Mad, Bad & Dangerous to Know

by Samira Ahmed

  “You know what they say: le cœur a ses raisons que le raison ne connaît point.”

  “The heart has its reasons that reason cannot know?” I smirk. It hits a little too close to home. Like, why do I still want to kiss Alexandre even when I’m mad at him? And why can’t I stop wanting to text Zaid when I think I’ve already shut that door?

  “The heart is a mystery.” It’s too dark to see Alexandre’s expression clearly, but I hear the softness in his voice.

  “Don’t you think there’s a funny contradiction in French culture? It’s all about reason and logic except when it comes to love.”

  “There is no logic to love. So I don’t see the contradiction,” Alexandre responds flatly, and it’s hard to tell if he’s serious or joking. Could legit be either one.

  Now seems like an excellent time to change the subject. “Gautier said there was a hidden panel, right? Or door?” I circle the room with light from my phone, trying to keep it away from the windows. It’s a risk using the lights, and my shaky hands remind me not to press our luck, but we need to get a closer look. The walls are all panels—rows of intricately painted flowers and elegant carvings of cherubs and garlands of ivy and rosettes along the edges where the wall meets the ceiling. It’s faded glory—the frescoes cracked and broken, paint peeling, the gilt borders tarnished, and bits of glass missing from dusty, ornate chandeliers.

  “The only door in this room besides the entrance is to that tiny closet we hid in.”

  Alexandre chuckles. “Oh, I remember that very well.”

  He’s not helping make the situation less awkward. What’s more, he clearly doesn’t want to.

  I ignore his leading comment. “Maybe one of these panels is the panel. We need to see if any of them have doorknobs or keyholes.”

  We start at the far end of the room. I move in to get a closer look, crouching to examine the length of each panel while Alexandre guides his light over the surface. There are no keyholes anywhere. Gautier didn’t give any more specifics about the hidden door Leila emerged from. But maybe . . . I straighten up. Like so many things in this mystery, sometimes the meaning behind a thing isn’t what it seems at first.

  “Hey, what exact word did Gautier use again? To describe the door Leila went into?”

  Alexandre scrolls through his phone, a few seconds that feel like forever. “Cachaient. Meaning something is concealing the door.”

  Two floor-to-ceiling tapestries hang against the wide wall at the back of the room. “Something like one of those, maybe?”

  We grin at each other. I have a sudden urge to pull the tapestries down, but I don’t want to destroy any other French antiques. I step closer to one, examining the worn threadwork and fading forest scene, trying to figure out a way to handle it with care, like all lost things deserve. I decide to slip behind it, giving rise to plumes of dust that make me cough. The thick fabric feels heavy against my back. I run my fingers along the wall, feeling for a door.

  I hear Alexandre walking on the other side of the tapestry, then a gasp, and a metallic squeak. The tapestry slides off my back along the wall. I whip around, and Alexandre points to the ceiling—the tapestry is attached to a heavy rod with metal rings like a drape. An easy way to hide a door. I step back. There’s no keyhole anywhere. No doorknob. We begin running our hands over the entire wall, pushing the panels, but nothing gives.

  Then my finger catches on the edge of one of the panels. Alexandre shines his light on it. A narrow pocket door. I catch my breath, fit the pads of my fingers in a tiny grooved indentation along the side, and pull.

  The panel groans and creaks and slides into the wall—a low, slim door, big enough for one person to squeeze through.

  The room behind the pocket door is tiny and spare, furnished only with a narrow bed and thin bare mattress, a nondescript side table, and a small slanted, wooden writing desk tucked up under the only window in the room. It’s almost painfully austere. I can’t say for sure this was Leila’s, but I want it to be so much that I’m willing to believe it is based on one line in an article and my gut feeling. It’s not exactly sound science.

  “It’s like a nun’s room,” I whisper.

  Alexandre shakes his head. “No. It’s a prisoner’s room. It’s like the room in The Man in the Iron Mask.”

  “Who’s that?”

