Page 50 of A String of Silver Beads (The Moroccan Empire #1)

The rituals have been going on for days, even weeks by now.

There have been meetings, parties, gifts, discussions and the painting of henna in intricate swirls.

In just a few days Imen will leave her father’s house and come to my father as his bride, her hair crowned in a golden headdress.

She will be his new wife, my mother’s sister, my aunt.

The servants have their own views on this and Hayfa is holding forth again.

The slaves’ allotted tasks do not seem to be any closer to completion.

“The new one, Imen – she’s here to provide a fine strapping boy.

Maybe several. I had a look at her the other day when she was in the souk with her mother.

A fine girl. Young. Wide hips. Plenty of fat on her.

” Hayfa outlines this figure with her hands in the air and nods her approval.

“Imen will bear him many sons for sure.” She lowers her voice slightly. “If she lets her.”

“What do you mean?” one of the younger servants asks, her eyes wide. The others lean in. I come down two more steps, silently edging closer but still hidden.

Hayfa shakes her head slowly, as one who has seen all manner of things in this wicked world.

“Do you think she will stand by and watch?” she asks.

“You think she will open her arms and say, ‘Oh, sister, welcome to my home. Bear my husband many sons with my blessing!’? Of course not. I would not be Imen for all the carpets in Kairouan.”

“But what can she do?” This from one of the men.

Hayfa considers. “I don’t know,” she admits finally. This breaks her storytelling spell. “Back to work, now, all of you standing about here cluttering up my kitchen with your gossip and nonsense.”

They begin to disperse. I get ready to make my getaway before any of them come up the stairs.

But before I turn away I hear Hayfa as she mutters while scooping out oil from a jar close to me.

I hold my breath and press my back against the wall.

No-one else hears her but me, and later I will remember what she says and feel a cold river run through me.

“Allah knows I am a good and honest cook, but if I were Imen I would not eat what was laid before me in this house.”

I turn and run up the stairs, past my mother’s bedroom door and back to my own room.

***

Imen arrives at last, soft and blushing.

She is kind to the servants, who love her at once.

She gives few orders, always glancing towards my mother to get her tacit approval for even the most minor of requests.

But the servants would find ways to obey her even if my mother withheld her consent, for who would not wish to please such a sweet little mistress, one whose voice of command is gentle and whose smile of thanks is radiant?

Our routine changes. My mother is now absent from most meals.

The only meals she attends are the important ones, when there are guests.

Then she descends, a princess amongst mere commoners, elegantly dressed, her beauty undimmed.

Frequently on these occasions it seems that Imen is indisposed, and does not join us, leaving my mother and father to greet guests as they have always done, as though nothing had changed.

But at breakfast it is Imen who sits by my father’s side, who passes soft warm bread smeared with honey and butter, who pours tea and whose hair is somewhat dishevelled, her smile tender as my father wishes her a good day before he leaves the house.

***

At first I stay away from Imen, as my mother does.

I think that my mother will be pleased if she comes to hear that I do not care for Imen, that she will see that I am her ally against this newcomer.

But my mother stays in her rooms and I find it hard to avoid Imen.

When I come to eat breakfast she is there, smiling, offering me sweet orange juice, fresh breads with honey.

While I eat she pours herself more tea and stretches back on the cushions to enjoy the dappled sunlight of our courtyard.

“I have something for you, Zaynab,” she says one morning.

I look up and see her pointing to a covered basket.

“Open it,” she says, her eyes bright.

Inside the basket is a tiny tabby-brown kitten.

“It will need feeding with milk,” she says. “It is still so young.”

She shows me how to dip a little scrap of cloth into milk and drip it into the kitten’s mouth, gives me some soft cloth from the chests in her room to line the basket and make a warm little nest for it.

She has the servants bring fresh milk every day in a special container just for the kitten and giggles with me when it grows old enough to explore and is afraid of its own shadow or overbalances on our wall.

