The Emerald Embrace Read online

  Her jawline shook. Her proud expression cracked. She looked very young. Very ashamed. And in that minute an odd empathy trapped me.

  She was being shipped home in rejection. Arrogant in her royalty, she had never been rejected before. In her pain, she lashed out as any wounded creature does. A snake spits venom. The princess’s weapon was cruelty. How could I blame her for being as nature intended?

  “Princess,” I said in a quiet voice, “I would happily trade with you. With all my heart, I wish I could go home.”

  She had regained her contemptuous expression. “I doubt that, slave.”

  “It’s true.”

  Her eyes flashed, twin ebony glints below black lines. “You are my enemy. The child is my enemy. All your children and descendants are my enemies. And if I remarry and bear children, they will avenge me through the generations.”

  With that she wrapped the crimson velvet pelisse about herself, turned and strode off along the pillared walkway, her servants hurrying after her.

  I had been threatened, melodramatically, with one of those hot, endless Eastern vendettas, yet as I watched the princess disappear, I wasn’t worried about it.

  Indeed, I wasn’t thinking at all. In my stomach was a liquid thrust, not painful, yet bewildering. I stood still, waiting.

  Again I felt that strange movement.

  My lips formed a rapt smile, as I hurried across the windswept, autumnal courtyard into the pruned-back rose gardens to inform Lullah Zuleika, my dearest friend, my mentor, that I had felt the quickening of her husband’s baby.

  Eighteen

  “Make way for the midwife,” voices called to the beat of drums and tinkle of tambourines. “Make way for the midwife.”

  I stood, swollen and a week overdue, watching as the procession wound into my apartment.

  First came the harem midwife, her two assistants bearing the delivery chair, which was adorned with white henna flowers. Servants banged on their instruments. The Syrian kadines, the concubines and one of the Pasha’s daughters-in-law beamed down on me, each wishing me an easy delivery. Lullah Zuleika, swathed in chartreuse satin, brought up the rear, the place of honor normally reserved for the grandmother-to-be.

  An hour earlier, my water had broken and Uisha had run for the midwife. Though I had no pain yet, my nerves were on edge, for a hamseen, as hot desert winds are called, swirled through Cairo. Shrubbery rattled incessantly and the red of late afternoon sunlight cut through the pierced jalousies.

  The procession milled about me, high voices joyously chanting.

  The midwife bowed. “I beg to bring forth your child,” she said. “Permit me this privilege, oh hidden jewel, oh gracious Little Kadine.”

  Two months ago, as the princess had predicted, I had become the fourth wife. On a chill November morning the Pasha had taken me, veiled, to his palace and there, in the presence of his oldest sons, Ibraham and Ismail, sturdily handsome young men with Lullah Zuleika’s kind eyes, I had said, “I give myself up unto thee.” And with this our marriage was binding.

  I had been grateful that my child would be legitimate, and once we were alone in my apartment, I had told the Pasha so. He retorted with malicious wit, and I knew my thanks had angered him. But why my simple gratitude roused his retaliatory gibes, I did not know. Everything about him seemed so arbitrary. Even my own emotions toward him.

  Of course I didn’t love him—love was reserved for Stephen. But other than my gratitude, unexpressed, and traces of fear, I never could understand what, exactly, I felt for the Pasha.

  On the rare nights that passion overcame me, he responded with amatory skill and endurance. He irritated me, roused me to laughter and made me turn crimson with fury. He overwhelmed me, this man who was carving himself the largest empire on earth and was ruling his lands as a benevolent dictator.

  “Loo, loo, loo,” fluttered the treble voices, starting a fresh song. The delivery chair was set down and each woman added to the heap of confections meant to sweeten my labor.

  Such a prebirth celebration was traditional in Egyptian harems. The men had no part in it. The Pasha, now like every other new father, was banned from the harem for eight days, starting with the onset of labor.

  The procession wound out of the antechamber. A Syrian kadine, the last person to leave, called, “Remember to breathe deeply. That helps the worst pains.”

  I thanked her and Uisha closed the door. She, two of my other servants, the midwife with her assistants and Lullah Zuleika remained. In the comparative quiet, the hamseen again was audible.

