Page 3 of None Such as She (The Moroccan Empire #2)
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.
By the time prayers are finished and we have made our way outside the mosque there is a huge crowd.
Word has spread of the engagement. More and more people join us as they emerge from other mosques or their houses as we stand there, waiting to go to the bride.
The sheep, held tightly by two of our servants, has given up struggling and lies quietly on the ground, sadly contemplating its fate.
Now the crowd begins to move. Slowly we walk towards one of the quarters until we come to a door set into a high wall.
The crowd is excited. My mother’s face is rigid, without expression.
My father is his usual reserved self, smiling wryly at some of the more ribald comments from the crowd and waving them away but I notice his left hand moving constantly, clenching and unclenching while his right hand reaches out to pat people’s shoulders, to gently steer my mother through the crowded space.
My aunts are at the front of the crowd, and they start to pound on the door.
A laughing voice calls out. “Who is there?”
My aunts answer as one. “We have come to ask if you will give your daughter to be married to Ibrahim an-Nafzawi!”
The crowd cheers.
Of course there is much demurral before we are allowed in.
It would not do for the bride’s father to seem too eager.
More calls, more responses, until finally the door is opened and we are welcomed inside.
A great crowd streams in, myself and Myriam getting lost in it so that we fall back from our front-row positions and end up towards the back as we enter the courtyard.
It is a pretty place, not so grand as our own home, but still pleasing to the eye.
It is cool and there is a small fountain that splashes merrily.
There are fresh-scented trees which later will bear sweet fruits, although right now they are full of small boys who have climbed them to get a better view while the first surah of the Qur’an is recited over the engaged couple.
“In the name of Allah, Most Gracious, Most Merciful. Praise be to Allah The Cherisher and Sustainer of the Worlds; Most Gracious, Most Merciful; Master of the Day of Judgement. Thee do we worship and Thine aid we seek. Show us the straight way, The way of those on whom Thou has bestowed Thy Grace, those whose portion is not wrath, and who go not astray.”