The Taste of Translation

  He leaves her with his own treatise, The Garden of Instruction in Noble Love, and returns to his rooms.

  She thumbs the pages but cannot concentrate. Sets her sight instead on the garden of the madrasa, its flowering bushes and aromatic herbs a carpet of scented colour around the fountain. Four streams burble up from small pools in the pavilions to feed its thirst – narrow channels, translucent undercurrents, subterranean aqueducts, ever-underway, ever-to-return, the passage of water as circular as that of life itself:

  Every affair and every existent thing

  Is a circle that returns to that

  Through which it had its beginning.

  The waters shall teach her, their spirit harnessed but never trapped. And eternity’s still point reflected in each damp pearl of perfection.

  Khaldun returns from his latest travels.

  To Persia, he says. With gifts of a poet to a poet, he smiles, presenting her with a precious manuscript.

  The moment awkward, but barely a moment.

  Still no? he laughs.

  Still no, she smiles.

  I hope these gifts are not conditional, al-Gani teases. Otherwise my sister’s library will be very spare!

  This work is from the Sufi master Hafiz of Shiraz, Khaldun explains. His is a glorious story:

  Born into a poor family, people often wondered how he came to his vocation, to write such beautiful ghazals in honour of the Beloved. But, as always, fate plays a hand to call us to our destiny. It seems he was a baker’s assistant and each day his task was to bring bread to the mansion of a wealthy family, their daughter so beautiful, he fell desperately in love. But she did not even notice him! The situation seemed hopeless. So he turned to poetry to express his longing.

  Not a bad occupation for the lovelorn, al-Gani quips with barely a sideways glance at Zamrak.

  Desperate to win her, Khaldun continues, he decided to keep vigil at the tomb of a saint each night for forty nights while still working each day. For it was said that anyone who could accomplish this task would be granted his heart’s desire. In truth, he did succeed, for as the sun rose on the fortieth day, the archangel Gabriel appeared before him and said: What do you wish for? For it shall be granted by the grace of God. Hafiz was stunned by the sight of Gabriel, surely the most radiant being he had ever seen! So he thought: If God’s messenger is so beautiful, how much more beautiful must God be! And on the spot, the girl forgotten, Hafiz’s wish was: I want God!

  Hurrah! cries Esha, clapping her hands. A just and poetic end.

  Laleima leafs through the manuscript and finds each poem more glorious than the last.

  Oh look, Zamrak, she says. This one is for you:

  A poet is someone

  Who can pour light into a spoon,

  Then raise it

  To nourish

  Your beautiful parched, holy mouth.

  Light into a spoon, he muses. Certainly a line I would have liked to have composed.

  She goes back to reading, Khaldun at her side, pointing out his favourites, sharing an intimacy he observes with clenched teeth. But works hard to keep the foment lurking in his beard well-hid and sets to composing lines to lift to her beautiful mouth.

  Sixteen

  Esha comes to coax me from my chamber. Having remarked a sister’s melancholy since the work with the translator concluded, she thinks it only for the loss of words. We will have tea, she announces, in the mirador Ayn dar Aisha. So-named for her special place in the household – if the mother of the sultan cannot lead the harem, then of course his eldest sister. Blood is thick. Our blood is thick.

  We sit on cushions at her arched windows, rest our backs against the intricate tilework. Long have I touched these embroidered walls, let my hands float through their inscriptions, stucco woven over and under itself as elaborate as any textured lace upon which Sara works.

  I place the red and gold bands scripted on my own silken sleeves to the wall and become a chameleon, merging with its tiraz. Fused to stone, I slip into plastered verse, into that place which so absorbed his attention. At one with his translation, from my world to his I would go and re-emerge in a space of like words in different script, born again of his creation. Yes. Born again.

  The day is windy, the cypresses flirt, whipped into a dance of love.

  Their fruits will fall all the faster, Esha says.

  Let it not be on fallow ground! the maid quips as she serves tea.

  Not this time, Esha smiles, cradling her belly. She is at peace, with child, and suddenly her eyes shine, a bridge to memory crossed.