  The midwife bowed. Her long face was wrinkled, with a wen above the nose. “My lady,” she said, “let me see how you’re progressing.” She helped me into the flower-hung delivery chair, which resembled a chaise lounge except for the stirrup-like straps at the foot. Her gentle probing lasted several minutes. “The labor will begin soon,” she announced.

  At this Lullah Zuleika removed her festive satin robe, opening boxes to distribute streamers, ordering the servants to nail them above doors and windows.

  “Hanging verses of the Koran at every entry bars the djins who live off the breath of women in labor,” she explained.

  To further exclude such djins, she sprinkled a line of salt at each window ledge and across every threshold. The draft scattered white grains. Lullah Zuleika, an earnest expression on her face, dripped water from a Persian bowl. Melted salt, she said, was better than no salt at all. She acted from the heart, and the next time she passed the delivery chair, I reached up to hug her.

  “Thank you, Lullah Zuleika,” I said.

  “You’re a good, brave girl,” she replied. “Too brave, so you need someone to protect you. If your godmother were here, she’d be doing this.”

  Mrs. Yarby would have been the last one to encircle me with superstition—yet she couldn’t have been kinder than Lullah Zuleika.

  “Where’s that glass necklace?” she asked.

  Knowing her fear of antiquities, I’d sent my collection of ancient Egyptian things away. “In the Pasha’s suite,” I said.

  And as I spoke, my first pain began, spreading from the small of my back to harden my stomach. Sweat broke out on my forehead, and I dug my nails into my palms. The midwife pressed me forward, massaging my back. “Is that better, gracious Little Kadine?”

  The pain loosened its grip and I smiled my gratitude.

  I didn’t smile much from then on. The pains grew closer, and then harder. Lanterns were lit and their windblown flames cast ominous shadows. Through that long night Lullah Zuleika stayed by my side. At the conclusion of each pain, I would gabble of my home, the shelves of books in our shabby parlor and my father. Lullah Zuleika had no idea of the life I described, yet, wiping my face with damp, scented towels, she nodded understandingly.

  A terrible tearing, worse than any other, ripped me apart. Beyond the shutters a faint light showed and the hamseen blew shreds of sound, the distant cries of a muezzin. There was a feral odor of blood and excreta.

  A sharp mewling cry!

  And with that the door burst open.

  “Is she all right?” the Pasha demanded.

  “What are you doing here?” Lullah Zuleika cried.

  “I’ve been waiting endless hours in the antechamber.”

  “Pasha, you shouldn’t be in the harem!” Speeding across the room with the determination of a plump dove defending her nestlings, Lullah Zuleika risked the capricious anger of the one she adored and respected. “Djins perilous to the child are clinging to you!”

  But the Pasha strode to the foot of the delivery chair. “Forget those fairy stories, Lullah Zuleika. They don’t apply to this one. He’s of different stock. Naksh, we have a son.”

  The midwife sponged the infant with oil, wrapping him in softest cotton, and the Pasha himself carried him to me.

  Unfocusing blue eyes gazed around.

  I forgot the loss of my home and my lover, forgot the loneliness of exile, forgot the terrifying night of conception, the danger
s that had beset me in the harem, forgot my night of labor. A sweet pain clutched my heart. “How perfect he is,” I said. “He’s got eyelashes. And his nails even have half-moons.”

  The Pasha’s eyes were wet as mine. His thumb stroked the pale, damp hair on the throbbing skull.

  He was not a religious man, indeed he often mocked organized faiths. I had never seen him pray. But he placed our son in my arms, and then faced east toward Mecca, standing, bowing, kneeling, prostrating himself in the ritual of prayer.

  When he rose, Lullah Zuleika was beaming down at the baby, who now slept in a cotton-lined gold basket. “What name will you give your new son?” she inquired.

  “David,” I replied, usurping the Pasha’s privilege. My family had a great many Davids.

  “Daood,” the Pasha said, rolling the Islamic version of the name in his mouth. “Yes. David. It’s a good, strong name for this mighty warrior.” He smiled down at the sleeping blond infant. “Welcome, David, welcome, my son.”

