“Look how pretty they are,” Miriam said.
“Ugh, I can’t stand them. They’re vicious.”
“Why?”
“They attack girls.”
Miriam and Sara both smiled.
“Who ever gave you that idea, child?”
Halima was afraid that she’d blurted out some inanity again, so she answered carefully.
“My former master told me, ‘Watch out for boys! If they jump over the wall and break into the garden, run away from them, because they keep a lizard or a snake under their shirts and they’d let it loose to bite you.’”
Miriam and Sara burst out laughing. Sara devoured Halima with her eyes, while Miriam, biting her lip, said, “Well, there aren’t any mean boys here, and even our lizards are completely gentle and tame. They haven’t done anything nasty to anyone yet.”
Then she began whistling. The lizards turned their heads in all directions, as if looking for the person who was calling them.
Halima huddled between Miriam and Sara, where she felt safer, and said, “You’re right. They’re pretty.”
A little pointed head poked out of a crack in a rock and darted its forked tongue out. Halima froze in terror. Its head rose higher and higher and its neck grew longer and longer. Then there was no doubt: a big, yellowish snake, undoubtedly attracted by Miriam’s whistle, had crawled out of the crevice.
The lizards darted to all sides. Halima screamed. She tried to pull Miriam and Sara away, but they held firm.
“Don’t worry, Halima,” Miriam said, to calm her. “This is our good friend. We call her Peri, and when we whistle she crawls out of her little hole. She’s so well behaved that none of us can complain about her. In general we’re friends in these gardens, people and animals alike. We’re cut off from the rest of the world and take pleasure in each other.”
Halima relaxed, but she wanted to get away from there.
“Let’s go, please,” she pleaded.
They laughed, but complied.
“Don’t be so afraid,” Miriam scolded her. “It should be obvious that we all like you.”
“Do you have other animals?”
“Lots of them. In one of the gardens we have a whole menagerie. But it takes a boat to get there, so sometime when you’re free you can ask Adi or Mustafa to take you.”
“I’d like that. Is this place we live in very big?”
“So big that you could die of hunger if you got lost in it.”
“My goodness! I’m not going anywhere alone again.”
“It’s not that bad. The garden we live in is actually on an island surrounded by the river on one side and moats on the other three. It’s not that big, so if you leave it but don’t cross any water, you can’t get lost. But over there, at the bottom of that rocky cliff face, is a forest with wild leopards.”
“Where did you get Ahriman from that he’s so gentle and tame?”
“From that forest. Not that long ago he was still just like a little kitten. We fed him with goat’s milk, and even now we still don’t feed him meat, so that he doesn’t go wild. Mustafa brought him for us.”
“I don’t know Mustafa.”
“He’s a good person, like all our eunuchs. He used to be a torchbearer for a famous prince. It was very tough work, so he ran away. He and Moad are the garden keepers. But it’s already time to go back to the classroom. Fatima and Zuleika are going to train us in music and singing.”
“Oh, I like that!”
The singing and music lesson was a pleasant diversion for the girls. Miriam gave them complete freedom. Changing places frequently, they would play Tartar flutes, strum on the harp and the lute, light into the Egyptian guitar, compose and sing humorous songs, critique each other and argue, while Fatima and Zuleika tried in vain to command their attention. They laughed, told stories, and enjoyed the chance to let go.
Sara once again clung to Halima.
“You’re in love with Miriam. I saw it.”
Halima shrugged.
“You can’t hide it from me. I can see into your heart.”
“So, and what of it?”
Tears welled up in Sara’s eyes.
“You said you were going to like me.”
“I didn’t promise you anything.”
“You’re lying! It’s why I’ve trusted you so much.”
“I don’t want to talk about this anymore.”
It had gotten quiet, and both Sara and Halima turned and listened. Fatima had picked up a guitar to provide her own accompaniment as she began to sing. Beautiful, old songs full of yearning.
Halima was entranced.
“You have to write the words down for me,” she said to Sara.
“I will, if you’ll like me.”
She tried to press close, but Halima pushed her away.
“Don’t bother me now. I have to hear this.”
After the lesson they stayed in the classroom. Each one took up her own work. Some sewed or wove, or headed over to a huge, half-finished rug and resumed work on it. Others dragged several beautifully carved spinning wheels into the hall, sat down at them, and started spinning. They chatted about ordinary things, about their former lives, about men and about love. Miriam oversaw them, walking through their midst with her hands behind her back.
Halima thought about her. She didn’t yet have any work of her own. She listened to one conversation, then another, until finally her thoughts focused on Miriam. If she and Sayyiduna were “close,” what was it that took place between them? When she was in the harem, did she also do the things that Apama had described? She couldn’t believe that. She tried to shake off such ugly thoughts and convince herself that it couldn’t be true.
They had supper right before sunset, then they went for a walk. Suddenly darkness settled on the gardens and the first stars came out above them.
Halima walked down a path hand in hand with Sara and Zainab, conversing with them in half-whispers. The sound of the rapids grew steadily closer as the alien and eerie landscape stretched boundlessly before them. Halima felt a twinge of emotion, bitter and sweet at the same time, as though she were a tiny creature who had gotten lost in a strange, magical world. Everything struck her as mysterious, almost too much so for her to grasp.
A light flickered through the thickets. The small flame started moving, and Halima timidly clung to her companions. The flame got closer and closer, until at last a man carrying a burning torch stepped before her.
“That’s Mustafa,” Sara said, “the garden keeper.”
Mustafa was a big, round-faced Moor dressed in a colorful cloak reaching almost to his feet and tied at the waist with a thick cord. When he saw the girls, he gave a good-natured grin.
“So this is the new little bird that the wind blew in yesterday,” he said amiably, looking at Halima. “What a tiny, fragile creature.”
A dark shadow danced around the flickering torch. A huge moth had started circling around the fire. They all watched as it nearly grazed the flame, then darted in a broad upward arc and vanished in the darkness. But then it would come back, and each time its dance became wilder. Its circuits around the flame grew narrower and narrower, until finally the fire caught its wings. They crackled, and, like a shooting star, the moth hit the ground.
“Poor thing,” Halima exclaimed. “But why was it so stupid?”
“Allah gave it a passion to attack fire,” Mustafa said. “Good night.”
“That’s strange,” Halima mused, half to herself.
They returned and went to their bedchambers, undressed, and lay on their beds. Halima’s head spun from the day’s events. That ridiculous Adi with his rhyming sentences, the agile dance master Asad, tarted-up Apama with her shameless learning, mysterious Miriam, the girls, and the eunuchs. And here she was in the midst of all this, Halima, who for as long as she could remember had dreamt of far-off lands and longed for miraculous adventures.