“Yes, you are,” Jamil says, “and I shall honor your trust.” He smiles. “Even if that means protecting you from me.” He reclines, propping himself up on one elbow, but I remain seated, my legs curled discreetly under me. “I thought if I brought you here where there were no distractions, I might find out more about you,” he says. “Where you have been. What you want.”
No one has ever wondered such things about me, and I am so disarmed that, before I know it, I have recounted my life as a secret Jew with my mother, my years at Sagres with Papa, my grim marriage to Diogo, and my salvation in the embrace of the Abravanel family.
He listens quietly. “You’ve already been through enough for several lifetimes,” he says, fixing his intense and beautiful eyes on me.
I look away to avoid his stare. “I imagine you have too.”
Jamil smiles. “That’s for another day.” He gets up to fetch something from his bag. “I brought one more treat for us,” he says, unwrapping a cloth. “Something from home. You have dates here, but not like these.”
The fruit is larger than any I have seen, with creased and fragile-looking folds of skin around soft, glistening flesh. “We call them mujhoolah,” Jamil says, cutting one in half and removing the seed with a flick of his knife. He pinches a morsel between his fingertips and touches the silky flesh to my mouth. It dissolves and breaks away from the skin with the slightest pressure of my tongue. “Mmm,” I sigh.
“Would you like more?” He puts another piece in my mouth, and then he speaks.
“Laughing, you paint your lips brown with date.
The pink tip of your tongue licks its nectar from your fingers.
Do we enter Paradise like this?
Casting off our cloaks like the skin of a mujhoolah
Our flesh melting away in sweet delight?”
His eyes are shining. “You bring out the poet in me,” he says.
I take another date and paint my mouth before feeding half to him and eating the rest myself. Who is this woman, I ask myself, who does such things with a man?
Then his lips are on mine, softer and fuller than I imagined possible. He teases my mouth open and I feel sweetness mingle on our tongues. He pulls away with a smile. “Perhaps it would be wise to swallow first.”
I laugh from somewhere deep within me, not just because what he said strikes me as funny, but because I am soaring, I am singing, I am shedding all the burdens of my past and beginning again.
He kisses me more deeply, cupping his hand around my neck to hold me to him. I kiss him back, yearning to find every secret of his mouth, as if I could lick through to his soul. To my surprise, I feel Jamil pull away. “Are you sure this is what you want?” he asks. “We should stop now if it isn’t, and I will take you home.”
I know what I want—his lips on my hard nipples, bared to the sun and the summer air, his hands lifting my skirts to give me something I have never had, never knew enough to dream of. I pull myself back. “It’s too sudden,” I say. “I have to think about Eliana too. About what’s best for her—and me.”
To my surprise, he looks relieved. He stands up, and looking down at the protrusion in his trousers, he sighs. “My mind tells me to be chivalrous,” he says, “but it appears that another part of my body has a different idea.” Embarrassed, I look away, secretly thrilled to have done that to him.
“I don’t take these things lightly,” Jamil says. “I don’t make a habit of enticing women.”
“You could have anyone,” I say. “I’m twenty-six years old. I’ve borne two children—”
He pulls me to my feet. “You’re right. There are many beautiful girls I can have at home by snapping my fingers.” He takes me in his arms. “And I won’t deny I have partaken of such pleasure, but it makes no impression on me. I’m looking for a woman who is a feast for body and mind. Someone who frees the poetry in my soul.”
He pulls away to look in my eyes. “A woman, Amalia. Not a girl. Am I wrong? Is that not what you are?” He pauses. “You’re trembling.”
I fight back tears. “I’m not sure what I am, but I do think it’s best you take me home.”
“You need time to think,” Jamil says. “It shows you don’t take these things lightly either. I wouldn’t like that.” He tosses the remains of our meal to the birds and goes to get our horses.
