The Lover

by Laury Silvers

“I am afraid, Auntie, but I will step. Insha’Allah.” Zaytuna reached down and took the woman’s hand and held it to her own heart then lifted it to her lips to kiss. “I do not know a prayer to say to you, Auntie. What could I possibly say?”

  The old woman prayed, “May we accept love.”

  Zaytuna began to weep again, lifting her hand to wipe her eyes with the sleeve of her qamis, and said, “Amin, amin, amin.” She stood and took hold of the lean-to while the old woman repositioned herself as she was when Zaytuna first found her, then placed the humble shelter over her and walked back to the cemetery gate.

  She walked through the gravestones set out here and there for those who could afford them, further on to her mother where it looked like no one had been buried. A cluster of date palms grew by her grave, spreading their shade. She and Tein planted them one year, long ago, without knowing. They used to come together and sit by her grave, chatting and eating dates. They would push the seeds into the ground, and spit others into the distance. A few must have sprouted and taken root. They took turns bringing water to them during the hottest months, every year, until Tein left for the Frontier. Zaytuna saw yellow dogs asleep under their shade, their dusty fur like the colour of the dry soil, one lying nearly over the spot where her mother was buried. Her mother insisted that there would be no gravestone marking her body when she died and they’d respected that. Zaytuna knew someday that someone would just dig another body in there, disturbing her bones. As she came close to the grave, the dogs looked up at her to see what she wanted. She bent over to pick up a stone, but it was too hot now for them to care about rocks being thrown at them and they laid their heads back down. Zaytuna walked slowly to the grave, so as not to threaten them, got down on her knees, putting her hands in the dust, and lowered herself to lay across the grave, the one dog beside her. She held her mother’s earth to her, and for once she basked in the love that poured from her mother, like the humming of bees, the flowing of warm honey, and felt at peace.

  When her tears were spent, she got up, dusted herself off and made her way back home.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  She was spent when she arrived in the courtyard. Yulduz was there. She crouched in the one shady spot before a brazier made of loose bricks arranged in a semi circle working at getting the dung fire going. Her friend, Marta, sat nearby, her faded, stained yellow wrap, around her waist like an apron, was covered in bits of palm litter as she stripped the pieces down to use for fast kindling to feed the dried reeds under the dung.

  Yulduz looked up as she walked in, her eyes widening at the state Zaytuna was in, “Ya Rabb! What happened to you? Your clothes’re filthy and dirt’s sticking to the sweat on you. Go change those clothes.” She pointed to the basin, “There’s plenty of water in there to wash up but you could really use a trip to the baths.”

  Zaytuna replied, her voice tired, “Assalamu alaykum. Alhamdulilah, I’m fine. It’s a long story.”

  Marta said, “A long story! We need a good story. We’ve finished gossiping about everyone in the neighbourhood already and we’re bored.” She smiled at Zaytuna, “Will there be romance in it?”

  Zaytuna laughed despite herself, “Longing looks from across a garden filled with jasmine vines and pomegranate trees! My eyebrow was the bow and my glance the arrow that pierced his heart!”

  As Zaytuna pushed aside the curtain of her room, Yulduz called after her, “We expect you to eat with us now you’ve got an appetite!”

  Zaytuna, tired and embarrassed to say, now she could turn her attention to it, that she was hungry, responded, “Only if you agree to add my lentils to your pot, Auntie.”

  Yulduz responded, “Insha’Allah, it’ll be a delicious stew! May God bless us with every bite. Everyone is putting something in. I’ve got a pile of chicory that Marta’s collected. And Saliha’s given us onions and salt. Dates and bread too. I’ve got my soup bone. It’s only been boiled twice. There’s plenty of flavour left in it.”

  Zaytuna pulled the loose end of her wrap off her head and shoulders and unwound it from where it was tucked under her arms as it wrapped around her body, and pulled off her qamis and sirwal. She could see the dirt fall from them in the sunlight streaming through the crack in the curtain over her door. She unwrapped her hair and shook out her scarf. It wasn’t as dirty as the rest. She piled everything but her head scarf in the corner to be washed and pulled out her spare clothes, putting them on, but first sniffing at the wrap before winding it around herself. Tein had worn it last. It hadn’t picked up any of his scent, thank goodness. She wrapped her hair again and took up the bowl of cleaned lentils, untying the cloth cover, and went back into the courtyard to Yulduz.

