by Elif Shafak
Each day, for the past fifteen years, Jamila had spent at least a good couple of hours in the cellar, preparing the concoctions that might be requested at a moment’s notice with a knock on her door. She was the healer. The Virgin Midwife who spoke the language of birds, reptiles and insects. A granddaughter of the Prophet Suleiman. That’s what the locals called her. That, too, was one reason why she had managed to survive on her own in the wilderness. They respected, feared and despised her. As a result, they left her alone. This woman who was no woman; a witch who paced the tightrope between two worlds.
When Jamila was in the cellar, she stepped outside of her body, becoming a conduit for an arcane energy that coursed through the universe, healing, mending, multiplying. There she gave birth to her own womb, and the womb expanded to cover the whole of the natural world around her, a cavern of warmth and compassion, in which she happily lost all sense of self. She could never tell whether it was night or day. Not that it mattered. She lived outside of the clock in a cycle of her own. Some days she worked there from dawn to dusk, preparing age-old recipes, experimenting with new ones. It never felt dull. Tiring yes, but not boring. Each flower, every mineral, held a divine secret implanted by God. People often missed the clues. They looked at mistletoe and saw a parasitic plant that grew on tree trunks, not the salve for blood circulation that it offered. Trust. That was what Jamila needed to achieve. When life forms trusted you, they yielded their secret. Not right away, but gradually. Then you knew which plant was right to heal which ailment. Everything in the universe, no matter how little or how insignificant, was meant to be an answer to something else. Where there was a problem, there was a solution, and often surprisingly near by. It was a matter of seeing. Jamila was a seer.
She was not interested in travelling to unfamiliar places, meeting strangers, discovering continents beyond the horizon. The world must be full of variety, but human beings were the same everywhere. It was enough watching the gas lamps in the hills below flickering at night. Allah had intended her to serve Him by unravelling the secrets of nature, so she believed it was her duty to stay where she was. She knew how to cure numerous illnesses, though there were a great many that were still a mystery. Underneath the long-sleeved, colourful gowns and ornamented vests that she wore, she always donned a shalwar, which helped her mount a horse when it was necessary. Night and day, she had to be ready for anything.
The locals had made up many stories about her. They said it must be the djinn who gave her the formulas for the remedies. Others believed she had sneaked into the Kaf Mountain. where no human beings were ever welcome, the abode of fairies, nymphs and sprites. Jamila shook her head in wonder when she heard such tall tales. In a region hungry for heroes, legends and miracles they expected her to embody all three. But Jamila knew she could only do what she could. Depending on the means of the person in need, she would haggle for her brews and balms, although often she gave them for free. With the little she earned she bought additional ingredients.
She also prepared poisons, though she would share those with fewer people. Poison was a gift from God. A divine blessing that often went unappreciated. You could see it as a curse or a cure, like almost all things in life. Nature was beyond good and bad. What could heal could make you sick. What could make you sick could heal. Jamila was convinced that the job of a poison-maker was no different from that of any other craftsman. Just like an artisan, she was responsible for the quality of her product and not for the way in which people made use of it. She sold poisons for field mice, shrews, rats, cockroaches and snakes. While she accepted that her products could be deadly, she always concluded that so was meat. Eating too much meat caused gout, an illness that could kill if it went untreated. But nobody stopped buying meat for that reason or went around arresting butchers.
Now, with her forehead glistening under the light from an oil lamp, Jamila put the mortar aside and took out a box. Small, square, mother of pearl. In it there was a stone. A most precious one. A diamond, as amber as honey, larger than a hazelnut. She held it between her fingers and inspected it. There were folks here in the valley who would slit one another’s throats to have a gem this special. Fools! The diamond could never be possessed, only watched over. Every new proprietor was nothing but a temporary stopover on the diamond’s extended journey. Jamila understood this and accepted it. The diamond was with her today, but tomorrow it could be elsewhere. In the meantime, Jamila used it to perfect her concoctions. Some stones exuded warmth, an inner light, and when she kept them inside a potion for a while, they yielded their soul, smoothing the edges, helping things to blend. She kept several jewels for this purpose, but the diamond was the best.
