It was wonderful to be alive in Granada, and I can’t imagine how those who trudge through life with downcast eyes would not feel moved to raise their faces to the sky and live more fully under that glorious sun. Still, I cannot linger too long taking in the phantom fragrances of the past, or let the city itself dance on my closed lids, without my mind going to darker things. Just as one thorn catching on a robe can tear the fabric beyond repair, remembering those years is like donning a cloak of as many colors as Joseph’s, and as tattered.
The street is quiet outside my room. The setting sun will not bring relief for hours yet. I’ve heard that living things put in a pot of cold water set on a fire will be unaware that the temperature is rising until it is on the verge of killing them. I take a deep breath and then another to reassure myself that there is still air here, that the house has not yet been encircled by a force that is stealing my life while I am inside this room reliving it.
No, the force that wants to kill me has no need of stealth. They parade their victims to the stake. They light the kindling and from that moment, the doomed can only pray that death will come quickly. What has the world come to that the most loving thing a family can do is to add straw and dry branches to the pyre to speed their loved one from this tortured world?
The self-appointed spokesmen for God will explain with sorrowful, pious eyes that they have done the victim a favor. Such purification leaves a chance for God’s mercy, however undeserved. “Who are we to know what God will do with the soul of the departed?” they ask, although there’s no other time they admit any uncertainty about what God is thinking.
Besides, they will be quick to point out, God forbids the shedding of human blood, except—conveniently—in war. Arms are torn from sockets and backs are broken on the rack, but there isn’t a mark on their bodies except the bites of vermin as victims are driven, or carried, to the stake. It’s spectacle the Inquisition wants, and it would be prepared to make the last two people in Spain a grisly audience for each other.
I pray for the dead. How many times have I stood in the women’s gallery at the synagogue and choked back tears at the words of the Amidah? “You support the falling, heal the sick, set free the bound, and keep faith with those who sleep in dust.” How many times have I wondered where that whispered prayer goes?
Perhaps nowhere. I tremble at how abandoned I may truly be. Alone in a universe without a God to hear me. Alone, even when surrounded by people, as I was in Granada.
But that isn’t how it felt at the beginning.
The dapple of light on shimmering veils…the voices of children…the scent of roses… I shut my eyes and surrender again to memory.
GRANADA 1455
“Try again,” I tell Zubiya. Scowling with concentration, she draws her finger over a simple, two-line poem. “The spreading earth is like a—buxom?—young girl?”
“Good,” I tell her.
“Cloaked in springtime, with flowers for her jewels.”
I pat her hand. “It’s not so hard, is it?”
“The words are too big. What does ‘buxom’ mean, anyway?”
“You remember what you said about how Aunt Rayyan’s breasts look like melons under her clothes?”
“Oh!” Zubiya giggles. “But how can a girl be”—she consults the text again—“buxom?”
“Maybe they were more like oranges.”
Zubiya looks down at her flat chest. “I wonder what mine will look like.”
“You don’t have too many more years to wait,” I tell her, without adding that I have heard whispers among the women that her marriage is already being arranged.
Eliana is almost nine now, trailing Zubiya by a little over a year. The two have become fast friends in the eighteen months we have been in Granada. They play in the gardens of the Alhambra much as I used to with Elizabeth and Beatriz, but their romantic stories are not about wandering knights and fair maidens, but about Scheherazade and the Arabian Nights.
I see much less of Qasim than I do of Zubiya. Even at eight, he spends far more time with the mullahs and court scholars. It’s just as well, for it’s an effort to settle Zubiya down and get her to read. No one takes her education seriously—no one, that is, but me. She may be important to others only as a bride, but how dull her life will be with only clothing and cosmetics to amuse her. That and other people’s mistakes and faults to gossip about.
Jawhara comes to fetch her daughter. “It’s time for you to bathe,” she says. “Your father will be here soon.” I have adjusted to this strange way of life, where the caliph lives in another part of the palace, away from his wives and children, only coming for a short visit in the afternoon before going to whomever pleases him in his harem.
