It must, I reassured myself, be a tale told among men, and had not been told widely enough to reach women or books.
But even more worrisome: Was it the right tale? The one the Sultan wanted?
There was no way to know for certain until Shahrazad told it to him tonight.
And yet, it had seemed right. It connected with the Julnar story.
And the name: Badar Basim. I repeated it over and over in my mind, clutching it to me like a talisman.
* * *
At last, we came to a halt. I was hot again. Sweating. I could hear voices, and then a clapping of hands. More voices. Eunuchs’ voices. I heard the cart gate creaking open, and then I was moving; the chest grated against the cart floor and I was lifted into the air, borne silently aloft. This time, I didn’t even try to imagine which stairway we were going up or which fountain I heard. Soon, I told myself, I could tell Shahrazad that I had found the old storyteller. I could hardly wait to see her face when I said the name: Badar Basim.
The chest clunked down on the floor. I heard footfalls receding, and then a faint, close, rattling sound. Now another set of footfalls, moving away.
“Who’s there?” Shahrazad’s voice, at a distance. Then, “Dunya! Come here! The chest!”
More footfalls now, soft and light, coming near. “Where’s the key?” I heard Shahrazad say. “The key’s not here.”
A shadow passed over the holes in the chest. “Marjan?” Shahrazad asked. “Are you there?”
“Yes,” I said. “I found the storyteller.”
“Oh! Allah be thanked, Marjan!” Shahrazad said. “But. . . where’s the key?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I heard it being locked, in the cabinetmaker’s shop. And then—”
I stopped, remembering the faint rattling I’d heard a moment ago. “I think,” I said, “one of the eunuchs took it.”
“One of the eunuchs?”
“One of the . . . bearers. I heard a rattling just before he left.”
The shadow moved away from the top of the chest. “Send for him!” I heard Dunyazad say. “You’ve got to get it back!”
“But why would he take it?” Shahrazad asked. “Unless . . .”
“The Khatun!” Dunyazad’s voice. “He’s taking it to her.”
Footfalls, leaving the room. A shadow fell across the
holes in the chest again. “We’ll get you out soon,”
Shahrazad said. “Don’t worry.”
But she sounded worried. My breath was coming fast and scared. I was hot now, really hot. The air in the chest felt suffocating.
“Did you get the name?” she asked.
“Yes. Julnar’s son was . . . Badar Basim.”
“Badar Basim!” She whispered the name, as you would say the name of a loved one. “A name with two words, each beginning with the same letter, a B or a D. Badar Basim!”
Footsteps. “Here’s Dunya, Marjan. We’ll have you out soon.”
I could heard Dunyazad saying something. Her voice came fast, excited. But I couldn’t understand her. Then, “Now?” Shahrazad said. “She’s on her way now?”
There was a frantic rattling in the lock. “We couldn’t get the key, Marjan,” Shahrazad said. “Dunya’s going to try opening it with a midak. The Khatun . . . she’s on her way here.”
More rattling. Hurry, I thought. Hurry!
“They’re coming!” Shahrazad’s voice. “They’re at the top of the steps!”
A click, and the lid flew open; light flooded in. Hands were reaching down to me, helping me up, pulling off the carpet, my veil, straightening my gown. I stumbled over the edge of the chest—my legs were stiff. Dunyazad pulled me to stand beside her, and then there they were: Ashraf, the woman who had taken me to the baths. Soraya, the copper-haired girl. The gold-clad eunuch, looking sterner than ever. And behind them all, borne on a litter by four out-of-breath eunuchs, the Khatun.
The eunuchs, sweating and straining, set down the litter. Ashraf and Soraya helped the Khatun heave her massive bulk from the chair.
That smell again. That rotten smell.
Shahrazad moved to greet her. “My lady,” she said, bending to kiss the Khatun’s swollen hand. Shahrazad was so smooth, so poised, you would never have guessed that she had been desperate moments before. The Khatun lurched past her, peered into the chest. She picked up the carpet I had used from where it lay bunched on the floor, then flicked her fingers at the eunuchs. They moved through Shahrazad’s rooms, searching behind curtains and under cushions, opening cabinets and cupboards—but not, I saw to my relief, the hidden panel door. The Khatun watched, her eyes small and hard, squeezed between pillows of flesh. When the eunuchs had finished, she turned to Shahrazad. “How did you open the chest?” she rasped.
