by David Capel
Damascus is surrounded by the most delightful groves of oranges and olives, and it was a great relief to me to be able to sit in their scented, shady confines and while away an hour or two of freedom. After the first couple of visits I tested the boundaries of my new domain, and found that so long as I returned in good time to the gate the guards had no interest in where I wandered beyond them.
That still left me the problem of disguise. I considered filching enough unwanted clothes from the house to make up a suitable garb, but soon realised that I would need to buy the right garments, particularly a suitable cloak, boots and headgear. This boiled things down to the question of money, and my first idea was to steal from the household.
From time to time Walid the butler called upon me to conduct errands on his behalf, which sometimes involved visiting the markets to acquire food for the kitchen or other necessities. When I was given a suitably large quantity to purchase, I kept back some of the change for myself, and thus saved myself a few copper coins.
But the next time I tried the trick I was subjected to a fearful ear bashing, and I am sure that if I had not handed back my ill-gotten gains immediately I would have been flogged. Walid knew how to run a household alright, and had clearly mastered every trick there was to entrap his staff in their misdeeds.
After that I was at my wits’ end as to how to acquire money, and I left the problem awhile until I received help with all my problems from the most unlikely quarter.
I have mentioned Ibn Khalid’s family. His wife was called Jalila, and they had a lone daughter, Safia. But for the first weeks of my enslavement I hardly saw them. In a Mahomedan house the sexes are kept apart as far as is practicable, at least outside their private quarters. Ibn Khalid did not fit the wild imaginings of some Romans, with a string of wives and lovers kept in a harem. But he was traditional enough and rich enough to follow Islamic practice with regard to the structure of his house, though he was by no means strict.
In all my time in Damascus I never visited the private chambers of the house, though I gained some idea of their living arrangements later as I will show. So since I was excluded from family meals and most of the social gatherings that occurred, I had little cause to interact with the womenfolk.
I would see Jalila from time to time, sweeping through the courtyard at the centre of the house, or chatting with her daughter or visitors in the corner of the covered cloister that surrounded it. She was a fine looking woman, perhaps twenty years younger than her husband. She had a beaked nose and a haughty demeanour, with ornate, flowing robes, and she barely glanced at me on the occasions that I chanced across her.
The family rarely had large gatherings in their house, though Ibn Khalid had his scholarly meetings, and Jalila occasionally received one or two ladies during the daytime. She was out a great deal, and I suspected that she pursued most of her social life elsewhere. On her return she was often rather more strident that usual, haranguing the servants, though never talking to me. I noticed that on the rare occasions that she and Khalid played host together, she would sip wine from a small silver goblet, though he never touched a drink.
Safia I saw even less to begin with. She seemed quieter than her mother, and drifted in and out of her private rooms like a ghost. Her complexion was dark, like her father’s, and she had his deep soulful eyes, set wide around the hawk nose of her mother. She seemed to love pale colours that offset her nut-brown skin, and my eyes would be drawn to her shapely form as she glided across the courtyard. On one occasion I stopped outside the library to tie my sandal and noticed her sitting in the sunshine on the other side of the fountain. She was reading a letter and with one hand toyed with her uncovered hair, pushing the ink-black tresses behind one ear.
She had not noticed me – I had taken to walking softly as a cat around the house – and I crouched there for a full minute watching the soft rise and fall of her breast beneath the folded white sari.
Then I heard a cough, and there was Ibn Khalid in the doorway of his library. He stared at me for a moment, cold and hard, and nodded me into the room.
A month or so later I was sitting at a garden table that stood in the shaded part of the cloister near the servants’ entrance. It was my wont on hot days to move there where the faint breeze caused by the fountain cooled the air a little. I was studying an Arabic translation of a Greek text, a medical work by Galen. I had been mouthing the words to myself and must have been speaking aloud, because I sensed a movement and then a soft voice said,
“My, your Arabic has improved. You sound the perfect scholar!”
I stood and in my confusion knocked over the stool that I was using and Safia laughed.
“Do you mind if I sit with you for a moment? I would listen to what you are studying.”
I felt rather foolish reading aloud, and the subject matter was hardly suitable – incisions into the head or some such – but I could hardly refuse, so I launched in.
After a few sentences she interrupted and corrected my pronunciation of one of the technical words I had not encountered before.
“And what is it, may I ask?”
“A kind of knife, I think, that doctors use,” she replied. “Not a nice thought!” and we both laughed this time.
“I have an idea,” Safia continued. “I will help you with your Arabic from time to time, and you can teach me some of your philosophy. My father will allow me no tutor – he thinks that a woman has no need of learning. So you will have to do. Would that be acceptable?” And she smiled.
“I would be delighted to do that. But would not your father think me presumptuous? I mean if he…”
“Oh don’t worry about that,” she interrupted, waving her hand. “Father cannot object to me talking to you occasionally, and besides, I will explain the dilemma he has presented me with. No tutor, must talk to slave!” and she shook her head from side to side as she said it. “Besides, I don’t have time for all that many lessons, and we can conduct them at quiet times like this. So we’ll hardly be disturbing him or your work.”
