The Lioness of Morocco

by Julia Drosten

  She stopped abruptly, remembering that she had forfeited her studies as a result of her quarrel with her mother. The thought hit her in the pit of her stomach.

  “Are you planning to give the picture to someone?” she asked. “Perhaps a young man?”

  Malika shook her head. “I want it just for me so I can look at it one day when I’m old and fat. I also want it as a memento for when you become a famous artist. And you won’t be doing it for free. I’m going to pay you.”

  “Oh?” As far as Emily knew, Malika had no money of her own any more than she did.

  “I’m going to read your palm.”

  “Oh.” Emily was disappointed. “You know I don’t believe you can see my future in my palm. That’s hocus-pocus.”

  “You can’t be serious! Your life, every twist of fate, is written in the lines of your palm. You just have to know how to decipher them. So, what do you say?”

  Emily turned her hands over to examine them, but try as she might, she could see only lines, some long, some short, some more deeply furrowed than others.

  “Let me have a look!” Malika demanded. “I’ll prove to you how good I am. Tamra taught me palm reading, and she knows everything about it.”

  Before Emily could stop her, Malika took her by the arm and led her to the edge of the field.

  “Sit!” When Emily hesitated, Malika gave her a little shove. “Oh, come on! I know you want to find out about the man that fate has chosen for you.”

  Emily immediately thought of Sabri. Was there a future for them even though his parents had already chosen a bride? She took a deep breath, then stretched out her hands. “Here we go!”

  Malika took her left hand and looked at it seriously. Emily smiled shyly when the young Berber woman sitting near them and nursing her child nodded encouragingly.

  “What? What is it?” she asked nervously after Malika had stared at her hand for what seemed a very long time.

  Malika looked up with a tiny smile. “Well, well, little sister! Who would have thought?”

  “Who would have thought what? Don’t make me beg you for every little word!”

  “You’ve already found him, Sister, and yet you have not breathed a word. Aren’t you ashamed?” Malika sounded very pleased with herself.

  Emily wrenched her hand from Malika and hid it under her tunic. “You couldn’t possibly know that from a few lines on my palm.”

  “Yes, I could, and it’s as sure as the next sunrise. And even if I could not, you have betrayed yourself by now. Now give me back your hand. I’m going to tell you exactly what I am seeing.” Malika took Emily’s left hand, opened it, and stroked gently with her fingers.

  “This is the heart line. It tells me about your fate in love.” Using her index finger, she pointed to the upper of two thin horizontal furrows on Emily’s palm. “Your line begins near the fourth finger. This means that you will be jealously vigilant that your man does not desire other women. But the line is also close to the third finger and that tells me you derive great pleasure from feeling your man’s body. And in that, you are much like me.”

  “I have never felt a man’s body!” Emily yelped. Her face was deeply flushed.

  “Really?” Malika was astounded. “I have.”

  “Excuse me?” Emily thought she had misheard. “Does Father know?”

  Malika dreamily stretched out her hand toward a lizard sunning itself nearby. “Of course. I was married and celebrated my wedding at a tribal meeting of the Glaoua three years ago. Together with twenty other couples, a young Glaoua man and I were married by the qadi.”

  “What? Where is your husband now?”

  Malika poked the lizard gently with her forefinger and it darted away. “The qadi dissolved our union a year later. In Father’s language, it is called divorce. Now I am free to choose a new husband whenever I want.”

  “Did you not love your husband?” Emily marveled.

  “Of course I did. For almost an entire year.” Malika was indignant.

  “Did you . . . ahem . . . marry again after that?” Emily felt a bit envious of her sister for having had such experiences already.

  “No. I don’t like Arab men, and I don’t like Berber men either. I don’t like their scruffy beards and how they dress, those long tunics.” She shook her head. “I would like to marry a foreigner, from my father’s country, but foreigners don’t come to Qasr el Bahia. So I would have to leave, and I don’t want to do that.”

