice grew to the point of command.
“Rally to me. The Faithful rally to me.”
His voice was had raised to a bellow, and several jumped, their own faces becoming flush. The feeling of blood rising became a flame that leapt from man to man. His own motion became a kind of fluid, as if he could feel what was below him in the dry trench, he stepped over dropped weapons and gear, and behind grew a train of men. He had read it many times in his favorite book on war, there is only one kind of leadership.
“Follow Me”, the words came to his lips from long mental repetition. He had never faced a rout before, when it seemed the body of the army was falling apart, lost like ants without a queen. He set himself to as quick a stride has he could manage. And trusted to The God and his skills.
Going down the turning of the trenches grew a more macabre experience with each passing turn, there were bloated bodies, and the floor grew to a mud of sand and blood. His sword was in his hand, he had not been conscious of drawing it. It was a blade in the German style, straight and with a curved point. He had purchased it on a trading trip not long before raising a regiment and coming to war. His own from Al-Quareshi were not good soldiers, but they were prone to fight when the blood was on them.
It was simmering, but not yet boiling.
He continued forward towards a vague reddish light ahead of them. It must be the fire priests. Shortly he turned the corner of the trench and saw them there, five white and red robed men and two red robed women with lanterns and oil bombs, they cast the oil bombs ahead, which burned out the air of sulfur. There were flashes ahead of them as the air burned bright with a taint of a kind of blue flame after it. He had seen it among the Germans, and knew what they called it “Prussian Air”. It was a poison.
He stopped with the head priest, he recognized the man.
“We need to charge forward. Can we light torches?”
The priest shook his head negatively. “The air is bright with fire and spirits, we must use flares above. We are clearing out some ground so we may fire them off. I can detail two grenadiers to open the way for you when I am done with this.” He made a ritual gesture to the fire spirit – which was a god in the old religion, but under the rule of the faithful was considered to be an archangel.
He was restless as he waited and took moments checking the body of men behind him, there were over 100 in all, he had collected the remains of two regiments into his body. He felt they could hold the trenches if they could burn off the Prussian Air.
The first flares went up above. The Homas had done its work, the flares burned of themselves, and the streamers they set off did not set more ablaze. Everything became stark bright and shadow, a colourless sketch of its daylight form, grotesque in the way a geographic map is a grotesque of a country side. The curve of the trench became a gash in the land, like a long wound from a blunt sword, puckering and bleeding smoke and soot. He could see flashes in the trenches themselves, and for the first time he heard gun fire: since the Kentauri had no musketeers, it was from the defenders, now in the trenches and rolling the flanks of the routing besiegers.
“Keep the flares above, and when you see billowing clouds from the trenches, put flares into them.”
“It will burn, perhaps uncontrollably. It is Herron.”
“So is poison, and that is what they are using.”
The priest nodded. “I will cleanse the impure with fire.” It was said in almost gleefully mechanical way, as if he was both aware of its ritual nature, and the meaning in this case. Kurush could feel, rather than hear, the smile.
Then as they stepped over them men who had been strangled by the air, he began to hear the aid leading a chant. Walking turned to marching, he had thought to be silent, but that was no longer the mood of what was becoming a raging mass of men. Delicate stepping turned to hard crunching. Swords were beat against daggers. So be it, was his own thought. He saw motion ahead, being a round eye, he did not quite make it out well.
He motioned to his two grenadiers, and a small guard and forged ahead, his plan was to burn off the coming Prussian Air, and then rush into the attack.
Then heard distantly the clack of catapults again, and not far ahead, certainly no farther than a man could run in a minute in an open field – he saw billows reflected in the flash of flares, as the world alternated between an almost blank abyss when there was no flare, and the phantasm landscape of flare light. The billows were growing closer. His own head throbbing, he dropped from the mode of boiling blood that urged him to charge, and remembered his training, long before, as a doctor, for yes, that is what he had studied to be.
He turned to the grenadier. “Burn off that.”
The grenadier did a complicated motion with his hands which was both gesture and effect – and tossed forward a ball spouting sparks and flame – when it landed flames – blue and red – began to be seen. The grenadiers were now using straps to cast farther and farther ahead.
Kurush cried: “The God goes Forward!” as Kentauri of old had done.
He then gave an order:
“Spears front! Spears front!”
And then from before them there came a billowing gust of something between soot and fog. There was an acrid stench of bitter almonds. It just barely floated on the air. At this moment high above a flare burst – he could see motion down the trenches, instead of men, or the black sketches of men that one sees from a flare, he saw figures out of story or horrors out of old paintings and idols, bloody gods which bloody past had worshiped. Their eyes were larger and rounder and stuck forward off their bodies, their heads were bulbous, their bodies shapeless or shaped like drapes that flutter in the wind. The had no mouths or noses, merely round protruding shapes in the lower face, the did not have skin, but a sheened black.
And then he saw a detail that brought him back from the brink of madness and fear – they carried swords, and he could see spears and pikes. They were men, men in some strange garb of battle.
Below their feet came a billowing, and he could, even through his headache smell the bitter almonds of Prussic Air.
“Flare! Flare! Flare!”
The grenadier shot up a small flare which was the aiming sign for a larger one. It was an heroic and deadly move, for it was an invitation for fire to fall on their heads. He saw one man fall chocking and twitching. The figures marched forward deliberately until they were no more than a 15 meters away. The billowing preceded them. He felt his own head grow light. And then came a nearly blinding flash above their heads, and then the air itself became dry and his last conscious moment he felt the air being stripped out of his lungs and a desperate desert dryness on his skin, and then searing pain.
His last thought was that he had failed his daughter, even though he had served his Caliph and The God. He hoped that she would forgive him the committing the greater sin to avoid the lesser.
- - -
In the morning after the battle Kentauri surveyed the dead in the desperate trench battle, they found Kurush Parand, surgeon and regimental commander, his skin badly burned, his eyes boiled out of their sockets, among the fallen at the point of the greatest crush of battle. There scattered about were dozens of men burned horribly – and as many of the sortie man-monsters, there strange armor melted on to their bodies. They burned these corpses without stripping the garb off of them, it burned black, meaning it was thick with rubber, melted into place around silk. It seemed made to keep out the foul vapors that they used.
Kurush was given a hero’s funeral – he had saved the army of The Faithful from a fearful slaughter. But even so, it was clear that the siege could not be held, too many had died. The day was passed sending messages back and forth. Less than 12 days later the army was packing and readying to leave. On Long Count 994.9.24 Pradesh was an open city again, and the ships of the faithful were sent back, laden with gold and silver which had been their price for ending the siege, while leaving Pradesh in the hands of a newly crowned King. They also carried a humiliating treaty which recognized five new kings, including the King of Pradesh.
