Page 48 of A String of Silver Beads (The Moroccan Empire #1)
In her mirror I am a small scrawny girl of ten years, with scabbed knees and long dark hair, wide-open eyes and a too-large mouth.
I am not yet grown to a woman, but Myriam swears it will not be long now.
I do not care. I have no older sisters with whom to compare and find myself wanting.
No brothers either. I am my parents’ only child.
My father is a carpet merchant, and the carpets from his workshops are much prized.
Kairouan is famous for its carpets, and my father’s are the best in the city.
His workshops are elaborate places, with beautiful intricate paper designs replicated in a thousand, thousand tiny knots, tied by the deft hands of women, following the designs created by my laughing aunts.
Some of the makers work at home, but many choose to work in my father’s workshops where they can chatter amongst themselves as they work.
His workshops are refined compared to those of the other crafts – the heavy beating of the copper, the stench of the tanneries, the wet muddy droplets and dust of the potteries.
He is a busy man, so I see little of him.
Sometimes when Myriam takes me on her shopping trips I visit his workshops where I can stroke the soft carpets as they grow on the looms, but I am not allowed to go to the dirtier workshops in the city.
Our house is large. We have a shaded courtyard filled with a gurgling fountain, flowers and trees.
We have slaves, and some servants who carry out the more important household tasks, such as Myriam.
It is Myriam who washes me but it is the slaves who heat and carry the heavy buckets of water to my room, they who clean the house, and do the chopping and stirring under the watchful eye of our cook, Hayfa.
Our rooms have beautiful carved ceilings, our doors are painted and have marvellous thick handles and bolts in heavy beaten metal which I could not even draw until I was ten.
We have great carved chests of perfumed woods in which to keep our belongings, and my father, although he is not a scholar himself, has many books.
Sometimes he invites scholars from the great university to eat with us, and then they talk of many things until it is so late that I am falling asleep, and Myriam is summoned to carry me to bed.
I am still small for my age and she is like a stocky little donkey, able to carry a great burden with no effort.
She hoists me in her arms, whispering kind words so as not to waken me.
She carries me to my soft bed and leaves me there till morning.
Mostly she spends her time exclaiming in despair because I am always running about the city getting my costly robes dirty and sweaty from the heat and the dust. A girl from a good family like mine should not really be out on the streets.
But there is so much to see, for Kairouan is surely one of the greatest cities in the world!
The surrounding lands are fertile and so there are grains, olives as well as great herds of sheep who provide wool, meat and milk.
In the souks you can buy anything you want and on the big market days many hundreds of animals are slaughtered to feed the thousands of people who live here.
Aside from its glorious carpets, Kairouan is known for its rose oil, which smells very sweet and rich.
People say that if you marry a woman from Kairouan she will fill your house with roses and carpets, and it is true, for my mother smells wonderful and our house is full of beautiful soft carpets.
Some carpet merchants use only the poorly designed or badly woven carpets for their own house, those that did not turn out as they were intended.
My father says that is a poor economy, for when visitors and fine customers come to his house to be entertained they see extraordinary designs and marvel at their intricacy and quality.
Then they eat and drink and gaze at my beautiful mother, who reclines in silence on finely-woven cushions in her gloriously coloured robes.
The next day they buy many carpets from my father, finer and in greater quantities than they would have done had they not been so well entertained.
I usually attend these dinners but the talk is often dull and the customers are old and smack their lips when they eat.
Often I make my excuses after dinner and leave them to it.
My mother watches me go. Occasionally I wonder if she would like to leave too, but if she is bored she never shows it.
Kairouan is also a very holy city. They say that Oqba found a golden cup in the sand here which he had lost many years before in the Zamzam well in Mecca, so perhaps there was a river flowing between Mecca and Kairouan.
The water which comes up in the Bi’r Barouta well here is therefore holy, and if you drink enough of it you are exempted from the visit to Mecca which all good Muslims should undertake.
The water is pulled up by a blindfolded camel that goes round and round all day.
I watch it sometimes and wonder what it must think, on its endless wheel of walking, unable to see the daylight.
Perhaps it is as well that it is blindfolded.
If it realised that its journey would never end it might give up its life in despair.
Above all the rooftops towers the minaret of the great mosque.
Inside the prayer hall are columns, very many of them.
It is forbidden to count them or you will surely be blinded, but the street boys say there are four hundred and fourteen exactly.
I have not counted them. Some of the street boys are blind in one eye or both, and it could be that they were the ones who counted the columns.
I am not taking any chances. I love to see.
Everywhere there are new things to see, especially in the souk.
True, I often visit the souk with Myriam, but visiting it alone is different.
I can run, I can get lost, I can visit parts of the souk where the shops get darker and smaller and the wares sold are more mysterious.
I can stand and stare at the healers and their wares.
There are teeth, snake skins, skulls of strange animals, bottles of every shape and size.
The healers whisper that they can cure any illness, even ones I have never heard of but which the men and women who sit before them seem to be flustered by when they hear them mentioned.
If I stare when I am with Myriam I am quickly dragged away as she tuts at me for my ‘morbid fascinations’.
Later I return alone to have my fill of staring, slipping out of the gate of my home when no-one is looking.
Although I come from a good family I find the other girls I am expected to spend my time with very dull.
They only want to talk of their clothes, and their jewels, and whether their sisters will be married soon.
The older ones whisper about boys they like and the younger ones beg to be told their secrets and follow them like unwanted pets, creeping a little closer every time, only to be pushed away when noticed.
I escape whenever I can and run through the city with the street children, who are quick, funny and clever.
I take sweet cakes from our kitchen and share them with the greedy boys.
Our cook marvels at how I can eat so many cakes and always be so bony, but she likes to feed me.
She says our house does not have enough children for her to spoil, and what is the use of cooking for adults, who are too refined to say they enjoyed the food.
She likes the way I beg her for treats and how greedily I bite into them.
She heaps handfuls on me and I run into the streets and spread their honeyed stickiness across the whole city.
Sometimes we go beyond the city walls to the great pools, the reservoirs of the city. They feed the city so that no one goes without water. Even when there are droughts we can still visit the hammams and our fountains can still play, soothing our heat with their splashing.
The pools are deep. In the centre of the largest is a beautiful pavilion.
In the summer evenings the fine men and women of Kairouan come down and sit inside it, enjoying the fresh breeze blown over the cooling water.
During the day, though, it is our palace.
We play at being great amirs, waving our hands regally at our servants.
We take turns being servants or amirs. Those playing amirs think up ever more ridiculous tasks and those playing servants undertake them as badly as possible, moving stupidly slowly or doing the very opposite of what they have been told, so that we all shriek with laughter and even the ‘amirs’ snort and then hide their mouths so we do not see them losing their dignity.
And when I return from my adventures, late as ever, Myriam despairs of me.
Especially today.
***
We are gradually joined by friends and family as we walk towards the mosque for the sunset prayers.
I pretend to pray, but my head is spinning.
My father is taking another wife! Who is she?
I never heard anything being discussed. I berate myself for not spending more time with the gossiping aunts, who must have known all about these plans.
No wonder my mother looks so still, so angry.
But she must have given her permission or my father could not have taken another wife.
I shudder at the very idea of suggesting such a course of action to my mother.
My father must be a braver man than I realised.
Who is she? Who is this woman who is brave enough to come into my mother’s home and marry my father under her still, dark eyes?
I am afraid for her, even though I do not know her name.