  The dung had caught fire with not too much smoke. Yulduz fanned the pile of reeds underneath it while poking more in, here and there, until the dung was burning steadily enough to begin boiling the water. Zaytuna spoke as she came over with the bowl of lentils, teasing, “Smells like animal dung today instead of human dung, we’re living the life of the caliphs now!”

  Qambar laughed from where he was seated inside their room, saying loudly, “The singing girls will be by later with trays of sweets carried on their heads.”

  Yulduz said, “Speaking of the caliph’s table, Umm Farhad collected some fallen apricots from the garden by the Great Mosque. Brought it back wrapped in her kerchief. You should have seen her! Her hair blowing in the breeze, smiling. I knew she’d got something good. She prepared some nabidh.” Winking at Zaytuna, she said, “Let’s see how long she lets that ferment!”

  She called out in a louder voice to one of the rooms off the courtyard, “Isn’t that right Umm Farhad, we’ll all be drinking the Caliph’s cider before long!”

  A voice called out from within, “Don’t you think I’m making hard cider, woman! Insha’Allah, it’ll be ready by tomorrow. Besides, who says I’m sharing!”

  Yulduz raised an eyebrow to Zaytuna, laughing, and placed a large ceramic pot of water with her soup bone in it onto the brazier, now that the dung was burning well, and stirred the lentils into it, and in her native Turkmen, she sang,

  I’ve come to wake you,

  Gara gozum,

  to wake you.

  How beautiful the Creator has made you,

  Gara gozum,

  has made you.

  If I were a tree, I would stand on the road,

  Gara gozum,

  the road you walk on.

  I’d spread my shade on the road you walk on,

  Gara gozum,

  on the road you walk on.

  On the road you walk on, I would stand,

  Gara gozum,

  I’d spread my shade.

  Zaytuna sat by the basin, saying “bismillah,” and cup by cup rinsed the dirt from her face, hands and forearms, and feet and ankles. Each cup of water washing away the exhaustion of the day, she felt herself soften inwardly under its touch. She stood, saying “Alhamdulilah” under her breath and asked Yulduz, “That’s beautiful, what does it mean? Qara qozum?”

  “Gara gozum…“ Yulduz laughed, “It’s a ‘gim’! You Arabs!” Zaytuna winced at being called an Arab but Yulduz didn’t seem to notice. She went on, “It means ‘black-eyed beauty’.” She sang, this time in Arabic, “I’d spread my shade on the road you walk on, my black-eyed beauty.”

  Yulduz winked at her as Zaytuna walked to her room to pray, “Some man might spread the shade of his tree for you to walk under, if you’d gain some weight.”

  Zaytuna laughed, “But Qambar is taken by you, Auntie. There’s no good men left for whom I should fatten my behind.”

  Yulduz and Marta laughed again.

  They heard someone coming into the courtyard. It was Mustafa. Yulduz asked, eyebrows raised in Mustafa’s direction, saying, “Not even that one?”

  Zaytuna didn’t smile in return. At the sight of Mustafa, the softness she’d felt fled her, her mind pulled back Zayd and her awful meeting with Ammar. She said, maybe too sharply, to Yulduz, “No.”


  Yulduz scoffed at that, saying, “As you like.”

  Mustafa walked across the courtyard, saying, “Assalamu alaykum!” He reached Zaytuna, smiling, “Reporting back as requested. I heard something you might be interested in.”

  She sighed, shaking her head, “My meeting this morning with the police was awful. Maybe you can offer me some hope.”

  Mustafa pulled back, “What happened?”

  “He was an awful man. He had some decency when he was Tein’s friend. Now he’s part of the caliphal administration, he thinks he knows everything.”

  “Zaytuna! What happened?”

  “He didn’t take anything I said seriously.”