  “Dumas wrote about him in the last Musketeers novel—the king’s twin, imprisoned for his whole life, so he wouldn’t challenge him for the throne. He was forced to wear a mask to hide his true identity. When we first meet him in Dumas’s story, the prisoner is in a sparse room in the Bastille, and there’s a wooden desk tucked up under the only window.” Alexandre points to the desk under the small, dirty window.

  “Oh my God,” I whisper. “When was it written?”

  “1847? 1850? It was a serial based on a true story from the 1600s, except that, even now, we don’t know the true identity of the man in the iron mask.” He runs his hand through his wavy hair.

  “I know,” I say, my pulse starting to pound in my ears. “The timing. He would’ve been writing it when he knew Leila. He could have seen this place. This could be her room.”

  I walk the length of this tiny cell of a room in about ten paces. There’s not a lot to look at: bare floor, bare window, bare walls. I’m caught by a stitch of sadness. If this was Leila’s room—and I want to believe that—it’s almost painful to imagine her living like this. How did she survive? Money from tarot readings and séances? That could hardly have been enough. There are too many dots that we can’t connect and maybe never will.

  I sigh loudly.

  “What’s wrong?” Alexandre asks. “Aren’t you happy we found this place? It matches Gautier’s description.”

  “I’m thrilled. Amazed.” I take a second to collect my thoughts. “But it’s infuriating that no matter what we find out about her, we’ll never know the whole story, or even half of it.”

  “It’s the cruel irony of being human.” Alexandre inches closer to me, so we’re almost touching. “We spend so much of our life trying to be known, only to be forgotten.”

  Alexandre’s assessment may be bleak, but it’s also true. One thing he’s forgetting, though? It’s not just the human condition because the histories that do remain, the people we remember? They’re almost all men. I watch as he crosses the room to the narrow bed and takes a seat, sending more dust into the air.

  I move to the window and trace the grooves in what could be Leila’s desk. Maybe she was a writer; maybe these marks are from the metal nibs of her fountain pens that bore the weight of her loneliness and rage and passion. You must’ve had stories to tell, Leila. I wish I could’ve heard them.

  I hear a soft thud behind me. When I turn, I see Alexandre on his knees reaching under the bed. “I kicked something with the back of my heel,” he says, then pulls out what looks like an extra-large cigar box—thin, rectangular, wooden. I sit down next to him, resting my hand on his shoulder. The box opens with a little creak of its hinges.

  The first thing I see is a dagger.

  Alexandre delicately pulls it out from its sheath. The metal shines, luminescent, almost like moonlight under the beams from our phones. It has a sharp point and a sort of curved edge that backs into the handle that looks like it’s made of bone. Ivory, perhaps? There’s a word carved into the handle that I can’t decipher, written in what looks like Arabic or Persian or maybe even Urdu script.

  Beneath the dagger are papers. I leaf through a few—receipts, tickets of some sort. Some of them were probably written in pencil because they’re not even legible. I hand Alexandre half the pile. He gasps. “It’s an invitation to a housewarming party—the opening of the Château de Monte-Cristo.”

  As I look at the invitation over Alexandre’s shoulder, I stop short. Out of the corner of my eye, I spy a letter written in black ink at the bottom of the box.

&
nbsp; My gaze falls on the signature line: Ever yours, L.

  Leila

  The poet tries to hold me back, but a mere mortal cannot stop me. I tear through the air, ready to plunge the tip of my yataghan into Pasha’s heart, to cut it out and cast it into the sea.

  He dismounts. His mouth opens in a laugh so cruel seraphs weep.

  The earth rumbles at my feet, dust swirls around me, and I’m pushed back by a gale force. Shadows rise from the dirt, their eyes glowing yellow as they set toward Pasha, shifting into hordes of screaming hyenas. The ghul claw at him, sharp teeth ripping soft skin, devouring him. Perhaps he screams. Perhaps he pleads. But I refuse to hear his cries. He stole my life and my love. He will not command another second of my time.

  I fall to the ground, pounding my fists on the earth, remembering Si’la’s warning: I fear you will not escape wholly as yourself.

  My heart is cleaved and will never be rendered whole.