Secretly the Caliph would sign, with trembling hands, a treaty which declared defeat and called all of his armies home. His Vizier, who had warned against the war, was beheaded and replaced with the general who had planned the ill-fated siege, to placate the angry army.
- - -
In Al-Quareshi, during the war, the board became an institution. Originally it had been put up by some merchants to tack notices of ships coming in, and sales of goods. However, it rapidly became a place where all sorts of other notices were placed. When the soldiers were raised from Al-Quareshi to fight in the Vedic Sultanates, in addition to the standing army and the Caliphs personal troops, it rapidly became the place where the lists of the fallen, missing or returning wounded were posted. At first it was copied lists from the town hall, which posted the official dispatch. But the town hall was both in convenient – because the main square had a bazaar in it, and made reading anything difficult, and people who were looking for names also wanted to match this to returning ships and other information of that kind.
Finally the town mayor, a military man who had retired from combat some years before, had bills printed up which joined returning ship information, casualty lists, and the government’s own statements on the war, and had them posted on the harbor boards, and on boards used to announce worship services at every mosque which would allow it, which was, in the end, all of them.
Rapidly they became places where people watched and waited, played chess, did business. Women would come with their sewing to wait for the next posting. Young wives would come down when they heard the banging of hammers. Older men would look for their sons in the waning hours of the day, after closing up their shops. There came to be an public atmosphere, as people would comfort others who had lost someone, or were merely worried beyond endurance. It came to be a place of bonding. Mosques would send Imams outside to hold prayer sessions, and vendors sold food and water. If you wanted to find someone, it paid first to look near the board nearest their home or mosque.
Gradually the “vultures” came to dwell near them, those whose business was death, particularly lawyers who specialized in wills, fortune tellers – though these were careful to ply their trade under other guises – and brokers of various kinds – pawn brokers, apprentice brokers, marriage brokers, child brokers. All of the trade in human flesh was soon represented, as some were even forced to sell themselves into slavery to pay the debts of a lost husband or father. Dark tales started to circulate as to what happened to young women in such circumstances, but the practice was not stopped, indeed, the court sent clerks to each of the boards and charged for sealing the contracts on the spot.
Thus the boards became, at once, both the great gathering place of the town, the place where people came to talk freely, and, at the same time, a place of somewhat ill repute. And yet everyone went, out of need, or curiosity, or desire to do business or locate another.
In one of the most respectable neighborhoods, the board was placed under a throng of five thin aspen trees, with their odd broad leaves, and graceful weeping boughs, it was generally kept clear of the worst of “board culture”, and was nestled between two shops. There had been an alley way between them, but that had been boarded up some time ago, and the trees planted in squares of earth, which had flourished and now obscured that there had ever been an alley. A board was erected early there, to announce sales and specials. But it had, like so many others, become the place of news and gathering.
It was on that terrible morning, in the thick rain, that Shahzadeh, or Zadeh as she was nicknamed – went early in the morning. Because of the sheets of water, only the people who had to be there were there, clustered around the board itself, under an awning that had been put up over it. They were reading names.
Each one was read allowed, because many women could not read. There were stones that had been set up as tables for chess and drinking, but these were empty but for one woman, draped in heavy robes with a long scarf embroidered in pearls – who was in tears, her head in her hand, oblivious to how damp she was becoming.
Zadeh was not the sort of person to push her way to the board, and she had thought to hang by the corner, out of the wet and the falling tree leaves. But as soon as she reached the edge of the group, she found that they parted for her. The list of names was long, and it took her a moment to realize that it stopped only partway through the alphabet, there was more bad news to come. It stopped before her father’s name could be there. She puzzled for a moment of the special treatment, but then remembered that her father, as an officer, would be listed in the first list. All sound died in her ears, she heard nothing at that moment, as her heart seemed to stop beating, and she looked up at the right hand corner – and there, were a dozen names, itself a bad sign, since fewer then one in ten were officers, and officers did not die at the same rate as mere soldiers. She could see “Parand, Kurush, Surgeon and Artesh”, that is the commander of a regiment.
She stared there, her hands closing first to fists and then opening. An older woman embraced her, but she simply stared at the crudely printed letters whose ink was smeared. For a moment, and only a moment, she thought she had misread it, and then for a moment, only another moment, she thought she was in a dream, and that she would wake up, her mind grasped on the strange colour of the leaves, and the way there was a drifting unreality to the way the slight touch of wind was pushing the skirts of the older women.
She sniffled, stifling back tears, this was no place for her to cry. She wanted to clear her head, but could not manage to do so, or even move. An older woman embraced her, she realized that many of the women before the sign were already in mourning dress, they were standing there to comfort those who came after, or were waiting for news, which was sure to be bad.
Sound came back to her ears and the world began moving at its normal speed again. The dreamlike quality was off of it, and she felt as if she were standing at the bottom of a deep pit. She was hearing noises of comfort: “It was the will of The God”, “He was so brave”. But they were almost foreign as a language to her. Many were in the holy tongue, many were in Farsi – the language of business and government. Some were in other languages – for the elite of Al-Quareshi were indeed of three different people. But they reduced down to a babble, until the oldest woman there told the others to hush.
She blinked and shook herself, gently pushed away the hands that touched her and nodded that she was fine. Her first stop was her uncle’s house, for there was now much preparation. She walked quickly, it was raining, and raining and raining. She looked back once at the women waiting by the board, and decided it had to be her duty to go back there later to comfort others.
With this she turned down the street and ran, her thin legs pumping as fast as they could under her skirts, her breath heaving in her chest, and an acid itch of forming tears at the corners of her eyes, that was pushed away by the rivulets of the raindrops that meandered down her face, as they fell off of her hooded shawl.
By the time she reached her uncle’s villa, high up in the Palm Quarter, she was bedraggled. Her over cloak – white with a pattern of diamonds sewn in beads – was clinging to her overdress, which was, in turn, clinging to her undergarments, which were soaking through at the seams. It would take a long time before it would be dried by the sun. She came through the gate, where there was a small garden in front, and behind that an awning, where sat her uncle and four other men. The were discussing business rapidly in Arabic – they were traders from far away, as cold be seen by their open and flowing dress, more appropriate to the south. But Kentauri traders would have used Farsi, and therefore she concluded that they must come from the Caliphate of the Islands, where only Arabic was spoken under the new law, called Sharia, which reigned there.
