Zaynab ignored my confusion. ‘Is there a picture?’ she asked.
I turned the book around and showed her. The artist had drawn a dragon-like animal emerging from the depths of the sea. It was very large, almost the same size as the ship it was menacing. The sailors aboard the vessel looked terrified.
‘It does have two wings,’ said Zaynab gently.
I was grateful that she had not laughed aloud. Her tactfulness only added to her attraction.
‘Maybe the writer was muddled,’ Zaynab murmured. ‘In Zanj I remember being shown a big fish that had a long flat nose with a row of sharp teeth on each side, just like a saw. Maybe that is the fish that cuts up ships.’
I found myself gazing at her hands holding the book. Zaynab’s fingers were slim and graceful, and she had drawn patterns on them in dark blue ink, whorls and curlicues that merged and flowed onto the palms of her hands and to her wrists. By comparison the artwork in the bestiary seemed clumsy and inept.
She noticed my rapt attention and gave me a demure smile, eyes cast down, as she handed the book back to me and tucked her hands out of sight beneath her shawl.
From behind me came a shout from the cook. He was summoning Walo and myself to collect our food. Hurriedly, I cast about for an excuse to speak with her again. I said, ‘There are other animals in the book about which I know little, and which you may have encountered in Zanj. Perhaps I can consult with you again.’
‘I would like that,’ Zaynab replied. ‘Maybe you can also tell me about the countries and peoples you have seen.’
*
That night Zaynab surprised all the crew in a way that none of us could forget.
At twilight it was Sulaiman’s custom to find himself a spot on deck where he had a good view of the vault of heavens, as he called the sky. There he took measurements of the stars as they emerged.
‘Try it for yourself,’ he said to me, handing me the little wooden tablet on its cord that he had shown me in al-Ubullah. ‘Place the end of the cord between your lips, stretch out the cord, and hold the lower edge of tablet on the horizon. Select a star, and see how high the star measures against the tablet’s side.’
‘What’s the reason for the string?’ I asked.
‘So that the tablet is always the same distance from your eye. That makes the readings consistent,’ he answered.
‘Which star should I choose?’
‘On the voyage to Zanj the best is Al-Jah. You Franks call it the North Star.’ He gestured over the stern of his ship. ‘Al-Jah is fixed in the heavens. The further south we sail, the lower in the sky it is seen.’
‘Even a child could use it,’ I said after I experimented with the device.
‘Now, yes. But when we reach the land of Zanj we will no longer see Al-Jah. It will have sunk below the horizon. Then I must use knowledge of other stars, where they are in heaven’s vault at each season, to find my position.’
I gave him back the little wooden tablet and, choosing my moment, asked, ‘How did you know that Zaynab was to be our interpreter?’
‘I was the captain who brought her from Zanj when she was first sent to Caliph Haroun. I have followed her career ever since.’
‘There must be other slaves in the royal household, just as beautiful.’
‘None who can also sing with such sweetness.’ His voice softened. ‘I heard her sing just once on that first voyage, such a sad song. I’m told that is why Jaffar bought her from the caliph, for her singing.’
‘Do you think she would sing for us?’ I asked.
‘Perhaps.’
Zaynab was the faintest of shadows where she sat away from the rest of us, on the small foredeck where the anchors were stowed. On an impulse I made my way over to her and asked if she would sing. When she made no answer I went to where the crew were clustered near the cook’s charcoal box, talking among themselves. I asked them to be silent. For a long interval there was nothing but the creak of the rigging and the sound of the waves washing along the sides of the vessel as our ship shouldered south. Then Zaynab began to sing. She sang a dozen songs, some plaintive, others filled with longing, one that spoke of quiet joy, and we listened to her, enchanted. My spine tingled when I recognized her voice. It was Zaynab who had been singing among the trees when Osric and I had visited Jaffar in his exotic garden.
When finally her voice faded away, no one spoke. We were left with our own thoughts. The sky seemed infinitely far away, a velvety blackness scattered with myriad bright points of stars. Our vessel was suspended below it in a great dark void and no longer part of the real world. Into that brief lull burst an unnerving, eerie sound – a sudden heavy puffing and grunting and splashing. It came from all directions and from the darkness around the ship.
Walo cried out, ‘Sea pigs! They came to listen!’