  “Oh.” Mustafa took a breath, relieved. Thank God, the girl would be safe. God knows the police wouldn’t be concerned with risking her life. There must have been nothing to Zaytuna’s story. Then he wished he hadn’t mentioned he’d heard anything about the Imam. If he’d only waited to hear from her first.

  He replied, softly, “I’m sorry. But Zay, he probably has testimony he didn’t share with you that helped him better judge your information. You shouldn’t take it personally. You don’t know what else he knows.”

  She sucked her teeth, just slightly, but Mustafa heard it. She asked, “What did you find?”

  “Look, Zaytuna, it’s nothing. It doesn’t sound like you could take it to the police. Better let it go.”

  “I’m not speaking to that man again.”

  “So no need to discuss it.”

  “Mustafa.”

  “It’s not important.”

  She looked at him and sucked her teeth again, tsking loudly this time, “Another man deciding for me.”

  Yulduz and Marta looked up from where they sat, not even pretending not to listen. Mustafa saw them and lowered his voice, “Zaytuna, I didn’t say that.”

  She heard him try to be quiet and kept her voice consciously loud enough for anyone to hear, “If you are going to be dismissive of me, then go.”

  Mustafa gave up, “Fine, I’ll tell you. You can judge for yourself.”

  He walked away to the other side of the courtyard to the shared water basin, “Can’t we talk over here?”

  He dunked the communal cup into the basin and handed it to her. She sipped from it and smiled again, “Not as good as water from the cup you made me.”

  He tipped his head forward, acknowledging the peace offering, and was just glad she wasn’t frustrated with him anymore. He couldn’t stand it when they argued. And it was so easy for them to argue. She sat down beside the basin. He slid down the wall beside her and said, “I don’t know how any of this would fit in, but it seems that some people believe the Imam forged his name on the collection of hadith he claims as his own. That means he never would have heard any of the hadith himself. He’s not only not in those chains of transmission, but it would also make him a liar, a plagiarist, damning him forever from being considered a reliable scholar in the field.”

  With every word Zaytuna became more excited, “Mustafa! Yes, this is it! It didn’t have anything to do with the girl. It was the forgery! Zayd knew about the forgery and threatened to expose him!”

  Mustafa said, “Hold on, Zaytuna. First, this is gossip. Second, if Zayd knew this gossip, other people knew about it. Why target Zayd specifically?”

  “No, Mustafa. Zayd knew how to read and he was studying hadith. He saw, somehow he saw, that the manuscript itself had been changed. Maybe he saw him change it himself when he was doing some work around the Imam. The Imam would never think that this servant boy knew what he was looking at and didn’t think to hide it from him! It wouldn’t be gossip. It would be evidence.”

  “Zayd knew how to read?”

  “Salman was teaching him, the boys, how to read and write. And they study hadith.”

  “Masha’Allah, I never would have known. God forgive me, I thought. Well, I didn’t like that he had young boys at his place. Vulnerable boys. There was wine there....”

  She gasped, “God protect us from evil things! That never occurred to me.”

  She thought about it, then said, “There’s been no gossip. For God’s sake you can’t do a thing around here without anyone getting wind of it.”

  She looked at him sharply, “In any case, if you suspected something, why didn’t you say anything?”

  He didn’t answer, realizing heavily that he himself hadn’t tried to intervene despite what he suspected.

  She saw him chastened and tried to put him at ease, “Don’t think about it, Mustafa, he was only teaching the boys to read and write.”

  “There’s no money in teaching boys like that. Why does he do it?

  “He cares about them. I think he sees himself in them. Pushed to the edge of society for who they are, for no reason of their own making. God forgive me for saying so, but it’s not all generosity. He wants his grandfather’s collection of hadith to survive, through them.”

  “That’s understandable.”

  They didn’t speak for a few moments. Then he asked, “What will you do with this information about the Imam?”

  “I don’t know. Insha’Allah, pursue it myself. There is no point in going to the police with it. But I cannot see how…. How can I interview the Imam?”

  Her eyes suddenly pricked with tears, her limbs exhausted under the weight of it, “This is impossible. I feel like I’m supposed to do something for these children. But I don’t know what.”

  Mustafa heard her voice catch and steeled himself against it. He knew he’d give in. “Zaytuna, I cannot speak to the man. If I hear anything else, I can tell you, but that’s all.”