I could think of nothing more pleasant that whiling away the hours talking to this charming girl, and she was true to her word. Every few days she would come and sit with me in the shaded cloister and we would discuss the great writers of the past, but more often chat simply about everyday life. She would ask me about life in the City back home, and I found out a little about her.
Safia was indeed a gentle soul, who lived a secluded existence, sheltered from the world by the conservatism of her father and her lack of siblings. As such she had some of the ingrained snobbery of the ignorant, but was otherwise thoughtful and intelligent.
She seemed surprised to discover that I was from a wealthy background, and had been a soldier of rank, as if it challenged her notion of how a slave should be. At one stage she even muttered, “but what are you doing here?” as if captivity and servitude were a choice to be taken.
Her own life was sheltered and tedious in the extreme, or so it seemed to me by comparison with my previous life in the City. She spent much of her time in her apartments, or else being chaperoned to other ladies’ houses by her mother and aunts.
“My parents are waiting to find a husband for me,” she smiled, “but they cannot agree on which one, otherwise I would have been married long ago. Each would like a son in their own image of manhood. My father a studious young scholar, to take his place and converse with in the library. My mother a glamorous emir, apt to warfare and courteous to the ladies.”
“And you, what kind of man would you like?”
“Something of both, of course.” And she smiled briefly at me and stood up to leave.
So I enjoyed my gentle conversations with Safia, and considered them a great addition and improvement to my life. They even drove thoughts of escape from my head for a while.
Ibn Khalid looked askance when he first witnessed our meetings, but he did not intervene, nor did he discuss them with me.
He would not have been so tolerant of th
e other development in my life in his household, however.
ρ
It was a late summer evening, and my master had four or five guests for the evening meal. Jalila was out, and Safia was in her rooms, so he had asked me to join them, for the discussion was mostly of a learned nature. We spoke of astronomy, and the nature of the stars and whether they had any effect on human life below.
We sat outside in the cloister so that we could admire the heavens as we ate, and as the brazier burnt low and the darkness enfolded us, the firmament indeed blazed forth in all its glory. It was pleasant to sit there in the cool of the evening, with the greybeards muttering and my own contributions required infrequently.
As the meal drew towards its conclusion there was a commotion in the front hall and we heard Jalila returning noisily and issuing instructions to Ahmed, the footman. She walked into the courtyard and Ibn Khalid, who was in a jovial mood, rose to greet her and asked her to join us. She paused for a moment, assessing the scene, wondering no doubt if she would be trapped in this tedious company. I expected her to decline, though I could not see the expression on her face in the shadow.
But instead she said, “why not?” in a gay, loud voice, and there was a small commotion as the assembled greybeards got to their feet and bowed while Ahmed fetched a chair and placed it beside me. He asked her if she required refreshment, and she said, “I think I’ll have a little wine.”
Jalila enquired briefly after the guests and the topic of their discussion, and it seemed to me that she slurred her words somewhat, but after a while she fell silent, and the conversation continued much as before. The butler brought her goblet, and she indicated for him to leave the flask to hand.
If her presence disturbed his guests, Ibn Khalid showed no sign of it, and droned on as before, making no concession to the feminine company. He was in the middle of a particularly lengthy soliloquy on the old Persian star gazers, when to my horror I felt something on my knee.
For a split second I thought it was a snake, and nearly leapt out of my skin. I saw the white beard of one of the old men glance briefly in my direction at my sudden movement, but it was quite dark by now and he looked away. No one else seemed to notice.
Of course I realised after an instant that it was Jalila’s hand on my thigh, and I shifted away slightly, half expecting her to realise her mistake and move it back to the bottle she had been applying herself to.
But the hand moved with me and started to shift very gently up my leg. For a moment I considered standing up on some pretext, but I was terrified that someone would see what was happening, and to draw attention to myself would be madness. So instead I placed my hand on hers and firmly moved it away.
Jalila acquiesced briefly, but as soon as I withdrew my hand, she placed her own on my leg once more, this time on my knee, which was bare below the hem of my tunic. I was paralysed with fear and anticipation, and she took advantage by gently stroking my skin with the tips of her fingers, encroaching further under the garment with each movement.
By this time I was excited as well as fearful, which she seemed to sense, for she withdrew her hand and then touched me further up, as if seeking confirmation. Then, apparently satisfied, she stood and yawned, interrupting one of the scholars in full flow.
“I’m sorry my dear, I am weary now and it’s late. If you’ll all excuse me I shall retire for the night.”
We all hurried to our feet once more, and Jalila swept off. One by one the other guests began to make their excuses as well, and I was soon able to withdraw to my small room in a fever of excitement and confusion.
I hardly saw Jalila for several days afterwards, and when I did she kept her nose in the air and ignored me as before, much to my relief.
The only further change in my circumstances was that I was sent once more to the markets to buy provisions, something that I had not been trusted with since Walid caught me trying to pilfer the coins several weeks before.