She reached the awning, and her uncle Iskander looked at her. She must have been a sight, her thinness accentuated by how the layers of her clothing clung oddly to the few parts of her that had reached womanhood, while the rest remained firmly in that time of just coming of age. Her gangliness fit with her body in another way, there were features that were not quite in proportion – her nose was too long, her hands were too large, her eyes were large – she had gotten her mother’s cat’s eyes – and her cheek bones unusually pronounced. She slouched, and thought of her self as ugly. Her uncle smiled at her, he remembered her mother at the same age, and she too had been half woman and half girl, but had flowered into a great beauty. Shahzadeh was short, as her grandfather had been, but otherwise would almost certainly be courted far and wide.
“And you have come to us with great news I can tell.” He waved dismissively to his interlocutors and said “We should speak in side.” He took her in even as she was opening her mouth to break the news, taking her hand and leading her into the lower level. As with a villa of that time, the first floor was a single room with pillars, between which rooms were created as needed by hung drapes. This allowed the room to be flooded with light during the day. He walked over to the kitchen – fortunately the morning run of the oven had left enough heat to warm the coffee that had been cold brewed overnight. He poured the coffee into the warmer through a cheesecloth, and waited.
He looked at her.
“I have heard there was a great defeat at Pradesh. You face tells me the worst.”
She shook her head slowly in the affirmative, not trusting her voice yet.
“It will be almost certain that troubled times are ahead.”
She nodded slowly in the affirmative.
“You will have to be made a citizen.”
She furrowed her brow.
“You are your father’s daughter, and as of not long ago, of legal age. Two trisdekads means that I can no longer act as your guardian.”
“But how do I do this?”
“You must find a solicitor, and do what needs to be done, a woman has not been made a citizen at your age for some time. The usual process involves a widow, who takes on her husband’s tax. But there must be another way.”
“Uncle, surely you are wise enough to do this.”
“And if I do, they will take it to court, and show that you did not do it of your own will and faith, and take it away from you. And aside from this, I must journey south to the Islands to clear up your father’s business there. And then north to the German lands. I need you to be able to do all that must be done here, and without my intervention. This is your test, little Princess, The God has set you to come of age. I can help you, but it would be no help.”
He then recited:
“And the fledgling butterfly, If shorn from cocoon by false charity Will die, its muscles untested by nascent flight And then to be fodder for the birds of the night.”
She looked straight at him, and said “I will do this.”
She curtseyed gravely, and in the old style, and started to leave, but he ladled out some coffee to a small cup.
“The holder of a great house, may drink coffee when she needs it.”
She sipped first the sweet dark liquid, it sent a kind of wave along her skin and to her face, that was between pleasure and revulsion, warmth and goose-bumps, and a sensation more intense than any she had heard described outside of a few poems that she was not supposed to have read at her age.
“May The God aid you in all promises made and all covenants kept.”
He smiled “And may his peace and blessings be upon you.” While his voice went down to punctuation, it nevertheless uplifted her, and made her happy to go on her way.
Her uncle cleared his throat and pointed at a rack with a rain over-garment, which she traded for her wet overcoat. She set down the small cup, turned towards him, curtseyed again, and left.
And then dashed off into the rain.
It was when she hit the street, water still running down the sides of it, that she thanked that her boots were fur-lined and very dry. They had been made in a town that conjured up the most exotic visions in her, even its name was alien: the German capital of Avalon.
- - -
When she reached her father’s house, at the very foot of the Palm Quarter, much smaller than her uncle’s grand villa, for her father did not believe in display, and wanted a location nearer the small medical college – which he had helped found some annae before, or rather, take from being a single building school to a chartered college.
She entered into the house itself. Terribly empty, as her cousins were away – one north and one in Kentauri – and there was only a part time servant. She knew there was more than enough money to hire one – but it was gold, and she was not allowed to touch gold coins by law. Nor pay in silver as she was not. Wait, she was of legal age. Silver, a woman servant. She envisioned company, a greater sense of safety, and more time for her studies. It would be done, as soon, of course, as she was a citizen.
But how to do this? Without touching her father’s funds, she was at a loss for how to do it. Her uncle had clearly stated that none of the money could be his. And so, how to get the money? Borrow it? Earn it? But the only ways she had even heard of any young lady, rather woman, her age earn money were activities that she dared not even think of participating in.
There was a ring, and she answered the door, dripping in the rain was a message carrier, wearing the town livery and holding on his back a sack of scrolls. He handed a small bound case to her, and waited for a tip. She had some bronze coins in her pocket, she pressed one into his hand. He left with a smile, and turned about to run to the next door.
She unfurled the scroll, it was her father’s last message to her. She did not read so much as soak it up through her eyes.
She did nothing more that day but move from kitchen to bed, crying – clutching the scroll all the while. Only when dark began to creep through the house – and truly a deepening dark for the clouds were still hanging over the city – did she close the drapes and go up stairs to her hammock – strung between two pillars, and sleep a fitful sleep filled with the kind of dreams that are never remembered, except through the footprints of fear they leave behind in the memory.
- - -
She awoke the next morning, across east the bay was lit, the sun was a florid orangish red, but was rapidly being covered over, it was as if an awning of light grey clouds was being slid across the sky. She saw something unfamiliar – she thought at first it was volcanic ash, which she knew from trips into the mountains, or perhaps one of the days where the swirling sulfur fell out of the air. But this was quite different, it drifted down, it floated, it hovered and then fell. In fact, it fell with ever greater speed and density.
She went out on to the balcony, and touched it – it was icy cold to the touch. She had been a little girl the last time she had seen – snow.
At that moment it was hitting the balcony and melting, but leaving behind a sheen of water with specks of ice in it. The wind began to blow more harshly. She shut out the outside, and went down stairs to fire up the oven, stacking it full of fuel and running the bellows. As she did this she continued to ponder her fate, and how, exactly, she was going to deal with the situation. Where to get the money from?
She was at a complete loss. It was not that she was not a practical person, she was studying mathematics and literature and business, and intended to take over, eventually, her father’s thriving trade in medical equipment and supplies. His own invention – a medical instrument for measuring the strength of the blood pumping – and his improvements to instruments for cutting the skin and muscle, were well thought of, and brought tremendous profits. She realized that it was his business no longer, that in 61 days there would be the reading of the will, and that she was now the owner of all of this, as soon as she could find a way to citizenship. The tears wanted to flow, but she gritted her teeth, put on a warmer, and then went to a lower cabinet where her father kept his coffee. She counted out 62 beans, ground them, and began making hot water to brew the coffee. In took sometime for it to get hot enough, but by that point the oven was letting off enough heat that she no longer felt desperately cold. She pulled all of the drapes across, which divided the downstairs into 9 separate rooms, to keep the heat in the small corner which was the kitchen .