13
QUELUZ 1451
That night, I lie next to my daughter, unable to sleep. What do I really know about Jamil? If there were something wrong with his character, Judah would have warned me. But Diogo was attractive and charming at the beginning too, and if I had really loved him, he would have broken my heart.
I think about the way Jamil endeared himself to my daughter and how he did not press me for more than I wanted to give at the fort. I think about his poems, and about his embarrassment at the bulge in his trousers. I remember how my body felt when he kissed me, and how surprised I was when I returned home to feel that the hair in my private place was matted and wet.
My daughter stirs next to me. I must keep my thoughts straight, I tell myself, not just for me but for her. I could never marry him—Judah is right about that—and I haven’t gone to all this trouble to live as a Jew just to throw it away.
Ask yourself what you don’t want to regret at the end of your life.
“Mama?” I whisper. Somehow, she’s heard my distress, for I sense her beside me. “But what about her?” I whisper, reaching over to touch my daughter.
She won’t always be young. She’ll have her own life when she’s grown. Will you be able to make up for lost time then?
“I just want what’s best for her.”
Perhaps what would make you happy would be best for her too.
Eliana snuffles and rolls over. “I love her so much,” I tell the dark, still air where my mother’s spirit hovers.
The more love you start with, the more can grow.
I lie thinking for a moment, and then I get up. Lighting a candle, I settle in at my desk and begin to write.
You said that wishing the prophets peace would bring that peace to me.
Our day leaves me sleepless, and I ask you this:
If I wish my lips were upon yours, would you bring your kisses to me?
If I wish myself to love you, would you love me in return?
***
The following morning, Eliana seems well enough for a ride, so I suggest we go to Sintra to buy her a new hair ribbon. At the palace, I give one of the pages a coin to take my poem to Jamil. “We’ll be in town all morning, if there’s a reply,” I tell him.
I let Eliana dawdle over her choice of ribbon and end up buying her two. We stop at the vegetable shop to get a carrot for our horse and go into the bakery to buy a treat for Simona. Then, when I can think of no other reason to delay, Eliana’s face lights up. “Jamil!” she says. I whirl around and see him standing inside the bakery door.
“I hoped I would find you.” He holds out the letter. “My answer didn’t take long.”
Below my writing, he has written one word.
Yes.
***
A week later, Jamil meets me near the palace. “I’ll take you to a side entry,” he says. “I’ve bribed the guard.” He adjusts the hood of my cloak to obscure my face. This is a mistake, I tell myself, hesitating to take the first step. And then I do. Even if it’s a mistake, I am going to make it gladly and without hesitation.
“The servants know not to disturb me when the outer door is closed,” he says when we are inside his quarters. He takes my cloak and stands back to look at me. “You enchant me,” he murmurs.
We stare into each other’s eyes until I think I may disappear altogether, like a boat slipping over the horizon into an unknown sea. I feel a tug in my belly as he pulls my hair free from the band holding it. I shake it out so that it falls down my back, and I hear his quick intake of breath.
We kiss deeply, hungrily. He pulls my dress down to my waist and cups my breasts through my chemise. I help
him remove my underskirts until I am standing before him in only a single layer of thin silk. It’s so unlike my wedding night that I want to laugh. My body feels glorious, and I want this beautiful person to know every part of me.
Jamil’s hair touches his shoulders like a lion’s mane, and I run my fingers through it. He unbuckles his belt, and soon his voluminous pants have dropped to his knees, and he stands before me, his erect penis surrounded by a nimbus of velvety dark hair.
When he is down to only a thin shirt, he takes me in his arms. I make room for his hand to slip between my thighs, and I feel his fingers stroking and separating the pink lips of my most private place. I moan with pleasure, and when he feels my knees give way, he guides me into the bedroom.
He helps me gently into bed, then spreads my legs with his knees and teases the insides of my thighs. Taking some of my wetness on his fingers, he touches his lips and then mine. He moves forward and brushes the tip of his penis against me, and I spread my legs wider, as if I could grow around him and satisfy myself that way even if he never moved at all.
