The Steel Seraglio (30 page)

IMTISAR: We would never tell him anything.

ZULEIKA: I spent some time studying the assassin’s trade. One thing I learned is that there are ways of forcing a man to reveal even matters he’s sworn to keep secret; they would work just as well on a woman.

IMTISAR: But you can’t imprison us here!

ZULEIKA: I can. Try to leave these caves, and see how far you get.

GURSOON: Stop this.

Imtisar, I’m sorry, but I think Zuleika is right: it’s not safe to travel openly now. You have a right to take that risk for yourself, but not to endanger all of us. If you still wish to go, then leave on the day of our attack; then if we succeed you’ll be safe to go where you will. And if we fail, at least Hakkim will be distracted for some days afterwards.

IMTISAR: And you talk of safety! Listen to yourself, Gursoon! This woman wants to lead us against an army. We’re women. We don’t even have weapons! What will you do, march up and storm the city walls? They have archers. They have hundreds of armed men.

ZULEIKA: Gursoon, we should end this meeting.

GURSOON: We can’t end it now.

NAJLA: I agree with Imtisar. How can we defeat an army? It sounds like madness.

[There is a chorus of voices from the women with Imtisar, sounding agreement.]

BETHI: Maybe we can get help from outside. Zuleika, you told us you learned about fighting in a school. So you’ll have friends there, yes? Let’s go there and ask them to fight with us. We can pay them. And they’ll have weapons, too.

ZULEIKA: No. My bond with the school ended when I joined the seraglio. They would not help us.

IMTISAR: Oh, this is all stupidity. We might just as well go for help to the seven djinni!

[There is a silence.]

BETHI: Well, why not?

JUMANAH: All the stories tell of people who visited the djinni before a great undertaking. They could tell us how best to succeed. Or at least let us know how much chance we have.

NAJLA: They could help us. But they could strike us down as well.

BETHI: They can’t be more dangerous than what we’re planning anyway! I think we should try it.

FERNOUSH: What, all of us?

JUMANAH: Just a few representatives. And we have to plan very carefully what to say to them. . . .

ZULEIKA: Wait. You mean all this seriously?

MANY VOICES: Yes!

Why not?

They’re powerful. What other help do we have?

ZULEIKA: We have knowledge of the enemy, our resolution, our own hands and minds. We can make our own plan. We don’t need help!

IMTISAR: And can you foresee the future, Zuleika? The women have spoken. We should visit the djinni: perhaps you might listen to them.

ZULEIKA: Gursoon. This is foolishness, and we don’t have time for it.

GURSOON: I agree. But I think we will have to do it. Look at them!

SOMEONE: Who will go? Who will talk to the djinni?

SOMEONE: Has anyone here seen them before?

END OF THE RECORD.

Postscript, by the hand of Gursoon:

At this point in the discussion our scribe, Rem, became ill, and the record was interrupted. Only a dozen more people spoke before the meeting ended. It was agreed that I, Zuleika, Imtisar and one or two others would make the journey to the cave of the djinni, and if we could find those beings, ask their counsel. In accordance with tradition, we will leave tomorrow at sunset. The extra day will allow us to set up the safety measures that Zuleika has advised for the whole community, and to agree on the final number who will be in our party. Issi may accompany us to represent the men: we go on foot, of course, but he could be invaluable to us in finding our way back here after the meeting. By choice we would bring Rem, as the only one among us who has met the djinni before, but she has no wish to see them again.

REM:

I never saw it. Not even when I spoke the words that led to this. How did that not warn me? Every action has consequences, and I see them. When someone makes a choice, when I make one myself, a dozen futures will be there that were not there before, immediate and potential, both trivial and momentous. I once almost lost my mother her job by running off with a cake she was about to sell, because I saw a child choking. When I decided to disguise myself and work in the library I was overwhelmed with new visions for days, so many that I could not steer a path between them.

But I said: “We take back Bessa!” I said it to Zuleika, for whom decision is action, and to all the women of the community, who would support her. And I never saw a thing. I was so swept away by my own enthusiasm that I didn’t even notice. I never considered what that blindness could mean.

