The Lover

by Laury Silvers

  Suddenly, rusty-blue lapis vengeance rushed up, thickly, clinging, and she saw her hands around the throat of the man who raped her mother that night. Streaming in from the deepest river, the clearest emerald water swirled knowledge around her, pushing her to turn and look into his face until the peridot green of small spring leaves brought awareness of the shape of his features to her. It was not that one, the one whom she saw rape her mother, but another man. She saw, as if through a mirror of shining, transparent ruby, her own face overlaying his own. She dropped her hands from his throat and placed them over his heart. Opalescent blue sorrow overtook her as the sapphire blue of his desire to dominate thrust through her and took form in her womb. She looked down at her growing belly and saw her mother’s hands holding it as if it were her own, caressing it and cradling it like a full moon shining silvery light through everything. Rivulets of sun-bright amber acceptance found their way through her, gently saturating her, tugging her down with its glorious weight until she was sitting in the stream while the white light of joy flowed through it all. She could have laid back into the stream and breathed its waters into her lungs and died there with joy flowing through her. But she pushed herself up with her hands. Then her feet. She found her way to standing again in the stream. Walking again.

  The stream’s light dimmed as she walked. The city fell away behind her. The world fell away around her. The stones in the bed darkened. A pool was ahead. She could just see it. She walked to it. The water deepening. She was up to her waist in it. The water had no light. The sky had no features. Blackness embraced her. A blackness that accepted all light, rejecting nothing. The edge of the pool went to the horizon. First light arrived in the distance, only a thread of golden blackness illuminating the far, far edge of all things. It grew, the deepest brown, red and golden, slowly filled the sky with its warmth and clarity. Her eyes adjusting, taking in more, in every moment until she saw that the golden encompassing blackness was her mother. Her arms filled the horizon from East to West. Her mother’s body held every direction. She saw then, slung across her, one on her front and one peeking up over her back, two children, and two more by her legs. Layla held on in the front, her hands grasping at the thick fibres of the wool of her mother’s rough qamis. She was too big to be held this way, yet it was natural. Her mother did not stoop or hunch over, either, at the weight of Zayd laid across her back, his arms around her neck, his head on her shoulder, secure in his own sling. A boy, a large boy, held onto one of her legs. God, how he looked like Tein. She wanted to reach out to him, to hold him. A girl held onto the other. The girl hid her face, but Zaytuna saw the clothes were fine and realized it had to be Zaynab. Her mother spoke. Her words like a bell sounding, peeling through Zaytuna’s every cell, “My babies. Take care of them.”

  The Third Day

  Chapter Eighteen

  Zaytuna slept beyond the dream and did not wake; she did not even hear the morning call to prayer. She would not remember her dream, but only feel its aftermath. Tein opened the curtain and found her, lightly snoring, curled over on her side, her blanket twisted around her.

  Tein pushed her lightly with his foot, “Look at you, still sleeping! It’s light out, Zaytuna.”

  Tein laughed at her, “What will God think? Did you even do your morning prayers?”

  Zaytuna tried to pull herself up, but her limbs were stuck, as if her blanket were a rope tying her down. She insisted, “I’m awake.”

  She managed to get up and meet Tein in the courtyard. He was sitting against the wall watching Qambar recite his morning supplication. Then the old man pushed himself up off the ground, holding the wall to stay steady. He straightened himself and called into the room he shared with his wife, Yulduz, who came out and spoke with him for a moment. Tein heard her say, “I’ll meet you there, insha’Allah.” Tein wondered if they were heading out to work. They were too old for it. Although she was older than her husband, she was sturdier than he. He was surely too old to lift anything anymore. He had large hands, but he could see that the joints were swollen and his fingers bent.

  He called out to the old man, “Where are you off to today?”

  The old man answered, “Cut reeds,” and no more.

  Yulduz came out and handed him his sandals, “You’ll cut your feet up to a bloody pulp on those reeds. Put these on, I’m not losing my man today. I’ll be down there before long.”

  Tein stiffened as she said it and wished he had some coin to give them so they would not have to go to cut reeds today, or any day.

  His wife raised an eyebrow at Tein, “And you? Now that you’re police? What’re you off to do today?”

  Tein answered, “Kill children. Then we’ll roast them on a spit.”

  Zaytuna slapped his arm and then turned to her, “Auntie Yulduz, he’s not that kind of police.”

  Yulduz spit out at Tein, “There’s no other kind of police.”

  She turned to Zaytuna, “What do you think’s going to happen if trouble comes down. Will he be on our side?”

  “Of course. What a thing to say,” not admitting her own fears aloud.

  Zaytuna went to the communal basin for water for her ablutions. She breathed out, “Bismillah,” and squatted in front of it, using the cup to pour water into her right hand. She put the cup down and rubbed her hands together, washing them. She cupped more water to clean out her mouth and nose and spat it out into the small bricked pit dug beside the basin. She poured more water into her right hand, bringing it to her face, rubbing out the grit from her eyes. Then again, but this time letting the water drip down her arm and rubbing her right forearm with her left hand. Then the same over her left arm. She wet her right hand again and rubbed the top of her head and cleaned her ears. Finally, she washed her feet, propping out her right foot first on its heel to rub the water all through it. Then the left. “Alhamdulilah.”

