The Lover

by Laury Silvers

  She spun around on him, after realizing what he’d said, and could not hold back the pain she felt for the boy, the infant in the woman’s arms destined to a life like this, Zayd, Layla, all these poor children, and hissed at him, “May you have no mother in this life and the next!”

  The man turned on her, sitting up, “The Prophet told us ‘charity is a smile,’ but you’ve got nothing but filthy talk for the likes of us, you withered-up bitch!”

  It took all she had to keep from spitting on him or giving his leg, sticking out into the path, a furious kick.

  She growled, “You do this to these poor children, yet you tell me to correct my speech! Where do you find destroying a child’s life so you don’t have to work in the Prophet’s example? You’ll find nothing but your own place in hell!”

  She turned away from him, not waiting to hear if he answered, but she could hear the woman cackling behind her. She strode up the path until she got far enough away then stopped cold. She was shaking and demanded under her breath, without propriety, without apology, “God, how could You do this to these children?”

  As she heard herself say it, she automatically reached out and slapped her own hand to scold herself. She sucked in her breath through her nose, pulling herself up straight and calling herself to account, now silently. This is the nature of things. This is life. You’ve known this since you knew anything. You pray and fast and take care with every little thing, but you’re no different from the avaricious swine in their fine clothes, touching everything for a lost fleck of gold, and gorging themselves on meat and complaining about the smallest discomfort. Stop wanting life to give you, give anyone, give these children, a taste of ease and tenderness.

  She followed her scolding with a litany of theological prompts meant to pull back her anger at God’s willing destruction of the most vulnerable. God is The Slayer and The Giver of Life. God is The Nourisher and The Withholder. God is The Tenderly Compassionate and The Terrible in Punishment. God’s will is wise, God’s will is wise, God’s will is wise. But her anger was on the loose and needed a simpler object than God to lay into and found it in Salman.

  Her thoughts ran to him. And where in the world did Zayd get that heretical telling of “Zayd and Zaynab’s” story? Salman, of course!

  She shook her head. Walla, everyone knows that Zayd and Zaynab were married, and married only a short time, when the Prophet Muhammad fell in love with her. Muhammad saw her uncovered, in a stolen moment, and he could not live without her, nor she without him. Zayd saw the fact of their love and let her go. Zayd and Zaynab weren’t even in love, for God’s sake!

  As Zaytuna made her way into the square, these thoughts became louder and louder in her head and sharper in their certainty until they threatened to cut through and spill out her mouth until she said aloud, just under her breath, “...forced apart because she was promised to another. How can there be forgiveness for spreading such slander!”

  And with that her anger settled in for an easy rage. She said aloud, in a full-throated voice, uncaring who could hear her, “One of Salman’s tall tales! He sits there all day in his shop, serving wine, telling stories about the Prophets. Telling lies. Serving lies and wine to anyone who will pay. He’s running nothing but a tavern! God preserve us from that grandson of a traitor! Leading people astray and disgracing the Prophet. Teaching this child that Zaynab would have preferred Zayd over Muhammad!”

  Zaytuna leaned into her stride, her long legs stretching further and faster up the footpath towards the street connecting to the square where Salman sat throughout the day and night telling his stories while serving up nabidh and wine.

  Salman laughed to the men sitting on stools beside him outside his establishment, “Here she comes! What will it be today?” They all turned to watch her approach.

  She came up on him, “Are you drunk telling such stories? Only a filthy drunk would think that a woman would choose anyone over the Prophet of God. A man in direct conversation with God! A man of perfect character! How dare you say that Zayd and Zaynab were forced apart! God preserve us!”

  As Zaytuna went on, Salman leaned his back against the wall and smiled at her, a woman of towering height whom a polite man might have called “handsome” behind her back. He sized her up, trying to gauge her age. He shook his head at the shame of it. What good is asceticism to a woman? All that fasting and then no fat when she did eat, praying all night, no sleep. It simply made her look dried up and much older than she must be. He tried to remember when he first saw her and her brother as children with their mother….less than twenty years ago, couldn’t be more. He thought, She can’t be thirty yet, but looks more than that.