My mother will not let me feed her songbirds, but Imen strokes my kitten and when I kneel by her side to hear it purr she strokes my hair too, and after a time I forget that I should be my mother’s ally, for my mother does not smile whatever I do and Imen laughs so easily, it is easy to laugh with her.

My father has begun to smile when Imen is nearby.

He seems happier, walking more slowly, speaking more kindly to the servants.

His wrinkles, which were beginning to appear as the years went by, seem to be fading.

Once as dusk descended I ran to his rooms to call him for the evening meal and found him buried under a pile of soft giggling silks, which turned out to be Imen, who blushed mightily when she saw me.

My father only laughed and kissed her forehead, then rose and came with me to dinner.

We had guests that night and Imen sent word that she was unwell and begged to be excused.

My father accepted the sympathies of the guests with a charming smile while my mother, by his side as always when we have guests, said nothing.

***

Sometimes I see Imen drinking from a wooden cup, a faded reddish colour marked with worn carvings.

I asked her once what it contained and she lowered her lashes a little and said that she hoped it would help her bear many brothers for me.

Then she giggled and chased me round the courtyard with a long feather she had found from the storks who roost on the rooftops of Kairouan, seeking to pin me down and tickle me.

But the liquid in the cup must have worked its magic, for Imen smiles ever more broadly and now my father is very tender with her.

Where before my mother ordered our food to her liking and Imen never presumed to countermand her orders, now my father has decreed that all food must be ordered by Imen.

Everything must be to her tastes. My mother says nothing but bows her head and is seen even less, spending her days tending to her songbirds, whom I can hear tweeting.

All our household now revolves around Imen.

She giggles over all the fuss but enjoys her new status, basking in the petting from my aunts and the foods she craves.

Sometimes she turns a little pale and clutches at her stomach, sometimes I even hear her retching, and servants hurry to her with clean cloths and fresh cool water, but the aunts only laugh kindly and say everyone must suffer so to bring forth a healthy child and he must be a boy to cause his mother such grief already.

Then they offer Imen perfumed drinks to take away the sour taste of bile and fan her as she reclines on the soft cushions by their side.

They amuse her with stories and the city’s gossip and recite endless permutations of names that might suit my unborn brother.

Imen still sips from the carved cup, but now it contains tonics for her baby’s health, to make him grow strong within her ever-increasing belly.

“What shall you name him?” I ask.

Imen stretches out her bare toes in the dappled morning light of our garden and yawns. “I think your father has a name for him,” she says, smiling. “He said he had kept it for many years for his first-born son.”

I look down. “He will be pleased to have a son,” I say.

Imen reaches out and pulls me to her. Her pale pink robes enfold me and her body’s warmth spreads out from her to me. I tuck my feet under her cushions and lean my head against her.

“He will be grateful to have a kind grown-up daughter who can take good care of a baby brother,” she says.

“Think how much the baby will love you – a beautiful older sister to follow about and play games with. It is good for children to have brothers and sisters. When we are all old and wrinkled the two of you will be young and strong and will share your festive days together with your own families.”

I cannot imagine pretty Imen being old and wrinkled but I smile anyway.

“Perhaps,” offers Imen, “you might give a second name to your brother. What is your favourite name for a boy?”

To make her laugh I think up dreadful names, names that sound like they are only fit for a slave or a peasant boy. She laughs until she cries and then she gets the hiccups and I have to bring her water to sip to make them go away.

***

It is night and I am fully asleep when Myriam shakes me awake.

At first she is in my dream, one of the street boys tugging at my sleeve as he shows me new hiding places in the souk’s maze of streets.

Then I am pulled from my dream and open my eyes in the darkness.

I yelp, for Myriam’s face, too close to mine and lit by a dim lamp, is like some terrifying djinn, one eye hidden altogether, the other bulging outwards.

Then I am awake and puzzled. It is far too dark even for dawn prayers.

The light dims as Myriam moves away from me and grabs a plain robe which she throws at me whilst struggling to unroll our prayer mats.

“Pray.”

I hold the robe, sit up in bed. “What?”

“Pray!” Myriam hisses back.