Page 5 of None Such as She (The Moroccan Empire #2)

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.

She does not raise her voice as she usually would, nor ask me if I need my ears stretching like a donkey to hear her better. She has succeeded in unrolling the mats and is taking her place on one of them.

I climb awkwardly out of bed, pull the robe over my sleep-warmed naked body which is now beginning to tremble in the cool night air, then kneel beside her. “It’s not dawn yet,” I say crossly. “The call to prayer won’t come for hours.”

Myriam ignores me and begins to pray. I follow along with little grace and much mumbling.

I stumble over words that ought to come smoothly, since I have been repeating them for many years and overbalance so that I knock my head too hard on the floor.

The prayers seem to go on forever, far longer than usual.

At last I see she intends to keep going all night and I stop, sitting back on my heels defiantly.

“I’m not praying anymore unless you tell me why we’re praying in the middle of the night.”

I think Myriam might ignore me, or yell at me. She does neither. She sits back on her heels and I see her face is streaked with tears. She sits still for a moment or two while the tears roll down her cheeks and then speaks, very low, as though afraid of being overheard. “Imen is ill.”

I frown. “She looked well last night when we went to bed.”

Myriam shakes her head. “She said she was indisposed.”

I shrug. “She always says that when we have guests.”

Myriam nods. “But she started to have pains. She thought it was the sickness again.”

“I thought that was only at the beginning. She hasn’t been sick for ages.”

“Yes. She should have told one of us. We would have known something was wrong. She did not know the sickness should not come now. She had pains like knives in her belly.” Myriam mumbles something else, which I don’t catch.

“What?”

Myriam speaks a little louder. “Blood.”

“Blood?” Even I know this is not a good sign.

Myriam nods again. “She started to bleed. Her maid got scared and called for help. The doctors are with her. Everyone is awake.”

I turn my face towards the door and strain my ears.

I have very good hearing, but if everyone is awake then the house seems unnaturally quiet – in the daytime you can barely hear a conversation for all the noise that goes on – clattering pots and pans, feet running up and down stairs, orders being shouted out.

Now there is only silence. I look back at Myriam, frowning. “I can’t hear anyone.”

“They are all praying,” she whispers, her face pale in the darkness.

I say nothing, but prostrate myself, the words suddenly coming to me, begging for His kindness, for His mercy, for any help He can offer to Imen as her crimson blood drains away in the darkness and my baby brother’s life is lost.

***

As the cold pale light grows the streets awake.

The dawn prayers are called and there is a brief lull before the bustle of the new day begins in earnest. Only our house is quiet.

In the coming days we will find ourselves mourning twice over; for my brother who did not even have a name and for Imen, whose gentle nature was not strong enough to withstand the agony that gripped her, nor the tide of blood, which swept her away as though she was dust in the road.

***

Many, many months pass before our house seems normal again.

My mother sits with us at all our meals again, and my father’s hair is a little more grey.

The rooms that were Imen’s are not used for anything, their doors are kept shut and the dust is allowed to settle around the spiders, who rebuild their webs and await any foolish flies who mistake Imen’s windows for a true entrance to our house.

The flowers Imen had planted around her windows fade and wither, for no-one comes to water them.

***

I miss Imen. I miss her love of good food and her sleep-ruffled hair.

I miss her perfumed robes in pale rippled colours, so different from my mother’s dark magnificence.

Most of all I miss her giggle, her embraces given without warning or reason, her delight in my father and his happiness with her.

He is quiet again now, and I have not seen him smile for a long time.

I sit in a cushioned alcove in our courtyard and rip leaves into small shreds, following their marked-out pathways. There is no-one now to share these mornings with and I am bored.

My father is leaving the house, going to one of his workshops. As he leaves he crosses the path of Hela, who is carrying breakfast to my mother. They see each other and pause, then speak in low voices.

I lean forward to hear them. I am curious, I rarely see them speak to one another. My mother issues all commands to Hela and Hela barely speaks when others are present. My father and she do not pass their time conversing with one another.

“I have spoken with her father.” I hear him say.

Hela shakes her head. It is a quick sharp movement, a direct refusal of whatever my father is proposing. A servant should not defy their master, my father would be within his rights to reprimand or even strike her. He does neither, only looks down at his hands.

“There will be only one,” says Hela. “You must resign yourself.”

“It is not only that,” he replies. “It is…” but he does not finish his sentence, he seems unable to find the words.

Hela holds up one hand, the other still balancing my mother’s breakfast, now going cold. “There will be no more new wives in this house,” she says, and turns, walking away from him into the house, towards my mother’s rooms.

My father stands still for a moment, looking down at the tiles of our courtyard. Then he makes his way out of the gates of our home, heading towards his workshops.

***

Sometimes I still go alone into the souks, but the street boys seem to have grown up all of a sudden.

Many now work hard every day, fetching and carrying heavy loads.

Some are apprenticed to their fathers or to a trade.

By evening they are too tired to come to the great reservoirs and play at servants and amirs, and so I sit alone in the middle of the vast expanse of water and gaze over the side of the pavilion at my rippled reflection.

My face is becoming more like my mother’s as time goes by, and I know that people say that I will be a great beauty like her.

I gaze at my face in the water and hope that I will still look like a street girl – with untamed hair and a wide smile.

But however often I look my hair grows ever faster and more silky, my eyes become wider and darker, my limbs longer and more graceful. I am becoming a woman.