“I want my daughter to be queen of the village,” Najla told her mother, who agreed wholeheartedly. She was almost successful. Aunt Samia blossomed into a queen manquée.
One day, King Saleh was riding through the city when he came to Lady Zainab Street. There were wooden planks spanning a small gulf, and his subjects crossed with difficulty. He felt ashamed that the maqâm of Lady Zainab was not in a more fortunate quarter of the city. He said, “A bridge must be built here, and a small neighborhood, with decent shops and adequate housing.” He put Baybars in charge, and Baybars was honored by the responsibility.
The prince had Othman summon engineers to build the bridge. They hired carpenters and artisans and built a neighborhood so lovely it was as if the Lady watched over it. A marvelous gate protected it, and clean streets invited people in. The prince said to Othman, “Bring me grocers, butchers, perfumers, tailors, oil merchants, coffee traders, and other honest brokers.”
Othman brought the shopkeepers, and they moved into the neighborhood within a couple of months, transforming it into the most popular in the city.
Evil Arbusto, the king’s judge, heard of the miracle, and his blood coursed with envy. He called on his close friend the mayor of Cairo. The mayor inquired why the judge looked sad and was told, “There is a sight in the city that breaks my heart. The slave Baybars has built a lively neighborhood that I would love to see reduced to cinders and ash.”
“I know the neighborhood,” the mayor said. “It will be a pleasure to be rid of it. That scoundrel Othman has bested me a few times, and now I will get him back.” The mayor called on a rogue by the name of Harhash and told him of his wish to burn the neighborhood. Harhash asked where the neighborhood was. The mayor said, “Next to the maqâm of Lady Zainab.”
Harhash recoiled. “I cannot do this. I will burn any other neighborhood, but not the Lady’s neighborhood. That is blasphemy.”
The mayor screamed, “That is not blasphemy, you jackass. You do not even know what the word means. You and your men will burn what I command you to, or I will have you in prison, and you will never see the light of day for the rest of your life.”
And Harhash agreed to commit arson, for he had no other choice. He and two of his men went to study the neighborhood. The men told Harhash, “This neighborhood can only be burned in the middle of the night, when there are no witnesses.” Lady Zainab, the neighborhood’s protector, had made sure the weather was hot enough that a tailor was taking his siesta on the floor of his shop and not his house, and so was able to hear the conversation of the men standing nearby. When they left, the tailor sought Othman and informed him of what he had heard.
Othman and the Uzbek and African warriors rode to the neighborhood. Othman told the gatekeepers to close the gate but keep its portal open. He ordered the residents not to light their night lamps that evening. And the prince’s servants waited for night to fall.
Harhash and his twelve men arrived with barrels of oil and found the neighborhood dark and the gate closed. “This is a blessing,” Harhash whispered. “We can do our job and no one will witness.” He sent one of his men ahead through the portal. As soon as the man entered, one of the Africans banged him on top of the head with his closed fist, and the rogue collapsed unconscious. Othman waited a little and then whistled. Another man walked in and got thumped by another African. Othman whistled again. A third man entered, and this time Othman hit him on the head, but the man did not collapse. He stared wide-eyed at the Africans, and one of them thumped him quickly. Othman sulked. The warriors took turns whistling the rogues in, until Harhash was the last one to be knocked unconscious. The arsonists woke and found themselves tied and lined up before the fiercest-looking men they had ever seen. Harhash began to weep.
“Oh, Harhash,” Othman said, “have times been so tough that you have resorted to playing with fire?” And Harhash replied, “Be not cruel, friend. Do you think me impious enough to commit a dastardly crime with the Lady so close were I not forced to? That these warriors stand here to protect this neighborhood is the only proof I need that the Lady still watches. Now I will never taste the fruits of paradise.”
And Othman joined Harhash in weeping. He sat down on the ground and said, “Oh, Harhash, you are not damned. If you repent before the Lady, as I did, God will listen and forgive.” Harhash and his men gave up their wayward ways and swore allegiance to God. Othman said, “Now you and your men can work for me,” and one of the Uzbeks said, “But you are a servant yourself.” And Othman replied, “True, but I am moving up in the world. Soon Harhash here will be able to afford his own servants. It is an ever-shifting multilevel process.”
Fatima’s room was across the hall from the royal chambers, and the second stab of pain forced a sigh that echoed that of the emir’s wife. Fatima asked her attendants to leave her, but when she was alone, she no longer wanted to be.
“Ishmael,” she said, “come.” And Ishmael popped up next to her in bed. “What an awful-looking room,” he said. “You want your child to grow up to be a scholar?”
“Do something, then.”
“With pleasure,” Ishmael replied gleefully.
“Hold on,” said a materializing Isaac.
“I will do it,” said Elijah. “You have no taste.”
“Go home,” said Ishmael. “She asked me to do it.”
His seven brothers ignored him. Adam turned the drapes violet and Noah changed them to blue. Ezra and Elijah had a wrestling match over the carpet. Fatima’s bedspread had four competing pattern designs. By the time she yelled, “Stop,” the room was a disaster, clashing gaudiness in every corner. She looked around. “This is truly awful. I love it.”
Aunt Samia loved and idolized her mother. For her, my grandmother could do no wrong. God, in all His great bounty, created the world in six days, and on the seventh, He concentrated on Najla. She was the most virtuous woman who had ever lived, the most devout, the most intelligent, the most fill-in-the-blank-with-an-ideal-trait. My poor, poor grandmother Najla, born an orphan, married to a ne’er-do-well hakawati, still managed to raise the perfect family and provide her children with a loving environment. Aunt Samia mimicked her mother’s every movement, modeled her entire personality after her. She learned to cook the same meals, weave the same textiles, cross-stitch the same patterns. Whenever she remembered, Aunt Samia pronounced her “s” the same way my grandmother did, spitting saliva upon the listener. Luckily, she didn’t often remember, and she never did it after her mother passed away.
And Aunt Samia had the same adversary as my grandmother and my great-grandmother: none other than the evil Sitt Hawwar, the builder’s wife, who would commit the most egregious of acts against her. Aunt Samia had thought that she would end up spending her life with her mother, since she remained a spinster long past marriageable age.
“We’ll grow old together,” she used to say to Grandmother.
“No, we won’t,” Najla would reply. “You will get married.”
In the morning, the mayor and his men rode into Lady Zainab’s neighborhood. Surprised to find it still standing, the mayor asked the first shopkeeper if he had seen or heard anything during the night. The shopkeeper replied that he had not, because he had turned off the lanterns and fallen asleep. The mayor yelled, “It is against the law to extinguish the lamps,” and he had his men take the shopkeeper out and beat him. He moved to the next shop and asked that shopkeeper if he had had his lamp extinguished last night. The man replied that Othman had ordered him to, which angered the mayor even more, and he had his men beat the second shopkeeper. The mayor went into the next shop, a perfumery, and told the shopkeeper, “Show me your dried carnations.” The perfumer opened a box, and the mayor said, “This carnation is crooked.” The puzzled shopkeeper said, “Find me a carnation that is not,” and received a terrible thrashing for his insolence. The mayor then asked the dairyman, “Why is cow’s milk white but your butter is yellow?” and he replied, “It is always so,” and he, too, received a whipping. The mayor moved from one store to the next, meting out severe beatings.