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

T he sun is sinking and I am late back from the pools.

My nursemaid Myriam is not her usual kindly self.

She grabs me as soon as I come in and hustles me upstairs, gripping my arm in a painful way.

I try to escape but she will not let me, hissing at me to be quiet and get into my bedroom, immediately.

“And wash that filthy mud off your legs!” she adds. “Where have you been?”

“The pools,” I say as I am bundled, breathless, into my room. Myriam is already throwing open chests while two slave girls who have brought up large buckets of hot water are pouring them into a big basin.

Myriam barely hears me. “Faster!” she snaps at the slave girls and they flee the room with a pile of orders falling over their heads – more water, washing cloths, towels, robes, belts, hair pins.

Myriam pulls my clothes off and flings them in a pile, then lifts me bodily into the basin.

I stand up to my knees in water while Myriam scrubs me down and then shriek as she starts to brush my hair with none of her usual gentleness.

She puts a hand over my mouth to stifle my cries.

I squirm and try to bite her hand. This earns me a sharp smack on the legs.

I stop shrieking and stand still, in dumbfounded pain.

Myriam hardly ever smacks. I cannot even remember the last time she smacked me, but it must be whole years ago.

“What is happening, Myriam?” I ask, through tears of pain.

She is still working on the knots in my long hair while the slave girls rush back and forth with everything she asked for.

A yank on my head forces it to one side and I see that the robes being laid out for me are new, and the finest I have ever owned.

They are very long, and more formal than I usually wear.

They are entirely made of silk, a fabric more usually reserved in such quantities for my mother’s clothes, and they are of many glorious colours.

Myriam is arranging my hair very elegantly.

I am going to look like a miniature version of my mother.

“Myriam?”

I try to get her attention but she does not seem willing to share any information with me. She is putting on her outer robes now, preparing to leave the house.

“Where are we going?”

“Engagement,” she says without any elaboration.

Well of course I have been to engagements before, but never dressed like this.

I would be well dressed, but not so elegantly and expensively.

I run through all our family members trying to think who it might be that is getting married, for it must be someone important to us if we are going to all this trouble, but I have heard nothing about this and surely my gossiping aunts would have told me if something so exciting was happening in our own family?

There is no time to ponder this, for Myriam is rushing me back down the stairs. I am just opening my mouth to ask some more questions when I see my mother and father standing by the main door, about to depart. They are surrounded by servants.

My father Ibrahim looks like a prince. He is beautifully dressed and looks very handsome. I cannot help smiling at him, even though I am still confused. He catches sight of me and nods, stretches out his hands to me. I reach him and he holds me at arms’ length to examine me.

“Very fine, Zaynab,” he says. “The image of your mother.”

I look towards my mother Djalila. She is always beautiful, but today she is stunning.

Her robes are magnificent. If my father looks like a prince, she looks like a queen.

I thought my new robes were grand, but she makes me look like a beggar girl.

She is not smiling, however. Her face is pale and still.

Beside her stands her handmaiden Hela, who rules our household in my mother’s name.

“You are late,” says Hela.

Myriam bows her head without speaking.

Hela ignores Myriam’s contrite face and turns to the servants. “Ready?”

They all nod. It is only now that I look from one servant to the next and see what they are carrying.

A large jewellery box.

Dried fruits.

A live sheep.

An engagement cake.

I look again, unable to believe what I am seeing. Jewellery. Dried fruits. The struggling sheep. The cake. These are the gifts that the groom takes to his intended bride on the day of their engagement.

My father is taking a second wife.

***

My mother has a beautiful mirror in her room.

Sometimes when she is occupied elsewhere I snatch a peek at myself in it.

My mother does not like anyone going into her room.

Only two people are allowed: her personal maidservant Hela, who comes and goes at will.

And my father, who makes his way to her rooms only rarely and with a slow tread.

When my mother is not in her room and I am sure no one will find me, I creep close to her mirror and peer at myself.

I have long thick hair, although it is always tangled, for I twist and turn under Myriam’s hands until she gives up and lets me escape.

I have very large dark eyes, which Myriam praises and says are like my mother’s.

I am not sure she is right. My mother’s eyes can gaze at you without blinking for whole minutes, whereas my eyes are always moving, seeking out curiosities and following movements around me.

My mother is very still. I have never seen her run or move fast. The same is true for my aunts, but they are fat and like nothing better than to lie on their comfortable cushions and eat sweets and cakes, giggling and quivering with the latest gossip.

They are my father’s sisters and come often to visit, caressing their brother and praising him.

They are polite to my mother but she does not join in with their sticky-fingered whispers.

She ensures they have everything they need and then leaves them, retreating to her rooms and the songbirds who flutter in their ornate cages there.

The aunts while away long afternoons on their visits, occasionally catching me as I run through our house.

When they catch me they crush me to their warm, multicoloured breasts of velvet and silk.

Hot roses and jasmine flowers pervade the air around them.

They laugh and poke and ask questions, rewarding answers with kisses and tastes of honeyed treats, then let me race away, back to my own games.

The mirror reflects my mother’s bedroom, a place of fine colours and rich scents, beautifully arranged objects, which I am not allowed to touch.

So I content myself with observing them in the mirror, reaching out through the glass so that I leave each item exactly where I found it, for my mother would surely spot any small changes.

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.