  And with these words the baby—with the Pasha and me—became tangled in the intersecting strands of two webs, one stretching across Islam, and the other reaching into the misty dawn of time.

  THREE

  The Nile

  One

  David wriggled as I fastened his little cloth-of-gold robe. Clothing of any kind was an irritation to him on the hot August afternoon, and he let me know it. At two years and eight months he was a sweet, sturdily assertive child.

  “Scratches,” he announced, pulling at the embroidered collar with both hands. “Mama, I don’t want.”

  “But you must look very smart today,” I said. “At the Nile Festival everybody will be watching you.” The ritual of breaking the earth dams to permit the flooding Nile to enter irrigation canals is Egypt’s most important holiday, and all of Cairo would be at the two-day celebration.

  I moved David’s protesting hands from the glittering fabric. His blue eyes widened in anger, his mouth opened as if to argue, showing white milk teeth. Suddenly, one brow shot up, a gesture he had inherited from his father along with a sense of humor. He began to laugh. The clear, happy sound brought an ache of too poignant love into my throat.

  Pulling from my grasp, David stood, his plump legs wide apart. “Father says I ride Almanack.”

  I kept silent, not wishing to start another argument, but I was positive that the Pasha had said no such thing. Almanack was the pride of David’s life, a small, docile brown pony with a long silken mane and a tail braided with crimson ribbons. On him, David would circle the Citadel courtyard led by a groom, a half brother, or the Pasha himself—David never hesitated to order the ruler of Egypt to make the pretty animal go more quickly.

  Though the Pasha took care not to neglect his other children, it was universally acknowledged—without jealousy—that his youngest child was his favorite.

  David drew love on every side.

  From the first morning, the Syrian kadines had leaned over his cradle, singing their pretty, minor-key lullabies. The concubines were forever showing him off to their guests. His older half brothers and sisters treated him as a pet. The servants doted on him. And Lullah Zuleika spent her free time cuddling him on her ample lap.

  Such open spoiling is commonplace in Egypt, and though I had been raised in a country where parental affection is tempered with sternness, I could see no ill effects. David was an open, affectionate, good child—even if he did have a will of his own.

  Uisha came in carrying his pointed red leather shoes. The Pasha, at my request, had freed the dignified mute, and she received wages for helping me tend David—of all the harem children, David alone had no personal servants.

  As I was adjusting his gold-tasseled fez, the door swung open for Lullah Zuleika. To attend the Nile Festival the Great Kadine wore heavy ropes of diamonds over her brightest clothing, canary yellow trousers and a vivid purple tunic glowing with huge pearls. The servant trailing her carried the black and white outer garments.

  “Lullah! Lullah!” David cried, throwing himself at her.

  She knelt, hugging him to her sandalwood-scented bosom. “How handsome you look, darling. I’m so proud of you. Will you salute our tent?”

  “A hundred hundred times,” David promised. He had spoken English to me, but now he switched to Arabic with the pure Egyptian accent that is considered Islam’s most beautiful. “I riding next to Father.”

  “Of course you are, David,” she beamed, producing a honeyed date for him. “All the Pasha’s sons ride with him at the Nile Festival.”

  “On Almanack,” he asserted proudly.

  She shot me a worried glance. Certain that David had misunderstood his father, I shook my head reassuringly.

  She turned the little fez. “Where’s the amulet?” she inquired. She personally had sewn a gold charm on each of David’s caps, to protect him from the evil eye so feared in the East.

  “It must have fallen off,” I said. And was about to ask Uisha for another cap when the door opened again.

  It was the Pasha.

  David squirmed from Lullah Zuleika’s embrace, running to his father, who bent, arms outstretched. David hugged the Pasha, shoving awry the tall green turban. (Green is the sacred color of Islam and none save the hajji, those who have made the pilgrimage to Mecca, may wear a green turban. The Pasha had more than traveled to the holy city. He had defended it. And now it was part of his territory. Never a man to vaunt his accomplishments, though, he wore a green turban only when state occasions demanded it.)