  “I wasn’t asking you,” she looked at him sideways. She meant it.

  “I wish I could help, I’m sorry.”

  “It’s alright. I wasn’t asking, really.”

  They sat quietly again. They were so easy together like this, as long as they didn’t talk.

  She broke the silence, “Mustafa?”

  “Yes?”

  “Are you hungry? I’m hungry.”

  Mustafa looked at her, wondering what she could mean, “You’re hungry…for food?”

  “Saliha had some fresh cheese this morning. It was delicious.”

  “I’m just surprised.”

  She smiled at him, “Don’t make too much out of it. I don’t know what’s going on. It doesn’t feel like a craving from my lower soul. I just feel like I’m waking up from a long sleep and I need nourishment. Would you buy Yulduz, well all of us, a bone with some real meat on it for her soup? She’s boiled that bone more than twice, I can tell you. She keeps it in a jar and boils it over and over. She offers to feed anyone from it, God bless her. I’m grateful to her, but I’d like to get her some meat and have some myself. I’m out of coin. I spent it on rent and Tein.” She laughed, “God you should have smelled him, had to send him to the bath. Can you get something for us?”

  Mustafa laughed, “Wait, you want meat to eat and you are willing to let me buy something for you?”

  She leaned in and pushed him with her shoulder, “It’s not just for me, it’s for all of us. Anyway, don’t the Sufis eat when a friend offers something?”

  Mustafa smiled, his eyes taking her in with warmth, “So you are a follower of Uncle Abu al-Qasim now, too? Do you want to come with me? You can pick it out.”

  “Do you know a butcher who is a man of good character?”

  “Of course.”

  They stood up and met with Saliha coming through the passageway into the courtyard. Zaytuna took hold of her, “Saliha, hold on,” and called back to Yulduz. “Mustafa has kindly offered. Is there room in the pot, you think, for a little meat in our stew? We’re off to get some.”

  The woman’s eyes widened and she stiffened slightly, too proud to seem eager for something she or her man hadn’t tasted in a long while, “There’s no need for meat, but plenty else for Mustafa to join us.”

  “We’ll be back in a few minutes, but please, Auntie, make room in that pot for so
me meat.”

  Saliha looked at Mustafa and tipped her head toward Zaytuna, “Meat?”

  Mustafa smiled and said, “I know.”

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  The door to Junayd’s home was open. It was getting quite dark, but Mustafa could still see an unkempt man in a heavily patched wool robe was stepping through the doorway. He was closely followed by another man in a simple white muslin robe and turban. A scholar. Mustafa did not recognize him from the back, but the long tail of his turban hanging between his shoulders marked him as a Maliki. He seemed old, not frail, only stooped from years of writing over a desk, years of sitting in prayer. His hand was on the shoulder of the man in front of him. It was a gesture of companionship. To have his hand on the shoulder of such a man, Mustafa felt a little guilt. As a child, he always found a way not to sit near the patched wool wearers and even avoided them now, if he could. They smelled. Their wool cloaks and robes were patched over and over as they wore away from sleeping rough. But they were welcomed, open-handed, like this man had, by most everyone else in their circle.

  Mustafa hurried to reach them calling out, “Ya Uncle, hold the door!” The second man heard him and turned, the first man in old wool disappearing into the house without looking back, as Mustafa came to a stop not far from them. It was Imam Abu Abdelrahman al-Azdi and Mustafa saw that the turban the man wore was his own.

  Imam Abu Abdelrahman said, “Well met, Mustafa. Alhamdulilah.”

  Mustafa reached to take his hand, bowing his head to kiss it in greeting, but he pulled it from him and kissed the top of Mustafa’s turban instead, saying, “May God open our hearts tonight to the sama.”

  “Amin.”

  Imam Abu Abdelrahman put his hand on Mustafa’s shoulder and gently insisted that he walk ahead, but as they reached the end of the vestibule, Mustafa slipped to his side and excused himself to keep from showing his back to this great man and fell in behind him. One of the younger Sufis bolted the door behind them. Mustafa asked the Imam, “May I walk with you to the shaykh?”