  Then she stood and returned to her room to pray. Her forehead and nose were pressed against her mat when the fragrance of freshly baked barley bread hit her and she felt her mouth water. She breathed in the moist scent deeply as she sat back on her haunches and said, “Alhamdulilah, praise God” instead of “God forgive me,” and prostrated again. She finished her prayer and tried to force herself to sit through her supplication, but couldn’t think to finish it. She got up and went outside saying, “God you know me. I don’t know what this is about. Guide me to what is right and beautiful, ya Rabb!”

  Saliha was chatting with Yulduz who had spread her mat out on the ground. Saliha tore the bread into pieces, putting each piece down in a pile next to a palm leaf basket of fresh cheese. Then she stuck her hand into a large sack, pulling out handfuls of soft, dark dates and placed them into a pile. Saliha took a square of cloth from Yulduz, she placed a bit of the bread and cheese into it, along with a handful of dates, “For Qambar.”

  Yulduz took the folded cloth from her and kissed it, then placed it to her forehead before setting it aside, “May God restore to you what you’ve shared with us.”

  Saliha said, “Amin.”

  Looking up, nodding to Zaytuna, she said, “Breakfast.”

  Tein moved over and sat next to the old woman, saying, “You’ll eat with police?”

  She shrugged, “Cheese, yes. But you smell like you rolled in a dead animal.” She shifted away from him.

  Zaytuna laughed, “That’s exactly what I thought!” She smiled at Yulduz. She could see why Qambar would leave his Shia family behind for this Turkmen woman. She must have been a wild mare when she was young. Zaytuna heard her stomach grumble and laughed at herself. She was hungry for the first time in a long time. She looked down at the feast before her, wondering at not being repulsed by the scent of the bread and the moist sheen on the fresh cheese.

  Zaytuna ducked back into her room and opened the box where she kept her spare things. She crouched before it and pulled out a spare qamis and sirwal, folded rags for menstruation, if she ever did menstruate again, and her spare wrap. Underneath them all was a folde
d square of rough, patched wool fabric. She opened it revealing a strand of prayer beads, eleven delicate, amber-coloured glass cylinders loosely strung on a long leather thong. The edges of the amber cylinders were cracked and cloudy from abrasion but she thought that they were even more beautiful for it.

  Her mother had made two of them, one for her and one for Tein after they were born, from her own necklaces. The thick strings of beads her mother wore around her neck and threaded through her locks were all that she took with her from her village when she headed out to be away from people, to be alone with her Lover. Over the years, she had restrung her beads into bracelets as gifts in thanks for those who had cared for them on the road and until all she had left were the stone beads and one opalescent cowrie shell she wore in her locks. But even the shell she gave away, to Mustafa’s mother, stringing it on a thin braid made from colourful, discarded fabric. The stone beads, Zaytuna wore in her own hair. She knew Mustafa kept the shell necklace among his cherished things, put aside after his mother died, but she wondered if Tein still had his beads. Perhaps he’d put it on his own son’s neck after he was born and buried it with him. As a child, she’d worn her own around her neck every day. She rolled them in her fingers as if, by some incantation, they bound her mother’s love to her.

  As a child, she took them off to rub them, pushing them along the leather thong, mimicking her mother who did her own prayers on a length of knotted string, until one day the thong wore through and the beads scattered. She had panicked, barely able to breathe, until she and her mother had crawled on hands and knees and found every last bead and strung them up again. Zaytuna kissed the string of beads, laying it back into the patched wool square, placed the folded square in the box, carefully putting her spare things over it as protection. She stood, pushing herself up off her knees and went to the door. She pulled the curtain aside, held the wrap out to Tein, and said, “Get in here and change into this. We’ll get you off to the bath after we eat.”

  He pulled himself up and came to her. She didn’t move out of the way immediately, but rather touched his face, holding his chin lightly and rubbing her thumb across his cheek. She admired how strikingly handsome he was, with their mother’s beautiful, glowing, ruddy brown skin, her high cheekbones and full lips. His face was so smooth despite everything he’d been through, and always with only a bit of beard on his chin. She heard herself say inwardly, Alhamdulilah, my God, thank you for him, thank you for everything. He held her eyes for just a moment. She saw him softening to her, his sister, before looking down. She thought she saw his eyes wet with tears. Or maybe she mistook it. Either way, she smiled at him, tugging his face up to meet hers again. She pulled on his bit of beard lightly, and said, “Make sure and get that scruff under your nose trimmed.”

  She left him and sat down next to Saliha. She breathed in the sight of the feast before her, then tore off a bit of bread and used it to grab a small bit of the fresh cheese. She brought it first to her nose, awakening to its clean scent, and said, “Bismillah, O Nourisher, open our hearts to the blessing of this food and may all your creatures enjoy your open-handed generosity.”

  Yulduz sighed, “Amin,” and dug in.