The djinni are jealous and secretive—the gifts they give do not include power over themselves. And now we’ve put the final decision in their hands, and I cannot see even a glimpse: not of them or what they might say. And not of the future that will come from their words.

The thought of them makes me sick to my heart. How could I bear to go back there?

But how can I bear it, not knowing?

They set off, as agreed, at sunset the next day. The party was in some ways an oddly assorted one: Zuleika, as leader of the disputed campaign; Imtisar, as her chief opponent, and Gursoon, to keep the peace between them; also Issi the chief camel-man, who had agreed to come for reasons not entirely clear, but whose expertise would be valued as a pathfinder. Lastly, there was the foundling, Rem, who had not wanted to come at all.

“Look at her,” whispered Bethi to Thana, as the slight figure followed the others into the setting sun, her head bowed. “I heard she’s been there before—she even has the sight herself—but she looks like she’s being sold off in marriage.”

“To a fat man of eighty,” Thana agreed.

“With bad breath.”

They giggled, but Thana quickly sobered. “If she has the sight,” she said, “that long face of hers is a bad sign. What’s she so frightened of? There are some bad stories told about the djinni.”

Most of the women watched the pilgrims’ departure in silence. Many shared Thana’s fears—word had spread that Rem, alone of all of them, had once met the djinni, and the girl’s reluctance to go there again gave them no great hopes for what the venture could achieve. A few of the children, more curious or adventurous than the others, looked on with envy. Jamal scowled and swiftly turned away to throw pebbles against a rock. But most felt only anxiety for the fate of the travellers, mixed with a wordless sentiment that translated roughly as:
Sooner them than me.

It was Farhat who dispelled the mood, turning from the others to spot a pile of sacks and blankets still stacked in the middle of their camp.

“Zeinab!” she cried. “We need to get all the foodstuffs stored in the lower cave. Can we organise a team to carry the rest down? It’s almost dark. And Umayma, does everyone know who’s on the guard rota for tomorrow?”

The women turned from their watch, some sighing, some grumbling, to resume their evening tasks. Small fires were lit in their usual hollow, and Thana and Halima brought out the dried meat and saltbush leaves for supper, helped by the bigger children. The youngest ones were fed and chivvied into bed. Any woman or man not immediately engaged in work was rounded up by Farhat and Zeinab to carry the last of their supplies underground, to the hideout that Zuleika had ordered in case of attack from Bessa.

Unobserved now, the tiny pilgrim group plodded on its way, already lost in the shadows. There was no need to stop with darkness: the way to the djinni is not to be found by landmarks. They would walk straight ahead until their legs tired, then next day set off again with the rising sun behind them.

They did not speak, maybe from a sense of tradition, or fear, or simply from the pressure of the darkness all around them, which seemed to muffle sound. None of them heard the light tread of the one who followed behind.

On the first day the mountains accompanied them as a dark line to the north. Early on the second day they were still visible as a fading shadow over their shoulders. After that there was nothing but level sand and empty sky. The sun set in their faces, and the after-images flashed before their eyes as darkness gathered around them.

Late on the third day a shadow appeared ahead of them, growing as they approached it to become a line of slender rocks.

“Is this the place?” Gursoon said to Rem. The girl stared ahead wordlessly, seeming not to hear.

“It had better be,” said Imtisar. “We can’t go on for another day.”

“It’s too soon to tell,” Issi said. “Land as flat as this, it could be leagues away.”

But the rocks drew steadily closer, resolving themselves into four narrow spars and a single stub.

“This is the place,” said Zuleika. Beside her, Rem was shivering.

They had talked about what they would say to the djinni. They had agreed that Zuleika would speak of their plans, and ask for guidance and strategy. Imtisar would ask about the dangers they would face, and test her belief that the venture was doomed to fail. But as they passed the Hill of the Hand and entered the valley, all thoughts fell away.

