Those were ten happy days. The eleventh day was strange enough for the
Poet to think it would probably seal his fate. Sarah had changed suddenly. From
morning to evening she did not greet, smile or say a good word to the Poet.
Haroon was absent all that day long. So when the Poet had finished all that day’s
work he regained his room to sleep. He was deeply dismayed at Sarah’s abrupt
change. She had not even given him his dinner this night! And this was enough
to shatter his morale. Sarah was his beloved. He had never entrusted this
secret to anybody, but he loved his mistress secretly and deeply. Even when he
had told Marqus about Sarah, he had not said that he loved her. He had told him
anything but this. So the Poet thought about this for two or three hours that
night.
Suddenly, in the middle of the
night, a light filled the Poet’s room. So he removed the sheet from his face
and turned toward the door. It was Sarah, carrying an oil-lamp in her left hand
and a bowl in her right. “You madam?” said the Poet, having nothing else to
say. Sarah glanced at the floor, then at the Poet’s face and moved forward and
sat on the bedside, close to the Poet’s feet. She put down the oil-lamp on the
floor and turned to hand the bowl to the Poet, who had now gathered himself and
sat upright, close to his mistress. All his fears had revived instantly. So he
began to eat from the bowl with a shivering hand. He did not wash his hands
before eating. He did not ask questions. He merely sat beside his mistress and
beloved and ate silently. In the meanwhile Sarah had cupped her chin in her
right hand and rested her eyes on the floor. She looked absentminded. Now and
then the Poet glanced furtively at her. She was wearing a blue nightdress and
her hair hung on her back. At long last, she turned to the Poet and asked, as
she glanced at the bowl:
“Finished?”
“Yes madam,” replied the Poet,
slightly puzzled.
Actually, he had not finished.
But his fears pushed him to say yes. Without any more words, Sarah took the
bowl gently from the Poet’s hand and picked up the oil-lamp and left the room.
She did not say good night. The Poet’s heart beat fast. He was once again
amazed and thoroughly captivated by this inscrutable woman.
Then, the Poet lay on his right
side and wrapped all his body but the face in the sheets. He resumed his
thoughts by muttering this: “I live a life of adventure.” So far nothing
dangerous had happened, though. The mistress had merely brought him his dinner.
And the master was still away. But why had Sarah herself brought him the bowl
until the length and breath of his room? This had never happened before. And
what had she been thinking about when he had been eating? The Poet had affected
not to care. But all his body was shivering with fear and desire. A woman could
easily discern such an affectation of indifference. Soon afterwards Sarah put
an end to these unending thoughts by her new coming into the Poet’s room. This
time she came without the oil-lamp. She just coughed at the door to indicate
her presence and immediately afterwards blundered toward the bed. The Poet
rose, aghast, and asked in a shaky voice:
“Is there any problem, madam?”
Sarah hesitated, then said:
“No, there’s no problem. I only
need to be- well, I’ve suddenly felt lonely. Haroon’s away, you know. And-
shall I sleep with you?”
Stunned, the Poet could not reply at once. He just frowned, lowered his
eyes and thought briefly before he replied uncomfortably:
“You’re welcome, madam. Come!”
Sarah removed one side of the
sheets and lay beside the Poet. And they slept together in utter darkness.
The first cock-crow found the
Poet and Sarah alone in their respective rooms. When they met again, in the
morning, the Poet found it hard to look his mistress in the eye. Sarah smiled
at his shyness but did not comment in words. She only said, when she gave him
his breakfast: “Haroon will be back in the afternoon. Don’t look abashed before
him!” The Poet nodded lamely and moved away.
The Poet had not had such a
good, rich breakfast for months. This morning he ate bread with butter and
honey, two eggs, nuts and almonds, and drank a big cup of hot milk. Later in
the day Sarah gave him two sweet, succulent apples. And she smiled at him a
smile that cleansed his heart of all past sorrows. Indeed, when he was working
on the fields that day he felt more overjoyed than worried. He knew for sure
that his master would return in the afternoon. So he prepared himself for that
decisive moment. At last, Haroon came back and the Poet met him near the alley
leading into the house.
“How’s the work going?” asked
Haroon, as he alighted from his horse and handed a basket to the Poet.
“Everything’s doing well, sir.”
Haroon frowned slightly and
asked again:
“Mm. What were you doing now?”
“I’ve been finishing the
sowing, sir,” the Poet stuttered.
Haroon looked up and gazed at
his servant for a while. Then he moved into the house. The Poet followed him
silently, with the basket in his hand.
As Haroon stepped into the
house, he called:
“Sarah?”
