Diego turned to Galib, his eyes filled with tears.
“You speak beautiful words and the truth seems to lie beneath them. And yet I feel so much hate still. My heart bears so much pain, so much that it won’t let me see clearly who are my enemies.”
Galib did not doubt it and embraced the boy, taking in his grief. For a moment he felt strong emotion, as if he were playing the role of father. A shiver ran over his flesh.
“You have to learn Arabic, Diego. If you come close to our culture, you will learn to love it. To understand the language of horses, you have to understand the language of the desert, if Allah wills it. And when you have mastered it, you will think the way our greatest scholars did. You will understand why Allah used this language to reveal his laws to us. Its sound is beautiful and it will caress your tongue. Its echoes will soften your palate and you will recognize in it the language of love and the power of the wind.”
She began by teaching him the numbers, then the letters and their sounds. She followed that with common expressions, making him repeat them countless times until he could memorize every aspect and reflect their depth or subtleties as she said. Further on they went into the verbs, and afterward, a copious vocabulary. Thousands of words, of complex but beautiful sounds, some whispering, others sharp, like a restrained sigh.
Diego was now almost sixteen and Benazir a bit over thirty. Except for his mother, whom he scarcely remembered, and his three sisters, he had never spent so much time close to a woman.
Every morning, when he finished his forging and shoeing and whatever other chores Sajjad had in store for him, Diego would enter the large house.
Until then he had hardly heard the voice of Benazir. It wasn’t customary. But when Galib had given his blessing to that daily contact, it charmed him, above all its musicality. When she spoke, the words seemed to flow like silk until they struck against the veil that covered her face, almost ethereal, but then they would disperse in the air like a soft breeze.
Every day, Diego went to the dining room and he waited for her, going through everything he had learned the day before in his memory. Those waits became the most longed for and exciting moments of the day. To see Benazir appear was like a mystery. Every day she wore a different tunic, and if not, she would change her vest.
She had slippers of every color, and hundreds of sashes, adorned with gold, of the most distinct shapes, and more than a dozen bands she would wrap around her waist. There was only one thing that was always the same, her perfume. A blend of sandalwood and violet, an intoxicating aroma that rocked all the senses to sleep.
They would sit side by side atop comfortable cushions, over a gorgeous rug brought from her country of Persia. With her legs bent to one side, she would hold a chalkboard on which she would write out the different words. To Diego’s surprise, she did so from left to right, the opposite of him. When she passed him the piece of chalk she would write with, sometimes she grazed his hand. Those subtle touches began casually, but as time went on, Diego tried to make them happen intentionally.
She was more than just another woman; she was the pure essence of woman. The smoothness and generosity of her body, which he could sometimes make out beneath her garments, began to shake Diego like a palm tree in the wind.
They awoke in him an infinity of feelings, first contained, but eventually becoming turbulent temptations.
One day, Benazir lifted her veil for the first time, to vocalize a difficult word.
“Pay close attention to my lips and try to put yours in an identical position.”
Diego did so, immediately quivering as he saw the textured flesh of her own. He stuttered a few times until he finally tried to pronounce the word.
“No, no, no. You have to tense your upper lip and make an echo against the roof of your mouth. Look …”
She took one of his hands and drew his fingertips toward her lips. Then she repeated the word a number of times.
“Do you see the difference?”
Diego breathed three times until he had regained control of himself and drowned the desire to kiss her then and there. When he felt that sweet touch, he thought he had died. He tried to pronounce the word, though with little enthusiasm, so that he could repeat that caress. Benazir knew what he was thinking and put his fingers on her lips again.
“Try one more time.”
In his solitude, Diego would savor that sensual memory, like others that would come over the following six months. But particularly that day, he smelled his hand and looked for the remains of Benazir’s fragrance that lingered there. And again he wanted her, though with shame, because she was Galib’s wife.
The force of instinct, of his unbridled youth, the sensuality that Benazir gave off from each of her pores, weighed more than his own sense of wrong.
XII.
Their naked bodies shook in the warm breeze.
It was the breath of the desert that came through the windows of the luxurious harem of Yusuf ben Yaqub al-Mansur in Marrakesh, over them, the two new slaves brought there expressly for his pleasure.
They had just emerged from a room saturated with steam. They were lying atop marble tables suffering the rasping of rough gloves. Women were cleaning their skin and seemed almost to be peeling it off. In compensation, they would receive an agreeable bath with hot water.
Blanca and Estela looked at each other. They had slept a whole day after the long and painful voyage, first in carriage for several weeks, then in a ship for two days, and at last on horse back for four days more.
That morning, from daybreak, a huddle of women had watched over them and the first thing they did was undress them. They looked at their intimate parts without concern, and amid laughter, they pointed incredulously at their orange hair. Blanca and Estela were defeated. They could scarcely put up any resistance.
“What will they do to us?” Estela looked with terror at her older sister.
“I don’t know, but I’m afraid we’ll find out soon.”