There was a small window of glass that faced south, and at this point it was accumulating snow on the window sill. It was a off white color from the sulfur in it, but otherwise a kind of fine ornament. She looked south on the lower level of the town – she was on the last terrace of the Palm Quarter, which was somewhat above the basin in which the main town, with its canals and bridges. But it was enough to see the rooftops of most of the buildings until the harbor to the far south, and, if she peered around as far as she could, until the town center in the west. Thus, she thought of it as looking “down” on the rest of the city. The white was rapidly piling up, though still melting on the black shapes of the tubes of rubber which the sun warmed, and thus provided heated water.
This reminded her to draw off all of the water from the heater into the tank, as tepid as it would certainly be. This task occupied her for some time, as she had trouble with the valves and finally found the tools, selected a wooden mallet from among them, and managed to use it to tap the water open. There was a satisfying rushing sound, and she stood there, just listening to it, for how long she did not know. After that, she drew off some of the warm water, and began cleaning the kitchen – there were dishes from two days ago – and then as much else as she could reach. It was only when a ring from the front door came that she realized she had been doing all of this in her bed clothes. She rang the “wait” bell at the front, and went upstairs to change. She realized her damp cloths from before needed to be specially dried from the weather, but put off dealing with this until she could handle the problems of a visitor.
She decided to enforce that she was indisposed for the day by wearing house slippers. This was a rare thing, since almost all sociability occurred out of doors. But it was cold, snow, windy, nasty, and the entire town was in shock anyway. Some 100,000 people lived in Al-Quareshi or its immediate abutting villages, and it was a very dark day for many of them. She dreaded going down to the news boards for even more information, and then remembered her own promise to serve time among the widows.
She had reached the door, and opened it without checking who it was. There stood her cousin, dressed in a traveling cloak of strange design, with a heavy hood. It was, she finally realized, wool. It had a large metal clasp to hold it in place. He clearly wore some rather odd clothes under it, and heavy black boots. He looked refreshed, rather than cold, and swept in. Ibrahim was the son of her mother’s sister. The sister had died giving him life, and he, and his brother, had lived with her father ever since. They were also the idols of her young life, she longed to follow them, be with them, and be accepted by them in their sophisticated talk. For a long time they had ignored her, but, at a certain point, they allowed her in to their deliberations and secret world of adolescence. It did not occur to her until very recently, it was because she had started to mature, and lent their activities an air of respectability. They fed her love poems, and would instantly banish any that she found too bawdy or beneath notice. They tried out their introductions, and even dance steps with her. Learning gallantry – that new fashion acquired from the German lands – by teaching it to her.
He swept in, lifted her up. And proclaimed:
“The God has brought me back to you. Though misfortune is the reason, bring me to the kitchen and let us be together!” It was an effusive bubbling, and he kissed her on both cheeks before setting her back down on her feet.
She took him by the hand, led him through the curtains and to the kitchen. He immediately smelled coffee, and looked at her. He raised an eyebrow, and she replied in kind.
“Clearly you have matured more than just in body since I was last here.” Almost half an anna ago he had left. And yes, she thought, I am different.
She had only one cup of coffee made, but gave it to him, and he took only the barest of sips before handing it back to her.
“My baggages are still on the ship. But we must first speak of darker things that will never be spoken of again.”
They drew to chairs into the kitchen, and as the snow stuck to the windows, and then day turned to dark, and his gaze on her hardened, his muscles tightened. There was a ripple in her chest and a quiver in her heart, she felt that he did not want to say what he was about to say.
- - -
At first she had an impulse to take the discussion to the divan, covered as it was with leather with its comfortable seats to set coffee or tea cups. It beckoned, to her, but the hard gaze from her interlocutor, and there was enough light coming from window to make where they were seem a fragile space which welcomed human presence, where the rest of the house came to feel with each passing moment to be a vast haunting place, like a cemetery or other forbidden place. Thus she looked at him, and leaned in from her chair, huddled around the fading warmth of her coffee cup.
He began, slowly, with a voice that seemed worn by talking, its edges filed, but not smoothed by fatigue.
“I wish you to understand it should not have been like this. Much of what I have to say has been, hidden, from you.”
“Was it my father’s wish?” It seemed difficult to believe that he would hide anything essential.
“No, your father was opposed to the secrecy, but these are fragile times.” He paused. She could barely see his features, and thus did not really know whether he intended to go on or stop. She hesitated, heart sounding in her ears. He continued: “ There has been a more terrible defeat at Pradesh than even you will hear, though, because our small city took bears great losses, it will be known here as a weighty battle.” He again paused for longer than she was comfortable with.
This time, however she interrupted. “I have heard a story that we have left the war.”
“That is not clear yet, but it is likely, and if we are wise, which we have not always been, it will be so. We will take payment in gold and silver in return for our accepting terms, if the reports I have are to be believed. But that is not the problem. It is not that we lost, it how we were beaten.”
“And how was that.”
“Our enemies used a weapon which is terrible in its aspect, far worse than any spear, shot, or even firearm. They used a poisonous gas, one which debilitates and kills. We know that they must have received great aid from others to create it. It not only ends our making war on the Vedic Kingdoms, but opens the possibility that they will take this weapon and use it to expand.”
“So there is a fear over the land, and it is justified.”
“But that is only the beginning.”
“It seems enough.”
“It is not. You do not know the past well enough, I who have seen the last of it still do not truly understand, your father fought in the Vedic Wars, he explained it as best he could.” In a sudden broad gesture, suited for the dark he waved his hand towards the front of the house. “South there is the Ocean Haram – the Ocean of Sanctuary. The sea forbidden to unbelievers. And once this was so, our armies swarmed across the borders and lands. Our ships and galleys brought Jihadeen to conquer, convert and subjugate. It is made into our culture.”
“We were warriors once.” It was a phrase her father had used, like a ritual, to describe any behavior she had which surprised him, particularly one she picked up from other children or at the mosque.
“Yes, but no more. There is to be a new way. We are to be merchants, manufacturers and mullahs. We are to be a new people. But we have the weight of the old government on us. A vizier who is a warlord by another name.”
She sipped more coffee, it burned down her throat, not from heat, but from a kind of grainy dryness. She was not familiar with the feeling, of coffee’s effect fading.
“This is grand politics, and I am sure I should be interested. But what does it have to do with me.”
“When the city is to heavy on the ground, there is an earthquake, when there is too much weight on a ship, it capsizes. Our land is set for many changes, and they will go on for some time. For now there are some who think that we are farther along than we are. They rush.”
“And.”
“Not all of the dead are dead at Pradesh. There was a second battle, one against our own people, to put down a revolt.”
“Against the Vizier?”
“The current Vizier is in a very precarious position, but no, against the established way. It was rootless, angry, and doomed. Al-Quareshi has its discontents, but not enough to rebel. There were many dead, many women and children.”