The Poet nearly went mad with
fear. But he knew that he had to keep mastery of his wild heart. Otherwise he
could not fight against the impulse to do what should not be done. Sarah
appeared at the door of her room and then moved toward her husband. They met
beside the fountain and greeted each other. The Poet’s heart was about to break
down.
“Has this one done anything
wrong?” Haroon asked his wife, pointing at the Poet, who was standing at a safe
distance.
“Oh, no! Why?” Sarah snapped
with a Satanic smile.
“Well, I see he’s stuttering
and-”
“No, no,” Sarah interrupted, to
the Poet’s great relief. “There’s no problem. Let him be!”
Haroon roved his eyes from
Sarah to the Poet, then back to Sarah. But Sarah intervened.
“Shall we stay here like this?
Go, you, go to your work!”
The Poet bowed and fled away. He led the horse
into the stable and flew back to the field, with a dark face. He went on with
his work and waited impatiently for Haroon’s last word. His verdict.
Sunset came, then the evening
and the night, and nothing happened. But the Poet could not yet heave the deep
sigh of relief until Haroon appeared on the following morning and asked him to
take the wood-and-leather chair to the orchard.
All that day, too, went
peacefully by. Four days later Sarah told the Poet that Haroon would spend the
night away. And he understood easily. For he began to wait impatiently for
nightfall. The night fell and Sarah came to sleep with him.
The next day the Poet felt on
top f the world. He had told Sarah that he loved her and replied: "And so
do I!" And on the morning of this very day he had confided to her that he
was afraid, and she advised him not to worry. "As long as I am
alive," she said, "there's nothing you should fear." All this
happened at the kitchen-door. Now the Poet was with the boys on the pastures.
He was tooling happily, and the boys sang to his tunes:
For your soul, for your eyes,
for you only,
I still sing, I still smile;
I'm not lonely!
For you're nice; oh warm and
lovely!
O please don't laugh if I loved
you madly!
When he was on the way back to
his master's home, he was gripped by an irresistible impulse to go to Marqus
and tell him about all hat had happened during these last six days. But Haroon
had not yet allowed him to go to Marqus. Even if the Poet had the permission to
go, would he really be able to breathe just one more word to Marqus? Certainly
not. Yet, the Poet fearfully wanted someone to confide in. He felt that he
could not resist this wild desire for a long time.
The last eighteen days had
passed like a dream. Sarah had done the unthinkable. At first the Poet had
imagined only in dreams that this queen of beauty would one day gather him in
her arms like a baby. And in so doing she helped him push out of his mind any
thought of running away. Now, he wanted earnestly to stay, at any rate. For he
now loved Sarah as deeply as he had loved Sultana before her. Oh Sultana? What
could he do about her? He had not come here of his own accord. Then, what could
a slave, like himself, do far away from his home?”
Once the Poet had finished
plowing and sowing his master’s lands, he was commanded to work henceforth in
the house in the morning and in the fields in the afternoon. Indeed, there was
little to do in the fields. Even in the house Sarah would not bore him with
unnecessary chores. Sarah and the Poet were on their best terms these days.
They had suddenly become like real friends. But they knew that this must be
concealed from the master and Marqus. Of course, Marqus had no idea of what had
happened after that latest row over the thought of running away. But the Poet
still wondered how their next meeting would be like.
A few days later Haroon was
away, and so Sarah came by night into the Poet’s room carrying the oil-lamp in
one hand and the dinner in the other. She had come to dine with him. So they
sat on the mat and put the tray with the bowls and plates between them and the
oil-lamp on their side. On the tray were also a cup of water and two of wine.
“Where has he gone, your rascal
of a husband?” the Poet said, somewhat confidently, when he had begun eating.
Sarah gazed in amazement and
then replied gently:
“Rascal? How dare you say that
of my husband?”
The Poet smiled confusedly.
Then there was a long silence, after which Sarah spoke.
“What are you thinking about?”
she asked, chewing.
“Of you,” the Poet replied
simply.
“Really?”
“Then who else?”
“And your wife?”
“You said I had none!”
“I was just joking. Now I
believe all you’d said to me.”
The Poet felt happy. Now he
could no longer resist the impulse to ask his beloved the question that had
long puzzled him.
“Madam,” he began hesitantly,
“I have a question to ask you. May I?”
“Yes, speak.”
“Well, I don’t understand you,
madam. You are my mistress. You are very, very beautiful. You have a kind
husband and he’s a Jw like yourself-”
“I see what you’re aiming at,”
Sarah interrupted, and lifted the cup of water to her beautiful mouth. When she
had drunk, she continued: “I am not a Jewess.”