Then he is inside me. His thighs are muscular and hard, and I use my own to grip his, bringing my hands down around his buttocks to move with him. A feeling grows within me, something close to pain but so glorious I want it to go on and on. Jamil drives hard into me until my body is splitting all the way to my mouth, bursting open with waves of pleasure so great I don’t care how loudly I cry out.
We go on, at times with small and exquisite movements and then with wild abandon that leaves our bodies slick with sweat. I hear Jamil’s breath grow shorter and more insistent, and suddenly he pulls out of me. White fluid makes an arch from his penis onto my belly. I have never seen such a thing, and then I remember that of course we must not make a baby.
With a grunt of satisfaction, he falls on his back and breaks out in soft, amazed laughter, as our breath slowly calms. Lying in Jamil’s arms throws the last bit of earth on the grave of my sad and lonely marriage. I am finally alive as a woman—blessedly, amazingly alive.
***
“Your mind’s wandering,” Simona says gently, as I look down to see a few pears in the bottom of my basket and hers already full. Two months have passed since Jamil and I became lovers, and on this sultry September morning, with a hint of fall in the air, my thoughts are the only part of me that hasn’t slowed to a stop.
Jamil must return to Granada soon, and he wants me to go with him. The caliph needs a tutor for his grandchildren, and Jamil has arranged for me to have a respectable life at court if I should want it. There are children for Eliana to befriend, and Jamil tells me the Muslim custom of men having more than one woman will make it easier for us to be together openly. Jamil is waiting for me to agree, but the word “yes” won’t cross my lips.
“I love it here in Queluz,” I say. “To be somewhere else, and know that the pears were ready to pick and you were doing it without me? To celebrate the High Holy Days without your family?” I bring my sleeve up to wipe my eyes. “I’m crying again,” I say, trying to smile. “Isn’t love supposed to make people happy?”
“You don’t have to leave,” Simona reminds me. “You can tell Jamil you won’t go.”
“I know,” I reply, “and I’ve almost told him that, more than once. But being with him here in Queluz is so—” I struggle to find the word. “It’s embarrassing to have you know what we’re doing when Jamil’s horse is outside my door and Eliana has been shooed off to visit you.”
Simona’s eyebrows arch as if the decision should be easy, but I know she understands. I turn my attention to the pears to keep from pouring out worries my friend has already listened to more patiently than most people would.
Jamil has been gone almost two weeks on a hunting trip near Tomar with King Afonso, a taste of what my life will be like when he leaves Lisbon. Will I then be just a woman who lives in a faraway town, someone he sees so rarely that love doesn’t really matter? For diplomats, kings always come before lovers. Jamil will go where he is sent, and he might never be here again.
Then again, what would it be like to be a Jew in Granada if I went with him? Would Eliana and I light Shabbat candles alone? At whose table would we sit for the Passover seder? Where would I break the fast after our Day of Atonement?
Simona reminds me I am not leaving Queluz forever. But sometimes people don’t come back. Sometimes we do, but what we want to recapture is no longer there. Only later do we realize that, without knowing it, we have already done something or seen someone for the last time. The more ordinary a thing is, the less likely we are to know the moment we lose it.
“You’ve stopped picking again.” Simona wipes her brow. “We can get the last of the pears tomorrow. Another day will do them no harm.”
One fact stares back unsaid. Jamil and I are wrong for each other as husband and wife. That thought bores holes in my heart when days pass without the sweet reassurance of being in his arms. A love that can never bring me a child? A love without the dignity of marriage? A love that, although not forbidden by either Muslims or Jews, will be viewed with suspicion and distaste by those less enlightened than Judah and Simona? Would I not live to regret what I have done if I spent—what?—perhaps years with him?
I want nothing more than that. Every dream of my future has three people in it—Eliana, Jamil, and me. Spring, fall, morning, evening, here, everywhere.
