The Mapmaker's Daughter (25 page)

“I am,” I tell him, “and you must be Qasim.” I look to the girl. “And Zubiya.”

Qasim shrinks back—shy, perhaps because a stranger knows his name. Zubiya’s large, gray eyes look me over with the frank and open curiosity that is the prerogative of children. “Go with her, then,” the caliph says, shooing them away with a sweep of his hand. The children back away respectfully before turning to their attendant, who has come up to stand behind me.

“I am Ana, one of the children’s slaves,” she says. “Please come with me to the women’s quarters. The family is waiting to greet you.”

As we leave, I hear the rhythmic tapping of finger symbols and the slow beat of a drum. I turn to watch a few of the singing girls seat themselves cross-legged on the floor, their trousers billowing around them. The others have raised their hennaed hands and are swaying their hips in time to the drum, making slow twirls and dips as they sweep in front of the caliph.

A small hand slips into mine, and Zubiya looks up at me. “They’re very pretty, aren’t they? I wish I could dance like that.” Ana hisses faintly to quiet her.

“No one wants to teach me because the girls who do it are all slaves in the harem,” Zubiya goes on, ignoring her. “They say it wouldn’t be decent, but—” She gets up on tiptoes, and I bend down to hear her. “I dance in my room when no one is looking,” she whispers so close to my ear I can smell the scent of orange candy on her breath. “Would you like to watch me sometime?”

I smile at her, remembering my own youthful fantasies. “Very much,” I say.

We follow Ana through a courtyard bordered in myrtle bushes and taken up almost entirely by a reflecting pool. On the white walls, huge drapes of silk billow with every puff of air, and around the walkway, carpets and cushions are strewn for those who wish to linger. “Look,” Qasim says, the first words he has said since we left the caliph. He settles on his stomach at one end of the pool. “You have to get down low, or you can’t see it.”

“Oh, do!” Zubiya says, lying down next to her brother. I crouch and look across the pool, not wanting to appear undignified, but Qasim insists I get so low my cheek touches the ground. From that level, the building on the far end is reflected in the pool, down to every filigreed arch. “It seems so real,” I say.

“Real water,” he laughs, splashing his hand and destroying the illusion.

“Qasim!” Zubiya whines. “You spoil everything!”

We walk through more filigreed arches onto a patio Ana calls the Courtyard of the Lions. “The women and children live in the buildings around it,” she tells me as the children run ahead through an open entryway into a garden I can see just beyond.

In the entry, I hear whispers from the upper floor and look up to see several windows covered with lattices of carved wood. One of the shutters moves, and I know I’m being watched. Someone giggles, and a stern voice tells her to hush.

I climb the stairs to a walkway overlooking a garden enclosed on all sides by the apartments of the caliph’s chief wife and female relatives. I can see Qasim and Zubiya playing hide and seek among the sculpted bushes as Ana takes me around one corner and into a huge room.

Several women about my age come to greet me, but one who looks to be about fifty, whom I take to be Muhammad the Ninth’s chief wife, Mushtaq, stays in her chair. Another woman about ten years her junior stares at me before whispering something in Mushtaq’s ear.

“Ahlan wa-sahlan.” The first to reach me takes my hand with her delicate fingers. “I am Jawhara,” she says, “the mother of Qasim and Zubiya, and this is my friend Rayyan.”

“Ahlan biki,” I reply. “I’m pleased to meet you. Your children are truly charming.” A girl of around fourteen has been hiding behind them, and Rayyan gestures her forward. “Don’t be so shy, Noor,” she says. The girl looks up through dark lashes, and when she raises her face, I have to stop myself from gasping.

She is without a doubt the most beautiful human being I have ever seen. Her eyes are the same aquamarine as Jamil and Rashida’s, but her skin is much lighter, almost tawny in hue, and so flawless it is hard to resist reaching out to touch her cheek to see if it as cool and dewy as it looks. Her nose is narrow and straight and her lips, without a touch of added color, are so roselike I can imagine the scent of a summer garden on her breath.

“Fursa saeeda,” she says. “I am pleased to meet you.” I see a hint of color rise in her cheeks, and my heart goes out to her for being so painfully shy that even in the privacy of her home, she can barely manage to speak.