Blanca turned to a high window that rose up from the floor. Through it could be seen a fantastic pond next to the building, full of calm blue waters. And in the distance, magnificent mountains raised their snow-capped summits against the horizon.
A tear slipped down her cheek when she imagined how much humiliation and suffering still awaited them, now inside a palace, perhaps to be enslaved by some man of high rank.
Estela tried to push aside a woman with a rotund body and a cold face who was feeling the firmness of her breasts, but the woman paid no attention and went on to her hips and buttocks. Blanca pretended to trip and fell against the woman to push her away from her sister, but in return she received a violent slap and a torrent of imprecations in Arabic. Angered, the woman began to push at their backs with the intention of moving to another room.
Holding hands, the two sisters were walking completely nude, but no one seemed to care.
The new room was completely lined in pink marble and had an enormous pool in the center. Blanca and Estela had to lie down so that their heads were just over the water. Two young women with dark eyes and olive skin, almost their same age, entered the pool and washed their hair from inside it. With their hands covered in a reddish mud, they scrubbed their heads, massaging them unhurriedly. Then they rinsed them, over and over, until their hair was loose and silky. Once it was dry, they scrubbed their feet with a rough stone until they were well polished, and then they left without saying anything.
Estela covered herself with a cloth and remembered the inn and her family.
“Every day I pray for Belinda, and I also remember Papa and Diego. … Something tells me we won’t see them again. …”
“Don’t say that!” Blanca said angrily.
The women who had washed their hair came back, now with trays and two steaming containers. Blanca and Estela immediately perceived a sweet scent of caramel with a touch of lemo
n.
They were told to lie down again and each woman grabbed a small wooden spade. With them, they spread that sticky brew and anointed the women’s arms and legs, armpits, and sex. … All the hair on their bodies was covered with that unguent, which was then left to dry. When the women began to peel it off, especially in the more sensitive areas, Estela could not restrain her tears and shouted in pain.
Then the women opened some small jars and smeared their fingers with a whitish paste. To their surprise, the women inhaled it at one go. Then they took another small quantity and came closer. Though the sisters resisted, the women pressed it into their noses. Immediately they felt nauseated, but with a pleasant sense of well-being just afterward, as if they were floating. Half dazed, they hardly complained during the rest of the depilation, and not at all when they made contact with the warm water of the bath, where they were left to relieve their stinging skin.
Amid orange and almond trees, in the gardens surrounding the great pond of the palace, two men were talking.
One of them represented the maximum authority of an empire based in the north of Africa and Al-Andalus: the Almohad. He was the great caliph Yusuf ben Yaqub. The other, a Christian and a knight of noble birth, wanted nothing more than the defeat of the Castilian king, his worst enemy, though he also appreciated the gold he received from the caliph and the promise of great tracts of land in exchange for his service. An enormous scar spanned the width of his forehead. It felt tight in the dry air and reminded him of who had given it to him and when.
Five years had passed, but he still remembered the sword of King Alfonso running across his face in the duel that no one would attest to. The friendship that they professed since childhood had shattered into pieces when the king threw in his lot with the Lara clan in a plaint that they had levied against his family, the Moras, which represented a loss of enormous domains for them. Don Pedro had put all his effort into achieving the opposite result and, because of his influence, even though he knew they didn’t belong to him, he pushed Alfonso to unbearable limits. He even threatened him with making public the adulterous relationship that the monarch himself carried on with a Jewess from Toledo, violating a debt of secrecy. That filthy ruse won him a challenge to a duel, a defeat at the hands of Alfonso VIII, and Mora’s later eternal exile from Castile, to which he was sentenced by the king himself.
The caliph knew what he could get from Mora without ever forgetting his true nature as a traitor. The name Mora, as illustrious in Castile as that of Lara or Castro, had been tarnished for some reason he did not know, but so gravely that it had made him come to hate the king.
For Yusuf, the friendship of the Christian was useful, and for that reason he paid him with his generosity and favors. But he also took care and watched out for him.
“Our holy war bears a resemblance to that game, one that not all poets dare to engage in. Do you know it, Don Pedro?”
“No, sir. I have had little experience of poetry.”
Yusuf II looked at him with disdain. He loved poetry. To cultivate the spirit through the different arts was the most precious gift a man could possess.
“It consists of improvising and continuing with a verse that another person has begun. Now do you remember it?”
“I believe I’ve seen such a thing before in Al-Andalus.”
“Certainly. It is very popular there, even among the country people. The war we are engaged with against the Castilian king has taken a form up till now very similar to that game. In fact, I began the first stanza with my victory at Alarcos. Then, the kings of León and Portugal, by suing for peace, have gone on adding rhymes, and now you should help me finish my recital.”
“How?”
Yusuf laughed at his confusion.
