The Jealous

by Laury Silvers

  Saliha replied, “This was the hard part. She is a tiny thing. I saw Tein take her in hand. They must have arrested her, and they’ll be arresting Tansholpan as soon as they find out it was her who wrote the talisman.”

  Yulduz cried out, “Ya Rabb!” She pushed her old body off the ground in one motion. “I’ve got to get to the Fruit Seller’s Gate right now and warn her. Lord, help her! She’ll need to get away.” She turned to Zaytuna, pointing at her, “And you! If you breathe a word of this to your brother Tein, I’ll have Hajja Tansholpan write a curse against the two of you!” She turned and pushed aside the thin curtain to her room to grab her sandals and robe. Dragging it on over her qamis and sirwal, she belted it and strode out to the passageway.

  Layla came over, tablet under one arm, as Yulduz pushed past her. “What’s wrong with Auntie Yulduz?”

  “A friend of hers may be in trouble with the police.”

  Layla took Zaytuna’s hand and shook it. “She should let you take care of it, Auntie. You can set anything right.”

  Saliha said, “Layla, go into my room. There is a bag of coin in the box at the back, take a few fals and go get us some nuts, and a candy for yourself.”

  At the word “candy,” Layla nearly set off but then held firm and asked Zaytuna, “May I?”

  “Zay, I need to talk.” Saliha said.

  Zaytuna pushed Layla, “Go ahead and take your time.” Layla smiled and ran into Saliha’s room, then out again in a moment, and was out the passageway.

  Zaytuna reached across to her. “Tell me.”

  “It’s not only the murder, it’s your brother.”

  “Is anything wrong!”

  “No, no. I said he was there today. But, Zay, Tein and Judah were there.”

  Zaytuna grunted.

  “Don’t be mad! But I tried to make Tein jealous. I wanted to see if he loved me.”

  Zaytuna interrupted, “Love you! What are you playing at? You don’t love him. And what good would it do you, if you did? He’s a drunk. He still hurts from the death of our mother. He still hurts from the slaughter of his wife and child. He’s no good for loving a woman.”

  “I know he hurts!”

  “You think you can heal him? Saliha!” Zaytuna’s voice rose.

  Saliha retorted, “Well, you have nothing to worry about. He doesn’t love me. He didn’t react at all, no matter how I played Judah in front of him. But Judah, he reacted. He was jealous.”

  Zaytuna hit back, “Good, then go become a doctor’s wife and live under his jealous protection! I thought you’d had enough of marriage and men showing they love you by controlling you. Do you even remember how it was between you and Ayyub?”

  Saliha’s eyes narrowed and her voice became firm, “I remember exactly how it was. I don’t want to marry him. I don’t want to marry either one of them.”

  But Zaytuna wasn’t listening. Her objections became an angry flood, “How will it be for you when your doctor shows you he loves you by becoming angry if you look right or left? How is that going to work for you? You who cannot keep your eyes down!” She spat on the ground. “Must everything be possession for them? God is the Possessor of all things. This love is nothing but unbelief!”

  Saliha shrieked, “Enough!”

  “Enough? You…”

  She put her hand out, her palm facing Zaytuna. “Enough!”

  “When you show up here with a bruised face or arm from his loving jealousy, will you quote hadith that I’ll never accept to make me believe that the Prophet would have said that enduring the jealousy of men is a woman’s jihad? Is that how you want to gain martyrdom and paradise? Do you want to die at the hand of his ‘love’?”

  “You don’t understand!”

  “Fine then, Saliha. What don’t I understand?”

  “Tein saw me standing close to Judah. I saw him. He didn’t care. But Zaytuna,” her face fell, “I realized then that I cared.”

  Zaytuna muttered, “God protect you from your own foolishness.”

  Chapter Six

  The enslaved girl was still being held in Ammar’s office. If Ammar had his way, she would have been in the cells beneath them by now. She had slept for a time curled up, her face buried in a rough linen pillow on the back of one of the wide low couches edging the room.