  Come with me when I go to the art academy in London, Emily wanted to cry. But then, for the second time, she remembered that she had given up her place at the academy and that it was unlikely she would ever travel there. She bit her lips and stretched out her left hand. “Come on, let’s get back to work.”

  Malika pointed to a spot below Emily’s forefinger. “Two lines make a cross here. That means you already know your great and eternal love. The heart line is long, clear, and red. You will always be true to your chosen one and you will love him wholeheartedly and passionately.” She lifted her head and smiled at Emily. “Who has captured your heart, Sister?”

  Emily could feel her pulse in her throat. She instinctively looked around, but no one was paying any attention to them. Not even the young woman, who was humming softly to her baby.

  “You don’t know him, he lives in Mogador,” she whispered to Malika. “He is the hakim in the city.”

  Malika whistled softly. “An Arab man!”

  Emily nodded. “But he has been in England and studied medicine there.”

  Sabri’s image appeared before her mind’s eye, the way he had looked that day when he spoke of taking her out. She had often wondered what else he might have said had not Thomas burst in. Her brother had spoiled everything, not only the wonderful moment with Sabri but all of her happiness!

  Emily drew a quick breath. “Do the lines say that we have a future together?”

  “You will have problems,” Malika answered with a serious look. “There will be disappointments, but if you stay strong—”

  A shadow fell over the two girls. “So this is where you are—startled like thieves caught in the night! Well, I hope that is because of your guilty conscience for shirking your work!” André stood before them, his hands on his hips, but his eyes were twinkling.

  “Father!” Emily quickly withdrew her hand from Malika. “What are you doing here?”

  “I wanted to ask you if you felt like coming with me. We are going to take lunch to the men who are clearing the field and then we’re going to ride out.”

  “I’d love to!” Emily jumped up.

  The new field lay on a sunlit plateau bordering Aynur’s vegetable garden and an orange grove with scattered beehives. Behind it, the slopes of the Atlas rose to bluish, snowcapped peaks. The men had burned off the brush, but now they had to painstakingly hoe the roots out of the soil. Emily saw the large heap of roots lying by the side of the field. Bleating goats were jumping around on the area strewn with charred branches, rocks, and deep holes, with André Jr. and his playmates supervising. Emily thought about how much time and sweat it would take the men to transform this cratered landscape into a tillable field. And then there were irrigation ditches and retaining walls still to be constructed.

  They dismounted just as the workers were finishing their midday prayer. There was no muezzin on Qasr el Bahia, so people determined prayer times according to dawn and dusk, the position of the sun, and the length of shadows.

  Emily led the pack donkey over to some olive trees where the men were sitting and unpacked flatbread, vegetables in olive oil, goat cheese, dried meat, and oranges.

  After their meal, one of the men pulled a flute from his tunic and began to play, another struck up a song, and the rest of them clapped their hands in time and sang the refrain. Emily still couldn’t understand much of the Ait Zelten dialect, but André explained to her that the song told of an old legend of the Imazighen—the “free people,” as the Berber referred to themselves.

  “A
long time ago, God revealed knowledge of agriculture and weaving to the free people. The plow and the loom were His gifts. The Ait Zelten sing praise to agriculture, which they consider a holy activity much like the art of weaving. When they plow the new field, you will notice that they always dig the furrows at right angles. In that way, they recreate the pattern of a woven rug’s warp and weft. They thus serve God and protect the land from the powers of demons.” He touched Emily on the shoulder. “Shall we?”

  “Gladly!” She got up.

  “Baba!” André Jr. shouted. “Look! Over there!”

  A band of six riders came galloping out of the orange grove uttering ugly cries and waving their guns aloft. Suddenly, a shot rang out, the sound reverberating off the rocks. André Jr. screamed and covered his ears. Men and children jumped up and ran around in confusion.