“Something seems to have happened to the key,” Shahrazad said. “I didn’t want to bother you, and so . . .” She picked the midak off the floor. “We opened it with this.”
Auntie Chava had a midak, a long needlelike instrument for threading a sash through the waistband of a pair of trousers. But hers was not made of ivory and capped with gold.
“They did a nice job repairing it, don’t you think?” Shahrazad pointed to the place where the scratch had been. It had vanished completely. The cabinetmaker must have worked for hours.
The Khatun glared at Shahrazad, fury in her eyes. She turned her fierce gaze on Dunyazad, then on me. Sweat was streaming off my face; she couldn’t help but notice.
She turned back to Shahrazad. “Don’t bother lying,” she said, “because I’ll find out.
“I always find out.”
Chapter 12
İ Forbid İt!
LESSONS FOR LIFE AND STORYTELLING
When you re telling a story, you can suggest things that would get you in trouble if you were just stating your own opinion. And you can suggest even more if you wrap one tale inside another. So if you’re telling a tale about a merchant, and the merchant tells a tale about a barber, and the barber tells a tale about a fisherman . . . Well, inside the fisherman’s tale you can put the most provoking and mutinous truths. Because the tale is so far removed from you.
That’s what Shahrazad did. Wrapped up morsels of truth in a confection of tales, which she served to the Sultan each night. She was hoping that in time those truths wouldn’t seem mutinous anymore—just true.
“Do you think she knows?” Dunyazad asked, after the Khatun and her servants had left.
We were sitting on cushions on the floor. Shahrazad hugged another pillow, rocking back and forth, biting her lip. Thinking. She shrugged. “She couldn’t know for certain.”
“She was suspicious, though.” There was a look in Dunyazad’s eyes that I hadn’t seen before. She was afraid.
“She must have been, or she wouldn’t have come here. When’s the last time you saw her leave her rooms?” Shahrazad sighed. “And I’m sure we looked suspicious. But she can’t prove anything.”
“If they saw Marjan getting out of the chest. . .”
“I don’t think they did. I think she was . . . just out when the Khatun got to the door.” Shahrazad turned to me. “Did they see you getting out, do you think?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I was . . . hurrying. I couldn’t tell.” Now that the Khatun was gone, I noticed that I felt a little weak. A little shaky. She scared me.
“I wonder what she was looking for,” Shahrazad said slowly, “when she sent the eunuchs to the bazaar. And I wonder why that eunuch—or whoever it was—gave her the key in the first place?” She looked at Dunyazad and then at me, raising her brows as if expecting us to answer.
We couldn’t. We didn’t know.
Shahrazad brightened suddenly and turned to Dunyazad. “Marjan got the story!” she said. “We’d better get started.”
“Not all of it,” I said. “There wasn’t time.”
“There’s . . . more?” Shahrazad’s smile melted from her face.
I felt terrible. If only I’d asked about the
storyteller before noon prayers, and if only Ayaz had heard me, and if only he had taken me to him before most of the day had passed! I told Shahrazad and Dunyazad what had happened and that I had learned enough of the story to last more than one night.
“So we’re going to have to do this again,” Dunyazad said to her sister. “It’s going to be harder, now the Khatun’s suspicious. She’s always hated you, but now . . .”
“Why—” I began. How could anyone hate Shahrazad?
She looked up. “Why what, Marjan?”
“Why does she hate you?”
“Because my sisters not a spineless little puppet,” Dunyazad said.
Shahrazad shrugged. “The Khatun does like people she can control. But I think there’s something else that goes back to when her sons were growing up. They were always in danger of being assassinated by her husband’s other wives, so that their sons would become Sultan. Her oldest son was poisoned—you’ve heard about that?”
