Page 6 of None Such as She (The Moroccan Empire #2)

I am grown to fully fifteen now, and suitors seek my hand almost daily, or so it seems. Their families hope that my mother’s beauty, if not her fertility, will have been passed down to me.

I know that they whisper that I have all her beauty but that in addition I seem to have rosy cheeks and a warmer smile, that my grandmother on my father’s side had more than one fine son and two lovely daughters and that perhaps, therefore, I will not only bring beauty but also bear many children, thus making my desirability complete.

I find it laughable that someone would want to marry me, for I feel like a child playing at dressing-up when I am paraded before would-be husbands or their emissaries.

Each night when a guest is due for dinner with us I am dressed beautifully, my hair gleams and yet I am bound to tip over a drink or trip on the long brightly-coloured robes which now drape over every part of my body.

I grow clumsy when I am shy, and it makes me shy to be stared at as though I were a delicious course laid at table.

Sometimes I have to bite my lips to keep from giggling, and Myriam, who knows what I am thinking, will nudge me or shoot me a warning glance.

When she does that I cast my eyes down, which must look delightfully demure to the visiting suitors, but in reality I am only trying not to laugh out loud.

I no longer sit in the reservoir pavilion at dusk, for it would be unseemly for an unmarried fifteen-year-old girl of a good family to wander the streets alone.

It was tolerated, barely, when I was a child, but now neither my mother nor father will hear of it, and Myriam no longer makes excuses for me.

She is too afraid of what would happen to her if my reputation were in any way damaged.

So I can go out only when Myriam will accompany me, and she does not often do so.

Besides, I grow weary of walking the streets when so many people watch me walk by and whisper my name to one another, murmuring my heritage, my beauty, my suitability for marriage.

They speculate on my suitors, on which man will be chosen for me.

So most days I sit at home, alone and lonely. Sometimes I think I had better hurry up and get married. At least I might have someone to talk to.

It is boring. I am not allowed to cook, only to order the meals if I so wish, but if I venture to the kitchens it makes the servants nervous, for I am no longer a child to be hugged and spoiled with little cakes and tender meats, I am the young mistress of the house, second only to my mother.

There are servants to do every possible task.

Myriam only gossips about people I have no interest in.

I play music and sing sometimes, or dance a little, but it is not much fun alone.

All the little girls with whom I was encouraged to play as a child are no longer my friends after I ignored their company and favoured the street children for all those years, and anyway most of them have already been married off.

My mother lives her own life with Hela, keeping to her rooms, waited on hand and foot.

She emerges when her presence is required but otherwise ignores me entirely.

My father is an older, sadder man now. He spends little time in our house except for the evening meals when we have guests, which, as always, are elaborate and elegant.

No one ever speaks Imen’s name and my memories of her have faded.

From her short time in this house I remember only her laughter and the kitten she gave me, who is fat and slow now but still fond of being stroked and whose purr is still loud.

I pass the time watching the sun circle through the sky, being washed and dressed, attending fine meals, thinking up ever more elaborate dishes for the kitchen staff to attempt, watching the birds as they fly above our courtyard.

In this last I am joined by the cat, who peers hopefully at them without the slightest chance of ever catching one.

I used to enjoy the heat and cleansing calm of the hammam and went there often to pass the time, but it has lost its charm now that my body is eyed up every time I disrobe.

Gnarled old matchmakers sit in the dark corners and their eyes turn on me as soon as I enter, inspecting every part of me, from my hair to my toes.

They note how much hair I have on my body, the size of my breasts, the length of my legs, the shape of my toes, the curve of my behind.

I am aware that they think I am too thin, but other than that they concur that I have a fine body, well-proportioned and delicate for all my height.

They mutter that I ought to eat more fatty meat and rich cakes, but they cannot say that I am not beautiful, and they admit that my mother is also slender and that therefore it may be something I cannot help – this is said in pitying tones, with much shaking of the head and pursed lips.

At first I used to stare in my own mirror and think about what I’d heard them say about me, wonder whether my breasts were the right size to please a future husband and whether I would bear sons easily, but having heard them discuss every other girl my age I know there is no pleasing them, there is always something they will find to tut over – one girl is too tall, another too short, I am too slender and another girl too fat.

I have grown resigned to the knowledge that my naked body has been described to all their fellow matchmakers across the land, for their tongues do not lack speed even if their wrinkled old bodies creak and groan when they move from their warm dark corners.

It is their descriptions that have brought the suitors to our table, night after night.

The suitors come in all shapes and sizes, and most importantly in all ages and degrees of wealth.

There are the young eager ones, who blush more than I do and whose fathers accompany them, their lusting eyes wishing they were choosing a bride for themselves rather than for their sons.

There are the wrinkled old ones, scrawny and with missing teeth or with red faces and fat bellies.

These leer at me, eat too much and smack their lips.

Some are old colleagues of my fathers, who talk shop all during the meal, either barely glancing my way or else looking at me as they would at a fine carpet, expertly counting knots at a glance.

When they look at me I see them counting up my assets – long silken hair, fine limbs, elegant features of the face, well-to-do family.

Then they turn back to my father and the talks continue, bartering over prices – mine or the carpets, I am never quite sure.

I am only another commodity, I suppose. For all the tales of great loves that Myriam is so fond of hearing from the storytellers in the marketplaces, I can’t quite imagine any of these suitors inspiring any such feeling in me.

There are a few rather touching ones, who have fallen in love – or lust – at first sight, and who return night after night, seeking to sway my father’s opinion.

They cannot take their gaze from my face, which grows wearisome when I want to bite hungrily into a piece of chicken or when something has become stuck in my teeth.

I suffer them in silence and leave as soon as I can.

In this way the poor love-stricken men see less of me than those who do not much care whom they marry, so long as the woman is attractive and of a good family.

They are all well off, of course, or they would not even attempt my hand.

Even so, there are those who are sons of chiefs and amirs or indeed chiefs and amirs in their own right.

The amirs, of course, do not come themselves.

They send emissaries, wily men who look me up and down and mentally catalogue me alongside the other beauties they have seen on their travels to find the next queen of a grand city, the next wife for a rich and important ruler.

They wonder how much favour I will bring them at a distant court if they bring me back to their lord.

The chiefs sometimes come themselves, unwilling to trust someone else’s judgement.

These are men who have fought for their chiefdoms, warriors, who trust no-one but their own sharp eyes and strong arms in battle.

They are a little ill at ease in my father’s house, full of rich carpets and fine foods.

They are used to plainer fare and simple clothes, to sitting amongst men, not being joined for an elaborate dinner by women dressed in fine robes and jewels like my mother and I.

Of course with my mother’s past history the chiefs are often a little wary about my fertility.

A son is everything to them, and if I should fail to provide one then all the beauty in the world would not be sufficient to entice them.

I could have been married a good year ago, for there have been plenty of suitors to choose from and many fine offers have been made.

But my father delays my future marriage.

He raises objections to the suitors, regarding their lineage, their wealth, their distance from our own city.

And so the talks go on and on and yet more visitors come to our table.

Word spreads, of course, that many have sought my hand and been turned away, and all this does is increase my value, my desirability.

As time goes by only chiefs and amirs make their advances, their sons no longer deeming themselves worthy.

The merchants, meanwhile, have long since fallen by the wayside, however rich they are.

What at first seemed rather exciting – the idea of being wooed and married – has come to seem tedious and unlikely ever to actually happen.

***