  André felt for his gun and cursed when he realized that it was hanging from his saddle several strides away. He quickly looked around to make certain no one had been hurt. Emily had had the presence of mind to throw her little brother on the ground and cover him with her body. The Ait Zelten men had formed a circle around the other children, but they were almost completely unarmed. Some had grabbed hoes and shovels, others had ripped their knives out of their belts, but no one had a gun.

  “Father!” screamed Emily. “Look out!”

  The riders were heading straight for André. Horrified, she watched as he did not take even one step back. At the last second, the group pulled up short. Even when their horses reared above his head, André did not budge.

  Emily cradled her terrified little brother and eyed the troublemakers. They were young Ait Zelten men, most no older than she was. Only their leader was a little older. His eyes glowed and he had a port-wine stain running from his left eye across his whole face. He sat proudly on his horse, holding the reins with one hand and brandishing his gun with the other.

  André took one step in his direction. “What a heroic deed it is to shoot at children and unarmed people! And you call yourselves men?”

  “Filthy foreigner!” the man hissed. “Your greed devours our land like the desert devours a fertile oasis! Take your brood and go back to the infidels!”

  “Shame on you for tainting our friendship with the faransawi! You’re not a man but a dishonorable coward. Go home and crawl back into your mother’s lap!” The sheikh of the Ait Zelten stepped up next to André and shook his soil-stained fists.

  Loud, angry muttering came from the group of riders. The leader aimed his weapon at the man. “You son of a dog! You’re betraying your own people to an infidel!”

  “Enough!” André shouted. “Put your weapons down! Those barrels may be crooked as the horns of a mountain goat, but you could still hit an innocent with them. And now”—he turned to the leader—“you listen to me: the Ait Zelten and I have been good neighbors for more than twenty years. Do you really think that you can command me to leave the land that has been given to me by two of Morocco’s sultans? Who do you think you are?”

  “The faransawi is right,” the sheikh said. “He helped us when we lost the greater part of our herds and were starving. Without him, your wretched bones would have turned to dust long ago! He may be an infidel, but he is a friend and you are showing your gratitude with hatred. Shame!”

  “If he hadn’t stolen our land, we wouldn’t have lost those herds in the first place. Here”—the leader drew a wide circle with his arm—“is where our goats once grazed. No sultan can give this land away. It was ours long before the Arabs arrived!”

  “Ay, ay!” the riders shouted approvingly.

  “I listened to your ramblings twenty years ago. At that time, this land no longer belonged to your herds,” André countered. “But now it feeds many people. Get off your horses and help feed your people instead of being a burden to them!”

  The leader waved his gun in the direction of the Ait Zelten workers, who had been silently following the altercation.

  “What are you? Are you free people, or are you old women who will take orders from anyone?”

  The men responded by gathering behind André and their sheikh, like a silent, menacing barricade.

  “Shame on you for breaking your backs for the infidel!” He spat on the ground in front of André, then pulled his horse around and galloped away through the orange grove, followed by his band.

  After the excitement had died down and André had made sure that the young agitators were not still lurking nearby, he and Emily rode to a high plateau half an hour up the mountain.

  From there, Emily could see across a sparse forest of cedars up to where the Oued Igrounzar and Oued Zeltene merged. Qasr el Bahia, looking massive and unassailable with its mighty donjons and sturdy gate, was situated between the two areas. One of the two towers was accessible only by means of retractable ladders. André had shown her the small rooms with the sleeping mats, torches, water, and several days’ worth of provisions. He kept his saffron inventory hidden in the tower in a locked trunk behind some sacks of grain and rolled-up rugs. In the event attackers were to break through the gate, the residents had a nearly impregnable shelter in the towers.

  Terraced fields lay spread out around Qasr el Bahia, some a reddish brown, where the saffron bulbs still lay submerged in the soil, and some golden, where the ripe barley stood ready for harvesting. In between were dots of green from the orange, lemon, pomegranate, and olive trees. Emily spotted the new field in the east. From here, the men clearing it looked like tiny ants.