She drew breath in.
“And still, I must ask as a poor woman child, what this is of mine.”
“Do you not understand?” She could feel his look of slightly impatient explanation at this, and then he resumed: “You are about to be the inheritor of your father. He navigated the shoals of politics, for the old order grasps more and more of the profits of the land. Now that you own all that he owned, or will when you set affairs in order, you will too.”
“My father did…”
“… business with the Germans, the Chishanese, the Veda, the Hellenikos, the Latins. And was watched all the time.”
“He was a commander and a long serving member of the military.”
“And he was a thinker, poet, surgeon, doctor, teacher and radical.”
“Radical?”
“You have no idea how differently your life has been from others.”
“I know that the attitudes of our house were sometimes in appropriate to discuss outside.”
He stood and stretched, and did a small walk around the chair. And as he did.
“More than this. And because of this, we are watched. People will be tried for merely breathing the wrong air, and deprived of their heads. There will be, for a time, open use of the secret police., the Talibeen.” She did not shudder, though many would, at the dread stories that were told of them.
“And I will be watched?”
“Soon, but not yet, after all, you are not of importance. But as soon as you announce that you are to assume citizenship. Yes.”
“I will need help, and I have been offered. None.”
Here she tried to peer into the dark to get some sense of him.
“I will send someone to you, he is young, but subtle, his name is Navid, and he is a surgeon, a student of your father’s.”
The name produced only a hazy recall of a rather silky face some annae before. He seemed, composed, with bright eyes, which, were unlike the cat’s eyes she saw each time she looked in the mirror.
“For this I thank you.”
It seemed to reduce the conversation to quiet. And yet, there was an unbearable weight on it, and the silence was punctuated with the heavy glops of increasingly dense snow hitting the window.
It was she who could bear it no more.
“Why have I received no help from my uncle?”
“He is going to pretend to leave on business soon, but it will be long before he returns to your sight. He is fleeing to military command, where they will have trouble catching him.”
“Why is this?”
“They will think he knows what your father knew.”
It was her turn to break out of her hunch, and stretch. She yawned, and then stopped before it ceased.
“What is that.”
There was a slow exhale.
“I wish I knew. Probably little, which is worse than much.”
“Surely such a mania would not grip us.”
“It has gripped us for an age, the war in the Vedic lands was a mania, we had nothing to do with it.”
“But The Faithful…”
“Would have adapted. We are not the soldiers we once were, your father was of the last. He was a horseman, surgeon, tactician, planner. He trained every day of his boyhood for it. I less so, since at first I was destined for the mosque, or university.”
She almost laughed. “None of the young men I know or know of do that.”
“It is neither good nor bad, it simply is. But it is not understood in the halls of power.”
“And my uncle leaves, I become a citizen, and watch myself.” She began to get a little giddy. “Is that all.”
“Traffic not in revolution, it is not yet in season.” He stood at this point.
“Now I must return to my dwelling.”
She stood easily and stepped to him, putting her hand on his shoulder. “It is frightful out.”
He seemed to gaze at the window, at least his profile turned towards it.
“You are right, more is about this night than man.”
He stood, turned towards her, and took her by the hand upstairs, where sleeping was. She had a hammock, and there was her father’s bed, which was an old fashioned kind with a tent than hung from the ceiling above it, and was in fact a hammock slung between two poles. The new beds were flat and sprung on a new innovation, the mattress. The sleeping on hammocks dated back to the first years of the faithful on Ishtar, to be ready for war.
He took the guest hammock near the glass doorways to the balcony, which is what he could easily see. She by default took her father’s place to sleep, and it was easy for her to fall into the ghostly darkness.
- - -
He was gone before she awoke – oh that easy habit of men to awake at need – and left her with sweeping the steps, the balcony and the rest. She set down and sorted through papers and bills. She cancelled her riding, since she was merely a rider, and not really a “horsewoman”, it was a luxury, not a skill. She also cancelled much else, because it would consume precious coinage.
There was a ring from the front, which signified a visitor. She looked up, she was not expecting any sort of. Wait. The help, Navid. She searched and remembered his last name as “Shaheen”.
She stood, went to the front and opened the door. And there, as bright as the new day reflecting off the rapidly melting snow, was a not quite thin, but very upright young man, with the kind of liquid features and visage that seems to mark the memory easily, but not specifically. He was easy to remember, but hard to recall.
“Please accept my service and peace in the name of The God.” He proffered a scroll of introduction.
She laughed, so old fashioned. “Of course I know you. Come in.”
He smiled, and not in the awkward way she expected from someone who could not be much more than her 26 annae.
He brushed passed her, and walked to the kitchen, a kind of familiarity in his stride, he settled before the oven, and looked expectantly at it.
“May I have some coffee?”
She smiled, took out the coffee, opened it, and counted 120 beans for two cups, half heartedly looking at the shapes of the beans, with their crease and roundness, it struck her differently some how. But she ground them up without hesitation, and made truly hot coffee, regardless that it used up more fuel that was good.
Navid the settled down, seeming very different from the glowering presence of the night before that had, inhabited her house and rocked back in the chair. He was more filled out than “lanky” would allow for, but still quite whip young. She could see that he barely needed to shave.
“So, you have a problem.”
She explained at great length. He listened patiently, or mostly patiently, sometimes looking into her eyes, and sometimes at her generally, sometimes at the wall and sometimes at the window. But able to prompt for information, it was clear his mental attention did not wander.
At length, he spoke rather than interjected:
“I can find you both the lawyer you need, and a source of funds. The first is safe, the second is not without risk.”
She looked at him.
He took out two small cards, both with names and addresses.
“The first, is a young friend of mine, just confirmed to the law. But his uncle is on the court that hears the cases, and his cousin is the registrar. But you will have to visit the other first. He is a German, but will be able to come to an arrangement on funds.”
She took the cards, and examined both carefully. He had precise script, very flowing. After placing them in a small pouch she looked at him, just as light from the sun flooded through the south window. The world looked sharply different, and she knew her irises must have reduced down to ellipses, because the colors grew hard to distinguish.
“And what will the money before.”
“You’ve heard of the novel art of painting.” There was a faint trace of irony in his voice. They both knew why.
“Yes.” She smiled and was almost excited.
“He will want you to pose for him, without clothes.”
It would take her many years for her to admit that it was anything more than shock she felt, but it was a delicious shock. A kind of quivering at a cold touch of expectation, combined with trepidation, and of course, modesty.
“I am not sure if I like such an arrangement.”
“I have my reasons, he will pay you in German silver coins, which, unlike ours, are still quite fine. There will be no problems in their acceptance.”
She straightened up. “You think of an awful lot. What, what if he tries to take advantage of the circumstances.”