I wait in my quarters until I am certain the caliph does not wish to talk to me about the children. When his visit is concluded, I am free to leave. My fear that I would be trapped living in the palace proved groundless, and I come and go almost every day, having been permitted by Mushtaq to live in the aljama here.
“You need a place to follow your faith,” Mushtaq told me. “You should live among your own.” Her decisions are never questioned, though Tarab has ways of making her displeasure obvious. I remember what Judah said long ago about power and love, and every day the caliph’s chief wife shows the compassion that comes from the balance of the two, with Tarab, unfortunately, serving as the counter lesson.
My quarters are only a place to rest while I am here and to leave the few things I need. There’s a small bed, a low table for working with the children, and a few extra clothes. From the benches built into the wall below the windows, I can look out over the courtyard on one side and the Albaicín and the rocky landscape beyond on the other. The windows have latticed shutters for privacy, but when I open them, light floods in, setting the warm wood panels aglow.
The two hundred Jewish families in Granada cluster on the southern side of the palace hill, surrounded by a city of seventy thousand. I walk most days up a footpath to the palace, and in cold or stormy weather, a sedan chair is sent for me. On the worst days, I spend the night here in the women’s quarters.
Eliana comes frequently to play with Zubiya, but the rest of the time she is with our rabbi’s wife, Toba, who watches her during the day and sets up a bed for her when I cannot return at night. Toba makes sure Eliana completes the lessons I plan for her, and my daughter can already read and write Arabic, Castilian, and Hebrew, as well as her native Portuguese. She knows more about astronomy, geology, and botany than the caliph’s grandchildren, because her curiosity is insatiable, and she learns twice as much from asking questions than is contained in the books Qasim and Zubiya open only reluctantly.
Toba’s rabbi husband, Baroukh Obadia, runs a small yeshiva out of their home, and Eliana listens from a chair near the door when the discussion interests her. When she tells me what the Talmud made her ponder that day, I think of young Isaac Abravanel. How pleased he would be to have a conversation with my daughter now, and how much Rabbi Obadia’s young charges are missing because a girl is not allowed to join them.
I hear noises in the courtyard and I go to the window. Zubiya and Qasim are playing a noisy game of tag while the caliph and Mushtaq sit and talk near the fountain. I haven’t warmed to the idea of a man marrying more than one woman, but I can’t imagine how he could love anyone more than he does his chief wife. She is kind and gentle, and it’s hard to see why she would be close to someone like Tarab if they had not grown up together.
My nemesis is ten years younger, and though she is Mushtaq’s niece, they grew up more like sisters. Tarab and her only child, Noor, came to live in the Alhambra when Tarab’s husband died. Mother and child could not be more opposite. Whereas Tarab can terrorize a room even when silent, Noor is a cowering mouse, joining the games and conversation only when prodded.
I see Tarab now, sitting on the other side of the caliph. Though Muhammad is gracious to her, I see how he stiffens when she is near. Does he, like I do, look at her and
think, “Now there is one to keep an eye on”?
I suppose not. He has little to fear from anyone. I, on the other hand, am not so fortunate. Tarab looks up toward my window. Instinctively I draw back, though no one can see me through the closed lattice. She must have been commenting about something the children are learning or my behavior around them. The only thing I can be sure of is that it is not a compliment.
Jawhara and Rayyan are seated under the arcade. The two are best friends from childhood and wives of the same man, a diplomat who is away as much as Jamil is. When Rayyan’s husband and two children died in an outbreak of pox, Jawhara insisted her own husband marry her friend, but among the women of the palace, she seems little more than Jawhara’s shadow.
Mushtaq seems to enjoy my company the most, for I am better educated than the other women, and she has a lively mind. She’s pleased to have a Jew in her entourage, she tells me, because finally someone can answer her questions about my faith and help her appreciate her own. Despite her pain, she gets down from her chair at least once a day to pray and says the prayers from her seat the other times. Occasionally I get down on the floor and join her, reciting only the things Jews believe and remaining silent for the rest, just as I did at mass when I was a child.
