How strange, Zahra is thinking, that this child who I barely know and who has just reached her eighteenth year, reminds me so much of my own youth. Her father sees her still as a flower in bud. How wrong he is, how wrong all fathers are and will remain. She is in full bloom, like the orange-blossoms in spring. Those blossoms whose scent excites the senses. As if to make sure, Zahra lifted herself with the aid of a pillow-cushion and looked down on her great-niece, who was diligently but gently pressing the toes on her left foot. Even in the weak glow of the lamplight, Hind’s skin, normally the colour of wild honey, was flushed and animated. Her eyes were shining and her mind was elsewhere. They were familiar symptoms.
‘Does he love you as much?’
The suddenness of the question startled the girl.
‘Who could you be talking about, Great-Aunt?’
‘Come, child, it is not like you to be so coy. Everything is written on your face. Here I was thinking that you were excited by what happened this evening. Miguel told me what you shouted at him. He’s not really upset — admires you for it — but you’ve forgotten it all, haven’t you? Where have you been?’
Hind, unlike her calm and contented older sister Kulthum, was temperamentally incapable of dissimulation. At the age of nine she had shocked a religious scholar from Ishbiliya, who also happened to be her mother’s first cousin, by challenging his interpretation of the al-koran. The theologian had been denouncing every possible pastime in which Muslim nobles indulged as ‘forbidden,’ and had developed the argument to demonstrate how all this sensual irresponsibility had led to the decline of al-Andalus. Hind had interrupted him in mid-flow with a memorable intervention, still recalled with pleasure by the Dwarf and his friends in the village.
‘Uncle,’ the young girl had asked with a sweet smile, which was completely out of character. ‘Did not our Prophet, peace be upon him, once say in a hadith which has never been questioned, that the angels loved only three sports?’
The theologian, deceived by her smile and delighted that one so young could be so well versed in the scriptures, had stroked his beard and responded warmly.
‘And what were these, my young princess?’
‘Why horse-racing, shooting at a mark and copulation, of course!’
The uncle from Ishbiliya had choked on the meat which he had, till then, been consuming quite happily. Zuhayr had excused himself and collapsed with laughter in the kitchen. Zubayda had been unable to control a smile and Umar had been left to divert the conversation, which he had accomplished with some finesse. Kulthum alone had remained silent and offered her uncle a glass of water. For some reason this gesture had left a deep impact on the scholar. It was his son whom Kulthum was due to marry next month.
Zubayda had told the tale to Zahra. It had made the old woman laugh, and it was that memory which now caused her to smile at her great-niece.
‘My ears are getting impatient, child.’
Hind, who had so far not dared confide her secret to anyone except her favourite maid-servant, was desperate to unburden herself to a member of the family. She decided to tell Zahra the whole story. Her eyes began smiling again.
‘From the very first day it was, Great-Aunt. From the very first day I saw him I knew that I wanted no other man.’
Zahra smiled and nodded thoughtfully. ‘The first love may not be the best, but it is usually the deepest.’
‘The deepest and the best! It has to be the best!’
Hind’s eyes were burning like lamps. She described Ibn Daud’s arrival at al-Hudayl. The impression he had made on the whole family. Her father had taken an immediate liking to the young scholar and had immediately offered him a job as a private tutor to the family. They had all attended his first lecture. Ibn Daud had explained the philosophy of Ibn Khaldun as it was interpreted in al-Qahira. Zubayda had questioned him in some detail on how Ibn Khaldun’s theories could explain the tragedy of al-Andalus. ‘Loose stones,’ he had replied, ‘could never construct a stable city wall.’
‘Hind,’ pleaded Zahra. ‘I am too old to appreciate every detail. I accept without dispute that the boy is both intelligent and attractive, but if you go on like this I might not be alive to hear you finish your story! What happened tonight? After the meeting?’
‘Father was worried about Zuhayr, and before I realized the whole family had disappeared inside the house. I walked up to Ibn Daud, told him that I needed fresh air and asked him to take a walk by my side.’
‘You asked him?’
‘Yes, I asked him.’
Zahra threw back her head and laughed. Then she cupped Hind’s face with her withered hands and stroked her face.
‘Love can be a snake disguised as a necklace or a nightingale which refuses to stop her song. Please continue.’
And Hind described how a maid-servant had led the way with a lamp, while two others had followed them at a discreet distance till they had reached the pomegranate grove.
‘The pomegranate grove?’ asked Zahra faintly, trying to control her heartbeats. ‘The clump of trees just before the house is visible when you’re returning from the village? When you lie flat on the ground does it still feel as if one is underneath a tent of pomegranates with a round window at the top? And when you open your eyes and look through it, do the stars still dance in the sky?’
‘I do not know, Great-Aunt. I did not have the opportunity to lie down.’
The two women looked at each other and laughed.
‘We talked,’ continued Hind, ‘about our house, the village, the snow on the mountains, the coming spring, and after we had exhausted every possible formality, we fell silent and looked at each other. It seemed like a year before he spoke again. He took my hand and whispered that he loved me. At this point the maids began to cough loudly. I warned them that if they did that again I would send for the Inquisition to roast them alive. Then they could cough all the way to hell. I looked him straight in the eyes and confessed my love for him. I took his face between my hands and kissed him on the lips. He said he would ask Father for my hand in marriage tomorrow. I advised caution. Better that he let me prepare the path. On the way back I felt my body ache and realized that it was for want of him. I offered to go to his room tonight, but he nearly fainted at the thought. “I am your Father’s guest. Please do not even suggest that I abuse his hospitality and betray his trust. It would be a disgrace.” Thanks be to God that you are here, Great-Aunt Zahra. I could not have kept it to myself much longer.’
Zahra sat up in her bed and hugged Hind. Her own life flashed by and made her shiver. She did not want this girl, on the threshold of her life, to make the same mistakes, to be scarred by the same emotional wounds. She would talk to Umar and Zubayda on behalf of the young couple. The boy was clearly poor, but times had changed. To her great-niece she offered only words of encouragement.
‘If you are sure of him, then you must not let go. I do not want any talk a hundred years from now of a green-eyed youth who wandered round these mountains, desolate and heartbroken, confiding to the river his yearning for a woman named Hind.
‘Look at me, my child. A pain still oppresses my heart. I was burnt by love. It devoured my insides till there was nothing left at all and I began to open my legs to any caballero who wished to enter, not caring whether I enjoyed or disliked the experience. It was my way of destroying all that was sensitive in myself. It was when they found me naked on the tracks outside Qurtuba that they decided to send me to the maristan in Gharnata. Never make my mistakes. Far better that you run away with this boy and discover in six months that all he wanted was to feast on these two peaches than to accept a refusal from your parents. The first will cause you misery for perhaps a few months, even a year. The second will lead to despair, and despair gnaws at one’s soul. It is the worst thing in the world. I will talk to your mother and father. Times have changed and, in any case, your Ibn Daud is not the son of a servant in this house. Now go to your own room and dream of your future.’