  Do you remember when we would wait till the cypress fruits were hard and brown and then collect them for our backgammon? Mumu would draw the board in the clay and steal the dice from the chest in the hammam so we could play.

  How Father would roar to find the dice missing! I rejoin.

  Mahmoud would have to squander dice from another game to make sure we were not found out! Oh, we were young then, she sighs.

  Yes, we were young. When I knew not the full spectrum of love’s painful rainbow. Esha chatters on but I sink back into the walls of verse where the poet lovers of times past, Zaydun and Wallada, whisper their words to me:

  After the separation will there be a way to reunite?

  Oh! All lovers lament their woes.

  I spend the hours of our winter meeting

  Burning with desire

  And why not, if we are separated.

  How soon has destiny brought that which I feared!

  But the nights pass and the separation goes on

  And my patience does not free me from the fetters of longing

  May God water the land that is your home

  With abundant and plentiful rains.

  Later I lie abed on a strange night, the moon full and low in the sky, a harvest moon. Autumn has caught her flight, bathing her in colours not her own.

  I rise and stand naked at the window in sight of her pregnancy. I would be seen by the one I love. And the dreams which follow are dark, fulsome, drawing me into a web where time spins to another place. In a room draped in rich brocade, I find him. Human forms, painted on canvas and framed in gilt, spout from high walls. A lit candle floods me and I cry out as we become one, fused in molten joy. I catch his heaving breath in my mouth, hold it, swallow it. Warm its taste, and sweet. Souls conjoined, our fishes nest, dark-light snug-wrapped, whole.

  In the morning, Sara tut-tuts her surprise at blood staining the bedclothes, and says: Your menses have arrived earlier this month.

  Every night I scan

  The heavens with my eyes

  Seeking the star

  That you are contemplating.

  When the wind blows

  I make sure it blows in my face:

  The breeze might bring me

  News of you.

  This verse he recites to Pedro’s new bedchamber queen, the mistress a king would woo with the words of Moorish poets.

  Delightful, says the mistress to the scribe. Yet I fancy these words are not from a translator’s pen, but a lover’s?

  He blushes, lowers his eyes.

  Tell me, she says, patting the cushion beside her. Who is she?

  Seventeen

  The prayer hour concluded, she visits the grave of her mother before returning to the harem.

  He watches her cross the patio, slip down the steps through the arched hedge of cypresses. Hidden from view.

  Now, he thinks. Now.

  She sits by her mother, tracing fingers across a name woven to stone, prays for strength, guidance. But soon enough feels his presence as a prickling heat at her back, a space into which he speaks, weaving script of his own onto the breeze which lifts her veil.

  I grew to adulthood loving you, this girl-child reciting my poems, tickling my chin, disturbing my peace, piercing my heart. I remember so well how you dreamed to be Wallada, herself a caliph’s daughter, educated and brilliant, a poet of searing verse.

&nbs
p; His pause is long. It encircles them in memory.

  I had my own dreams, in my own bed, as I watched you grow, bud, your beauty blossoming full-flowered before my eyes. My dream to be your Zaydun and our poetry sung to spirited applause in the halls of our king. Together we would string pearls on a necklace of verse. Zaydun composed his greatest works because of Wallada. And I dreamed to be as gifted, as prolific, as celebrated. With you at my side:

  The horizon all around me

  Breathed out perfume

  Announcing her arrival

  As the fragrance precedes a flower.

  I went over the traces

  Of her steps with my kisses

  As the reader goes over

  The letters of a line.

  Her face remains bowed, the veil a hovering bird’s wing against her cheek, her hand still resting on her mother’s name. She cannot look at him. Knows there are tears on his face, the tremor in his voice bespeaks such things, but knows the sight of them would only confuse her.

  They all wondered why I never took a wife. They still do. I know of the whispers, that I prefer the boys of the madrasa, no matter how many slave girls enter my bed.

  He hesitates. But you know. You know that my hand remains free to enjoin yours should you say the word, should you ever say the word – yes.

