The Steel Seraglio (43 page)

People recognize me in the streets, now that my embroidery has become popular. They sometimes curtsey or bow to me. Gursoon says that Bessa has no need for sultans, nor for queens; its figureheads are its artists, its craftswomen and its poets. I am happy with this, so long as we artists and poets never feel the need to emulate those symbols we have replaced. We overthrew them—this does not mean that we should follow them. We couldn’t if we tried, anyway. We are different from them on a level that is always seen but rarely perceived, and really amounts to all that we are good for. I try to keep it before me always. Without it, this city would be brought to something worse than destruction—it would return to the way it was. The difference is this: almost everyone in Bessa is an artist, a craftswoman or a poet. They are sublimely simple things to be. You don’t need fame, or even skill. Most importantly of all, you don’t need birth. They are designations with no walls around them. Many people say many things about Bessa. I say this. And I raise people up, when they bow. I shake my head if they go to drop a curtsey. I look into their faces. I smile.

Fouad

Take our orders from women: why not? I did as Gursoon told me for years. She just has more of a head for some things than I do. And the women leave me free to follow my calling, which is all a man needs.

The last sultan, the fanatic, now, he was a hard one to live with. He sold my horses, all of them! Set me to tending camels and donkeys, and nursing sick goats. I should have followed the women; borrowed a horse and gone after her as I did before. But my daughter had not long had her twins, and my son . . . By rights I know Danyar is Bokhari’s boy, but when did a sultan care for those sorts of rights? I’d taken him on as stable-boy and he was promising, a gentle hand with the beasts, and a fine rider already. But he was only thirteen then, and small for his age. I couldn’t leave him.

When the women came back we didn’t have much time to spend celebrating; there was too much to be done. Rashad had a few of us into the kitchens for a drink, and old Issi told us some of what they’d been up to. It was quite a story. My Gursoon has a way of turning a situation to her advantage; the others too, of course. I think Rashad had given up hope of ever seeing them again, but me—no.

What now? Well, it’s as you see. I won’t deny I miss the old horses, but these here are good beasts. My brother found them for me; he didn’t undercharge me, either. Now I can teach my daughter to ride, and my grandsons, as a man should. And any others who want to learn. Of course women can ride, it was my mother who taught me. They have arms and legs the same as us, don’t they?

I don’t know if we’ll marry. Gursoon might not have me—it was thirty years ago I last asked her. And we’ve managed well enough without it up till now. We’ll go out riding together, though. She says she’s too old, she’s forgotten how, but you never forget.

I’m not a great one for words. But it’s good to have her back. You know how it is after a storm, when everything goes back to how it should be, and you can stand up again and look around you? Yes, that’s how it is. I can see properly again.

Taliyah

I missed him. I did. I spent most of my time in the desert pining for him. Every time I ground stone to make paint, I did it for him. We voted to go to war, but when I cast my lot I saw his face. It felt like a homecoming, not an invasion. For all of us, I think. We all carried the faces of loved ones in our minds like banners. Their names were our rallying cries. The others returned to Bessa for sons and daughters, for fathers and mothers and sisters. I came back a bride, and if a battlefield lay between me and my beloved, then so much the better if it was strewn with the corpses of those who had parted us. I thought he would be proud.
I
was proud. There was a desert and death between us, and I walked through both—for him!

And in my more mundane mind, I knew now that I had a craft, a livelihood. When I left I was an ignorant child, but now I was a grown woman. Do not believe that I had no fears. I had steeled myself for a cooling of feeling. In my darkest dreams I had seen him wed another, had seen that hair’s breadth between joy and despair crossed, irrevocably, as he crossed the threshold into his wedding home. In my terror, I had even imagined his death. I came armed against these fears, ready for them. I was so afraid as I ran through the streets, one mischance after another pressing against my mind, that I was surprised by his embrace when it came. The relief of it nearly crushed me to the floor.