  Tein knew too well how terror wears its way through to exhaustion. Now she was awake, sitting up straight, her hands gripping the edge of the couch. She had unwound her wrap from underneath her arms and had pulled it around herself like a blanket. It was thin and faded with a deeply frayed embroidered edge, a long ago hand-me-down from her employer, no doubt, and not warm enough for the weather. Her head scarf was newer, but it was a short length of purple with barely enough to tie back at the nape of her neck. Tein didn’t think she had much hair with the way it was pulled close around her head. Her skin was a deep, shining black, like obsidian, and adorned with small scars down her nose and across her cheekbones. Her eyes were on fire. Her mouth was a tight frown. Tein wanted to take her hand. He wanted to reassure her but he couldn’t. He needed to know what she’d done. She wasn’t the first person sitting on that couch trapped between fury and fear. He never knew what would come of it. Some burned in silence; others blew to pieces, falling apart and admitting everything or coming at them in one last desperate act of violence.

  Ammar sat forward. “Tell us what happened.”

  “I killed him.”

  Tein felt sick.

  “How did you do it?”

  “I bought a talisman and put it on him. An ifrit came and killed him.”

  Tein shot up. This was unexpected. The wife’s superstitious claim repeated as if it were true! He threw his hand out in a gesture of objection at Ammar. “What’s this story? That’s not a confession; it’s a fantasy!”

  Mu’mina swung around on him, “You talk to me! I know what I did. I killed him.”

  “You don’t understand,” Tein objected. “You only put a talisman on him.”

  Her voice was hard, her stance immovable, “I know what I did.”

  Ammar shot Tein a look, then asked the girl, “Why did you want to kill him?”

  “He raped me.”

  “You’re his slave,” Ammar said. “He has the right to have sex with you.”

  “Yes, I killed him.”

  Ammar stood up and said to Tein, “That’s it, then. I’m going to Ibn Marwan to let him know and get a scribe. You stay here.”

  Tein stood up and moved to get in the way of the door so he couldn’t leave. “You can’t take this to him yet. That’s no confession!”

  Ammar sighed at him but took a step back. “You just heard what I did. She confessed.”

  She said again, now almost pleading, “I killed him.”

  Tein looked past Ammar to Mu’mina, sitting on the couch, her hands still gripping its edge, and all the provocation drained from him. “You don’t understand what you’ve done.”

  “Watch her, I’ll be back.” Ammar walked around him.

  Tein looked down at her. “You may die.”

  “Alhamdulillah,” she said, as if gratitude to be executed were a thing he should understand.

  He replied in angry frustration, “You may not die. Sometimes they execute slaves. Sometimes they don’t. In that case, you’ll rot in prison. Is that what you want?”

  She turned her face from him.

  Tein forced himself to step out of the room to keep from grabbing her and shaking her. He shut the door slowly and firmly to keep himself from ripping it off its hinges, and then leaned against the shut door, forcing himself to take hold of his anger and frustration. He wrestled his anger down, like Uncle Nuri taught him, keeping a tight grip on it. Once it stopped moving, he allowed himself a deep breath. Then another. It stayed down. He began to feel his muscles lose their readiness to fight. He pushed himself away from the door and looked down the arcade.

  It didn’t take long for Ammar to emerge from his sergeant’s office. When Ammar caught sight of h
im standing there, Tein could see from his expression that the matter was closed. His anger began to rise again. He stepped on the neck of it before it could get too far.

  A short, fat man with a stubby black turban had followed Ammar out of the office. Ammar approached saying, “Ibn Marwan wants Ben Haddad here to get her confession down. Afterwards, you’ll bring her down to the holding cells until we can get her before the Chief of Police’s court for judgment and sentencing.”

  Tein objected anyway, “Ammar, she’s confessed to buying a talisman to curse him, nothing more.”

  Ammar stopped in front of the door. “She admitted to killing him.” The scribe caught up to him, giving Tein a tired look. Ammar put his hand on the scribe’s shoulder. “Now move aside so Ben Hadad can get in there.”