  Yes. Its tail leaves his tongue like a snake’s whip-fast flick, with a slow, slow finish.

  No, she whispers. The word is no.

  The air darkens, thickens.

  That’s right, he growls. Seek the company of an Infidel, a dirty pale hairless Infidel, but do not accept the love of a true Believer.

  Calm, her sigh a mere softness of thought which parts stilled lips, she kisses the tips of her fingers and places them upon her mother’s cool bed a last time, this time.

  Do you forget, Zamrak, she says, rising, that Ibn Arabi said we are all One. There are no Infidels in the sight of God, only love.

  Ha! His laugh a bitter fruit. Ha! Love! Lie with filth and you become filth.

  He spits his fury to the ground where it pools and festers, enters the groundwater, joins the Acquiea Real, traverses the Madinat, bursts into the river, flows on over the Vega, comingles with the seas, a watershed overspilt with hate.

  This, she sees. All this she sees, and – Oh? – Her own anger presents, sweat-damp on her forehead, a rising tide within the watershed.

  You know not of love. You know only of ambition and power. Love is pure, molten, a joyous cup of which to sip, not the festering plague of envy and greed you present before slow-sliding your victim to an agonising death!

  He recoils from the slap of her words but shifts deftly into entreat, the dance of one who has practised the moves. Long. Over and over, alone in his chamber. Before a candle wafting in gentle fright away from an insistent advance.

  It could change, I could change when I know of your love, he says, and kneels before her in beseech, grasps her hand, presses his lips to her palm.

  I am older now and my desire has never diminished. Forgive my anger, but your refusal cuts deep into my heart. Forgive my heated words. I am your Zaydun, you are my Wallada.

  And at this he rises, her hand still tight-held, his robes a smooth face against her hip, his breath warm upon her hair.

  Zaydun and Wallada burned with passion, love’s fire heated their words. Pressed to parchment was their desire, reed pens quivering as they wrote! Let them be our guides, my heart! he cries.

  He pauses. She has not moved.

  Let me show you what it is to melt into another’s skin, he whispers into her veil. It folds like a damp curtain before her cheek.

  We would entwine words, he says. Tongues. Again the pause. Limbs ...

  He feels her soften beside him, imagines a wetness between her legs, and is ready to lap at her fountain, suck deep her musky scent. His own self grows hard and ready, to answer if she calls. His thoughts are already in the chamber. A breath, a gasp, a moan –

  A breeze fast-risen. A small eddy whirling of its own accord across the Rawda catches them unawares. Her hand slips from his grasp and she skates away, twirled in a dance of the otherworld.

  No! she cries above the wind’s voice. I will not drink of your Black Death!

  Damn the sudden wind! It cannot be recovered. An angry swish of robes takes him away from her. While a new memory is swift-entrenched – of failure.

  If I were chief vizier, he growls, she would accept me. They would all accept me.

  His teeth grind this new bitterness to his liking, fruit sucked dry before ripeness can sweeten its flesh.

  Eighteen

  The doors to the oratory are drawn to, filtered light enters the room through star-cut windows in the cupola high above, while the fountain keeps the air moist, fresh, fragrant, cool. On this, a midsummer’s day.

  She sits at her prayers, tries to still her mind as she has been taught in order to contemplate her approach of the divine, and reflects on Attar’s instruction to:

  Forgo all the shadows; before the sun

  The visible and the hidden are the same.

  Empties herself and an image arises.

  She walks in the forest beyond the Generalife with Rasool, Esha, others, collecting mushrooms from the dark cool mossy places between the tree roots, the big knotty tree roots bulging from the earth. Happy, she smiles into this space, this no-space into which the vision came.

  Look, she says, up ahead is the clearing where I met the gazelle that day so long ago.

  In her vision, they laugh and chat. But only she walks toward the clearing, a clearing bathed in white light, and only she therein, encircled by a grove of trees, the basket of mushrooms still on her arm.

  But where is the gazelle of her past? Where is the beautiful doe with the soft honey eyes to whom she once whispered a prayer of grace?