I nodded. It had happened a long time ago, before I was born. But everyone knew about it.
“They put ground glass in his milk. It was horrible. So the Khatun . . . became a tigress. She was ferocious. She protected her remaining two sons against so many women when they were young that she doesn’t trust any woman to get close to them now. She’s always suspecting plots.”
“You’re too charitable, Sister,” Dunyazad said. “That woman is evil.”
“The important thing,” Shahrazad said, “is that Marjan has some of the story. Tell me, Marjan! Time’s running out.”
She leaned forward as I told it; I could see the eagerness in her eyes. Dunyazad paced about the room. When I had finished, Shahrazad began to rehearse the tale herself—as she had done that first day. She learned it quickly. “This is a wondrous tale,” she said. “And it will last for two more nights. Maybe three.”
“What about... the betrayal?” I asked. “How Princess Jauharah tricked Badar Basim. Might that not—”
“No—it’s fine,” she said. “But I will need the rest of it. This blind storyteller. You can find him again?”
I nodded. I began to tell her how Ayaz had led me to him. But partway through, Shahrazad broke in. “Dunya, what’s the matter?”
“What if. . .” The fear was back in Dunyazad’s eyes. “What if this story . . . isn’t the one the Sultan wants?”
Shahrazad looked puzzled. “Why wouldn’t it be?”
Dunyazad turned to me. “This storyteller,” she said, “was not where you found him before?”
“Well no, but. . . I recognized him,” I said.
“Six years later, and you’re certain you remembered? He couldn’t be another old man, pretending to be blind?”
“You worry too much, Little Sister! Why would he do that?”
“For gold! Marjan was asking for this story, and the boy saw a way to part her from her dinars, so he took her to someone who claimed to be the blind storyteller.”
“But he wasn’t blind,” I said. “He . . .”
Now I felt both of their gazes heavy upon me. “I only thought he was blind before. But it was the same man. I knew his face like . . .” I appealed to Shahrazad. “Like the Sultan will know the name of Badar Basim when he hears it.”
I hoped that Shahrazad would reassure me, because we had had this conversation before. About how you could forget things, but then know them instantly once you heard them or saw them again.
She nodded, but looked uncertain. “This story does . . . fit with the other one.”
“It’s a loose fit, Sister. It’s completely different from Julnar’s story. Practically the only thing they have in common is that they’re about merfolk.”
“So you’re saying . . . This old man may have made up a tale to trick Marjan into paying him. That it might not be the one the Sultan remembers?”
“And the name,” Dunyazad said. “That’s what he wanted, wasn’t it? The name.”
“Badar Basim,” Shahrazad said. “That could be wrong?”
Dunyazad shrugged. “I don’t know. Did you tell him,” she asked me, “that you were looking for a name with two words starting with a B or a D?”
“No,” I said. “Or . . . I don’t think so.” She was confusing me. I tried to remember. I didn’t think I had said anything about that.
“The Sultan is very particular about names,” Dunyazad went on. “He’s unreasonable. Remember when you forgot that one name, just after little Nasim was born? And I remembered it just in time? He looked angry. If the story is completely different, and if the name is completely different, might he think . . . that you never knew it to begin with? That you told him you did, and then you made something up? It’s just . . . The right story would confirm his trust in you. But the wrong one . . .”
“Would make him doubt me. But you recognized this man,” Shahrazad said, turning to me. “He was the storyteller. You remember him. You can tell me that for certain?”
I hesitated. I had thought that I did, before Dunyazad’s questions. But now . . .
Still, I would not have told him about the two words and the B and the D. I was certain I would not. And I had felt that burst of recognition when I saw him. That knowing.
I nodded.
“Lady?”
Shahrazad’s women stood at the door, the women who prepared her for her nights with the Sultan.
“Go, Marjan,” Shahrazad said softly. “I have the tale here.” She tapped her temple. “IΓll see you in the morning.”
I only hoped that she would.