“I will arrange for your safety. He is trustworthy – and – pointing absently in the direction of a wall hidden by a drapery – “the creator of that work that is above the china chest. He would no more dishonor your father’s patronage, than you would allow it.”
She was still not at equilibrium, but it was enough for the moment. She gathered up scrapes of dignity and put her best voice on it, of slight haughtiness combined with a soft coldness.
“I am so glad Ibrahim sent you.”
“Ibrahim? He was imprisoned days ago by the Talibeen. No, it was your father who sent me a letter asking me to help if you should be in need of help. It is the scroll I gave you.”
She opened it and read it carefully. It was all in order, in her father’s familiar meandering hand, except that it was dated two days after her father had died.
- - -
She allowed Navid to finish his coffee and immediately made a motion towards the front door with her arms, indicating it was time to leave; he raised a jaunty eyebrow, clearly not used to being dismissed so quickly, but he picked his frame up, and, at a graceful amble, made it to the door – looked directly into her eyes for a instant in a contact which was both fleeting and fixed in her memory from the moment it happened.
“I have many things I must attend to.”
His nod and smile seemed to be wrapped in the same motion, and he made his pleasant farewells. Turning and walking down the steps that hugged the side of the building, and disappeared into the throng of the street – now moving in fits and starts as it navigated growing puddles and rivulets that had formed from the banks of now brownish snow.
She watched the entire way, finding an artistic appreciation in how he moved and in the shape of him as seen from behind, with his doctors tunic belted tightly around his waist, and his heavy boots forcing his legs to have a peculiar weight as they went down, even as they seemed to swing freely when in motion.
Se closed the door and was about to head back to her papers, but, instead, she set all of the drapes to closed, giving a marvelous openness to the entire first floor. She did this on the pretense of a chore, as if it were a duty, her movements uninhabited by her thoughts. But then, after this was done, she turned towards the now illuminated section to the left of the front door, where there was a large series of lidded benches, where the china was stored, and above these their hung an oblong painting. It was the painting that Navid had mentioned, familiar to them both. It was a long landscape, overhung with large leaves run riot from tropical plants, which, in the middle third of the painting, had an aperture that looked out on to a mosque, low and heavy like a turtle, but with two graceful soaring minarets, which, like painter’s brushes set in their rack, pointed upwards with a slender neck that widened close to the top.
It was an object of fascination for most visitors, who had never seen such layers of paint, which gave the whole thing a weight which Kentauri painting, largely based on the Hellenic styles learned from the old city’s artisans, did not even attempt.
Her eyes flowed around it, and she saw, again, the birds hidden in the branches, the small mammal with saucer like eyes, and again renewed her self with the languid shapes of the voluptuous foliage. She looked in to the sky, with its early retreating dusk, and first suggestion of stars. She looked at the curve of the dome, which seemed to have a single highlight of a bright bronze, though from what light she did not know. She looked the minarets, and saw the suggestion of a window in one, and, as she always did, she walked closer to see that, indeed, there was something resting on its sill, though she had never been able to tell quite what. She had always imagined it was a sleeved arm, from someone leaning back on the sill, but looking inwards. Inwards to the mystery, and not outwards to the sky. She again, as she had often in the past, furrowed her brow, wondering why her image was so specific.
She had to shake herself to pull her eyes away from it, and set them back to work examining columns of figures and details of the business. Her desk seemed to reek of a dry air, and the wood, darkened with special oils, seemed, instead of comforting, arid as a desert. When downstairs there was a riot of color.
No, not downstairs, in a room, in a house, whose address, she had in her pouch. It was there that there was a world of colour, colour beyond what she had known and seen before. And mastered by a mysterious sorcerer of an art that was, indeed, a kind of magic.
- - -
She began to grow nibblingly hungry, and at first thought of cooking – a process that involved many steps, and time. And then of purchasing something from a street vendor, and then finally her mind settled on something else. She needed a maid, and she needed to hire one. It might take more time, but there was no delaying it. She could feel days slipping through her fingers, and she was about to embark on a course which would gobble up every instant of available time.
Thus a plan formed in her mind, to go look for a maid, down near the board there were both people to hire, and people to ask about them, and then eat. This, in turn, reminded her of public mourning. She was not, in itself, devoted to mourning, but she did desire to tell others that she was among those who had lost.
She realized this too, would take time, and the idea of “just cooking” began to have a chorus in its support. But then came the realization that she needed the ashes taken from the oven anyway, and restacking the wood. And hence, it was a choice of getting dirty, or reaching a sumptuous clean required of mourning. She, once it had been placed in these terms, chose to draw a bath, having filled the water heater on the roof among her morning chores, looked forward to warm water.
Luxuriating in the water, to which she had added scented oils, at first brought a deep relaxation. But then, as soon as she settled into the bath, instead of bringing a sated feeling of warmth, brought a sensation of emptiness. She had the peculiar feeling that her father would return, as Ibrahim – the ghost? – had returned.
She rejected this and chose a more material explanation. Ibrahim was reported dead, but had smuggled himself into the city to do what needed to be done, and had, probably, forged the letter to Navid – he father’s script was not difficult to manage, she thought, if someone set their mind to it. This, in turn, made her toy with getting a draft on his silver with a forged letter and using that to pay, rather than Navid’s suggestion. She looked down at her body, resting on the base of the tub, water flickering over her legs, and creating its own geography. She knew, in the abstract, that its lines and curves would be a continent, or at least an island, of desire for men. She could not help thinking what it would be like to have it, not merely looked at, but rendered on to paint, to be stared at and absorbed by yet other eyes beyond her own.
Again, abstractly, she considered that someday there would be a husband, and that he, of course, would gaze at her with want, and she even smiled as she thought about having a man want her. But this contrasted with the thought of having many mean want her picture. She could almost see in her mind a painting of her, draped in some exotic costume, reclining on a bed. She had heard there were such pictures. Or posed in some manner, turned away from the viewer, her shoulders forming a broad smooth curve across the canvas.
She sighed, stood, drained the water, and dried. While going through the ritual of preparing herself to be seen – which she had learned from her aunt not all that long ago, who had taken her aside, and sternly told her that it was time she stopped looking like a scrubbed corpse in public.
The movements were still not habitual, as much as she tried to consider what she should do, the need to pluck and paint and dab with precision overcame her ability to focus. Her only thought was a near giggle that the restrictions on women surgeons were foolish, since everyone committed surgery on her face every day.