  “Rise, Leila. Leave this place.” Si’la’s voice is soft, but direct.

  “Strike me down; let my blood mingle in the earth with his,” I beg.

  “Your life has many tales yet to tell. I pray your Giaour is granted mercy as I pray for you.” Si’la cups my chin. She touches my opal, and its warmth courses through my body.

  I look up at Si’la. Leaving means losing her, too.

  “Go now. You must hurry,” she warns. “If you are found, the janissaries will be ruthless. You will carry his love in your heart always. And mine. May it be a balm for you in troubled times ahead. Peace be with you, little one.”

  “Goodbye, Si’la. I will never forget what you have done for me. Peace be with you on this day and all days.” I have no other words. They all catch in my throat.

  I stand and return to the poet. His eyes are filled with tears. I bend down and grasp my satchel, clutching it to my chest. The poet takes my hand, and we walk to the small skiff. We row in silence to the Salsette, where his men help us aboard.

  Khayyam

  I wake to the early morning light filtering through the windows in my living room. I sit up with a start, and then sink back into the sofa, rubbing my dry, scratchy eyes. My neck hurts, and I could barely sleep—too many feelings about what we found last night, too much catastrophizing about what could go wrong. I turn to the soft snoring next to me. Alexandre’s body is half curled into a comma, long legs extended, eyes gently closed. He nodded off a few hours ago. Somehow, despite everything, he looks peaceful, unbothered.

  I honestly can’t imagine the position he’s in—the weight of history and family burdens he’s carrying. I’ve tried, but I can’t stay angry with him. He lied to me and made stupid choices to save his family. But what keeps coming around to kick me in the ass is that I lied, too—to save myself. I’m too tired to be mad. It’s too exhausting to stay angry. It feels too hypocritical. I might not be ready to forgive him completely, but maybe Alexandre deserves a second chance. Maybe I do, too.

  We haven’t kissed since before the drama outside Shakespeare & Company, but I can’t ignore the times we’ve almost kissed since then or how the space between us crackles with possibility. We’re in orbit around each other, and it’s taking a lot of energy to make sure we don’t collide and burn up. I can’t deny it would be nice to nestle into his arms and close my eyes and let the world drift away for a few silent hours. But I’m not ready to let my guard down again.

  My eyes fall on the ornate blade in its sheath atop the papers we found last night. Only one of the notes was legible, but that was enough for me to connect some of the dots. The dark fairy tale come to life—death and blood and an enslaved harem girl, fighting to live the life she wanted. It’s the Giaour and the Pasha and Leila, at her most exposed and heartbreaking. It’s Leila speaking for herself.

  July 10, 1845

  My Eternal Love,

  Think me not unfaithful, though I undertook to write to you yearly on the anniversary when we were parted. In this endeavor I have failed, yet in my vow to remain true—to live and live only for you—I have not wavered. More than three decades have passed since Pasha’s kilij struck you down and cleaved my heart in one fell swoop. Every day I have prayed for you, that God grant you a place in jannah.

  Time has been kind to me, though I fear you would no longer recognize me should you, through some miracle, walk through this door. My hair is grayer, and wrinkles meet my eyes when I smile; my smiles are but a shadow of the joy I shared with you. Though it came at too high a price, your youth is eternal in my mind’s eye. The soft waves of your black hair bear no hint of age, and the flecks of gold in your eyes, those warm eyes, dance as they did thousands of nights ago in our courtyard of hollowed trees. Hallowed trees. I have promised myself not to mourn you all my days, yet to hold you fondly in remembrance, but my love, I must confess, it is difficult, and with each passing day, you grow more distant from me.

  There is little luxury of the harem here. But I do not long for it. A cage, though gilded, is still a cage. And here I am free. The old woman who took me under her wing passed some years hence but left me a small living. And while I long ago sold the jewels that accompanied me on this voyage, living frugally has allowed me to reap, even still, some benefit from those gifts. How it pleases me to know that my easy disposal of those jewels would anger Pasha.

