Page 31 of None Such as She (The Moroccan Empire #2)
The robes have the added benefit that they accentuate my new-found public piety.
Where once I prayed in my own tent now I pray ostentatiously in public.
I pray when many are gathered, where the greatest gossips and the most pious pray.
The gossips spread the word and the pious are pleased.
I have no private moments of prayer now, all is done for show.
My face is suffused with a holy fervour, my bows are so deep that were it not for Hela’s precious unguents the skin of my forehead would grow calloused as it touches the rough ground over and over again.
The holy men, who used to mutter in corners against me, finding it unwomanly for me to sit in council, are appeased.
They talk of Yusuf’s influence on me, of how their teachings are converting even those, who like me, enjoyed the riches of Aghmat in all their glory, showing little true belief.
They believe that I have seen the error of my ways, that their pure interpretations of the faith have been heard.
They tell Yusuf about these new changes and I see him glance at me when I arrive for prayers, a careful, considering glance.
I do not return his gaze. I prostate myself and after a moment he does the same.
Only once in these three months do the holy men falter in their new praise of me.
The man sits where he has been told to sit, despite his mortified protests.
Slowly word carries through the camp. All make their way past my tent on one pretext or another.
Even shepherds, who have no business being in camp at all, come from the fields and hills.
No-one can resist the sight of which everyone is speaking.
They stand a little way off, watching as day after day as the curls of dense black wood fall to the ground.
It is slow work, for the wood is harder than most.
Mostly our beds lie upon the ground and they are made of soft weavings with stuffing of one sort and another.
The poorest sleep upon the earth with only a rug to keep the chill from entering their bones.
The rich, of course, have grander beds, but even so they are made mostly of soft things – thick woollen blankets, fine silk cushions.
The wood or metal that holds all of this softness is rarely of much interest. It may have a few carvings or be bent to better please the eye, but no-one has ever seen a bed like this one.
From the hard black wood begin to emerge flowers, and fruits.
The children squat close to the wood and reach out a finger to touch them.
Life-size and perfectly formed, were they not black and hard their little mouths might try to bite the perfect pomegranates and figs, their small noses sniff out the perfume of the roses and jasmine which twine about the legs of my bed, growing more beautiful by the day.
When the carver begins his next stage of carving, however, these children are shooed away by their parents, and virtuous women blush as they walk by, their husbands glowering but then casting one quick backward glance as they walk on, unable to resist.
In the dark wood there are figures entwined and as the carving goes on, so their lusts grow stronger.
There in the darkness are men and women whose bodies merge with one another in ecstasy.
In the last days of its preparation the carver puts aside his sharp tools, takes up soft leathers and fats and begins to rub at his creations, bringing lustre to the writhing skin of the lovers.
The women of the camp who have no children, whose business here is the pleasure of many soldiers are the only ones who dare comment now.
They walk past with swaying hips and jangling jewellery, each claiming to have been the inspiration for the carver’s work.
They giggle amongst themselves and when a man walks by who looks more than once they call out and suggest he might like to taste such delights in soft flesh rather than in hard wood.
***
Hela watches me as I mix ingredients with pestle and mortar, a servant hovering by with hot water.
“What is that?”
“Nothing,” I mutter, head down, arms aching with the grinding motion. The hot water is poured into the mortar and a deep intoxicating smell emerges.
“It is an aphrodisiac,” says Hela without even inspecting the contents.
I do not reply.
“Who is it for?”
I continue grinding.
She sighs and gets up to leave. She pauses in the doorway. “You are not skilled with herbs, Zaynab. These drinks are for enhancing what is already there, not for forcing what is not.”
I shake my head and keep grinding. “It is already there,” I mutter to myself. “It is.”
***
It is the heat I feel first, throwing off one cover after another until I lie naked on the bed.
In the darkness with only the dying fire outside the bodies carved into the bed flicker and move, their movements lewd.
I reach out to try to still them but find myself caressing them as though they might include me in their embrace.
The silks of my bedcovers brush my feet where I kicked them away and I drag them back onto me, slipping them over my too hot and tender skin.
It is Hela who hears me moaning in the darkness and comes to me quickly, silently, muffling my mouth with a silk sheet while she searches around her for substances that will bring me back to myself.
She pours cool water down my throat and dampens a cloth to pat me with but I turn towards her touch as to a lover, taking her hand and pressing it to my most intimate parts.
She waits until I loosen her and then returns to her task, seeking to cool my fevered body and mind.
By morning I lie still and quiet. Only faint images of the night come to me. “What did I do? What did I say?”
Hela is mixing a new version of what I made. “You are not competent to mix such a drink. I should not have let you. I will do it myself now even though I think it should not be mixed at all.”
“I wanted it for him. But I thought I should try it myself first.”
“It was too strong. You were wild with passion.”
I sit up eagerly. “I want him to be wild with passion.”
Hela shakes her head. “If he had drunk this and been with a woman he would have hurt her. His passion would not have been contained. You can be passionate without being driven mad with lust.”
I lean forward watching her closely. “But you will make it strong enough?”
She sighs. “I will increase it over time. Otherwise he will become desperate for a woman. He’ll find a whore before your wedding if it is too strong.”
I laugh.“He is too pious to use a whore.”
“He has slaves.”
“A good Muslim should not wed his slave,” I recite piously.
“Who said he had to wed a slave to bed her?”
***
Well before the bed is entirely finished I am visited by one of Yusuf’s religious advisors, who is appalled by the forms taking shape under the carver’s hands.
“It is said,” he begins with great firmness and keeping his eyes on me rather than the object in question, “that the angels will not enter the home of one who displays pictures or images such as…” he gestures rather weakly towards the offending carving, visible outside my tent.
I shake my head. I have been expecting this moment, I am ready.
“It is said that when all souls are brought back to life those who have made images will be asked to breath life into them and if they cannot they will be cast aside for their presumption in taking the place of He who is greater than us all. That one should not make images of living beings for no mere mortal has the power to give them true life.”
He nods, agreeing with what I am saying, but he looks doubtful. If I know all this, why am I proceeding with such shamelessness?
I stretch out my hand towards one of the finished parts of the bed. “They are not living beings,” I say.
He frowns at me. I gesture back towards the carving and he reluctantly follows my hand’s path to gaze at the blasphemous images.
When he looks more closely a blush appears on his face but a frown begins to steal over his brow as well, for he can see that I have outwitted him.
None of the men and women depicted have heads.
There are no faces. Their heads are thrown back in ecstasy such that they cannot be seen or the carving, so detailed and accurate in every other way, so well planned, seems to be so large that where a head should come there the wood ends and when another figure begins the head must be imagined for it seems that the diligent carver has quite forgotten to place it there.
“But, but – ” he splutters.
I smile meekly at him, my face the very image of a good and pious woman. “I would not dream of showing a living being in sculpture such as this. None of my figures may live, for where would their breath be since they have no mouths?”
He stares at me incredulously.
“Blessed is Allah and the teachings of His Prophet Mohammed,” I say and he can only mumble a reply and retreat, confused.
I know the holy men argue amongst one another for days.
By the time they have decided that the carvings are anyway a disgrace and should not be on public view it is too late.
The bed is ready and has been taken into the privacy of my tent where it is assembled.
But by now all of the camp knows that in my tent I now have a bed that is obscene, lustful, shameless.
There is not a man in the camp who would not wish to lie in it with me, nor a woman who does not think of it and blush at the thought of Yusuf’s power, his hard arms and dark eyes.