Dressing was more prefunctatory, she did not worship clothes. But as she slid the heavy black embroidered dress over her head, her father had insisted that it be made, she felt a kind of girdled comfort in it. It was like being on horseback in its own way, her own body extended by this external thing. Which was not merely a tool, like a pot or a pen, but, somehow, a magnification. She realized that part of this was visual, the dress padded out her hips and bust, making her seem more mature, but as much of it was simply the sensation, of being surrounded by the material, and thus somehow protected, and indeed, even armed.
Her leaving into the streets was difficult, she wore black riding boots, in defiance of mourning tradition, because the streets, cobbled though they were, were not fit for anything more delicate, The boots showed to the mid-calf beneath the dress. But she took a kind of perverse bride: it was appropriate to mourn those who died in war with their boots on, she thought of her father, and realized, no matter what, Kismet did not want him to die in bed.
She saw the square where the board was, the trees were now devoid of leaves, and as she entered it, and moved away from the houses with their balconies that overhung the street, there was a crisp openness to the sky, which was only lightly slurried with high, small, but dark clouds. Reaching the board found it crowded, there were many, like herself, in mourning dress, talking, looking at each other, and engaged in small activities such as embroidering and sewing. But the market place activity had returned. Which was as she hoped.
She looked to one side, where there were stone benches, and on them sat various women in old fashioned clothes, the kind which almost wrapped around the body, and which had scarves to cover their heads. Many were older. Some were quite young. She was not sure which would be better – experience or adaptability – her eye roamed across them. Finally she settled on one who was even younger than herself, and wearing clothes which were both more up to date in style, and worn thin from over use.
She went to the young woman, who spent as much time, looking down as looking up. And seemed in pain.
Shahzadeh made a very formal curtsey, and the young woman stood smoothly and replied in turn, with a slight turn of the hand that indicated that she too, had learned the older rituals. As Shahzadeh had expected, she was of good family, and probably had lost everything in the war.
"I would like you to know who I am, I am Shahzadeh Parand, and I am seeking someone to help me."
The young girl, her eyes dark and wide looked back, and said.
"I will come with you. I am Haifa, Haifa Ghalandar " And smiled back.
Shahzadeh knew the Ghalandar family. The mother and father had divorced acrimoniously, the mother returning to her people - in the wild lands of Gulistan, to the north. The father had died in the war sometime before. Obviously Haifa had not been as fortunate.
Haifa stood up, and followed, as Shahzadeh lead outwards, not to her home, but to a small restaurant that normally served out of doors, but today was serving on its roof. She lead Haifa to a table, sat down and waited, It would take time for a waitress - since men and women did not mingle alone - to arrive. Shahzadeh asked for one of her favorite things - a dish that consisted raw fish with green vegetables shredded finely, soaked in a creamy vinegar sauce and surrounded by a corn wrap. Marjan, not knowing until Shahzadeh nodded that she was not paying, ordered the same thing. The drank tea and munched quietly for some time.
Finally Haifa asked, as she pushed away long blonde ringlets that fell down beyond her shoulders, "What are my duties?"
Shahzadeh smiled. "I'm like you, I've lost everything." Haifa raised an eyebrow and started to protest, "We are going to be friends," Shahzadeh took Haifa's hand" and though I'm going to have you do chores and the like. I need someone. I'll tell you our little secret, when we get back to my house."
"But they will take everything, I was left with nothing, supposedly a ward and now almost..." Haifa stopped before she lost composure. "You must be very careful, my own story is quite a warning to others."
"You can tell me when we get home." And Shahzadeh casually attacked the rolled up food with a large bite, and munched. Sooh Haifa was happily eating as well, and though she meticulously followed the manners of eating with ones fingers, dipping them in the lemon water periodically, it was clear she had not eaten well in sometime.
When reaching Shahzadeh’s home, Haifa began a very curious look around. The drapes were not in place to divide the house – so what she saw was a square first floor, on her left were the coat and clothes racks, she noticed a mixture of clothes for both men and women, but noted how the woman’s cloths were all the same size, beyond that on the left were a series of shelves that represented a kind of storage place for dried foods and other basic bulk items, and beyond that, an iron spiral stair case which, instead of wrapping around a pole two curving sides, the railings, she noted, were not of iron alone, but were ornamented with brass.
She then turned right, and saw there the china cabinets, and a large double window that opened like a door, beside it on each side were small paintings, of what to her were an usual style, they had a kind of richness of – something, not the bright primary colours of the paintings she was used to, nor were they guilt in gold or silver. They were thicker and with a more, she hesitated to think “natural” style, but that is what she ended up thinking of them as. One was nothing more than a woman cutting fish at a wooden table, her dress sleeves rolled up, her hair pulled back. Her cheeks red from being out of doors, the fish laid in stacks. Just a common scene of a not particularly well off woman. That someone would paint this seemed odd to Haifa.
The second small painting was more reasonable, it was a very well set table, with pewter tabards and mugs, with wrought silver, and overflowing with round rich shapes of fruit. On one plate were fish, cut just as the other painting had them. The similarities in the dark hues, the highlighting, the sense of roundness in space made Haifa feel almost ill with being drawn into them, and yet fascinated. She walked towards them, and then, in the corner of the picture of the woman, she could see a door way – which at first she had assumed was the doorway out, and then saw the corner of the checkered tablecloth of the still life in it, and the curve of the tall central pewter wine tabard, with its oval stoppered top made of glass.
The paintings were by the same person. Interesting.
She then turned right because she saw out of the corner of her eye the large canvas over the wood and wicker china chests. If the two small paintings had puzzled her and confused her eye, this was dizzying, and produced in her a sense of vertigo – it was as if there were a giant window, of one piece of glass, and she were looking out on this whole landscape, of leaves, and a mosque and a particular time of day. She raised her eyebrows and turned to Shahzadeh – “Where were these from? They are… beyond anything.” But Haifa could only half turn to speak, her eyes still roaming across the canvas, falling now on the curve of the minaret, now on the leaves. It was as different style than the domestic painting, it was florid in its use of shape, and its brushstrokes were more visible, unlike the almost smooth surface of the smaller paintings, which seemed to be like glass.
The details called to Haifa’s eye, and she stepped towards the painting itself, each step bringing into view another level of detail. It was not so much realistic, as a vortex of a mind’s eye, that remembered, rather than depicted, the images. There were slight imbalances of proportion, and she noticed, before the mosque, a place where transgressors were hung by their heals, with a post and lintel construction, but it seemed, at first as if post were closer, and then the other. First the lintel seemed to come towards the viewer, and then away. She was now almost up against the painting, staring at this one aspect, no larger than her index finger.
“It does that to me as well.”
Haifa startled. She had forgotten that Shahzadeh was even there.
