“Dance!” the Sultan roared. His shout startled everyone. The musicians stopped playing briefly and all of us—the woman in the doorway, the eunuch, the three advisors and I—stared at the Sultan.
“She must dance!” he shouted.
The eunuch said something to the woman, who at once straightened her back, lifted her head, and for a moment stood tall and proud. Slowly, she began to dance.
She moved gracefully down the steps, then onto the tiled floor before our table, her hands and body keeping time with the music. Once before us, she began to twirl. Her robes and veil lifted as she turned—and I saw the fair skin of her hands, a flash of blond hair.
I knew then who—or what—danced for the Sultan of Agadez and his guests: the woman from a lost mythology. I felt as if a jug of icy water had been poured over my head. I sobered at once and, shivering, sat up straight to watch the twirling dervish before me.
It was then that she noticed me, and she was curious. She danced close to me when she let her veil fall, and she danced close to me as she loosened the ties of her robes. I studied her face and, though it was not a type of face I had ever imagined existing on this world, I could still read the emotions that played there: unhappiness, sorrow, shame. I did not want to see her forced to dance naked. Even if her people were to become the enemies of mine, I did not want to see her shamed like that. I thought, in vain for a time, of a way to prevent her complete disrobing, but nothing occurred to me better than what I presently did: I began to cough, though my false cough soon turned to a real, and as the real continued I shortly could not stop myself from vomiting.
At once the dancing stopped, the music stopped, everyone stood but me. Without a word, the Sultan left the room. The eunuch rushed forward with rags. I took one of his rags and knelt to help him clean the floor.
“No!” he said, too loudly. “You are the Sultan’s guest.” He tried to take the rag from my hands, but I would not let him. I was responsible for the mess, and I was determined to help him clean it, though it comforted me somehow to find that at least this man still thought of me as a guest here. One by one the advisors left, and when they were gone, the musicians left. Other servants came at once to clear the table. The Sultan’s wife stood not far off, watching the eunuch and me, retying her robes. I had stopped her dance, but I had not planned to make such a mess. She crossed to the table, took pen and paper before the servants could clear it away, and wrote on the paper, which she handed to me. Did I displease you that much? she had written in Arabic.
It disturbed me to find my actions misconstrued in this manner. I crossed to the table and quickly wrote in Arabic on the same paper, I saw your reluctance to dance and did what I could to spare you from proceeding. I did not mean to go so far, and for that I apologize. I handed her the paper. After she read it, she stared at me for a long time. Finally she handed the paper to the eunuch, who also read what we had written. Then it was his turn to stare for a moment. He set the paper on the table. “You are a man of honor,” he said. He bowed to me from where he knelt on the floor, which embarrassed me, so I knelt and took up my rag to continue cleaning. The eunuch put his hands on mine to stop me. “Let me do this,” he said gently. After I stood, he said, “She can hear and understand our words, though she cannot speak them. Suleiyá,” he said. “You must put on your veil.”
His words seemed to surprise her—it was as if she were not accustomed to the clothes she wore, though she hurried to comply. Soon the veil covered her head and hid her face in shadow. She crossed to the table and wrote. Her jeweled bracelet tapped the table while her hand moved. I saw that this bracelet was really four separate copper bands, a large yellow stone on the bottom, nearest her hand, then a tiny brilliant blue jewel on the second, small red jewels on the third and fourth. She handed me the paper. Where are you from? she had written.
“From a land called England,” I said. “It is far from here, and very different from this place. Where are you from?” I asked in return, glad that the Sultan were not present so that I might ask the question and read her answer.
She looked at the eunuch, who looked back at her but said nothing, then she motioned for me to follow her across the room to doors that opened onto a balcony. We stood at the rail, where she studied the night sky for a time. Innumerable stars blazed there. A breeze off the desert cooled the night air, and I became mindful of the dews that constantly worry Abdullah. I was about to say that for my health I needed to return inside, when she pointed northeast to something forty degrees above the horizon—above the Aïr mountains. I pointed at the mountains, but she pushed up my arm till my finger pointed at stars.
That was how she answered my question. I stood, wondering, as she turned and walked back into the room. I shortly followed, but she was gone. Only the eunuch remained in the now almost dark room, clearing away the last of the dishes. Most candles had been extinguished. “I do not understand,” I told him.
“Neither do I,” he said. He held the paper we had written on to the flame of a candle. When the fire had nearly reached his fingers, he dropped what remained of the paper onto a plate. Soon nothing was left of our communication but ashes and memory. He blew out the candle and left with the dishes. Soldiers came to escort me to the street, and again I was left to walk alone to the house of Ibn Faleiha in the dark night, cool now in a desert breeze. I buttoned my jacket to the neck to ward off dews, though once in my own room I opened the window, which also faced northeast, to look at stars for a time. The moon had not yet risen, but the night was bright with starlight. What had Suleiyá, for such appeared to be her name, tried to tell me? Were she and her people not something from a lost mythology, as I had imagined, but descended here from some star or moon?
Forty degrees above the horizon in Africa there are many, many stars at which to point.
I woke with a fever and other worse symptoms I refrain from chronicling. Two of Ibn Faleiha’s serving girls were also similarly ill, and Ibn Faleiha himself complained of a severe headache. Ibn Faleiha told me that many in the city were ill.
After a failed attempt at breakfast, I wrote an apology to the Sultan and sent Abdullah to deliver it. Though he waited at the palace till after midday for a reply, none came. Abdullah seemed troubled after his return, and I asked him the reason.
“I heard men talking at the mosque of thee, O my master,” he said.
“What did these men say?” I asked.
“That the illness in the city is thy doing, that thou hast cursed Agadez with some Christian ailment.”
“A curse that afflicts the man who says it seems strange and ineffective.”
“Indeed,” Abdullah said. “But that is not all. A mahdi has arisen here. He preaches in the mosque against thee, against the Sultan’s worldly ways, and against one of the Sultan’s wives.”
“What does he say?”
“That thou and this wife of the Sultan’s are infidels and have polluted Agadez. Tragedy will befall the city unless the Sultan repents and cleanses it.”
“What does this mahdi say of the Sultan’s wife?” I asked.
“That she is a devil whom he has tamed for evil, that one look of her brings a curse, and two hard looks stop the heart.”
“That is nonsense,” I said. “I have met the woman to whom they must refer. She looks different from other women, but her glance does not kill.”