Since time immemorial the natives of Mesopotamia had called diamonds ‘The Tears of Gods’. They believed they were made of the dust that fell from the stars above or from splinters that broke off from lightning bolts on stormy nights. Jamila had even heard some say that they were the crystallized drops of sweat shed every spring when Mother Earth and Father Sky made love. Wild imagination! People let their thoughts run amok when they came across things over which they had little control, as if by inventing stories they could make sense of all that was painfully confusing, including their brief stay in this world.
Compared to a diamond, human life was shorter than a summer rain. At the age of eighty, humans were old and frail, but a diamond was still considered an infant. Jamila guessed that between three and four hundred years must have passed since her stone had been mined, polished and faceted. Still young. It could live thousands of years, if not more.
When it came to greed for diamonds there wasn’t much difference between the affluent and the poor, and really no end to it. He who had no prospect of owning a diamond coveted one. He who already had one yearned for more. Dishonesty, rapacity and cruelty – even at its young age, this diamond had already seen them all. It had a bloody history, like all rare diamonds. Merchants, wanderers, pilgrims, sailors, soldiers and spies had betrayed one another just to lay their hands on it. Maids had served their ladies with more respect, ladies had loved their husbands more devotedly, and husbands had felt more like a man with it under their roof. Ambiguities became certainties, flirtations developed into marriages, friends turned into foes, and foes turned into cohorts. Like a shaft of sunlight that reflected off pure white snow, the amber diamond rendered everything around it brighter, in the same way that sunlight seemed brighter when reflected off pure white snow; but it also carried darkness within. Jamila knew that a diamond of this splendour could exile a person from his own soul.
It was a gift from a beg. A man who was used to having people of all kinds bow in front of him, spreading terror and respect in equal measure. Jamila had saved his only son’s life. Where doctors had seen no hope, she had toiled quietly, doggedly, bringing the boy back from Azrael’s Kingdom, inch by inch, like pulling a sleigh out of broken ice. The first time the boy opened his eyes and spoke, the beg wept. Howled, in fact, like most men who were unused to crying did.
The beg offered her money. Jamila refused. Gold coins. A parcel of land. A honey-bee colony. A silk farm. Each time Jamila shook her head. She was about to walk away when he showed her the diamond. The Amber Concubine, he called it. She was drawn to it. Not to its worth but to the riddles it held inside. It was a stone of secrets, she could tell.
‘They say it is cursed,’ said the beg. ‘It cannot be purchased, cannot be taken by force. It cannot be stolen. It can only be given from the heart, as a gift. That’s how it came to me, and that’s how I’m giving it to you.’
For a split second, Jamila felt as if she and the stone were connected in some deep and mysterious way beyond her understanding. Nonetheless, she declined. But the beg was a smart man. He understood that Jamila had been attracted by the gem and yet also repelled, worrying that if she had it with her, she would never be safe again. Part of the reason she had survived the attacks of thugs and robbers in the valley was because she had no
thing worth stealing. The beg did not insist. But the same night he sent the diamond with a trusted messenger. Ever since then Jamila had played host to the Amber Concubine.
There were many odd things about human beings. They thought insects were disgusting but felt lucky when a ladybird landed on their fingers. They detested rats but loved squirrels. While they found vultures repulsive, they thought eagles impressive. They despised mosquitoes and flies, but were fond of fire-flies. Even though copper and iron were medicinally important, it was gold that they worshipped instead. They took no notice of the stones under their feet but went mad for polished gems.
It seemed to Jamila that in everything they did, human beings selected a few favourites to love and simply loathed the rest. Little did they understand that the things they disliked were just as essential for the Cycle of Life as the things they so treasured. In this world every creature was made to challenge, to change and to complete something else. A water mosquito was no less significant than a fire-fly, or brass than gold. That is how God, the Great Jeweller, had designed the universe.