I was prepared for anything, except happiness. I returned to him a warrior. I fought my way to him through an army and across a desert, and arrived to find he had been waiting for me, with a house and a garden made ready. It should have made me glad. But I could not make him understand why the house felt like a cage.

He took my desire to work for mere restlessness at first, then for a lack of faith in him, a fear of relying on his skills. How could I rely on him? I lay on our bed through all those endless afternoons, and watched everything that I loved about myself drifting away like dust motes in the changeless light. He asked me if I was jealous, but I never doubted his fidelity. He brought me back fruits and necklaces from the market, and could not understand why I wept.

I cannot blame it all on his narrow-mindedness; he loved me the way he had always loved me, back when I was the daughter of a concubine, and had never dreamed of a greater joy for myself than the love he gave me. In the end, I grew up and he did not. I could not put my weapons down, and he wouldn’t see that I never raised them against him. I couldn’t make him understand that I left not because I thought his love had faded, but because it was not enough. He wanted me to feed on it and grow strong, but it was not enough, it could never be enough, to sustain me through a wasted life. In the end, I was prepared for anything except the thing I had crossed deserts to regain. So I left, to find out what I really came back for.

Warudu

The best part was seeing my children learn to read. I could never have afforded to apprentice them to a scholar, but after Rem built the schools, everyone learned to read.

Efridah

I suppose it was fifty years I worked here, since my husband died. I swept the floor for Al-Bokhari’s father before him. Sometimes I thought the broom would stick to my hands. But it was a home, and the girls were kind, mostly. Then that murderer came. When he turned us out I thought, there’s nothing to do now but pray for death. And death wouldn’t have me.

And then it all got turned around. I came through the desert, lived in the mountains. I grew strong again. And now here I am back where I started, and it’s all different. I don’t have to hold a broom till I drop and then starve, or live off charity. They’re even building me my own house. Think of that!

Well, I did think of it: I thought that after fifty years of slavery I would end my life as a queen. But no. It turns out they have more work in mind for me. Gursoon wants me to sit on their city council, and make laws.

I’m not sure. I did think they might let me rest at last. But it’s only two days a week in that old bakery they’ve set up; they’ll give you tea, and Fernoush bakes her pastries there, apparently. She’s a nice girl and a good cook. So I might say yes. Perhaps I could insist that that bitch Imtisar brings me my tea.

At all events, someone else can do the sweeping.

Zeinab

The things you need to order to build a city: it’s astonishing! Bricks, to rebuild the places Hakkim destroyed. Building tools; spades to dig sewers and plant seeds; pipes to carry water. And that precious material, wood—which turns out to cost nearly as much by weight as gold, but how else do you make cattle-yokes, spindles for scrolls or stools for students? I was in charge of finding it all, and working out how to get it back to us. Issi helped, of course, and ran the caravans, but I was the one who did the trading. And then after the building work, there were all the other tools. Needles and cloth. Chisels. Paints. Pens. And this new writing material that Rem loves so much: paper. You can make it from old cloth, or from wood shavings; we’ll be able to produce our own soon. Rem says it takes ink better than skins, and it certainly smells less foul when you’re preparing it.

We’re going to be a trading centre, I can see it happening all around us. Sometimes I feel that my head can’t take all the things I need to learn: the different grades of thread; the names and market rates for precious spices. I worry that I’ll bring back too much or too little, that I’ll be cheated or buy the wrong thing entirely, and wreck a vital project. But Gursoon says there’s no one who’s better qualified, and I suppose it is going well so far.

You know, it’s strange. My parents were poor traders: they rejoiced when I was chosen by the sultan. They thought I’d be set up for life, and my daughter too, that nothing they had given me could compare. I wish they could see me now, see how I’m valued for the skills they taught me.

Soraya comes with me on some of the trading journeys: I want her to see how it’s done. She doesn’t have to follow in my father’s footsteps. But she’ll learn some kind of skill in Bessa. She’ll have a trade.