  Saliha tensed, sitting perfectly still, as she watched Zaytuna place the food in her mouth, close her eyes, and chew slowly, the muscles on her face relaxing into the pleasure of it. Saliha imagined Zaytuna feeling the soft resistance of bits of barley that had not been fully ground mixed with the rest. She saw her mouthing the bread first for gravel so she did not break a tooth. Then she imagined Zaytuna tasting the smoke of the bread baked near the ashes in the local oven setting off and heightening the rich flavour and grassy tang of the sheep-milk cheese. Zaytuna swallowed and opened her eyes and breathed deeply. As her hand went back in for another bite, Saliha finally relaxed and took hold of a bit of bread and cheese for herself.

  Tein came out of Zaytuna’s room and walked toward them. Saliha looked up and held still again, moving only to put down the food in her hand. Zaytuna’s worn-thin wrap was wound around Tein’s waist. His chest was bare and his head was uncovered showing the shape of his skull and his tight black curls shorn close. Every scar from his years of battle showed on his muscles, the worst one snaking up the curve of his bicep, over his shoulder, nearly reaching his throat where, Zaytuna had told Saliha, the wound had nearly killed him. All of this brutal masculinity framed a face of extraordinary beauty, even delicacy, thought Saliha. Saliha had never seen his mother, but her beauty must have been a thing of legend. She stared at him openly, unashamed, thinking, If only for a bit of kohl around those eyes. She picked up her bread and cheese again, placing it in her mouth, and tasting with joy every flavour and texture as Zaytuna did, then said, looking at Tein, as he sat down with them, “Delicious.”

  Zaytuna looked up from the food, “Yes, alhamdulilah.” Then she saw what Saliha meant and laughed, saying, “You know what the Prophet, alayhi salam, said, ‘The first look is for you, and the second look is against you!’”

  “Yes,” Saliha replied, nodding, eyes still on Tein, “So lengthen the first look.”

  Tein smiled despite himself, forgetting in that one moment, that enjoying her, the way she was looking at him and the way she looked to him, was a betrayal of Ayzit and a reminder of his failure to save her and his son.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Mustafa sat against a pillar in the Sharqiyya mosque, waiting for Imam Abu Abdelrahman to begin his class. He had come early to spend some time remembering God, hoping to centre himself, sort out how to do what he’d promised Zaytuna. His friends’ accusations picked at him: He should leave the investigation to the police. His meddling amounted to gossip. Then there were his own self-recriminations: He gave in to Zaytuna too much. She wasn’t paying attention to the harm she could cause. He couldn’t be involved in that. He couldn’t ask. He wouldn’t ask. But maybe he should ask? He put his hands out before him, looking at his palms, and prayed, “God, protect me from harming others without realizing it. Protect me from harming others with realizing it. Guide me in this matter with Zaytuna. I don’t know what to do. God bless the Prophet and his family, and peace.”

  He wiped his hands across his face, trying to pull in the answer to the prayer held out to God. He tried to settle himself. Starting the recitation slowly, breathing easily and deeply, he began, “Allah, Allah, Allah,” over and over. Each “Allah” said with a single, full breath. Breathing in on the “Ahhh….,” taking it deep within him until his chest fully expanded, then exhaling, “...llaaaaah,” the sound vibrating within him, grounding him and little by little releasing him from himself. Despite the cool damp of the early morning, he began to feel warm, relaxed, and thick with well-being. He could still hear murmuring in the background, not disturbing him, but somehow all of a piece, he began to hear teachers taking their places near the pillars in the mosque and their students mulling and sitting around them. His attention turned from his breath to a teacher’s voice, somewhere in the mosque, asking, “What are the stipulations of inheritance if a man dies leaving only his wife and a daughter?” He brought his attention back to his breath before the student’s answer came, breathing in deeply again, then exhaling, his own hearing tuned solely to his breath vibrating in his body as the student’s answer somewhere in the distance dissolved into nothing.

  “Assalamu alaykum,” the words jolting him back into the room. Mustafa’s eyes opened suddenly. It took him a moment to feel where he was; he put his hand on the leather folder next to him that held his paper to copy the first of the hadith, the cool metal of his inkwell, and the rib on the back of his reed pen laid out next to him. He looked up and saw Burhan staring down at him as if he, Burhan, were seeing some strange animal for the first time. Mustafa wondered how long he had been standing there watching him do his dhikr. He felt as if Burhan had seen him without his clothes on and was dumped from his state of well-being into humiliation.

  “Is that something you Sufis do?”

  Mustafa ans
wered too quickly, defensively, missing a better response, “It is something the Prophet did which he taught to Ali and which is testified to in God’s word, Say Allah....”

  “Ho! I wasn’t accusing you of heresy, my brother. That was before our time. My father remembers it quite well. He knew Ghulam Khalil, of course. By all accounts, a pedant preacher, but loved by the people. It’s a bit embarrassing for you Hanbalis that he was so widely admired, I imagine. But the people do love anyone who can stir them up. Unfortunately, he had connections in court. So that was that. But everyone got out of it alright, so no harm done in the end.”

  Mustafa closed his eyes and tried to pull back the feeling of deep rootedness he had reciting the name of God and failed, saying with real bitterness instead, “Yes, no harm done.”

  Burhan agreed, “Exactly.”