“What!” the Poet exclaimed,
surprised.
“My real name is Yamna. It’s
only him who called me Sarah.” She sighed.
Puzzled, the Poet said:
“I don’ understand. Do you mean
you’re –you’re a Muslim?”
“I should say I was born a
Muslim,” Sarah sighed. Probably to avoid more questions, she continued in a
clearly melancholic tone:
“I was born in Fez to a poor
family. We lived in the outskirts of Fez. One day I happened to be with my
father downtown Fez when a fight suddenly broke out. I was only five or six
years old then. In no time I saw people dashing in every direction. Men clashed
with men. Some men soon fell dead or injured on the ground. In a flash my own
father disappeared. As to me, I just howled, having nothing else to do. And in
the midst of the mad crowd someone picked me by the arm and flung me to his
chest and flew away. It was an old man. He hid me somewhere and when the battle
seemed to have been over he took me by night to a house a short distance from
Fez. And there he reared me like a daughter until I was ten or twelve. That old
man lived only with his old wife. So when I was that age he came one night and
raped me. And thus, he said, I became his second wife.” At this point tears
gushed from her eyes. She could utter no more words.
The Poet was astounded. What
should he say or do? He merely rose and left the room. He bent over the
balcony-wall and stood weeping. After quite a long while Sarah left the room
with the lamp and he tray. And before she went downstairs she said to the Poet
in an unsteady voice: “I’m coming back.” The Poet just nodded and waited a
moment before he regained his bed. Sarah came back and lay beside him on the
bed, in the darkness.
As soon as day broke Sarah
prepared breakfast and invited the Poet to sit at her side on the edge of the
fountain, where they ate together. Sarah looked confident and grave.
“Don’t be afraid,” she said to
the Poet as he sat beside her. “Haroon won’t come now. Besides the front door
is closed, you see.”
“How should I be afraid when
you are with me, Yamna!”
Sarah swung round and said in a
loud whisper:
“Sh! Never spell that name
again. Mind! Do you want us to perish here?”
“Your wish is my command,
madam. I’m sorry.”
“Then, tell me: have you ever
told that fellow of yours anything of me?”
“Oh, no! How could it be,
madam?” the Poet snapped, alarmed.
“Be careful!”
After a little silence, the
Poet spoke.
“May I know the rest of your
story?” he asked, somewhat hesitantly.
Sarah, who seemed to have been waiting only
for this of all questions, replied in a moving voice:
“Yes.” Then she paused and
after a sigh, she added: “That wicked old man enjoined me to be confided to his
shack. Two years after the rape, the old woman –I mean, his first wife-
disappeared. At sixteen or seventeen I bore him a girl and two years later I
bore him another girl. At the age of twenty I was pregnant again when, one
night, a band of four men erupted into our room and pounced upon the old man and
me. We were sleeping together. So two of those men fell on me and closed my
mouth with a scarf that they fastened round my head. The other two fell
simultaneously on the old man and strangled him. To make sure he was dead they
ran a sword several times through his body. One of the bandsmen carried me like
a child in his arms out of the house. Then another one folded my eyes and
drugged me and when I recovered consciousness I found myself in a smart house.
“Later on I learnt that I lived
in Wajda. Do you know where Wajda is?”
“Yes,” replied the Poet,
interested. “Go on!”
“Well,” Sarah sighed. “I was
delivered of that third child in Wajda. The child disappeared immediately after
birth. Then I found myself living with the man you know by the name of Haroon.
He married me, he said. And I lived like a recluse in his house, which then
abounded with people. I hate them all and they all hated me. I hated their
habits, their meals, their odours. And then when Haroon impregnated me he drove
me away from his family. We lived two years in Taza, where I bore him his first
child, a boy. The following child came into the world two years later, in
Cosantine. After that we came here. I bore him the third child in succession.”
“Where are they, these three
children?” the Poet asked, curiously.
“They live with Haroon’s family
in Wajda. I see them only once or twice a year. Haroon fears that if they lived
with me I would give them an Islamic education. In truth, I have grown to hate
them, too! What makes them even more hateful to me is that they all three bear
Jewish names. Their names are respectively Moshe (six years), Hayim (four
years) and Laura (two years). Now, let’s leave it here; I’ll tell you more next
time. But mind! If you let out one word both of us will be burned!”
“Oh no, how could it be,
madam!” the Poet said, smiling uncertainly.