Jawhara and Rayyan bring me over to meet the chief wife and the other woman with her. Mushtaq smiles warmly, but I can see by the difficulty with which she shifts her weight in her chair that she is painfully afflicted in her joints.

“Introduce me, Noor,” the other woman commands in a brittle voice.

Noor’s cheeks color again. “May I present my mother, Tarab,” she says.

“Tarab is one of the caliph’s nieces,” Rayyan adds. “Our honored chief wife is her aunt.”

Tarab’s eyes remained locked on me. “Fursa saeeda,” I tell her. She nods and says nothing.

Jawhara takes me by the arm. “It’s almost time for dinner,” she says. “Would you like to see your quarters first, and the lesson room?”

My quarters? Prickles of sweat break out on my forehead. Why had I not asked about this before? I assumed Eliana and I would live by ourselves in town. Jamil can’t visit me here, not within reach of the prying eyes of people like Tarab. The thought turns my ribs into claws around my heart.

What has Jamil told them? Do they know about Eliana at all? Will these strangers be her family? Will Tarab bully her with her eyes as she has already done with me? I fight the urge to run downstairs, past the fountains and pools, through the gardens, beyond the outer walls, and back to Jamil’s house in the Albaicín. My mind races back further as I reverse Eliana’s and my journey until we are back in Queluz, safe in our own beds, as if none of this ever happened.

Jawhara stops at a closed door. “This is where you will stay,” she says, opening the latch. Like a sleepwalker imprisoned in a dream, I go inside.

17

VALENCIA 1492

I was wrong to fear the open door that beckoned me into my new life. What I walked into so blindly when I accepted the Caliph’s invitation to tutor his grandchildren was not easy and often unpleasant, but I remember the sounds, colors, and smells of Granada with greater vibrancy and clarity—and yes, happiness—than many of the things I have experienced since.

If I were standing at this moment in an orchard in bloom, the fragrance could not compete with what comes to me by shutting my eyes and remembering the gardens of the Alhambra. The palace, the city, the magnificent mountains at its back, and the fertile vegetation surrounding it were so intoxicating that everyone there believed that Paradise hovered just out of view.

It was wonderful to be alive in Granada, and I can’t imagine how those who trudge through life with downcast eyes would not feel moved to raise their faces to the sky and live more fully under that glorious sun. Still, I cannot linger too long taking in the phantom fragrances of the past, or let the city itself dance on my closed lids, without my mind going to darker things. Just as one thorn catching on a robe can tear the fabric beyond repair, remembering those years is like donning a cloak of as many colors as Joseph’s, and as tattered.

The street is quiet outside my room. The setting sun will not bring relief for hours yet. I’ve heard that living things put in a pot of cold water set on a fire will be unaware that the temperature is rising until it is on the verge of killing them. I take a deep breath and then another to reassure myself that there is still air here, that the house has not yet been encircled by a force that is stealing my life while I am inside this room reliving it.

No, the force that wants to kill me has no need of stealth. They parade their victims to the stake. They light the kindling and from that moment, the doomed can only pray that death will come quickly. What has the world come to that the most loving thing a family can do is to add straw and dry branches to the pyre to speed their loved one from this tortured world?

The self-appointed spokesmen for God will explain with sorrowful, pious eyes that they have done the victim a favor. Such purification leaves a chance for God’s mercy, however undeserved. “Who are we to know what God will do with the soul of the departed?” they ask, although there’s no other time they admit any uncertainty about what God is thinking.

Besides, they will be quick to point out, God forbids the shedding of human blood, except—conveniently—in war. Arms are torn from sockets and backs are broken on the rack, but there isn’t a mark on their bodies except the bites of vermin as victims are driven, or carried, to the stake. It’s spectacle the Inquisition wants, and it would be prepared to make the last two people in Spain a grisly audience for each other.

I pray for the dead. How many times have I stood in the women’s gallery at the synagogue and choked back tears at the words of the Amidah? “You support the falling, heal the sick, set free the bound, and keep faith with those who sleep in dust.” How many times have I wondered where that whispered prayer goes?