  Instead of stepping aside, Tein stepped forward to push the scribe back away from the door, but he did not move. The rigid little shit held his ground, allowing the uncomfortable space between them to remain. The scribe said, sounding bored, “Let me by.”

  Tein gave it a moment longer, then moved, but just enough so Ben Hadad would have to walk around him to enter. The scribe sucked his teeth at him and went inside.

  “You actually believe an ifrit killed him?”

  “Tein, I don’t know what killed him. She could have poisoned him and is calling it a curse from that talisman to scare the rest of the family. What do you care if it was an ifrit or not? She confessed.”

  “We don’t know how he died. Shouldn’t we find out if she could have killed him? She must have wanted him dead. I get that. But someone else could have killed him. Maybe she thinks her wanting him dead did the job. Wanting isn’t a crime.”

  “The investigation was closed as soon as she confessed.”

  Not caring how Ammar took it, Tein said what he’d been thinking, “I was there. I saw you arranging with the doctor to claim it was illness if you couldn’t get a confession out of her. You don’t want to investigate this case. You don’t care who did it or who pays for it. You just want the paperwork tied up and move on.”

  Ammar widened his stance. “You’re imagining things. Why don’t you ask yourself why you’re defending her?”

  “You know what you’re doing,” Tein shifted his body just slightly, his shoulders back, his arms loose, yet flexed at his side. “You’re being a coward.”

  Ammar took a step toward him, hand on the hilt of his sword. “Watch yourself.”

  “She’s black, she’s a slave. She’s not important. The thought that she could call an ifrit scares you. She’ll rot down there to cover your fear.”

  “You’re right. She is black. She is a slave. No one cares about her. But tell me when you’ve ever seen me give up on a case because the person wasn’t important. Have I?”

  Tein wouldn’t answer.

  “Never, Tein.”

  “You are right now.”

  “I’m not going to accept or reject a confession because she’s a black slave.” Ammar relaxed his stance, giving Tein ground. “I’ll admit that she scares me. Look at her face. The scars her people put on her. These Africans. You think she doesn’t count spells on those to call up the jinn?”

  Tein took a step back to keep from laying his hands on Ammar. He wanted a drink. He wanted a jug of wine. He felt the kind of shame and betrayal that leads a man to kill and that can only be staved off by sitting in a dark corner of a tavern and not coming out again. This man was his friend. As much a brother to him as his childhood friend, Mustafa. Maybe more. He turned his face away from Ammar so he wouldn’t see how what he’d said had marked a friendship bonded in war over a decade ago. He silently demanded of him, Why aren’t you afraid of me? Am I so different? Does being half-Arab absolve me of being African, of being black? Is it because I have no scars? He couldn’t say it aloud. If he did, he didn’t know if he could keep from hurting him.

  Tein held himself together, bound between fury and sorrow, and argued for Mu’mina’s sake because that is all that could matter right now, “How are those scars any different from the tattoos of the Bedouin women? Are you afraid of them?”

  “A man died because she either had a spell put on him or got him cursed.” Ammar voice turned shrill, “What’s she going to do to us before she’s executed? What curses are going to come down on our heads? We have to finish this before she changes her mind and takes revenge on us, too.”

  Tein lost some of his grip on himself. “Nothing will fall on our heads! Talismans cannot kill people. They are paper with words folded over and sewn up in leather. Nothing more! Curses have no power. And there are no ifrit. Don’t you see, she’s innocent even if she believes she’s guilty?”

  “There we have it.”

  “Ammar, you are being irrational.”

  “Irrational? Because you don’t believe in what we all know to be true, we are irrational? What you believe is not my business. Tein, you’re a brother to me. But don’t let your beliefs get in the way of your police work.”

  Tein pushed down hard on his anger and the urge to laugh at the irony. He only allowed himself to take one step towards Ammar and said, “I won’t take her below.”

  Ammar stepped to the side away from him. “I’ll do it.”

  Tein took one more step, increasing the threat.

  Ammar sighed, took another step away. “What would it take to let this go?”

  He said, “Let me talk to her.”

  “You talk to her, then it’s done?”