The sun hung low and red between spikes of stone on each side, making it impossible to see what lay ahead. Rem stumbled and came to a halt, staring into the sun as if blind. Zuleika took hold of her arm to draw her forward, then started. The girl was silently crying, and her tears were black. Her eyes welled as if with ink. Dark streaks barred her face and dripped onto her clothes and hands. Gursoon, ahead of the group, turned to urge them on, and exclaimed in horror. But there was no time to delay. The old woman turned back and took Rem’s other arm. The girl stood passively for a moment, then seemed to pull away from them.

“Not this!” she whispered.

“You could wait here . . .” Gursoon began. But Rem was reaching for the dagger in Zuleika’s belt. Suppliants to the djinni do not go armed.

Zuleika nodded and loosed the dagger. After a moment’s thought she drew a smaller knife from her shoe, and laid the two blades together on the path. Then they went on together, supporting Rem between them and signalling to the two behind to keep close.

After a few more steps the spires of rock on each side began to curve down and inwards, the tips pointing towards them. A little farther, and the stones gave way to a wall of rock, at its heart a jagged black hole. The red light was all about them now, but the sun was nowhere.

In its place were the djinni.

Gursoon did not know them at first. There were bulges in the stone, outcrops that could perhaps, from a certain angle, be taken for carved figures. Yes: statues of men and women, or rearing beasts, crude and stylised and melting into each other at the edges. Silently and all together, the figures stepped away from the wall, towards her. And opened their eyes, all dark as the smoke of a forge, and with the same heat behind them.

Gursoon recoiled, and found that she could not move. She turned to Zuleika, but her companion had vanished. Even Rem, who had been leaning on her arm, must have loosed it without her noticing. She was alone with the djinni.

They waited. She had meant to say nothing, to leave it all to the taciturn Zuleika, who would not be tempted to speak a word off the purpose. But Zuleika was gone, and the figures before her demanded acknowledgement.

Gursoon’s skin crawled. She spoke the only words she could find, and they hung in front of her like breath in cold air.

“We want no gifts, no changes. We only ask for your words. If you deny us those, we have no request to make.”

There was a movement in the figures before her, a ripple. The stone faces had no mouths; they answered in voices she felt rather than heard.

But you must have gifts, if you are to succeed.

Gursoon choked down panic. Better to have nothing than too much, she told herself. “We’re not asking you for gifts,” she repeated.

Her voice wavered in the air before her. The answer came before it faded.

Then how else are you to get them?

The djinni appeared as soon as Zuleika reached the rock wall. They were armed and armoured, as she had half-expected: men and women, by their bodies, all helmeted and in ceaseless motion. By their absence of wounds they must be training, not fighting, yet the slashes and blows she saw were as furious as any she had known in battle. They lunged and feinted, turning around and against each other with the grace of dancers. And even as they fought, each helmeted head turned immovably in her direction.

Zuleika ignored the racing of her heart and spoke loudly the words she had prepared.

“Great djinni. We are women. We plan to take the city of Bessa for ourselves, by guile and by arms. I want to know if we can succeed, and how best to achieve it.”

An urge came over her to beg for strength, for wisdom or for weapons that might outweigh Hakkim’s forces. She bit it down and said nothing more.

The whirling combat did not falter, nor did their attention on her. Zuleika stood and bore it. At length, a cry came from all of them at once, like a battle shout.

What you need, you must take from each other!

It was only reasonable, of course, that the djinni should take the form of great caliphs and queens—they emerged in procession out of the dark hole, and the splendour of their jewels, their clothes, lit up the dry and barren place like little fires.

But something about them was not right. The slender lady with the emeralds: her face was beautiful, but the skin had an odd shimmer, as if clad in scales. The man with the golden beard smiled to reveal a suspicion of tusks, or fangs. And the lord in the velvet robe, so magnificently tall: was that a tail flicking beneath the purple hem?

They fixed their royal gazes on Imtisar and on her alone. And at once all the fine words she had rehearsed flew out of her head, and she was left barely able to catch a breath. But she had to say something.

“What do we do?” she stammered. They looked down at her gravely, not answering. And for an instant she saw that flick of a tail again; the horns not quite concealed by a jewelled turban; the queen stroking the edge of her robe with a taloned claw. They were mocking her, she thought, with a flash of anger, and this time the words came without thought.