He caught up to Nora and handed her the two books: the one about El Greco, and Ibn Hazm’s The Necklace of the Dove, between the pages of which she’d slipped the drawing of El Greco’s painting, a gift from the Toledan woman.
“These are yours. Don’t forget them.” His finger stretched out to trace the course of the tear that had run down her cheek; she looked away.
“I’m not sure there’s room for these here.”
His outstretched hand trembled in the air between them. “Maybe for the girl who looks like you?” From the distraught expression she wore as they walked into the lobby of the hotel, he could tell that there was no room there for that girl, nor for him either.
“You know that woman was crazy, don’t you?” His throat felt tight as they rode in the elevator together, feeling like strangers. He knew this was the last time they’d ride in an elevator together and that the doors would soon open and that she would disappear as if she’d been nothing but a mirage all along.
“Nora,” he whispered, stirring the air in the elevator. “Would it shock you to hear that I can’t stop thinking about making love to you? About connecting with you physically? It’s a riddle that occupies the space between imagination and geography. Maybe our imaginations are actually a part of our real physical existence. Something more like a necessity. Without our dreams, we’re left with nothing but our existence to keep us company. And that’s something we can’t get our heads around. We don’t even understand the reasons behind it. Life has no meaning unless we can hone it with our dreams.” Her eyes were fixed on the elevator doors and she was holding her breath.
“You’re a woman now. You don’t have to go back to the sheikh. You can just turn your back on everything that’s happened and come with me. It doesn’t even have to be with me. But … Just get yourself away from all this. Embrace your freedom.”
Not again, said the look she gave him. They parted outside the door of her suite and she disappeared behind it, going to face what awaited her.
Wallpaper Tree
NASSER HURRIEDLY EXAMINED THE WORN SECTIONS OF THE PARCHMENT. Mushabbab could no longer fill the gaps with what he’d heard the elders say. He could do nothing. He handed the worn parchment to Yusuf, who skipped to the end:
I COULDN’T COAX SLEEP TO COME to me there in the soft mud. Whenever I managed to doze off, I was swept up in a storm. A storm with you at the head, riding on a horse of fire, black. It shot up out of the sand and into the sky, carrying you and your men back from Khaybar. My dreams felt like I was skipping lines and pages in the book of destiny, looking ahead to what awaits you.
Labor came to me. Hand in hand with death. I was in agony for days and eventually I realized that I only had enough life left in me to save one of us. That’s why I sent for al-Ghatafani. I used up the very last sparks of my life writing this testament for you — in the blood of my labor — so that you would know everything there was to know about the truth of your lineage and origin. I slipped it inside my amulet, a silver half-moon that my father gave me when I married. It was made by our best silversmith to symbolize how the moon secretly penetrates our minds and even the rocks around us.
In the morning, al-Ghatafani visited me in my birthbed and deathbed beneath the palm trees. He looked like a ghost. Like one of the sand ghosts we defeated on our journey.
“I’m going to give you this testament, but you must first swear to me that you will protect it, you and your descendants. They must memorize my family tree and all its branches in the different tribes until my people return to Khaybar. Until they regain the Hijazi countryside, which is rightfully theirs.”
Glancing possessively at my round belly, where I was carrying you, he took the silver amulet and promised to store the family tree inside it. He also swore to engrave my lineage on the walls of the fort of my father Ka’b ibn al-Ashraf at Khaybar so that my descendants would be able to recover it even if the amulet were lost or destroyed.
The parchment ended there. The three of them had no way of knowing how al-Ghatafani and his descendants had served Sarah’s son and his descendants over the next fourteen centuries as the amulet was passed from one generation to the next.
Nighttime Arrival
THE CLOCK READ TEN P.M. AS NORA OPENED THE DOOR TO HER SUITE AND stepped into the gaze that examined her from her damp hair all the way down to her sports shoes. It was as if she’d walked into a cloud; an electrical storm, emanating from where he was reclining on the sofa, battered her face. He was dressed in a suit and he was still wearing his tie, his overcoat even. He’d been in the exact same position since the morning he discovered she was gone and no one had dared to disturb him.
She had no idea how long she’d been standing there, besieged, when he eventually stood up and walked toward her in silence. She froze as he reached out to her and tore off her white cotton dress, buttons flying in every direction. She didn’t so much as blink, not even when the window that overlooked the gardens came into his line of vision and he pushed her toward it, cold and menacing like the sky in one of El Greco’s paintings. He showed her body to the people passing below, her entire torso exposed to the road. Neither of them said a word. There was nothing to hear but his heavy breathing and screaming rage. When it became clear that she wasn’t going to resist, the game stopped being fun. He shoved her toward the door of the suite and then dragged her into the corridor, which stretched before them, holding its breath. She followed passively all the way to the elevator doors. He pressed the button. As they waited for the elevator to ascend, she gritted her teeth and racked her brain. She was trying to think up some way she could defend herself when he threw her out onto the street, naked. She found some steely determination within: she decided she’d pretend to be dead and allow her naked body to be discovered by anyone who chose to. The elevator opened and the brutal air cloaked her naked body. He pushed her into the chilly elevator and she ceased to see. He pressed the button for the ground floor. He seemed to have lost the ability to think — like an animal frozen in headlights. Only one instinct controlled him now: revenge, the need to humiliate her.
“In case you’re finally tired of acting solo, I’ll choose the audience from now on.” When the elevator reached the ground floor, the air inside was thick, tense, then the doors parted with a cinematic flourish to reveal the reception desk and every eye in the lobby. Piano music drifted toward them from the end of the corridor. As the door opened — it felt like it was taking ages — he stripped off his overcoat roughly. She didn’t make a move; her arms were pressed firmly against her sides so he wrapped it around her tightly and growled, “Keep defying me and you won’t even find a rag to cover yourself with.”
His voice was colder than the wind that pummeled them when they walked out of the hotel. She saw a darkness in his face that reminded her of Death in the background of The Burial of the Count of Orgaz. She looked away, provoking the resentment that held him in its thrall. He grabbed the back of her head and kissed her hard and when she opened her eyes again she found herself in the back of his large Mercedes. As soon as the door was shut, they were off. Rafa could taste the blood in her throat all the way from where he was standing, out of sight, in a pool of yellow beneath a streetlight.