After breakfast, the Poet went
on with his daily work in some confusion. He had believed every word Sarah had
said. But he could not understand why she had chosen to tell him her own
life-story. Perhaps what had happened to her in her unhappy life accounted for
what had happened on his own bed. But why him personally? Had Sarah (or Yamna)
done such things with other servants before him? Certainly there was nothing
which would make Sarah favour him above all the other slaves who had served
her. A big piece of the puzzle was yet Haroon’s habit of changing abodes. Why
had he gone from town to town? And so went on one question after another in the
Poet’s mind as the day wore on…
In the afternoon Haroon came
back home with a dark face. The Poet had just glanced at him once and taken the
basket into the house. Then he led the horse into the stable and headed for the
pastures. The lands had already worn an impressive coat of green. Migrating
birds filled the air with their merry twitters. The lambs were beginning to
fall. Indeed, everything was there to inspire joy. But the dark colour of
Haroon’s face today had started the Poet thinking deeply of every likely
reason. Soon he was back into the house. Sarah told him at the front door that
Haroon had called for him. So the Poet begged her to go and see what Haroon had
wanted him for. She went into her room and came out to tell the Poet. “Go and
take the chair to the orchard,” she whispered. “And mind out! Don’t stay there.
He’s very angry today.” The Poet flew upstairs, took the chair to the orchard,
placed it against the trunk of the huge fig-tree and vanished out of the house.
He went again to the pastures.
One of the boys there asked him why he looked so abashed today. “My master is
ill,” he replied unconvincingly. In truth, the Poet was deeply apprehensive.
There was no doubt in his mind that Haroon was undergoing some nasty
experience. He had spent more nights away in the last few weeks than in all the
previous time since the Poet’s arrival. Why? Was there anything wrong with his
family in Wajda or anywhere else?
Haroon stayed in the orchard,
reading and probably thinking, until the evening. In the meantime Sarah and the
Poet had exchanged looks that spoke of their great uneasiness and anxiety. For
the first time Sarah had betrayed to the Poet that she was afraid. How much
more was the Poet, who was by nature a coward? The night came and the Poet had
plenty of time to ponder these mysterious happenings. Well after dawn he was
still sleeping.
The next morning Haroon went to
sit under the fig-tree in the orchard. He stayed there until lunchtime. “Keep
calm,” Sarah warned the Poet at first. Then she warned him to keep a sharp eye
and a sharp ear. The Poet had replied meekly: “Whatever you say, madam!”
Haroon left home in the
afternoon. At night Sarah came into the Poet’s room with light and dinner. That
night the Poet ate very little but drank too much. He drank one gulp of wine
after another as Sarah, sitting in front of him on the mat, unfolded another
chapter of her tale.
“…At first,” she said in a
moving voice, “Haroon had no trust at all in me. He would not eat from my
cooking unless I ate first. He would never allow me any contact with other men,
including his two brothers. Still in those first days with him he had nearly
lost me when, one very beautiful morning, he led me into one of his private
rooms. He made me to stand near the door and he stepped over to a big iron safe
in one corner of the room. He opened the safe and took from it a dazzling gold
necklace. He stepped back to me and fastened the lace round my neck. I felt
some pleasure in that. Then he insisted that I go myself and take from the safe
whatever piece of gold I chose. Since
he insisted too much I went toward the safe with a beating heart. And no sooner
had I opened the safe and looked into it than I uttered a deafening scream and
then fainted. Do you know what I saw in the safe?” The Poet just gazed as he listened dumbfounded to his
beloved’s story. “I saw an adder wriggling on its every side!” Sarah gasped.
The Poet just gaped as she continued: “Later on I found out that Haroon’s a
master of deception.
“When we went away from his
family he made it his habit to bring into his house one servant only. And even
such a servant, I have noticed, must be weak in build. No slave has served us
more than one year. You too will go one day in the few months to come. This, of
course, if nothing odious happens in the meantime.”
Suddenly, Sarah broke off. She
had probably noticed that the Poet could hear no more. So he simply added:
“Just forget all about this now
and let us have a good night.” Then she rose from the mat, picked up the lamp
and the tray, and left the room. After a moment she came back without the lamp
and nestled in bed against the Poet.
Early on the following morning
they met in the courtyard, where they had breakfast together. Then Sarah took
the Poet on a tour round some of the many rooms of the house. They stopped
first at the door of the room where Haroon and Sarah usually spent their day
and night.
“You must have noticed that
Haroon and I spent most of our time in this room,” Sarah said, pointing at the
golden curtain. “In fact this serves us as a living-room, a dining-room, a
dining-room and a sleeping-room at the same time. I can’t show it to you, but
it’s really smart.”
“Why don’t you want to show it
to me?” asked the Poet smilingly. “Don’t you trust me? Haven’t I given you my
word?”
