Page 12 of None Such as She (The Moroccan Empire #2)

I nod meekly.

“What do you need to know about this household that Yusuf has not already told you?”

I want to laugh. He told me nothing. He told me nothing at all and I did not ask. Because I was a fool. I begged him to marry him and swore that my love for him was enough. He took me at my word and brought me here and now I doubt my love is equal to this challenge.

I shake my head. I cannot even think where to begin. “Who are you?”

She smiles. “I am Yusuf’s mother. My name is Khalila.”

I am horrified. I try to move, to perform a gesture of respect to my mother-in-law but she only laughs and holds me tighter. She is strong for an old woman.

“No need for such things. I am too old to need them to feel important.” I sit back in her embrace and we look at one another. She looks at my tear-stained face and asks very gently, “What do you know of Badra?’

This, then, is the unspoken name now made known to me.

“Is she…”

She nods. “Yusuf’s first wife. Mother to his sons.”

I shrug, eyes on the floor. I am not sure I want to hear anything about her, I am too afraid.

Khalila sighs but her tone is brisk, as though she means to tell me all quickly, with as little pain as possible.

“She was lovely. Beautiful, light of heart, warm of smile. Yusuf loved her at first sight, he would see no other’s face.

But she refused him. She told him she did not love him, that her heart could not embrace him.

But he would hear no refusal. He must have her.

He swore his love would suffice for them both. ”

I turn my face back to her shoulder and feel the wetness of my spent tears.

I cannot listen to this story, but Khalila continues.

“So they were wed. Yusuf did all he could to make her love him as he loved her, for he was certain that her love would flow to him one day, if he could but make her happy. For her part she tried. She was fond of him and tender to him, but her love could not flow for him.” She sighs again, as though this part is harder to tell.

“A child came. And all rejoiced, Yusuf most of all. But after the child was born Badra’s light heart and warm smile faltered.

She grew sad. A sadness that would not leave her.

The sun did not shine on her, food grew tasteless in her mouth, flowers lost their perfume.

The years have gone by. She has birthed five sons, all healthy, all strong.

She is honoured and loved like no other wife, but still her sadness has not left her, indeed it has grown greater with each child she has born.

At last a physician said that she must bear no more children, for they do not delight her as they should a mother but instead make her eyes darker and her spirit heavier.

Perhaps if she does not bear children for a time she will grow lighter of heart. ”

I pull away from her. “This is why he needs a new wife? To lie with rather than Badra, that she may not bear children?”

Khalila tightens her lips and nods.

A cold thought comes to me. “Am I to bear children also?”

She shakes her head slowly. “Yusuf has sworn not to hurt Badra’s heart, for he loves her still. He will come to you when you will not fall with child. In this way he can satisfy his desires without risk of causing her greater grief.”

I stare at her.

Gently she strokes my hair, with pity in her eyes. “He spoke with tenderness of you. He said you had a great sweetness in your eyes, that you laid your heart at his feet and he could not turn it away.”

I shake my head and she gets up and softly leaves the room.

I lie back on the bed and stare up at the bare ceiling.

I have been taken as a concubine, nothing more.

***

I have been in my new home for three days when a servant comes to me and says that Yusuf will come to my room tonight.

I thank him with grace and then give frantic orders for the preparation of my rooms, of myself.

As the hours pass and evening grows closer my heart flutters still faster.

This, after all, is why I am here, in this long narrow valley, perched on this hillside in my fortified rooms. I am here because this man took my heart in the darkness of my father’s house, with only a few words.

I am here because I am only sixteen and I fell in love for the first time with a man from another country, a man almost twice my age, a man who makes my body both hot and cold with nothing more than a glance.

This is the man who is now my husband but with whom I have never yet lain.

This is the man whose home I have tiptoed around, afraid to see his children’s curious faces at every turning.

I have kept to my rooms these past days, peering from my windows at the steeply- stacked houses below, unsure of my place in this new world.

I feel Badra’s shadow everywhere. I do not know how to proceed.

I long for tonight. Tonight I will welcome my husband to my bed and I will become his wife in more than name.

His desire will raise my status within these walls and I will learn how I can claim my place in this new life.

In years to come Badra may leave this world and he may grow to love me.

Perhaps he will misjudge his visits to me and I will bear a child of my own.

***

I am clean and perfumed, dressed in my softest silks.

My rooms, also, are clean and scented with incense, soft with fine carpets and wall hangings.

They are warm and welcoming, as I am nervously trying to be.

When Yusuf strides into my presence as the sun sinks and our mountain walls glow in the fading light I order food and drink and have to pitch my voice lower than I normally speak so that the tremor in my words will not be heard.

When we are alone I shakingly pour water for our hands.

We eat. Yusuf leans back, comfortable in his home, on my fine cushions, while I sit rigidly upright, afraid to spoil my fine clothes with creases or food dropped in ungraceful uneasiness.

“So it is true what they say,” remarks Yusuf between mouthfuls.

“What do they say?” I ask.

I think ‘they’ must mean the servants, or worse, his sons.

What might they say about me? That I stay in my rooms too much?

Perhaps they think me rude or arrogant? In truth I am only very shy in this new world, but perhaps they do not see that, only note my absence and read into it something I do not intend.

I look at him anxiously and wait to hear more.

He takes a drink of sweet juice and grins at me.

“Why, that if you marry a girl from Kairouan she will fill your house with carpets and roses,” he says, waving his hand at the soft patterned rugs and indicating the incense burner.

The breath I was holding in escapes in a laugh and he laughs with me.

He offers me fruits and I take them from his hand.

I am swept all over with love and desire.

This is why I am here. I love Yusuf, and despite his first wife he must love me.

Yes, he had another wife once, but she might as well be dead, for she does little else but sit in her rooms and gaze far away, or weep.

He may mourn her spirit and he may have warned me he might not care for me, but he asked for me to be his wife and brought me here.

I will live with him forever, loving, and in time, loved in turn.

He moves closer to me, begins to disrobe me while he leads me to our bed.

I, anxious to please, trembling with hope and fear, hold myself ready for whatever he may wish to do with me.

He looks at me, first at my too-fixed smile and then down to my meekly compliant body.

He smiles and strokes my hair with tenderness, and then he reaches away from me, to where his clothes fell by the bedside, and pulls out two lengths of golden silk.

He does not speak, but ties one round his eyes.

With great care he ties the second piece about my own eyes.

In the darkness that has now descended on each of us he reaches out to my young, unknown body and holds his beloved wife Badra in his arms for the first time in more than a year. His strong voice breaks a little as he whispers gentle endearments that were never meant for my ears.

I see nothing. I feel only the man I love caressing me and with a moan I take him into me.

The golden silk around my eyes hides my lover’s face but in my mind I see Yusuf’s eyes on mine.

His face is filled with love, his arms wrapped tightly about my naked body.

The endearments I hear whispered are for me and me alone.

He is everything to me as I am everything to him.

His dark eyes are fixed on me as I cry out.

***

He comes and goes. He is away for long periods without telling me in advance, so that I am often wrong-footed when I inquire from the servants as to his whereabouts and

received a puzzled response that he has been away from us for many days and that he will not return for a month – did I not know?

After a few such embarrassments I have learnt to hold my tongue.

If he is here I embrace him, if he does not appear then I am silent and wait impatiently for his unknown return, keeping mostly to my rooms. I do not know how to be with his sons.

I eat with them sometimes, stumble through their games and questions.

I am awkward and do not know what my place is.

It is easier to retreat to my rooms, where my servants wait on me without question, without the need for conversation.

Slowly Yusuf’s sons learn not to follow me, not to demand my presence. They forget about me.