No wonder Caliph Muhammad loves her best, even though her bones hurt her so terribly it must be years since they have made love. At the thought of such pleasure, my body wakens, and I wait impatiently for the caliph to say his good-byes. When he is gone, I splash some water on my face and arms and straighten my hair under the hood of my cloak before going out through the Courtyard of the Lions and down the arcades and gardens of the Alhambra to where my sedan chair is waiting to take me to the Albaicín to meet Jamil.
As I pass the souk, I see him walking with Sawwar, now twelve, who is visiting Granada. We’re only a few minutes from Jamil’s home, but he tells the carriers to lower the chair so Sawwar can get inside. The boy’s eyes dart between us, and I know he is thinking he’d rather walk with a man than ride with a woman, but Jamil insists he keep me company.
“I’ll be along in a few minutes,” Jamil says. “I have one more stop to make.”
Don’t be long, my eyes implore. It’s only a few hours until I must go home. Jamil’s expression says he has no intention to tarry.
Sawwar sits beside me, exuding a boyish scent of dust and dried sweat. His face is smooth, although his upper lip is dark, as if hair under the surface has not yet erupted into a mustache. “What have you and your father been doing since I saw you last?” I ask. It’s only been a few days, but Sawwar is usually full of stories of riding or hunting or gatherings of men at Jamil’s home.
He shrugs. “We bought some snares at the souk and some arrows for my bow.” He falls silent for a moment, then says without enthusiasm that he will be leaving for Ronda in a week.
“So soon?” I reply.
Sawwar sighs as the carriers put us down. “Father’s been called away.”
My heart drops at his words. “How long have you known?”
“He just found out today,” Sawwar says. “He has to go back to Lisbon.” Knowing Jamil hasn’t simply failed to tell me makes me feel better, but not much. With news like that, how could I feel anything but miserable? He will likely be gone for months.
Sawwar goes inside the house, and I dally outside by the fountain, waiting for Jamil. He comes into the courtyard, and as usual we do not touch each other until we have gone inside. No one has illusions about our relationship, but it’s still best not to invite gossip.
“Sawwar told me you’re leaving soon,” I say as he closes the door behind us.
“I would have preferred you to hear from me,” he says. “I’ll have to speak to Sawwar about keeping our conversations to himself. Are you angry?”
“No,” I say. “Just sad. And worried.”
He holds me tight. “Bad things can happen here too. Who knows whether my life won’t be saved by not being here to fall off a balcony or drown in the river?”
He pulls away to look at me. “Insha’Allah, I will be home in a few months, but I thought I might be able to persuade you and Eliana to come with me, so you could visit Queluz for a while.”
My heart leaps. Simona. Judah. My own house. How wonderful that would be! Jamil is caressing my back under my tunic. He moves his hands slowly to my buttocks and pulls me to him. I feel his hardness against my belly. “Let’s not talk about it now,” I say, returning his kisses. We move to the bed, and every thought I have vanishes from my mind, as our breath mingles and our slick bodies speak the wild, wet language of love.
***
I arrive at the rabbi’s house shortly before dark. Eliana is eating a bowl of soup tinted red with pimentón and heaped with chunks of vegetables. I gratefully accept one too, along with a large hunk of bread slathered with a spread of chickpeas. The food and a cup of watered wine relax me, and I look around with affection at the modest home where Eliana spends so much of her time.
Like most houses in the Jewish Quarter, it has one big room with a sleeping alcove at one end. The hearth and a large table for preparing food take up one side, and a few chairs and another table for meals fill most of the remaining space. A second bed frame is propped against the wall, brought down at night, when people no longer need to move around the house.
The rabbi and his wife have four children. The boys study at the yeshiva and help Baroukh tend his garden in a field just beyond the city walls.