“I do trust you,” replied Sarah
uneasily. “But I know Haroon. If he had any strong suspicions he wouldn’t
hesitate to wring confessions from you. Besides, I don’t see any point in
showing your master’s room to you.”
“I know, madam. I was only
fooling.”
“Then let’s move on to that
one.”
And thus they moved from one
door to another. Sarah showed the Poet where Haroon placed his money and gold,
his clothes, medicines, furniture, arms, dry-fruits, drinks, and so on. After
that, Sarah advised the Poet to join the herd-boys. But before he left he
begged his mistress for a cup of wine. She brought it to him and he gulped it
down and went out.
At the pastures he tootled and
sang with the boys. And he stayed with them until they warned him that it was
high time for lunch. He brought them their lunch and ate with them,
absentmindedly.
Haroon did not return in the
afternoon. Both Sarah and the Poet wondered why. Night fell but they could not
dine together or meet in the Poet’s room. “I’m quite sure there’s some dreadful
thing in the offing,” Sarah had said to the Poet when she gave him his dinner.
The Poet’s reply was: “May God keep us!”
The following day passed and
there was no sign of Haroon. In the middle of the night Sarah slunk into the
Poet’s room in the darkness.
“Salman, wake!” she whispered.
But Salman was already awake.
How could he sleep? So he rose quickly and made a place for Sarah at his side.
When Sarah sat next to him, she said in an uneasy voice:
“I’m afraid, Salman.”
“If you are afraid,” replied
the Poet, “what should I say, I? We’re all in the same boat. Both of us are
fellows in misfortune.”
“I don’t know what’s going on,”
said Sarah gravely, pausing after each utterance. “The Haroon of these days
frightens me. For weeks now the main topic of his talks with me revolves around
the Turks, the Arabs, Islam, war. I don’t understand. Sometimes I say he fears
for his business.” The Poet wanted to know what this business was, but he
preferred to keep quiet and let Sarah continue what she had begun. “But I can’t
say for sure what’s happening to him. Haroon has altered a great deal since you
came, as if you were an ill omen! He no longer eats with appetite, or sleeps at
ease. Try as I would I can’t make him enjoy his nights with me. If we do
anything of that we do it silently. Sometimes if I dare speak he would
immediately be wound up to a fury. I should admit that sometimes it wounds my
heart to see him suffering. And since he doesn’t want to tell me what he’s
suffering from, I just content myself with putting my questions to myself. And
I drown my sorrows in drink.”
“And yet,” the Poet commented
quite naively, “I find you a very wonderful woman. You keep cheerful even when
things are at their worst.”
Sarah pressed the Poet’s hand
as she glanced at him, and said, with a sigh:
“This time I will crumble to
death.”
“Oh, no! Why should you?”
A deathly silence descended on
the room. After a while Sarah said in a dismal voice:
“Some things are better left
unsaid.”
“You have lacerated me now,
Yamna. Why don’t you want to tell me what’s going on in your mind?”
“I don’t see any point in
telling you.”
“Why ever not?”
After a pause, Sarah replied,
looking fixedly at the Poet:
“I have thought of running
away. What could you do about that?”
The Poet was at a loss for a
time. It all looked as if Sarah had poured on him a bucket of cold water. Sarah
understood. So she spared him the reply.
“I know you can do nothing
about that,” she said, now looking in the direction of the floor. And after a
pause, she added: “It never entered my head to ask you to take me away from
this house and this land. You’re still a weakling and I don’t blame you for
that. Both you and I are in affliction and need someone else to help us.”
The Poet, who felt slightly
affronted by Sarah’s untimely remarks, braced himself and asked in a shaky
voice:
“Are you serious- do you really
mean to run away?”
“Don’t you see I’m deeply
agitated? I don’t know what’s happening around me and I’m night and day agog
for news. What should make me cling to life here? But where’s the man who can
save me and take me far away?”
The Poet, who was now deeply
provoked, just looked on in agony at his mistress. He thought of Marqus. But
what should he say of him? He couldn’t have the heart to mention Marqus as a
probable saviour. Wasn’t he a man himself? But Sarah interrupted his thoughts.
“What are you thinking about?”
she asked in a gloomy tone.
“I really no longer know what
to think,” the Poet replied with a sigh. “I myself want to run away.” And after
a brief moment’s hesitation, he ventured to add: “Marqus has once mentioned
this subject to me.”
“On what occasion?” interrupted
Sarah, alarmed.
“I don’t know,” the Poet
stuttered.
“Have you told him anything-”
“Oh, no! How could it be?”
Then there was a long silence.
After that Sarah lay on her back and said: “Let’s sleep.” And there they slept
until cock-crow.