***
Word comes a few days later that the king’s party will return to Lisbon by nightfall. Simona and I have gone to the mikveh built into the compound wall, so I can purify myself to greet my lover. Though women usually go alone to perform their ritual baths, after our first immersion in the fountain in the freezing rain, my friend and I have often done it together.
The space, stuccoed white and tiled in blue and green, is no bigger than necessary to contain a bench and seven steps leading into water deep enough to cover ourselves fully, one at a time. Simona lowers herself into the water first with a contented sigh. She chants the blessing in her lovely rich voice, and I watch the top of her head disappear under the surface. She comes up smiling, water pouring off her face and body, before immersing for the second and third times. Wiping her eyes, she moves her lips in prayer, then steps out of the pool.
“Blessed art thou, Lord God, king of the universe, who makes us holy by embracing us in living waters,” I say as I step naked into the water, wiggling my toes to let it surround them. A tingling sensation travels up my spine to the nape of my neck as I lower myself into the water and lose myself in the sanctity of the moment.
Simona is wringing her hair as I get out. I sit next to her, dripping wet, enjoying the rare blessing of a calm heart and empty mind. “Jamil will want an answer about Granada when he comes,” she says, breaking the spell.
“Yes,” I say, sighing deeply as I reach for my towel. “I suppose he will.” I open my eyes to meet her expectant gaze. “I keep thinking the right answer will come to me, but it hasn’t.”
“Maybe it won’t,” Simona says. “Maybe there isn’t one right answer.” She puts her hands on my towel and massages the moisture from my hair. “What do you like about going to Granada?”
“Jamil tells me I can hear poetry every night. Musicians play and women dance, and people eat and drink until dawn.”
“And you would like that?”
Maybe it’s human nature to hoist our sails, to climb a mountain, to get on a horse and just keep riding. To risk what we have, just to see if there might be something more. Then again, what could I see of the world that could make me happier than I am right now? I stand up and stretch my body, letting the towel fall to the ground.
Simona breaks into my thoughts, reminding me I haven’t answered her. “My question is, does Jamil make you realize what you have always wanted, or does he make you want new things you probably wouldn’t if they weren’t part of him?”
I slip my chemise over my head, feeling it cling to my still-damp breasts.
“What do you want
from your life, Amalia?” Her voice is soft but insistent. “Any decision about staying or leaving will come without a struggle when you understand what about your deepest self Jamil has spoken to.” She mops her brow. “We’ll never get dry in here, in all this heat. Shall we go out in the garden? We have the whole place to ourselves.”
Judah left early that morning for Lisbon, taking Eliana with him for a visit with Chana and Rahel, and all the servants have the afternoon off. Unconcerned about covering ourselves, we drape our towels on a bench in the arbor and sit down, letting the dappled sun dance on our skin.
I have been trying to think of how to respond to her, but the deepest self she spoke of is a mystery, and so far a mute one. “I’ll comb your hair,” I tell her, to fill the silence. I stand behind the bench and lay the mass of hair down her back. I work through each strand, noticing the quiet encroachment of gray. She must be close to forty now, I realize.
“How old were you when you married Judah?” I ask.
“Sixteen,” she says. “He was twenty-six and already quite a leader. I couldn’t believe I was the one he wanted.”
“I used to be so jealous of you when I was married to Diogo. I thought you had the perfect life. No one does, but I didn’t know it then.”
Simona laughs. “I was seventeen when I had Chana. I never had a chance to wonder whether there might be something more. By the time I first asked myself that, there was a baby at my breast and dinner to be made.”
“Are you sure you don’t mean something less? Less work perhaps? Not so many obligations?”
“No.” Simona does not acknowledge my teasing tone as she gets up to change places. “That’s not what I mean.” She picks up a strand of my hair. “You are the freest person I know, Amalia. I love my life, but for every bit of jealousy you may have had about me, I’m sure I’ve had just as much about you.”
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