  Salman sighed. She might be attractive, to someone, if she put a great deal of weight on. That horse of a face, though. At least this one wasn’t born black like her brother, what a curse from their Nubian mother. Her father must have been an Arab. Still, she’s on the dark side, a bit too much of a toasted sesame for my taste. A Persian or Slavic woman, now there is the lightness of skin that speaks of beauty. No better. A Byzantine Christian, or a Frank. A Frankish woman, ah, there is luminous skin. Now if they would only wash regularly like a decent Muslim. That would be perfection.

  His thoughts turned around the women of the neighbourhood, judging their characteristics, assessing his own tastes, smiling at the thought of some, wrinkling his nose at others. Satisfied with his thoughts, he turned his attention back to Zaytuna’s voice.

  She was still ranting at high volume, “You have turned a pure union, a love ordained by God, into scandal and filth!”

  Salman burst out laughing, “Ya Zaytuna, my sister, sit down and have one of my special drinks. A cup of date wine perhaps? Or a strong nabidh? My hard cider is the best this side of the Tigris. I think you need one!”

  She shook at him, “God preserve us from your lies and your sins!”

  One of the men called out to her, his words exhausted, slurring, “God preserve us from your passion for the Prophet. It drives you to madness, woman.”

  Zaytuna looked at the man. A canal worker. He sat on his stool in only his dirty short sirwal with his legs spread, one elbow on his knee, his hand holding up his head. She could see how drunk he was already. His eyelids sagging halfway down. So early in the morning. She turned to Salman and spat on the ground in front of him.

  Salman simply shook his head and said, “If only your madness were like your mother’s. There was a woman, Zaytuna. Everyone who heard her words became drunk on divine love and eager to follow the example of our beloved Muhammad. Now she’s gone and we sit here drunk on wine and you stand before me spitting at my feet because you say you love the Prophet, a man who would not spit on his own enemy. God preserve us indeed.”

  “You think my mother would not call you out for insulting our Prophet! How little you knew her!” As a child, she had held onto her mother, shaking with fear, as her mother hauled a man up with her words alone, sending him to his knees in tears begging forgiveness from God. But there was the difference. No one here was turning to God by the force of her correction. Her heart stopped at his words. Shame overtook her, rushing up from behind and covering her, cutting off her breath. God’s love spilled through her mother and she poured it out to all who would drink. She drove that man to her knees, because it was love of God driving her words and he felt it. He became one of her followers, finding her wherever she was preaching, weeping at her every word. To be in her mother’s presence was to vibrate with the humming of bees, to feel the flow of warm honey through you, to warm yourself in nourishing sunlight. Her love was not created, it was creative. It was not the knowing love of a mother built on intimate, worldly moments, end on end. It was unknowing, unworldly. It was a love that held nothing to itself, not even her own children.

  Zaytuna had failed her. Now. Always. Truth be told, she wanted nothing to do with the love her mother offered. She didn’t want God’s love. She wanted the petty, possessive, scolding, protective, and interested love of
a mother, a real mother. Not a saint. She had failed her mother by wanting her love. She and her brother, both. So the two of them had nothing from her but what they did not want. Zaytuna was not interested in God’s love. She could not see God’s love in any of the pain in this world. Not in any of the joy either. She knew she should and the shame of it all suffocated her. She stood stock still staring at Salman, eyes wide with all the resentment that unwillingly recognized shame can muster. She turned without a word to walk away.

  Salman called after her, “Go with grace, sister, and tell that brother of yours we have not seen him in long time and he owes us a visit!”

  Chapter Six

  Ammar left Imam Ibrahim’s house and told the night watchman he could go and get some sleep. As he walked through the streets of al-Anbariyya, he saw a familiar hulking black man ahead of him. A smile broke out on his face and he forgot all about the propriety of the neighbourhood, yelling out, “Ya Tein! Ya Tein!”