I wondered at this slightly, because he had been very angry at the theft, and seemed strangely grudging to send me on my way again. However, I was pleased with the variety this added to my routine, and returned dutifully with a consignment of fruit, and then a few days later with some fowl that I was asked to fetch from the meat market.
Within a week I was sent on a third assignment, this time to the spice bazaar which was on the other side of the great Mosque from Ibn Khalid’s house, nearly half an hour’s walk though the crowded streets and not far from the Circassian gate. I was half way through my list of purchases, haggling for some caraway when, while the stall-keeper was rummaging among his jars, I felt a tap on my shoulder.
There, despite her face being half shrouded by her abaya, I recognised the unmistakable hawk features of Jalila.
“Follow me slowly, ten paces behind,” she said, and turned and walked away into the crowd.
I gaped at her retreating figure until I was interrupted by the spice seller asking for his money. I paid him quickly, stored the herb in my satchel, and walked after the mistress of the house. I stayed a suitable distance behind her, which was not difficult, for she paused from time to time and glanced over her shoulder to check that I was coming. We left the bazaar and walked north-east, leaving the hubbub behind us and entering a quiet quarter of town in the lee of the east wall that I had never visited before. Jalila led me up a narrow, sun-baked alley and into a small plaza shaded by an old olive tree. There was no other entrance to the square except several doors belonging to narrow houses, all of them shut. A cat dozed in the sunshine by one of them.
Jalila walked across the court and pushed at a pale blue door the other side and disappeared within. I followed her, thoroughly intrigued, and found myself in a narrow, tile-flagged corridor, and as my eyes adjusted to the sudden shade I saw a stone stair ascending a few feet in front of me. I glanced into the narrow square to check that no-one was observing us, closed the door behind me and latched it, then climbed up into the apartment above. There was a small antechamber there, set with a couch, a table and a chest. A faint breeze came from an open door beyond.
I stepped through to a shaded bedchamber, which smelled faintly of jasmine. There, standing in silhouette against the slatted shutters that allowed the dim light, stood Jalila. She had discarded her robe and stood dressed only in a short muslin shift. I could not see her face in the shade, but the shape of her body was outlined in the thin material, her breasts and hard nipples upright, and her dark hair flowing free down her back.
She said nothing, and without a word I tore my tunic over my head and stepped towards her, overcome with lust. I kissed her mouth and neck hungrily and pushed her gently onto the bed beside us. I lifted the muslin shift to her waist and pushed her legs wide apart with my own. She gasped as I took her quickly, the frustrations and weariness of my life spent in just a few moments.
When I rolled onto my back afterwards, wordless and covered in sweat, she sat up on the edge of the bed with her back to me. She stood, and her shift fell back into place, covering her nakedness. She stooped to pick up her robe, and then turned to me and said in a low voice,
“You’ll have to be more patient next time. I did not go to this trouble for a man with the stamina of a boy.”
I was too astounded to reply, and she continued while reaching for something on the table by the window.
“In two days time you will be asked to visit the leather bazaar to collect some items for the house. Do not go there. Come here instead. I will have the goods ready here for you.”
She tossed something small and heavy over to me. “Go now. There are some coins in there. Have a drink next time you have some time to yourself. Don’t forget to take those herbs back to Walid.”
And that is how I solved the problem of money.
**
My affair with Jalila lasted for several months. At around the time of the new moon we would meet two or three times, sometimes on consecutive days. The room in the small shaded courtyard was an admirable spot for a l
over’s tryst. At first I worried that the square had no other exit bar the alley we came in by. But as Jalila pointed out, every bedroom was a potential trap, and this one was far from the house in an artisan quarter where she was unknown. The apartment belonged to a cousin of hers who lived in Aleppo, and had once been used for housing the servants of visiting merchants. In practice we rarely saw any of our neighbours who for the most part were out working during the day when we met.
On my way home from our first meeting I felt a kind of bewildered elation, and even laughed at the sharpness of her parting words. I considered taking her advice and stopping for a glass of arrack. But I realised that I was probably running late as it was, and indeed Walid gave me a sharp rebuke on my return.
It was while hurrying back to the house that I recalled my ideas for escape. I stopped for a moment in a discreet corner to count the contents of the purse Jalila had tossed me. She had been generous. I realised that if I played my hand well I could have the means to purchase the garments I needed and set my plans in motion.
The whole of the next day I walked around the house feeling as if I had a notice on my back that would reveal my behaviour to anyone who glanced in my direction. The feeling must be familiar to anyone who has had a guilty conscience – starting at every footstep outside the door, swallowing hard at every glance, and interpreting every comment as if it betrayed some knowledge of the crime.
As chance would have it, Safia searched me out that morning, wanting to ask my opinion about some trivial disagreement between her and her mother. I was most uncommunicative until she leant forward and clasped my hands with hers.
“You look so sad, John,” she said. “I know this is not your real home, and you feel lonely so far from your City. I wish that I could help you!”