  “I was afraid,” Emily confessed.

  André, who had just finished tying the horses to a jujube tree, turned around. “Of those pretend warriors? I’ve known almost all of them since they were born. I put their leader in his place my very first day on the estate. I’m not afraid of them, and you shouldn’t be either.”

  “I’m not afraid for myself, Father, but for you, my brother, and all the others.”

  He came over and took her in his arms. She nestled up to him and he led her to a sunny spot. “We can sit and talk here,” he suggested and moved a few stones out of the way with the tip of his boot. “We’ve been living under the same roof for half a year now, but we have many years to catch up on, n’est-ce pas?”

  They sat down on the warm, dry ground. He had retrieved two oranges from his saddlebag; now he peeled them and handed her one. “Are you happy at Qasr el Bahia, or are you homesick for Mogador?”

  Emily’s first—and longing—thought was of Sabri. Her second—and sorrowful—was of her mother. She furrowed her brow, just the way Sibylla always did. “No, I’m not homesick. I would like to stay with you for a while longer.”

  “I’m happy to hear that. Of course, you can stay as long as you like.” He took a segment of orange and chewed it.

  Emily leaned her head back and watched a pair of falcons circling high above them in the sky. Did Sabri think of her? Did he miss her? It had been so long since they had last seen each other that their encounter seemed like a dream. She stifled a sigh. There was a sharp-edged rock lying on the ground not far from her. She used it to scratch an image of the falcon pair in the dirt with just a few strokes. Next, she sketched the horses standing calmly under the jujube tree, chasing away flies with their tails. And finally, as though her hand had a mind of its own, Sabri’s eyes appeared in the dust, looking just the way they had that day at the maristan: warm and loving.

  “Who is that?” André leaned forward and looked at the sketch with interest.

  “Nobody.” She hastily wiped away the image with her hand.

  “Is that the young man you’re in love with? Does your mother know about him?”

  She hesitated and then shook her head. “Father, please don’t be angry, but I’d prefer not to talk about it.”

  “You’ve done a lot of painting since you came here. I’m very pleased that there are now such beautiful pictures of Qasr el Bahia. They will tell our story even after you and I are long gone. That’s why it would be a great shame if you gave
up your chance to study at the Royal Academy of Arts. Just think how few women are considered good enough to study at this renowned academy.”

  Emily did not answer but scribbled a wavy line on the ground.

  André continued, “I myself have certainly not seen much art or many famous paintings, but I know you well enough to see that you’re not happy unless you can paint or draw.”

  She pouted. “Are you chastising me, Father?”

  He laughed. “A bit. I just wish for you not to waste such talent.”

  “I was looking forward to London,” Emily admitted hesitantly. “Not just the academy but meeting the rest of my family. My brothers and Victoria have told me so much—I think life there must be quite different. But I’m not allowed to travel alone like John or Thomas. Mother would accompany me and that—”

  “I too insist that a young lady not travel alone from one continent to another. So, you see, you will have no alternative but to reconcile with your mother. Why don’t you let me take a letter to her the next time I go to Mogador?” He winked encouragingly, but she dropped her gaze and said nothing.

  “Emily, are you determined to be upset with your mother forever?” he asked her gently. “She asked about you when I was in Mogador. She misses you.”

  “I miss her too,” she admitted reluctantly. “I don’t want to be angry with Mother forever. But if it hadn’t been for Victoria, she would have kept the truth from me until this day. She has lied to me and to you, and has kept us from each other for so many years!”

  “That’s not entirely true. I saw you whenever I was in Mogador. And on your birthdays, I brought you presents.”

  “That’s not the same,” Emily replied stubbornly and regarded him warily from the side.

  He lifted his hands in jest as though she were pointing a weapon at him, and they both had to laugh.

  “I understand that you need some more time to forgive your mother,” he said finally. “She lied to you. But you should never forget that she had no choice. What would you have done in her place?”