“You will leave to speak with Sancho of Navarre. You should convince him to sign a peace treaty with me as well. Make it happen however you must. Do what you think necessary. Buy his ambition, look for his weak point. Give him all the gold he wants, if that is what he longs for. If we do it, we will break apart the various kingdoms and that way, we can defeat Alfonso of Castile. My plan is to enter from the west, crossing the river Tagus and taking back Toledo. That way the poem will be finished and we will win the game.”
“Excellent thinking, sir. … I admire you.”
The caliph proudly breathed in the dry desert air mixed with the fragrance that transpired from an enormous jasmine. He believed in the success of his plan because the Christians always fell victim to the same mistakes: greed for widening their territories and an obsessive need to feel different from one another.
Very frightened, the two sisters entered into a round hall where a group of women were seated on the floor listening to another older woman. They were dressed in diaphanous garments, perfumed silks, and seemed lulled to sleep by the music of the words coming from her mouth.
A young woman with black skin came over to them and showed them where to sit. The two sisters looked at each other without knowing what lay in store. They observed the girl who was preparing a mixture of rice powder and egg white in a container and then came over to spread it on their faces. With a salve of incense and carbon she darkened their eyebrows and eyelashes, and then she painted their eyelids with a red cream.
The other women murmured, pointing at them and laughing. One of them, a redheaded one, with blue eyes and fine features, stood up and came over to them. She appeared to be a Christian.
“My name is Yasmin. You are now in the harem of Great Caliph Yusuf and I am his favorite wife. Behave well and you can live here tranquilly and according to your wishes.”
To their surprise, the woman spoke Romanic, which relieved them to a degree. Blanca was going to speak, but the woman gestured for her to be silent. Without another explanation she pulled back Blanca’s veil, looked at her mouth, and smelled her breath. She did the same with Estela. Afterward, she gave an order in Arabic to two girls who ran off.
“We were kidnapped,” Estela whispered into her ear.
In her innocence she thought the woman would help them once she found out about their misfortune. But not only did she fail to demonstrate any kind of sensitivity, in fact she laughed back at her cruelly.
“I haven’t heard anything so funny in a long time.” She dried the tears from her eyes. “You are talking to the caliph’s first wife and the mother of the heir to the throne. I was born a Christian in your lands, but then I was married to Yusuf and I owe myself to him and to Allah. I am in charge of this harem, where I live with the rest of the women. Two hundred concubines also live here, and other women who distract him with their dances, their songs, and their poetry.”
The two girls who had left the chamber returned with something in their hands.
“Now we will whiten your teeth with ground eggshell. Then you will wait until you are ordered to enter.”
“Enter where?” Blanca asked.
The woman delivered her a resounding slap.
“Don’t talk to me again without my permission. Do you understand?”
Both girls responded by nodding their heads.
“I am made by Allah for the glory of my master, and I walk proud down my own path. I give power to my lover over my body and my kisses I offer to those who desire them,” she recited without taking a breath. “These rhymes were written by a wise poetess from Córdoba, and you will live them out tonight. Offer them your kisses if they are desired.”
Marrakesh had become the capital of the Almohad Empire and boasted its finest buildings and its artists, thinkers, and sages.
From a broad terrace of the palace, with the sun on the point of disappearing, the city began to live the night. The new mosque shone, proud, a lofty tower a copy of which had been built in Seville. When the sun had fallen, you could begin to see the first torches being lit.
“Shall we serve you your tea, Your Highness?”
Caliph Yusuf l
ifted a hand and shook it a few times. It was his particular way of saying yes.
Lying over soft cushions and among leopard skins, he contemplated the nightfall. A fantastic range of colors, ocher, copper, and orange, were splayed out over the houses, plazas, and alleyways of the beautiful city.
A smooth melody rose to his ears and provoked an immediate shiver of pleasure. He breathed in the night air, savored the warm notes floating through it, and felt all his senses sharpen. At a second clap of his hands, he had a servant kneeling at his side. He ordered him to bring dancers.
“Also, I have brought you a gift from my travels,” Don Pedro said, as he continued his conversation with the Yusuf.
“I like surprises.” The eyes of the caliph shone with feeling. “What could it be?” He stayed there pensive. “You know that I love literature … I know. You’ve come with some new writing salvaged from some library in Córdoba.”
“No. I am sorry I cannot give you such a pleasure, but I trust this will be even sweeter to you. You will know soon,” Don Pedro de Mora answered mysteriously.
Only a few moments later, two shivering women knelt in front of them pushed along by various servants. They looked at Don Pedro and were filled with fear. That wicked man had dishonored them numerous times in the course of the voyage.
“Here is my gift. Two beautiful Christians who are, moreover, sisters. Look at their bodies, at their hair.” He pulled away the cloth that covered them. At once two orange manes unfurled.
Yusuf ordered them to come close so that he could see them better. They resisted, furious, but they were dragged to him. He took Blanca’s chin and kissed her on the lips. Then he grabbed a handful of hair and brought it to his nose, absorbing its aroma, while he stroked one of her breasts.
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