Shajarat al-Durr, who once ruled the world, knelt down and washed her husband’s hair. She soaped it thoroughly, until lather built. She took out a dagger and slit the king’s throat from carotid to carotid. She watched disloyal blood flow upon the bath’s marble before she plunged the dagger into her own heart.
And the Kurds said, “The kingdom should return to the line of true kings. King Issa Touran Shah had a boy. He is seven and goes by the name of Ala’eddine. He shall be king.”
The boy was made king and one of his Kurdish cousins was elected regent. Fate had no use for this king, either, and sent him the Mongols.
Hovik’s face was that of a man who hadn’t had a good night’s sleep in quite a while. His mustache needed a trim. His distress was comforting. Apparently, he genuinely loved my father; then again, perhaps his concern was for his pregnant wife and coming son. He tiptoed into the room, carrying Salwa’s handbag, her coat, and a gray chamois sack that might seem amorphous to an untrained eye. Mine recognized the danger. Nothing was in that bag if not a small oud.
I felt the veins in the back of my hand pulse.
My sister recognized the bag and raised questioning eyebrows.
“I don’t want it,” my niece said softly. “I couldn’t play it. I tried so many times.”
“But it’s a memento,” my sister replied.
“It’s a constant reminder of how talentless I am.”
My sister asked Hovik to stay in the room and led her daughter and me to the balcony. She lit a cigarette, expelled the smoke toward the sky. My niece took the cigarette from her mother’s lips and threw it over the balcony. “I’ll get you a patch,” Salwa said.
“This isn’t the right time,” my sister said.
“This is nothing if not the right time.”
“Listen. Are you sure you want to give Osama the oud? It’s not as if he’s going to pick it up and start playing after all this time. I’m not sure the instrument is playable. We all have a family heirloom, and this one is yours. She wanted you to have it.”
“Who wanted her to have it?” I asked.
“Our grandmother,” Lina replied. “I thought you knew that. She gave it to me on her deathbed to give to my daughter. How old was I then, seven — eight? I couldn’t even conceive of the idea that I’d have a daughter. This is our great-grandmother’s oud.”
“My god,” I gasped. “I didn’t know this thing existed. Does it still play?”
“Check it out,” Salwa said. “I had it restrung. It plays adequately, considering that no one has played it in over a hundred and twenty years.”
“A hundred and fourteen,” my sister and I said in unison.
I delicately removed the oud from the chamois bag. The workmanship was beyond anything I had seen in years and years — the inlaid ivory carved in miniature arabesque detail, wood of invaluable cedar, splendid tear-shaped mother-of-pearl (genuine, not sister-of-polystyrene) lining the neck. And my great-grandmother gave up this exquisiteness for the love of her husband. “A sultan’s gift,” I said.
“Literally,” my sister said. “From a sultan to us.”
“I can’t take it,” I told my niece. “You could send your son through college with it.”
“I’d trade it for a foot massage right now.” She tried to lift her foot off the floor as Exhibit A, but could barely get it high enough to slip a sheet of paper underneath. “Look, if I ever need it, I’ll take it back. I was just hoping you’d play for him.”
“I can’t play. I haven’t played in so long.” I plucked a string, and then another. The oud’s sound was disappointingly bad. “You don’t just pick up an instrument after all these years and start strumming. This isn’t a fairy tale.”
“He always talked about how well you played,” Salwa said. She stared at the balcony’s glass door, at my father’s bed behind it.
“He didn’t like my playing,” I objected. “He never did.”
“You’re crazy,” my sister snapped. “Did you just say that?”
“It would take me months to be able to play a simple maqâm. Should I force him to go through the torture of listening to me practicing scales again?”
The oud was out of tune. I tightened the top string, and my fingers hurt. The sound was actually atrocious, the wood having aged beyond repair. I pressed my ring finger for an easy note, and the skin at the tip felt like it was about to break. Would my fingers ever relearn what they had forgotten? Would my hands remember what had been consciously erased? My fingers asked questions I had no answer for. They ached. My whole body ached; my eyes felt as if they were about to shoot out of my head. I slid along the railing and sat on the floor and cried. My sister hesitated, but then slid next to me and burst into tears. Together, side by side, shoulder to shoulder, we bawled. If only the gorgeous oud didn’t sound like a ukulele.
A letter arrived from the mayor of Aleppo, announcing that an army had appeared on the horizon, Mongols, as numerous as locusts, as destructive as termites, as methodical as ants, as cruel as African wasps. A few days later came a letter from Damascus saying that the locust army had conquered Aleppo, Hamah, and Homs and was heading toward Damascus. From the refugees that poured into Egypt the council discovered that the land of Islam was being completely overrun by the foreign hordes. The Mongols reached Gaza.
“They have conquered the cities of my people,” said a Persian. “Shiraz fell, as well as Isfahan.”
“The barbarians burned Baghdad to the ground,” cried an Abassid. “The armies either surrendered or dispersed.”
“King Hethum of Armenia helped the Mongol Hulagu,” said a Syrian. “The Armenian set the great mosque of Aleppo afire himself, and the Mongols encouraged him.”
“Ah, a pox upon Armenia,” said a Turk.
The counsel deliberated for hours. The only army left in the lands was the army of Egypt. The Franks had either sided with the Mongols or chosen to remain neutral. From Baku to Edessa, from Basra to Damascus, the Mongols ruled.
“I will never surrender,” Layla told Othman. “I am Egypt.”
“We will not surrender,” announced the African and Uzbek warriors. “We are Egypt.”
“Why are they deliberating?” asked Aydmur the slave warrior. “Our course is clear,” said the twenty-five Circassians, the twenty-five Georgians, and the twenty-five Azeris.
“I will choose death before surrendering to the fire-worshippers,” Baybars told the diwan. “You have heard the reports of what has happened to our lands. Our enemies kill those who fight and those who surrender indiscriminately. You cannot willingly give Egypt up to this. I will not allow it, and I am Egypt.”
The king’s regent said, “We cannot fight them. Even God cannot count their numbers.”
“If you cannot trust God to count, you are not fit to rule,” Qutuz the indefatigable spat out. “I will fight even if I am the only one on the battlefield. Shame on any man who chooses life without God over death with Him.”
“You will not fight alone,” Prince Baybars said. “I will follow you.”
“We will follow you,” cried the council.
“I will not serve a baby king,” said the slave warrior Qutuz. “Dethrone him.”
The diwan stripped the boy of his title and elected the great General Qutuz the indefatigable as sultan of Islam, prince of the faithful, the first Mamluke.
Behold. The reign of the magnificent slave kings has begun. Rejoice.
The great jihad was called. The high sheikh of Azhar University wrote a fatwa. Anyone who could wield a weapon and did not fight the enemy was an infidel whose burial would not be in a Muslim cemetery. Anyone who had money and did not spend it to ensure the victory of the army of God was an unbeliever.