  She rises high above the clearing to search out the gazelle, but instead sees only herself, alone in the centre of the circle, and observes how she, this other self, kneels down, places the basket at her side and begins to pray.

  Sweat beads this other self’s brow and suddenly she feels it too upon her own there in the oratory. Confused by the flush of heat in the cool of her space, she notices the dagger at her side, the small dagger gifted by Mumu at her first hunt. Watches as her other self grasps the dagger, draws it from its sheath, holds it, long, both hands on its hilt.

  No! she cries. No! Her other self trembles, is not full in her resolve. But –

  Oh! The plunge swift. Hands, dagger, belly, all fused in one fluid moment that never seems to end.

  She feels herself fall from the sky as her other self tumbles over and onto the blade. Blood pools fast, round and out, wide as a sea it sheets the grove. And she sees Zamrak step from the circlet of trees.

  Laleima cries out, wakes to find herself fallen to cool marble. Tears come as gasped sobs, she shivers in shock.

  But look here. A companion has sought her out, slipped in through an unshut door before unseeing eyes, one who wishes to console, one with soft paws and a silent tread.

  He cuddles into the crescent of her form and shares his warmth, his purr a cart’s rumble down a cobbled street, and her heart restored to a peaceful metronome, at last, within her breast.

  A stray from the medina, slim, white, with sandy brown ears, a few faint markings on face and tail, white whiskers, and – oh – very pale, yet very blue eyes.

  Her intake of breath is sudden. But she knows he has found her when she needed to be found. And will stay while she needs him to stay.

  Nineteen

  A summer day dawns, the day is bright and clear. It lifts my heart, but why? Is it only that the sky is as rich with colour as any painter’s palette, mixed, mixed and mixed again? Or is it that a soft breeze has lifted the scent of jasmine, brought it in through the window to greet me on waking?

  I wish to be beautiful today, is my instruction to Sara when she comes to prepare my toilette.


  She chuckles, says: My Lady, each day you are beautiful. It cannot be otherwise! And kisses the top of my head.

  She brings the basin of soured goat’s milk, dabs fresh henna onto my fingertips, sweeps kohl above and beneath my eyes. After stepping into trousers and donning robes, she ties a girdle of silver and gold at my waist, a necklace at my throat and bracelets to trill at wrists and ankles. She brushes my hair till it shines like ebony and dresses it simply with emeralds and pearls.

  Let us go to the workshop of Dirar the perfumer and choose a new scent, is my suggestion to Esha at breakfast.

  What a grand idea! she says. I could surprise Saffaar when he returns. Some delegation or other requires escort from the border. And she hurries to finish her fruits.

  The workshop is dim-lit and cool. Sweet tea is offered but we are already drunk on the scents which surround us. All-over they are, slipping around, under and through in their desire to be noticed. In and out of shadows they sneak, creeping up to assail the faint of heart and light of head. Esha almost swoons under their collective weight!

  Rest, says Dirar. Sit on cushions, sip your tea. Soon your senses will be freed to distinguish each scent as a single precious jewel. It is but a short transit to each star in its own heaven.

  A servant brings samples in tiny bottles. Violet, rose, myrtle, narcissus. Jasmine, poppy, sunflower. Cassia, citrus, cedar, sandalwood. The choice is so difficult!

  He smiles. Shall we experiment?

  A joy to behold, this art! An alchemical wonder of exploration and discovery, where the minute encompasses all, a single drop which can pervade a sea. How treasured the quicksilver that sheets an ocean, the gilt that encases the glass!

  Dirar is a delightful guide, showing us how to prepare the base of oils, beeswax, honey and almonds before we uncork and replace stoppers, forget what we have sniffed and uncork them again. We choose and discount combinations, fuse and blend consonant notes, grasp at the inconsonant, the possibility of the improbable, chart experiences, agree recipes, document findings, hold fast shared secrets.

  Finally! A new fragrance each in a precious crystal vial. And I spend the afternoon enveloped in scent and memory, embroidering a tunic for Esha’s next child.