A loud, sharp rap brought her attention back to her surroundings. Somebody was pounding on her door above. She jumped to her feet and put the diamond back into the box. How long had it been going on? She clambered up the stairs, her chest heaving. As soon as she lifted the trapdoor that opened into her living room, the clamour hit her like a slap.
‘Open the door! Virgin Midwife, where are you?’
Putting her hands on two sides of the trapdoor, Jamila winched her body on to the upper floor. She closed the lid and pulled the carpet over it. Finally she grabbed her rifle. Thus prepared, she went to get the door.
She was surprised to see the smuggler whose wife she had attended the other day. The father of the one-and-a-half baby. She was about to ask how the baby was doing when she noticed the man behind him. He was carrying his companion on his back. Trails of blood. Thick, dark.
‘Jamila . . . sister,’ said the smuggler. ‘You must help us.’
She understood. They had crossed the border into Syria, carrying goods. Tea, tobacco, silk, perhaps drugs. Things had not gone as they were supposed to. They had been ambushed. One of them had been shot. They could have left him there, but they hadn’t. They had carried him all the way back. But the man had lost too much blood; his soul was already oozing away. She didn’t need to take a closer look to know that he was dying.
‘I’m afraid I can’t help,’ said Jamila. ‘You need to go to a hospital.’
The smuggler sucked the ends of his moustache. He didn’t look angry or upset, only impatient. ‘You know we cannot take him there.’
Then, as if an agreement had been reached, they laid the wounded man on the sofa and left. Before he strode out, the smuggler said, ‘If he dies, light a fire in your garden. We will see it and come back to bury him.’
*
His face was long and angular, his cheekbones high. Sullen-shouldered, gloomy of countenance, he was lanky, lean. Jamila tried to guess his age. He could have been in his late twenties but he could also have been past forty. With his cheeks drained of all colour and his fate creeping through his veins, he could have been of any age and no age at all.
She hoisted him up as gently as she could and put a pillow under his head, which felt oddly heavy and light at the same time. He made a throttled sound, muffled and inhuman, as if there were a lump in his chest, another bullet stuck in his throat. A trickle of blood seeped out of his nostril. Jamila had witnessed many hardships before and overcome quite a number of them, but nothing in her life had prepared her for the dread she felt now.
It would be kinder to kill him. A horse with a broken leg deserved to die with dignity. For him, a draught of hemlock would be enough. Good old plant. It was astonishing how many people mistook it for fennel and took their last breath without knowing why. The villagers called it ‘Sheitan’s Breath’ but Jamila had a better name for it: ‘Purple Haze’. If only she could make the man swallow the right amount, he would tumble into a lavender slumber, a final dream. Twice in her life she had come close to killing herself: after being brought back to her father by her kidnappers, still a virgin but for ever tainted; and on the day she learned Adem had asked for Pembe’s hand. Each time, her determination to carry on, her fear of hell or simply the need to see the sun rise the next morning had compelled her to stay alive.
Jamila straightened her shoulders, determined not to permit herself to brood, strong as the urge was. She focused on the man’s wounds. Deftly, she cut away his clothes, fully stripping him. The thinness of his body almost made her cry – the grime, the vulnerability, the bones sticking out. He had three major wounds: one in his leg, one in his shoulder, but it was the third that was critical. Close to the spine. Whoever had shot him had done so from behind.
Working the entire afternoon, the patient twice fainting from pain, Jamila took out two and a half bullets. The third, below his right knee, had shattered. She saw no reason to go too deep. If he survived this hell he could live with that much. She knew he would never be the same again. Like stones and diamonds, bullets, too, passed their soul into the bodies that they touched.
Long after the glow of sunset retreated from the skies, she dozed off in a chair by his side, her neck gone stiff. Tonight, like the night before, there was a bad feeling in her chest, knocking the air out of her.
It was his moaning that woke her up, his mouth closing and opening, like a fish out of the sea. She dabbed a handkerchief in water and wet his parched lips.
‘More, please!’
‘I’m sorry,’ she said tenderly. ‘This is all you can have now. I’ll give you more later, I promise.’