  “If you listen, you’ll agree the case is still open.”

  The scribe walked out, paper in hand, and held it up to Ammar, saying, “Got it. I left the jail intake on your desk.”

  Tein’s anger gave way to fear as he watched Ben Hadad walk back to Ibn Marwan’s office.

  Ammar said, “It’s too late, Tein. What could change Ibn Marwan’s mind at this point? He, sure as God knows it, doesn’t care about a girl like that.”

  Tein pushed, “Let me try.”

  “Fine. But we also have to find the woman who wrote the talisman.”

  “What? What does she have to do with this?”

  “The talisman is the murder weapon. Ibn Marwan wants us to bring her in.”

  “You all are out of your minds, and a girl is going to be executed because of it!”

  Ammar crossed his arms. “If you really care about her, you are better off not challenging this. You think raising doubts about her confession is going to do her any good? She’s not going to be set free. She’s going to be put down into that cell, and she’s going to wait there until evidence comes to light that exonerates her. And Ibn Marwan has no intention of letting us investigate further.”

  “You can make it happen!”

  “No. We already have another case waiting, a butcher was found standing over a dead body. He confessed to the night watchman, but someone else has come forward and said they did it instead. We’ve got to sort out that mess.”

  “Let me talk to her.”

  Ammar opened the office door. “Be my guest.”

  Tein pushed past him. Ammar followed and sat at the edge of the room looking at the girl.

  She looked right back and burned. Every cell in Mu’mina’s body was on fire, screaming rage and fear. She held it in but wanted nothing more than to burn this place down. The Black One came in and sat so that he faced her. She looked over at the Arab. He sat further away, watching her, but watching the Black One, too. The Arab Master is going to let The Black One speak. She began to shake.

  The Black One cleared his throat, “I need to ask you a few more questions.”

  She clenched her jaw. She would not speak.

  He asked, “Your name is Mu’mina?”

  She wanted to spit in his face.

  “My name is Tein.”

  She mocked him, “I heard him call you that. It is an insulting name. A man named Fig. A big man like you lets that little one there call you twat?”

  The Twat laughed as if he didn’t feel the insult. But why would h
e? He can do with me as he likes. I die or do not die at his hand.

  He smiled at her, trying to seem kind. As if she had not seen this before. “My mother gave me that name. It is from a verse in the Qur’an that she loved, 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. My twin sister is named Zaytuna.”

  “Your mother named you Twat?” She asked, letting the fire of her rage play on her tongue. She saw him wince, just slightly. That hurt him. She wanted to hurt him more. Destroy him and that Arab.

  He said, “Your accent. I can’t place it.”

  “Why would you? You’re African but are no better than an Arab.”

  “I’m Nubian, but my father was Arab.”

  She retorted, “That is no excuse.”

  “Maybe not.”

  She held herself down, gripping the edges of the couch.

  “Your parents, did they adorn you with that…,” he traced on his own face the design of the scars across her cheeks and down her forehead and nose, “…before you left them? Or did you do it?”

  He had no right to know. She kept herself from touching the marks her mother gave her before she was sold away from her parents and made so their people would know her as one of their own if she could free herself and find her way back home. She knew where to go. South through Egypt, then hold fast to the coast.

  “When were you sold to Imam Hashim?”

  She repeated all they had a right to know, “I killed him.”

  The Twat asked again, “How long has Imam Hashim owned you?”

  Clenching her jaw, she held her mouth shut tight. She watched them.

  He leaned into her. “If you want to die, I need to know. You must answer these questions. We cannot let you die without them. These are the rules.”

  She began to shake like a seed on a hot skillet.

  She felt a soft touch, then arms surround her, holding her. A cool stream washed through her. Her fire tried to boil it away. It hissed, steaming, but the cool water kept flowing, replenishing what was lost. There was no end to it. She closed her eyes, reached up, and put her hands on the arms, leaning her head into the embrace, and heard a whisper in her ear, Tell him, Mwana. You will find your way home. She opened her eyes, lifted her head, and pushed away the arms holding her. She burned. “No.”