  The man ahead of him turned around, squinting into the morning light. He realized who was yelling at him and he bellowed out across the quiet laneway, “Ammar, you ass! They can hear you braying all the way to the Saffarin market! You’re going to wake up the Caliph’s taxmen from their beauty sleep!”

  They hurried to each other despite their old injuries and grasped each other in a great hug.

  “Ammar, what are you doing in this godforsaken neighbourhood?”

  “It’s good to set eyes on you, Tein. I’m just coming from clearing up some business about an accident.”

  “I heard you’d been moved from the Regular Infantry to the Police.”

  Ammar mock bowed, hand over heart, “It’s a position of great honour and massive pay cut.”

  Tein smiled but his words were aimed at locking horns, “Ho! And how do you square that with your longstanding devotion to the caliphs?”

  Ammar pushed back, “I work for the people, Tein.”

  Tein bucked lightly, “Like when the police have to round up the Caliph’s imagined enemies or the poor for blighting his view of the city?”

  Ammar stepped forward, crowding him, “I work with Grave Crimes. That involves killings, serious assaults, Tein. I’m not the kind of police you’re talking about.”

  Tein didn’t move.

  Ammar smiled at his huge friend, looming over him, disengaged, and stepped back, “Anyway, look at you, I heard you’d been kicked out of the military!”

  Tein let it go, “True, this gamey leg isn’t going to carry me into battle ever again.”

  “I heard there was more to it than a gamey leg.”

  Tein shook off the comment, “I’ve no interest in fighting the civil wars of these caliphal swine. Our days preserving the borders of the Empire for their greed dressed up as our piety finished me. They call us ghazis as if we were Muhammad’s noble companions fighting alongside him, but we’re no better than those Turks enslaved to fight the civil wars of the caliphs and their challengers. The poor are the ones that suffer most for their power struggles and rich tastes. May they eat the dirt of the dead they’ve put in the ground.”

  Ammar put his hand on Tein’s arm, “It wasn’t like that.”

  Tein looked at Ammar, his mouth was tight, remembering exactly what it was like, but shook the thought and Ammar’s hand off. He forced a smile and slapped Ammar on the shoulder, “Do you have time? Let’s go find something to eat. I haven’t had anything substantial in a day or so. You can pay.”

  The friends walked arm and arm out of al-Anbariyya toward the clanging of the Saffarin market. Tein said, “I know a place. It’s past that last stall there. It’s loud. It’s hot. But the food is excellent and cheap.” Past the last of the coopers and smithies was a series of arched brick stalls set back for the workers to eat. It was early yet, but Tein and Ammar could smell the tang of meat braised in broth sweetened with date syrup and soured with vinegar. The server saw Tein ducking his head in and taunted him, “You old twat, back to beg for scraps again?”

  Tein pushed the man lightly, saying, “Only if you have figs today, you old son of a donkey’s asshole! My friend here is paying, so ladle out some of that sikbaj we smell simmering.”

  “The meat isn’t quite tender yet, but I can make you some tharid with the broth. Will that do?”

  “It will indeed,” said Tein, settling himself heavily onto a bench.

  Ammar sat down next to him laughing at the exchange, “Just an insult in return for that comment? Where is the old Tein?”

  “The old Tein is even older. Those were younger and angrier days, Ammar. We all had something to prove. But being named after a fruit that looks like a vagina didn’t help.”

  “What was your mother thinking? May God preserve her sanctity. But seriously, what was she thinking?”

  Tein laughed, “You know what she was thinking,” and recited the verses from the Qur’an, “Wa at-teini wa az-zaytun wa tur is-sineen, wa hadha baladi’l-amin, la qad khalaqna al-insan fi ahsani taqwim….We swear by the fig and the olive, by Mount Sinai, by this peaceful land, we certainly created the human being on the most beautiful form.”

  “God how we tortured you with that,” Ammar was trying not to laugh again with the memory of it and lost the effort, “‘I swear by Tein, I’m going to drink this wine!’” Ammar realized what he said and his face blanched.