- - -
The went to the kitchen area, which had a long narrow window, and to the left a series of cabinets, and counter space that flipped out of the wall and down, and then folded back upwards. And then to the left of this was a heavy block of stone, which is the oven. Set in the top were four round stones, which could be replaced by metal to form a stove top. Shahzadeh said, “one of our first tasks is to clean out the oven, and put more organization in the kitchen. I have been so entangled in the details of what needs to be done on paper, that I have forgotten I live in a house at all.”
Haifa nodded. “It is very kind of you to do this.”
Shahzadeh shook her head. “No kindness at all, I am, almost, alone in the world.”
They changed clothes to those more suited for scullery tasks, and then cleaned out the oven. It cloaked them both with dust and soot, that clung to the hair and skin, and formed a kind of carapace that cracked and felt like being a molting crab.
Shahzadeh looked at Haifa, her hair streaked with dust and grey. “We,” she paused, “need to get clean.”
Haifa looked at her clothes and hands, and was suddenly self conscious about herself, checking the legs of the puffy pantaloons she wore, and the black marks on her shirt – actually a shirt from Shahzadeh’s father.
“There should be warm water from the roof. We can draw a bath.”
They marched up the stairs to the upper layer, with its higher ceiling and clutter of desk and hammock and clothes lain on dressing table – and in the corner, away from the stairs, a tiled tub, with blue figures painted on glazed white. It was luscious to behold, and Haifa’s skin ached to be clean, her nails were caked with dirt, and her feet tired and needing to be soothed.
She undid the shirt twisting the short rods of wood that were looped through twine – buttons were not generally the fashion among the Kentauri, instead preferring small hooks, so her hands fumbled once or twice.
Shahzadeh saw her discomfort and explained, “It’s Chishan style.” Then showed Haifa the motion that worked, which Haifa instantly duplicated. The trousers were a drawstring affair, around both waiste and ankles, The sound of their dropping on the floor was made Haifa’s skin breath again, and stretch with the anticipation of the warmish water and the scented soap. Removing the last of her undergarments, she arched one foot delicately over the tub and tested the water with her toe. She had not felt warm water in quite so long as to be a memory, and her muscles felt hard from the cold. Her uncle, her so called guardian, had been selling off the warm water from the heater in her father’s house, leaving her with none but what she could heat from the stove, which was little, since she had little money of any kind.
Shahzadeh pulled two sitting towels off of a rack, laid one before her, and tossed one to Haifa, who caught it at the same time she placed her foot all the way down and then almost gracefully, or perhaps like one of the old ritual dances, swung her other leg over the edge of the tub, and plunged it to mid calve in the water. Shahzadeh, not trying such an acrobatic feat, sat on the edge of the tub, and swung herself in . Haifa giggled, covering her mouth with her hand, the fingers hiding the tip of her nose.
“You do that,” a peep of a giggle, “like you are mounting a horse.” Shahzadeh raise one corner of her mouth in a smile. And then thought. “Yes, horse riding is one thing I do well.” And resolved to recontinue the sessions of riding after she had money. She had settled her hips firmly down on the towel, and looked, first at Haifa’s eyes, which were still bright with mirth. But then, as people are wont to do, she began examining the other – girl? woman? – person.
What she saw was a face that came to a pointed chin, and had an smooth curve of the jaw to it. She was round eyed, and these were almost green in the fading afternoon light. Her hair was a cascade of burnished blonde looping curls, that reached very delicate shoulders. Haifa, was petite, and her skin the lightest shade of tea with milk that can be imagined. Her faither had been quite light, but her mother must have been fairer still. There was a clear curve of demarcation between Haifa’s face, tanned by exposure to the sun down just past her neck, and the flesh beneath. The face was taught, expectant. Clearly she needs to be put more at ease.
“You have such lovely eyes, and hair – the colour is so unusual.”
Haifa ran her fingers through her hair. “It didn’t used to be this light, but I have been giving lessons, which I do out of doors. Lessons for dancing and deportment.”
“Ah yes.” But the words were merely inserted so that she could examine the rest of Haifa’s figure. Shahzadeh noticed the lithe willowy form of her legs, the curve of the waist into trim hips, how firm the muscles of Haifa’s mid section were, and how her bosom was small and with nipples that seemed as perfect small roses. “What kind of dancing.”
“The court kind, where the woman or man dances alone, and…”
“I know it.” That would explain the shape of her legs, and how all of a piece her movements were. The arms were not thick, but one long line, thin and sinewy. It reminded Shahzadeh of a forbidden memory: in a scroll case her father kept a painting he had not framed, it was of such a nymph-like creature, her small chest exposed, her face turned away from the viewer revealing the most exquisite profile, and displaying, set against a background of trees, such a form. The painting had her feet just turning to roots, for she was chased by a man. Her father had told her there was an old story being depicted, but it was the shape, the elongation, of the woman that had been burned into her memory.
Haifa for her part did not feel any need to cover her examination of Shahzadeh, but allowed her eyes to measure the woman who was now her benefactor. What she saw was a round face, with cat’s eyes, and a nose set in a perfect line. Haifa was aware, all too aware, of the slight asymmetries of her own face, but saw none, or almost none, in Shahzadeh’s. There was also a calmness, a, well, regal would be too much, but yes, nobility, in the way she looked, seldom blinking, and with her mouth relaxed.
Haifa taught dancing, so examining the physicality of another was not a social grace, but a professional skill. She noted the roundness of Shazadeh’s bust, and the rich red oak colour of her skin, which was all of a single complexion. Unlike the faint mottling from acne that Haifa knew was across her own back. “I wish I had your skin.”
Shazadeh had that classic figure from the old illuminated manuscripts, with a rich bosom, and hips that flared outwards. Haifa noted the muscles and strength of Shahzadeh’s legs, they were a bit on the verge of being thick, but this was not a detraction, since her whole hour glass figure was given, thereby, a pedestal, or base.
And then Haifa’s eyes came to rest back on Shahzadeh’s. The two girls giggled, the two women went to wetting sponges and bathing,
“Here, let me help with your back, it is so broken out. You must stay with me, if only to bathe.” Shahzadeh ran the edge between too firm and too soft in scrubbing the skin on Haifa’s back. From there no inch was left untouched by sponge and soap, nor left unrinsed by a second drawing of water.
It was, truly, one of the longest and most thorough cleanings each had ever either given or received.
By the end, night was chasing the last of the twilight blue from the sky.
“Tomorrow we will retrieve your things, I can tell that your living circumstances are not satisfactory.”
Haifa raised one eyebrow.
“You haven’t eaten, you haven’t bathed, you haven’t changed cloths in more than a day. That must mean…”
“I’ll explain, but yes, since I am a ward, and my so called guardian has taken all of the money – there’s nothing.”
“You promised me a story, we should set out chairs and have you tell it.