One evening when Miriam entered the bedroom and undressed, she said to Halima, “Stop pretending you’re asleep. Come over here.”
“What? Over there? Me?” Halima asked, startled.
“Or maybe you don’t want to? Come on. I have something to tell you.”
Trembling all over, Halima crawled in beside her. She lay on the very edge of the bed for fear of giving away her excitement, and out of some incomprehensible reluctance to touch her. But Miriam pulled her close anyway, and only at this point did Halima feel free to press close.
“I’m going to tell you about the sorrows of my life,” Miriam began. “You already know that my father was a merchant in Aleppo. He was very rich and his ships sailed far to the west, laden with precious wares. As a child I had everything my heart desired. They dressed me in exquisite silks, adorned me with gold and gems, and three slaves were at my command. I got used to giving commands and it only seemed natural that everybody should submit to me.”
“How happy you must have been!” Halima sighed.
“Would you believe that I wasn’t particularly?” Miriam replied. “At least it strikes me that way now. My every wish was fulfilled immediately. But what kind of wishes? Only those that could be satisfied with money. The silent, secret ones that a girl’s heart loves to dream about so much had to stay buried deep inside me. You see, I’d learned the limits of human powers early on. When I wasn’t yet fourteen, a series of misfortunes befell my father, one after the other. It began with my mother’s death, which sent my father into a period of profound grief. He didn’t seem to care about anything anymore. From his first wife he had three sons who had become merchants in their own right. One of them lost his entire fortune and the other two stepped in to rescue him. They dispatched their ships to the shores of Africa and waited for their earnings. But then came the news that a storm had destroyed their vessels. All three of them turned to their father. He reunited with them and they sent more ships to the Frankish kingdom. But pirates seized them and overnight we became beggars.”
“Oh, you’d have been better off poor from the beginning!” Halima exclaimed.
Miriam smiled. She drew Halima closer to her and continued.
“All these misfortunes struck us before two years had passed. And then Moses, a Jew who was considered the richest man in Aleppo, came to visit my father. He said to him, ‘Look here, Simeon’—that was my father’s name. ‘You need money, and I need a wife.’ ‘Go on, get out,’ my father laughed at him. ‘You’re so old your son could be my daughter’s father. It would be more seemly for you to be thinking of death.’ Moses refused to let himself be put off—at that time, you see, the whole town was saying I was the prettiest girl in Aleppo. ‘You can borrow from me as much as you want,’ he continued. ‘Just give me Miriam. She’ll be fine with me.’ My father took all this talk of courtship as a joke. But when my half-brothers found out about it, they begged him to strike a deal with Moses. Father’s situation was hopeless. He was also a good Christian and didn’t want to give his child to a Jew. But as frail and depressed as he was after all those misfortunes, he finally relented and let Moses take me as his wife. No one ever asked me about it. One day they signed a contract and I had to move into the Jew’s house.”
“Poor, poor Miriam,” Halima said through tears.
“You know, in his way my husband loved me. I would have preferred a thousand fold for him to hate me or be indifferent. He tormented me with his jealousy—he locked me inside my chambers, and because he could tell that I found him disgusting and was cold to him, he’d gnash his teeth and threaten to stab me. There were times when I thought he was crazy, and I was terribly afraid of him.”
Miriam fell silent, as though she had to gather her strength for what she was about to say. Halima sensed a secret approaching and she trembled. She pressed her cheeks, burning like white-hot iron, to Miriam’s breast and she held her breath.
“My husband,” Miriam resumed presently, “had a habit that deeply injured my modesty. The fact that I had finally become his property after all completely impaired his faculties. He would tell his business associates about me, describe my virtues, my modesty, my physical features in the most vivid terms, and boast that he had become master of the greatest beauty far and wide. Obviously he wanted them to envy him. You see, he would tell me repeatedly of an evening about how his friends had gone green with envy when he described my virtues and his enjoyment of them. You can imagine, Halima, how much I hated him then, and how revolting I found him. When I had to go to him, I felt as though I were going to my execution. But he would laugh and make fun of the greenhorns, as he called his younger associates, and say, ‘Ah, but for money everything is available, my dear. Even an old hen won’t look twice at a poor man, no matter how handsome he is.’ All this talking made me terribly angry and bitter. Oh, if I’d known just one of those greenhorns then, I would have shown Moses how much he was deluding himself! But what happened was the last thing I would have expected. One day one of my maid servants pressed a tiny letter into my hand. I unrolled it and my heart began to race at its very first words. Even today I remember it down to the last syllable. Listen and I’ll tell you what it said.”
Halima trembled in rapt attention, and Miriam continued.
“The letter said: ‘Sheik Mohammed to Miriam, the flower of Aleppo, the silver-shining moon delighting the night and illuminating the world! I love you and have loved you endlessly ever since I heard Moses, your accursed jailer, exalt your beauty and virtues to the heavens. Just as wine goes to an infidel’s head and intoxicates him, so has word of your perfection intoxicated my heart. Oh, silver-shining moon. If you knew how many nights I have spent in the desert dreaming of your virtues, how vividly you’ve stepped before my eyes, and how I’ve watched you like the rosy dawn ascending. I thought that distance would cure me of longing for you, but it has only intensified it. Now I have returned and bring you my heart. Know, flower of Aleppo, that sheik Mohammed is a man and does not fear death. And that he comes close to inhale the air that you exhale. Farewell!’
“At first I thought the letter was a trap. I called the servant who had delivered the letter to me and insisted that she tell me everything honestly. She started crying and showed me the silver piece that some son of the desert had given her as payment for delivering the letter to me. What sort of son of the desert? I asked. Young, and handsome too. My whole body trembled. I was already falling in love with Mohammed. Of course, I thought, how would he have dared to write me the letter otherwise, if he weren’t young and handsome? And then I suddenly became afraid that he might be disappointed when he saw me. I reread that letter over a hundred times. By day I kept it next to my breast, and at night I carefully locked it away in a chest. Then came a second one, even more passionate and beautiful than the first. I was aflame with my secret love. And finally Mohammed arranged a nighttime meeting on the terrace outside my window. That’s how familiar he already was with my surroundings. Oh, Halima, how can I explain to you how I felt then? That day I changed my mind a dozen times. I’ll go, I won’t go—back and forth endlessly, it seemed. Finally I decided not to go, and I held to that all the way up until the appointed time, when I went out onto the terrace, as if obeying a secret command. It was a marvelous night. Dark and moonless, although the sky was littered with tiny shining stars. I felt feverish and chilled by turns. I waited on the terrace like that for some time. I was just starting to think, what if all this is just a ruse? what if someone wanted to play a trick on me and taunt old Moses? when I heard a voice whispering, ‘Don’t be afraid. It’s me, sheik Mohammed.’ A man in a gray cloak vaulted over the railing as light as a feather, and, before I knew it, he had me in his arms. I felt as though worlds were being born and I was seeing infinity. He didn’t ask if I wanted to go with him. He took me by the waist and carried me as he climbed down a ladder into the garden. On the other side of the fence I could see several horsemen. They took hold of me so he could scale the wall. Then he pulled me up into the saddle with him. Off we galloped, out of the city and into the dark of night.”