The other two are girls, thirteen and fifteen, who bicker most of the day over who does a better job of helping their mother, who has the more annoying habits, and who does what unpleasant thing on purpose. “It would be better to marry off my girls and have them gone,” Toba tells me, “but I don’t know what I would do without your little one.” I know what she means as I watch Eliana furrow her brow and bite her lip as she cuts carrots and peppers as carefully as a surgeon for tomorrow’s soup.
Eliana loves Granada. She has access to any book she wants from the caliph’s library, she comes and goes among many who love her in our neighborhood, and she visits with her best friend Zubiya every few days. I can’t disrupt her life to visit Queluz. It’s best she forget about her past. I won’t make the trip with Eliana, and I won’t make it without her.
I lie in bed that night thinking about the other reason I cannot go to Queluz. I finally understand why Tarab dislikes me, and I know that if I go to Lisbon, she might be able to twist people’s minds so they would not want me back. I’ve heard whispering that she set her sights on Jamil some time ago as a husband for Noor, and she makes it clear every chance she gets that Jamil needs a wife who will give him more children. Instead, she implies with furtive glances and raised eyebrows, he has me.
When I think objectively, I know she is right, though marriage to another woman would be the end for Jamil and me. The custom here allows men to keep lovers on the side, but that’s not the Jewish way. I will not commit adultery with a married man, and I would honor a betrothal by refusing to see him again.
“I would rather have you,” Jamil tells me. “Sawwar will carry on my name, and he can be the one to have five wives and fifty children if he wishes.”
Still, something is changing in me. A chance to go home with Jamil might once have been an answer to my dreams, but I don’t feel as I once did. When I left Portugal, I was prepared to make whatever choices would keep me with my lover. Now I’m choosing to stay here for myself and my daughter. Even if he isn’t here—or isn’t mine—I never want to leave.
18
GRANADA 1456
Jamil is gone for a few months, then back, then gone again. It’s late summer, and Eliana will turn ten in a little over a month. She moves effortlessly between her modest life in town and the lush world of the palace, dressing like a Muslim and chattering in perfect Arabic, while never missing a Jewish blessing or failing to be home in time to light the Sabbath candles.
Eliana is a pretty girl, but not a dazzling one. She
is still narrow-hipped like a boy, with freckled cheeks from the Andalusian sun. When I look at her, I think of honey, for each hue it takes is somewhere in my daughter’s hair, eyes, or skin, and its sweetness is in her veins.
I have passed my thirtieth birthday. Occasionally, I am startled by a silver hair in my eyebrows or scalp, which I pluck quickly, wondering if Jamil has noticed. He says I am lovelier than ever, but surrounded by such female beauty in Granada, it would be impossible not to have at least some doubts, especially while Noor remains unmarried and Tarab keeps hoping I will vanish from the earth.
I’ve let Tarab distract me again. I am waiting for Jamil in his study this summer afternoon. Later, we are going to a pavilion on the banks of the Darro River, where on warm evenings, Jamil and other poets gather to enjoy each other’s company and recite their work.
I’ve attended several times before, although not many women do except for the qiyan, singing girls like those I saw perform for the caliph. A few weeks ago, a female poet, Atib bint Haqim, came on the arm of a new paramour and recited to great acclaim some scathing lyrics she’d written about a former lover.
“Are all women so bitter?” one of the men teased her between poems.
“Do all men give women cause?” she snapped back. I didn’t like her sour views or shrill manner, but I was astonished a woman was reciting at all. With Jamil’s coaxing, I have decided to counter Atib’s bitterness tonight with my own poem about love. I dip my quill and write.
Atib bint Haqim, who could survive the love you offer?
But if you go looking for another man
Stay away from Jamil ibn Hasan!
You’d find him with ease—His heart breathes perfume through his skin.
I have written hundreds of poems since my first attempt that lonely night back in Queluz. I write because I want to dive deep into my own heart. I want to devour with all my senses every moment I have to be in this world. Finding words helps me believe I am not wasting any part of the Holy One’s gift of life. I have wept, laughed, screamed on the page, and when I read my words to Jamil, it feels as intimate as making love. But my poems aren’t always so lofty, especially when it comes to Tarab.
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