‘I will, Great-Aunt, but there is a question which, with your permission, I must ask you.’
‘Ask!’
‘There is a story in the village about Great-Uncle Miguel…’
‘Oh yes! That old business about the weaver’s daughter. It is not a secret. What of it?’
‘Nothing. It was never a secret in the first place. What I meant to ask is if what they say about Miguel and his mother, the Lady Asma, is true?’
Zahra shut her eyes very tight, hoping that darkness would obscure the memory of that pain, which Hind wanted her to relive. Slowly her face relaxed and her eyelids were raised.
‘I do not know the answer. I had already been expelled from this house and was living in Qurtuba at the time. We used to call Asma “Little Mother,” which made us all laugh, even Ibn Farid. I was very upset when I heard that Asma was dead. Meekal? Miguel?’ Zahra shrugged her shoulders.
‘But Great-Aunt…’ began Hind.
The old woman silenced her with a gesture. ‘Listen to me carefully, Hind bint Zubayda. I never wanted to know. The details were of no interest. Asma, whom I loved like a sister, could not be brought back to life. Nor could Ibn Zaydun’s mother. Perhaps everything they say did take place, but the actual circumstances were known to only three people. Two of them are dead and I do not think that anyone has ever asked Meekal. Perhaps when he converted, he told the whole truth in the confessional, in which case a third person was taken into confidence. What difference does it make to anything now? When you grow up you will, no doubt, hear of similar tragedies which have befallen other families. Or other branches of our family. Do you remember that cousin of your mother from Ishbiliya?’
Hind’s face revealed her consternation.
‘You must remember! The very religious cousin from Ishbiliya who was shocked by your knowledge of the hadith?’
‘Him?’ said Hind with a grin. ‘Ibn Hanif. Kulthum’s future father-in-law! What about him?’
‘If ever they raise the business of poor Asma to try and humiliate our Kulthum, you can ask them the name of Ibn Hanif’s true father. It was certainly not Hanif.’
Every mischievous fibre in Hind’s body was now alert. This unexpected revelation had even relegated Ibn Daud for a few minutes.
‘Tell me please, Aunt! Please!’
‘I will, but you must never tell Kulthum, unless you feel she needs the information. Do you promise?’
Hind nodded eagerly.
‘Ibn Hanif’s father was also his mother’s father. Nobody in that family felt it necessary to take their own life. I do not think that Ibn Hanif is even aware of the fact. How could he be? His mother and father took the secret with them when they died. But the old servants in the house knew. Servants know everything. That is how the story travelled to this house.’
Hind was shaken by this information. In Asma’s case death had, at least, wiped the slate clean, but in Ishbiliya…
‘I am tired, child, and you need to sleep,’ said Zahra, signalling her dismissal from the room.
Hind, realizing that it was useless to pursue this matter, rose from the bed, bent down and kissed Zahra’s withered cheeks.
‘Peace be upon you, Great-Aunt. I hope you sleep well.’
After the girl had left, Zahra was assailed by the memories of her own youth. Hardly a day passed now without the magnification of some episode from the past in her thoughts. In the eerie calm of the maristan in Gharnata she had concentrated on the three or four good years in her life — these she would relive and even put down on paper. But three days before her return to the village of the Banu Hudayl, she had destroyed everything on a tiny replica of the bonfire lit by Ximenes in the market. She had done so in the belief that her life was not of any great interest to anyone except herself and she was about to die. It did not occur to her that in erasing what she regarded as the mummified memories of her own history she was also condemning a unique chronicle of a whole way of life to the obscurity of the flames.
She had been truly happy to return to her old home and find it inhabited by Umar and his family. For decades she had controlled her own emotions, deliberately depriving herself of contacts with the whole family, so that now she found herself overcome by a surfeit of affection. It was when she was on her own that she was haunted by the painful aspects of her life.
Take, for instance, the meeting with Ibn Zaydun at dinner tonight. Despite herself she had felt her heart flutter like a caged bird, just as when she first set eyes on him all those years ago. When the family had tactfully left them alone to sip their mint-flavoured tea, she had felt unable to communicate with him. Even when he had told her in that selfsame voice, which she had never stopped hearing and which had not changed, that he had written her a long letter every week since they had been parted, she had felt strangely unmoved. Was this the man for whom she had destroyed her whole life?
He had felt the emotion disappearing in her and had gone on his knees to declare that he had never stopped loving her, that he had never looked at another woman again, that every single day he had experienced an hour of pain. Zahra had been unaffected. She realized that her bitterness, her anger at his cowardice all those years ago when he had bowed to his status as the son of a house-slave and abandoned her to her class, had never left her. This resentment, displaced during her confinement by more pleasing images from the days of their turbulent and clandestine courtship, had nonetheless continued to grow and grow, so that now she felt nothing for him. This realization pleased her. Enslaved for so many years by the poison of love, she was free again. ‘I wonder,’ she thought to herself, ‘what might have happened if we had met again twenty years ago. Would I have got rid of him so easily?’
Ibn Zaydun knew that their phantom relationship was over and, as he wished her well and took his leave, he saw the coldness in her eyes, which made him feel empty and worse. ‘In this cursed house,’ he thought, ‘I am once again nothing but the son of my mother who worked for them and was killed for her pains.’ It was the first time that this sensation had overpowered him in her presence.
Zahra undid the clasps which held her snow-white hair. It unfolded like a python and reached halfway down her back. She had made a real effort to dress well tonight and the effect had stunned them all. She chuckled at the memory and undid the diamond brooch which held her shawl together. The diamond had been a gift from Asma. She had been told by some fool that worn close to the skin it cured every madness.
Lovely, ill-fated Asma. Zahra remembered the day her father’s party had returned from Qurtuba. She and Abdallah had not known what to expect as they had stood near the entrance to the house from the outer courtyard, holding tight to the hands of their mother’s sister, the replacement wife they believed had been grievously injured by Ibn Farid’s acquisition of a Christian concubine. Their first impression of Asma had been one of stunned astonishment. She looked so young and innocent. She was of medium height, but well built and generously proportioned. A virtuous face presided over a voluptuous body. Her skin was as smooth as milk but the colour of peaches, and her mouth looked as if it had been carefully painted with the juice of pomegranates. Underneath a mass of raven-black hair was a pair of shy, almost frightened brown eyes. They could all see how Ibn Farid had been bewitched by her.