  But I have built this life from almost nothing and without regret. I have scraped together a material living using my wiles, learning to navigate this world of men even as I did the world of men back home. It is a simple life, but it is mine.

  The poet, too, died some time ago. Though we were little in touch, I felt his passing most deeply—the last unwitting connection to home. He was a petulant child and selfish and also beautiful and daring. And ever one who lived freely. As of late, I have fallen into favor with a group of French writers and artists. Using skills and arts I learned in the harem and in my travels, I read their fortunes, and, when on occasions they take hashish in their coffee and wish to commune with spirits and find their muses, I am at their service. I can only imagine how you and I could have laughed at their folly together. For this amusement, I am given a modest room in a once-opulent hôtel particulier that has seen better days. As have we all.

  There is one in particular, a novelist, with whom I have been passing the time, and he quite pleases me. He has a round face and wild, unkempt hair and a mirthful mouth. And his stories amuse and fascinate me. Alexandre woos me with words and long letters professing his love. But he knows my heart. When I told him our tale, so different from the fiction the poet created in your name, Alexandre bade me—nay, challenged me—to put pen to paper and tell my own story, that the truth would be known. Perhaps I will, so that when my memory fails me, as it will almost certainly, I may gaze upon those words, and within them, you and I will live once more as we were. Star cross’d yet also young and beautiful and alive and in love. With an emotion so rapturous and pure, jinn and angel alike surely wept when we were parted.

  It is late, my love, and the candle is nearly at its end. Tonight, I burn sandalwood incense in your memory. I pray its perfume wafts me to sleep that I may dream of you. And now as I do each evening, I whisper my goodbye to you: My love, may our separation be brief. May our paths join again at water’s edge. May God keep you always in his care.

  Ever yours,

  Alexandre and I read it over and over last night, but rereading it this morning, there’s still a lump in my throat. I’m sad, but it’s more than that. I barged right into someone’s most sacred, intimate moment and didn’t even bother to ask permission. Leila’s note was private—a wish, a prayer, a confession to a lover long gone. There is obviously an amazing essay in here that I’m sure would blow away the Art Institute judges, but there’s a quiet whisper in my mind telling me that we haven’t only been trespassing at the hôtel; we’ve been trespassing on someone’s life, too. Is Leila’s life my story to tell?

  Alexa
ndre shifts in his sleep.

  I think about his family and how afraid they must be of what they might lose. How the possibility of finding a missing Delacroix carries a kind of burden for him that it doesn’t for me. He’s trying to save his legacy; I’m trying to build my future. And the fact of the matter is, I have more options than him, more chances. It wasn’t coincidence that brought us together; it was his uncle. But somehow when he reached for the past while I grasped for the future, our hands linked and formed a circle.

  I get up and stretch, then pad into the kitchen to start some coffee. The smoky, nutty smell swirls through the room, and slants of bright light fill the apartment, rousing Alexandre from his sleep.

  He twitches, yawns, and pulls himself up from the sofa. “How long was I asleep? You could’ve woken me,” he says in a gravelly morning voice and runs his fingers through his messy hair.

  “A few hours. And it’s okay; one of us deserved some beauty sleep.”

  He smiles, reaching for his phone. “I’m the only one in this room that needs it.” Then he crosses the room, excusing himself to freshen up.

  I realize I haven’t looked in the mirror, so I quickly splash some water on my face from the kitchen sink and finger-comb my hair. I’m relying on this coffee to take away my morning breath, so I add an extra cube of sugar and whirl it around with milk and take a big gulp before Alexandre comes out.

  When he reemerges, he walks to the kitchen and drapes himself across the bar. I’m distracted by his tousled bedhead that somehow makes him more attractive. But I snap out of it when he sets down his phone in front of me. “Check out this email. It’s the reason I wanted to go to the Château de Monte-Cristo. My uncle Gérard—” He catches himself and pales.

  I wince when he mentions his uncle—the one who hatched the whole Insta-stalker plan. I may have softened slightly toward Alexandre, but Gérard Dumas is still high on my shit list. I nod at Alexandre, giving him the silent okay to continue.