I recalled the picture in the bestiary where a shoal of fish clustered around a ship on which a man was playing a lute. The sound of music, according to the text, attracted the creatures of the sea.
‘They’re not pigs,’ muttered Sulaiman who was standing beside me.
He sounded so disapproving that I felt I should defend Walo though he could not have understood what the captain had said. ‘Walo has seen a picture of fish with snouts like pigs. They root in the sand on the sea floor,’ I told the shipmaster.
Sulaiman was scathing. ‘Whoever made such a picture knows nothing. Those animals are the children of al-hoot, the largest creature that lives in the sea.’
I guessed he meant a whale. Turning to Walo, I translated what the captain had said.
Walo was stubborn. ‘They came to listen to Zaynab sing,’ he insisted.
I thought it wiser not to pass on his comment to Sulaiman. Instead I asked the captain, ‘If you don’t believe in sea pigs, do you think we are wasting our time seeking the rukh?’
The shipmaster thought for a long time before replying. ‘I don’t know what to think. Ever since I first went to sea I’ve heard sailors speak about the rukh. They repeat stories about the rukh just as they have tales of how al-hoot grows so big it is mistaken for an island, with earth on his back and plants growing there.’
‘But you don’t believe such yarns.’
Sulaiman laid a hand on my arm as if imparting a confidence. ‘When I come across a new island that I have never seen before, and it’s small and low, with a few bushes growing, I approach very cautiously.’
‘Then you are not so different from me or Walo,’ I told him. ‘Walo firmly expects to encounter the creatures whose pictures he has seen. I search for them because I believe there is a possibility that they exist. You hesitate to dismiss them as nothing but fantasy.’
The shipmaster chuckled. ‘The only reality is my promise to Nadim Jaffar that, in searching for the rukh, I will take my ship further than any navigator before me.’
*
As Sulaiman predicted, Al-Jah had sunk to the night horizon by the time we arrived on our trading ground, the coast of Zanj. During the twenty days to get there I had done my very best to hide my growing yearning for Zaynab, and I believed that I had succeeded. It required painful self-discipline because I was longing to get to know her better, to tell her how I felt, and explore any feelings she might have for me. Not a day passed but that I ached to be alone in her company. Yet this was impossible and dangerous, and I knew it would place her in a difficult position. She was the only woman aboard the ship and she had to keep her distance, treat everyone equally and receive the same respect in return. So I forced myself to keep all my conversations with Zaynab to a minimum, and always in the company of Walo as together we looked through the pages of the bestiary. I took great care to appear casual and unconcerned whenever Zaynab appeared on deck, and I never spoke a word to anyone about the effect she was having on me. Not even Osric could have guessed how difficult it was for me to conceal my emotions whenever I laid eyes on her, or the fact that my thoughts lingered on the way she walked or sat and, above all, on her smile, so unhurried and enchanting.
The coast of Zanj brought me out of what was in danger of becoming a lover’s trance. The land was lush and exotic. It extended from a fringe of white surf across the sandy beach, then into dense groves of palm trees that merged to make a broad expanse of vivid jungle green. Many miles away loomed highlands where towering thunderclouds built up every afternoon, dramatic and threatening, only to dissolve and drift away. The people of the coast were striking in appearance. Tall and well-built, with wide shoulders and big chests, they had fleshy swelling lips and shaved their tightly curled hair at the front, leaving it to hang down at the back in long strands soaked in butter. Their only garment was a tanned hide or a length of cloth tied around the waist, and their skin was a rich black with just a hint of brown. Their bare-breasted women dressed in similar fashion, carrying their babies across their backs in a cloth sling. They wore broad ruffs of copper wire, and strings of scarlet beans as anklets, necklaces and bracelets. They lived comfortably, growing vegetables in small gardens close to their thatched houses, raising goats and a few cattle, and, of course, they fished. As soon as we dropped anchor, they came out in small boats to trade or coax us ashore. They wanted our enamel goods, filigree and fancy metalwork, weapons, mirrors, spices, silk and embroidered cloth, as well as the more humdrum sacks of dates. In exchange they offered items they had been gathering for months from the inland tribes: packets of gold dust, coloured pebbles and nuggets of veined rock to be cut and polished into gems, the spotted skins of pards that were greatly prized in Baghdad, and – above all – quantities of elephant teeth.