Issi

Camel-man’s a job for life, my father always told me. You’ll always be needed. Well, I don’t know about that. The past year or so I’ve been through more occupations than I knew there were. Nursemaid, farmer, builder. Trader and diplomat, now. Camel thief, too, though I haven’t told my wife about that one. Still, I can’t complain. I got back to her and the boys in one piece. And it seems I’m a big man in the city these days—they’re always calling on me for something.

I don’t know what the hurry is with all this trading. They sent us all the way to Sussurut last month just for a load of cloth and some spices. Zeinab got a good price, of course: the girl’s a marvel. But she ought to have a rest, maybe settle down. A couple of the men have their eye on her, I know that. But you can’t tell girls what to do, these days.

Anwar Das

I don’t spend much time in Bessa. My work takes me to many places: Perdondaris, Agorath, Yrtsus, once or twice. I always smile when I hear I’m going there. They don’t know what a lucky escape they’ve had.

All the cities I have visited are beautiful. Perdondaris has immense, spiralling prayer towers, and Agorath a magnificent gold-domed palace. Nor are they without their wonders. The vertical gardens of Jawahir bloom lush and green, and tower high above the arid desert all around. The sultan of Galal-Amin has carpeted the land round about his city for a mile on all sides with miniature date palms, so small they grow only to the height of one’s ankles. Visitors walk among them and think themselves giants, while the city looms above, a mother of giants. I have seen this sight with my own eyes, and it is marvellous to behold.

More miraculous by far, however, is Lilliath, the siren-city. I see from your faces that you have never heard of this place. Few have, for its inhabitants all died long ago. It is a sad story:

A large tribe, wandering through the desert, came across an abundance of large rocks. They seemed uncommonly well-suited for use as a building material: thick, even slabs, flat and sturdy. Their only fault was a slight jaggedness at their edges, as though they had once been joined together and had since shattered.

The leaders of the people took these stones as a sign from the Increate, and used them to build a city, vast and mighty, on the site. They called it Lilliath, and for a time they prospered there, laying waste to the surrounding tribes and plundering their wealth. Their city, although it was perfect in all other respects, was dry as a bone, and the people had to fetch water from a spring far outside its gates.

One night, there was a great storm over Lilliath. The next morning, the city was filled with a low rumbling sound, quiet and ominous. At first, people thought the noise merely a continuation of the thunder from the night before. When they glanced out of their windows, and saw the sky was clear, they feared it was an earthquake. But the noise continued throughout the day, and the city stood firm.

Gradually, their terror turned to jubilation. Clearly, the rain had woken a dormant spring hidden beneath the streets. A source of water within the city gates! That evening, a vast crowd thronged through Lilliath, greedy for water. They reached the centre of the city, where the noise was loudest, and began at once to tear up the stones that paved the street there.

Once they had removed the stones, they dug deep into the sand, searching for the spring that they were sure lay just below the surface. They dug for a long time, and as they dug, the rumbling became louder. It had, they realised, a sort of rhythm to it. They kept digging. The rumbling rose in pitch, as if the water they sought was building in pressure on its way to the surface. Finally, a gaping hole opened beneath their fingers, and they stepped back, expecting at any moment a rushing fountain to appear. But it was no spring that the hungry rain had woken in the earth. Instead, from the dark hole, the people heard a voice. It sounded like no human voice they had ever heard, but it sang with such piercing sweetness that the crowd began to weep, at a beauty pitched to the intensity of pain. The voice gushed from the hole, filling the city with its ethereal notes, and now the buildings trembled, the ground shook. The inhabitants of Lilliath were so filled with the song pouring from the earth, that they did not notice. They did not think to run as their own city fell upon them and crushed them to death.

I myself have never been to Lilliath, for they say that all who hear the music that still flows from the ruins of that city are driven mad. I heard the tale from a cousin of mine, who the Increate saw fit to strike deaf as a young man. It was a bitter sorrow to his parents, but as you see, for every desert storm, a date palm!

I have, however, visited a place that was even stranger. You do not believe it is possible? Listen. Have you heard of Sah, the city of sand? You laugh: you think it no more than a fable. I did too, until experience taught me otherwise.