He swore at her, slurring the words. His fever was high. He floated in and out of consciousness. She wondered if he was a decent man. Did it matter? Wouldn’t she have tried to save him regardless? He must be married with children. If he died now, would anyone miss him?
Slowly, Jamila moved the carpet aside and opened the trapdoor. She had work to do in the cellar, a potion to prepare, this time for herself, something to help her restlessness. She stole a glance at the patient in bed. He wouldn’t wake up for several hours. She pulled herself into the opening, and, once she had balanced her weight on the stairs, pulled the lid closed, holding it on her fingertips. There was no way she could put the carpet back, but at least the cover would remain closed. The man, if he woke up, would assume that she had gone out to cut wood. She let go. The lid sat back on its hinges with a thud.
Just at that moment, the smuggler opened his eyes. Through his blurred vision he surveyed the hut, his gaze moving from the neatly stacked woodpile to the rifle on the wall, until it finally came to rest on the trapdoor. An impenetrable look came over his features before he drifted back into a painful slumber.
Esma
London, April 1978
I closed the door and took a deep breath. It had become a habit lately, these midnight escapes. I locked myself in the bathroom after everyone went to sleep. I lit a candle, watching my face change with every flicker of the flame. I was not interested in observing the fifteen-year-old that I was. Instead I wanted to find out what was beneath the surface, connect with that other self I had yet to discover.
Most of the girls I knew had their own bedrooms and could keep their doors closed as they pleased. Not me. If I were to lock the door of the room I shared with my younger brother, my family would fear something terrible had happened to me. That is why I loved the bathroom – the only place where I could be alone with my thoughts and my body.
I took off my sweater and the flesh-coloured bra I hated with a vengeance. My breasts were pointy, with thin, blue veins, which I found repulsive. Two burdens to carry, as if I didn’t have enough already. Just this morning one of the boys in my class had attempted to touch them, pretending to get a book from a shelf behind me. Noticing his intentions I was able to dodge him at the last min
ute. Right away, I heard a group of boys snigger. They had planned this together. They had talked about it. About my breasts. I felt sick.
Outside the rain was falling on Lavender Grove. As I looked from the window back to the mirror, I wondered, for the umpteenth time, what I would look like had I been born a boy instead. Grabbing a nut-brown eye pencil, I first thickened, then joined, my eyebrows. Next I began to draw a moustache above my lips. Not a thin, wispy bristle, but a big, bushy thing, curling over upwards. If Iskender saw me now, he would have shaken his head and said, ‘Sis, you’re off your trolley!’ At times I felt like the odd one out, as if there had been a mistake in the celestial records that had caused me to end up here in this setting. I was struggling with being a Toprak while my true destiny awaited me elsewhere.
‘Hello, this is my sister. She only likes losers,’ Iskender said whenever he introduced me to someone, especially to a boy.
It never failed. The boy would then stay away from me. Not that I cared. Strange as it sounded when Iskender put it like that, he had a point. I found myself fatally drawn to the downtrodden, to the underdog. Even when I watched a football match, I so wanted the score to be a draw that I ended up supporting the losing team. The thought of how terrible the players must be feeling at that moment, crushed under the weight of their fans’ disappointment and woe, was enough for my heart to go out to them.
‘You side with snails. That’s the problem,’ Mum said. She believed there were two types of people in this world: the frog-allies and the snail-allies.
In the village where Mum had lived as a girl, the children used to catch frogs from a nearby stream. One day they captured the largest frog anyone had ever set eyes on. Someone brought a bowl from home and turned it over on the ugly animal, where it sat paralysed with fear. All day long kids came and tapped on the glass, leaning closer to see the frog better, excited and disgusted by its bulging eyes and scabby skin. Then one of the boys produced a snail out of his pocket and placed it under the overturned bowl. The frog immediately forgot about its distress, concentrating on its prey. In the meantime, the snail was inching its way along, hoping to break free of its prison, unaware of the danger. The frog leaped once, then twice, and caught the snail. Under the eyes of a dozen screaming kids, the frog ate the snail, a sticky, gluey slime oozing out of its mouth.