* * *
All night long, my mind churned. I went over and over everything that had happened with Ayaz and the storyteller—especially the part where the old man had told me Badar Basim’s name. I hadn’t said anything about the two words and the D’s and the B’s—I was certain. Well, nearly certain. Yet Ayaz had seemed eager to get those coins. And he had disappeared and left me in the street before coming to fetch me the last bit of the way. There had been time for him to prepare the old man.
And there was something else as well, something that had been niggling at me but which hadn’t come to the surface until now. I had said blind storyteller when I’d asked about him in the bazaar. And no one had said, “There is no blind storyteller.” They had only averted their eyes and said, “I don’t know.” As if they were afraid. And Ayaz. He must have heard me say blind, but he had taken me to a man who could see.
If Ayaz and the old man had been bent on deceiving me, why hadn’t the old man pretended to be blind?
But if he was my blind storyteller . . . how was it that he could see?
* * *
I was already awake the next morning when I heard the moazzen calling for dawn prayers. His cry sounded thin and sad; it made me ache for home. When I had finished my prayers, I made for the stairway near where Shahrazad would appear.
Walking down the hallway, I thought I heard the pad of bare feet behind me. I stopped, turned back. The hall was empty. But the curtain to one of the rooms rippled, as if stirred by a mysterious breeze.
Uneasy, I hurried to the stairway.
The usual gathering was there: a scattering of children, six or seven women, a few eunuchs. I didn’t see the copper-haired girl, Soraya. As I stood at the back of the group, little Mitra came up beside me. Her gazelle nuzzled at my hands; I scratched the bony place between its horns. One by one, the other children drifted down the steps; soon they were all clustered around me.
I wondered if anyone here knew that this was not an ordinary morning—that this past night had been more perilous for Shahrazad than other nights. I glanced at the young eunuch, but he was turned so I couldn’t see his face. Then I caught movement at the far edge of the courtyard. Soraya appeared in an archway, climbed the steps, and sat down beside Ashraf.
Now, at last, the door was opening. I held my breath. And there she was, walking with her sister behind the gold-clad eunuch.
Shahrazad.
A sigh arose from the crowd. I let out my brea
th; my whole body sagged with relief.
Shahrazad was looking toward the steps. When her eyes found me, she stopped, smiled, and signaled me to come.
* * *
“It was just as he had remembered it,” Shahrazad said. She was still smiling, radiant. Dunyazad had left on an errand; Shahrazad had sent away her serving women and now sat by me on a cushion on the floor.
“He hadn’t remembered all of it,” she continued, “but when I told the tale, he said it was like meeting an old friend. And Badar Basim! The Sultan joked with me that I had tortured him, making him wait those several nights to relieve the itch in his mind. But he didn’t hold it against me—so long as I had the name.”
I tried to imagine the Sultan . . . joking with Shahrazad. But I couldn’t. It was too far to reach. I had watched him riding somberly in processions through the streets, and twice I had seen him striding through a courtyard in the harem. His face looked . . . hard. Dead. Like stone. And . . . with everything else I knew about him . . . Joking!
“I was worried,” I confessed, “about Princess Jauharah. Because . . . Badar Basim was in love with her, and she betrayed him.”
Shahrazad looked at me for a moment. “And you were afraid,” she asked, “that this story would give the Sultan further proof that all women betray the men they love? And he might be inclined to have me killed? Is that it?”
I nodded.
“He knows there are betraying women in the world, Marjan! So the tale tells him nothing new of that. And if I omitted all women like that from my tales, he would know that I was shading the truth. That I was . . . lying, in a way. About how the world is. And Jauharah is not all bad. She’s false to Badar Basim in order to be true to her father. And besides, there’s Marsinah, the kindly slave girl who saves Badar Basim. And Julnar herself, who is strong and good.”
“Yes, I see that. But—”
“Marjan. I have told him tales of good women and bad women, strong women and weak women, shy women and bold women, clever women and stupid women, honest women and women who betray. I’m hoping that, by living inside their skins while he hears their stories, he’ll understand over time that women are not all this way or that way. I’m hoping he’ll look at women as he does at men—that you must judge each of us on her own merits, and not condemn us or exalt us only because we belong to a particular sex.”
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