Perhaps nowhere. I tremble at how abandoned I may truly be. Alone in a universe without a God to hear me. Alone, even when surrounded by people, as I was in Granada.

But that isn’t how it felt at the beginning.

The dapple of light on shimmering veils…the voices of children…the scent of roses… I shut my eyes and surrender again to memory.

GRANADA 1455

“Try again,” I tell Zubiya. Scowling with concentration, she draws her finger over a simple, two-line poem. “The spreading earth is like a—buxom?—young girl?”

“Good,” I tell her.

“Cloaked in springtime, with flowers for her jewels.”

I pat her hand. “It’s not so hard, is it?”

“The words are too big. What does ‘buxom’ mean, anyway?”

“You remember what you said about how Aunt Rayyan’s breasts look like melons under her clothes?”

“Oh!” Zubiya giggles. “But how can a girl be”—she consults the text again—“buxom?”

“Maybe they were more like oranges.”

Zubiya looks down at her flat chest. “I wonder what mine will look like.”

“You don’t have too many more years to wait,” I tell her, without adding that I have heard whispers among the women that her marriage is already being arranged.

Eliana is almost nine now, trailing Zubiya by a little over a year. The two have become fast friends in the eighteen months we have been in Granada. They play in the gardens of the Alhambra much as I used to with Elizabeth and Beatriz, but their romantic stories are not about wandering knights and fair maidens, but about Scheherazade and the Arabian Nights.

I see much less of Qasim than I do of Zubiya. Even at eight, he spends far more time with the mullahs and court scholars. It’s just as well, for it’s an effort to settle Zubiya down and get her to read. No one takes her education seriously—no one, that is, but me. She may be important to others only as a bride, but how dull her life will be with only clothing and cosmetics to amuse her. That and other people’s mistakes and faults to gossip about.

Jawhara comes to fetch her daughter. “It’s time for you to bathe,” she says. “Your father will be here soon.” I have adjusted to this strange way of life, where the caliph lives in another part of the palace, away from his wives and children, only coming for a short visit in the afternoon before going to whomever pleases him in his harem.

I wait in my quarters until I am certain the caliph does not wish to talk to me about the children. When his visit is concluded, I am free to leave. My fear that I would be trapped living in the palace proved groundless, and I come and go almost every day, having been permitted by Mushtaq to live in the aljama here.

“You need a place to follow your faith,” Mushtaq told me. “You should live among your own.” Her decisions are never questioned, though Tarab has ways of making her displeasure obvious. I remember what Judah said long ago about power and love, and every day the caliph’s chief wife shows the compassion that comes from the balance of the two, with Tarab, unfortunately, serving as the counter lesson.

My quarters are only a place to rest while I am here and to leave the few things I need. There’s a small bed, a low table for working with the children, and a few extra clothes. From the benches built into the wall below the windows, I can look out over the courtyard on one side and the Albaicín and the rocky landscape beyond on the other. The windows have latticed shutters for privacy, but when I open them, light floods in, setting the warm wood panels aglow.

The two hundred Jewish families in Granada cluster on the southern side of the palace hill, surrounded by a city of seventy thousand. I walk most days up a footpath to the palace, and in cold or stormy weather, a sedan chair is sent for me. On the worst days, I spend the night here in the women’s quarters.

Eliana comes frequently to play with Zubiya, but the rest of the time she is with our rabbi’s wife, Toba, who watches her during the day and sets up a bed for her when I cannot return at night. Toba makes sure Eliana completes the lessons I plan for her, and my daughter can already read and write Arabic, Castilian, and Hebrew, as well as her native Portuguese. She knows more about astronomy, geology, and botany than the caliph’s grandchildren, because her curiosity is insatiable, and she learns twice as much from asking questions than is contained in the books Qasim and Zubiya open only reluctantly.

Toba’s rabbi husband, Baroukh Obadia, runs a small yeshiva out of their home, and Eliana listens from a chair near the door when the discussion interests her. When she tells me what the Talmud made her ponder that day, I think of young Isaac Abravanel. How pleased he would be to have a conversation with my daughter now, and how much Rabbi Obadia’s young charges are missing because a girl is not allowed to join them.