  Tein pulled back and looked at him, “What?”

  “How did God not strike us all dead, making jokes of His words! And I just did it again!”

  Tein looked at him sideways, “Where did this piety come from? Are you back in the arms of your Shia imams?”

  Ammar tipped his chin up at him, smiling, but taking some ground with his words, “If you were a different man, I’d slug you for that.”

  Tein retorted, “Relax, brother. Ali, the Lion on the battlefield, would not hit a different man for worse than that.”

  Ammar raised his hands, giving up, “Leave it to the godless to teach the pious a lesson! No he would not. Whatever the case, I shouldn’t have joked like that even back then.”

  Tein smiled at his old friend, “I can’t speak for God, but as for me, it’s all good. How better to become such a killer on the battlefield? I had to beat the skin off of every kid who taunted me and more than a few of you fools!”

  Ammar said, “God forgive me.”

  “Wait, I sense God speaking to me right now. He’s considering forgiving you,”

  Tein put his hand over his heart and pulled a pious face as if he was searching to hear something being spoken from deep within his soul, “Yes, God is willing to forgive you for the cost of a good meal now and again with your old friend, Tein the Twat.”

  Ammar smiled at him, “A reasonable recompense. Done. Speaking of ‘wa zaytun’ how is your twin?”

  “Zaytuna is the same as she ever was, starving herself for God’s sake and pining away for the Prophet as if he were going to come back from the dead. Can’t get a decent meal at her house. Nothing but dried bread, vinegar, and a few lentils. I love her, but you’ll not get a piece of fat out of her cooking pot.”

  “She was always a hard nut.”

  Tein looked down, “Well, she didn’t survive our mother’s sanctity as well as she might.”

  Ammar raised an eyebrow, “Not like you?”

  “At least I’ve got my feet on the ground of this world,” he pointed down, “Right here.”

  Ammar looked down where he had pointed, “There never was a Hereafter for you.”

  “All this sudden worry about my soul, you have found some piety somewhere. Well, worry not old friend. God can forgive me if He likes, dip me by my little toe in Kawthar and wash away all my sins, then pop me into your Paradise in time to share a cup of wine and roast fowl with you for all eternity.”

  He gave in to Tein, as he always had, laughing, “Not without the intercession of the Shia Imams, so you are quite lost my brother.”

  Tein pushed at him, “We’re both screwed with all the killing we’ve done.”
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  Ammar turned serious again, “I understand. You’ve got reason to be bitter about life.”

  “It’s not bitterness, it’s plain dealing. We both ran off to fight to get away from here. Get away from our families. Now look at us, you’ve become the man we ran from as children and I’ve...,” he sighed, “…I don’t know what I’ve become.”

  The cook put out a couple of spoons and bowls of wheat bread soaked in the sweet and sour broth in front of them. Tein tried to approach the bowl with some control, but his hand shook slightly and gave him away. Ammar watched him closely. He moved at the food the way they did after marching for days and days against the Byzantines with only dried bread and a bit of salted meat to hold them over. They were foot soldiers and food didn’t always reach them if their troop had to push out ahead of army and its supplies. Tein spooned up the sopped bread into his mouth and breathed deeply as he chewed, grabbing a cup of water to wash it down. Ammar waited for him to get a few more mouthfuls in him and asked again, “So what do you do all day, just hulk that huge, black body around scaring people in rich neighbourhoods?”

  Tein looked Ammar straight in the eye, “I do odd jobs for people when I can. Even with the limp, I can carry more than most men. I hate to say it, but I’m looking to hire myself out to press men to clear their debts. That coin is good. More than enough for the likes of me to live on. I heard from one man that he only gets a few copper fals every time he visits a client, but several chinks of a silver dirham if the money gets paid back. If it’s a big return, he’s been thrown a dirham or more for his trouble.”

  Ammar winced at the thought of Tein, one of the few squarely honest men he’d ever met, working as muscle for petty loansharks.

  “You can’t be sleeping in your garrison anymore, where are you staying?”