  Lifting David, the Pasha came to kiss first the Great Kadine’s cheek, then mine. David copied, bestowing equally impartial date-scented kisses on us.

  “I riding Almanack,” he said to his father.

  “Not today,” replied the Pasha.

  “You promised!” David said hotly. He seemed to have settled the matter in his mind.

  “I said that one of my captains would share his saddle with you. A horse is much taller than Almanack. You’ll see more.”

  “Rus and Haroun ride alone,” David argued. The twin sons of the younger Syrian kadine were his favorite playmates.

  “Rus and Haroun are already circumcised. They’re almost seven,” the Pasha said. “They didn’t ride alone in the Nile Festival until they were five.”

  “Five!”

  “Well, maybe you can when you’re four.”

  “Now!” David shouted.

  At this small display of spirit, the Pasha chuckled. “How can I promote you, my little soldier, to four when you aren’t yet three?”

  David was fighting back tears of disappointment. “Father … want to ride like you do.”

  The Pasha set David down, squatting on his level, saying in a serious tone, “On the way to the courtyard we’ll discuss the matter.”

  “You aren’t going to permit it?” Lullah Zuleika’s voice rang with grandmotherly alarm.

  “Of course he isn’t,” I murmured.

  The Pasha, still squatting, looked up at me. “You know my mind, Naksh, so you can see how baffled I am. Is it more perilous to be led on a pony or to be held on a saddle?”

  The Pasha still teased me and I still responded with irritation.

  I snapped, “He’s never ridden outside the Citadel walls!”

  “Is that so?” asked the Pasha, who was well aware of the fact. “Well, that tilts the scales. Aren’t you forever telling me that in the West a good father tempers his love with severity? Isn’t this hazardous journey on Almanack the very thing to harden David?”

  “This isn’t what I mean, and you know it.”

  The Pasha was grinning at me. All at once I smiled back. His ability to joke about David’s welfare bewildered me, yet he loved the little boy as much as I and—as he had just reminded me—guarded over David even more zealously.

  David’s lips parted to show his charmingly gapped milk teeth as he stared hopefully at his father.

  The Pasha winked. “We better hurry to make sure the guards have saddled our mounts.
”

  “I ride!”

  “Next to me,” the Pasha said, taking his hand. “Ladies, the general will return to the harem tent for his nap.”

  After they left, as we were being helped on with our outer garments, Lullah Zuleika turned to me. “We forgot David’s amulet,” she cried. Above the face veil, her kohl-rimmed eyes were agonized.

  “It’s all right, Lullah Zuleika,” I soothed. “The Pasha will watch out for him.”

  “Nothing human can ward off the evil eye,” she said. “You’ve told me about your land. It’s new and fresh. How can you understand the ancient power of spirits and djins?” She rested her plump, beringed hand on my arm. “The children that are uniquely beautiful, like our David, need the most protection.”

  Fear cut into me.

  In the past years, my attitude toward Lullah Zuleika’s beliefs had undergone a profound revision. I no longer considered her superstitious. Rather, I believed her a vastly wise woman, possessed of truths unknown to my world. There is far more under heaven than can be explained by Western reason, and this had been proven to me, amply, by the Emerald Embrace.

  Though I’d had no further visions of the blond woman, I knew that her love had outlasted the millennia, and through the necklace spasmodically touched my own deadened desires. Occasionally, I would consider ridding myself of the magnificent collar, but I never pursued the idea. In fact, I was more attached to it than ever and no longer hid it from Lullah Zuleika.

  I was wearing it under my robes as I followed her outside. In the blazing August sunlight I felt a trifle foolish worrying about David’s missing amulet—but that didn’t halt my anxiety.

  Two

  Egypt is virtually rainless. The Nile waters the crops, and so the years when the flood is high, the fellaheen rejoice. When the rise is meager, they go hungry. Each June dikes are thrown up at the mouths of irrigation canals, forcing the river to rise within its banks. The earthen walls are broken in August at the Nile Festival. In Cairo the Pasha presides over the breaking of the mighty Khalag Canal dam.