Chapter Kairouan #3
I do not run or scream. I walk one slow step at a time, as though if I move faster I will not see the full horror of what is before me.
I do not scream, I whisper, as though I am afraid of receiving an answer.
I breathe in the smell of smoke and I choke out the names of the servants.
No-one replies. I stand in silence outside Ibrahim’s room and it takes me a long time to raise my hand and push against the charred wood.
I do not enter the room, do not kneel by the side of what I see there, the shape of what used to be a man. I look and then I close my eyes and know that I will never again close my eyes without seeing what I have seen here.
I walk through Djalila’s rooms. The metal birdcages sway in the breeze that comes when I open the door and ashes drift in low clouds across the floor with each step that I take.
I pause by one cage to touch the black feathers that were once bright yellow and the tiny, outstretched wingtip crumbles to nothing.
I stand by Djalila’s bed and address the wall.
“I failed you.”
There is no answer, no sound in this dead house except my own voice.
“I killed your brother because I loved him too much,” I tell her, as though she can hear me. “I killed him and then I tried to save you, to atone for what I did to him. I thought if I made you happy again that I would be forgiven. Instead, I only made more unhappiness.”
The wall is silent but I cannot lower my gaze.
“I made a good man unhappy with my arrogance in thinking I could heal you,” I say.
“I stole your husband without your knowledge because I desired him and lied to myself about what I was doing.” The words come in retches, as though I am vomiting up their poison after all these years of suffering in silence.
“I killed a young girl and her unborn child because I could not foresee your bitterness at her innocence. I let your daughter grow up without a mother’s touch. ”
I close my eyes and feel the tears seep out from under my eyelids. “I do not know how to make amends,” I say. “I do not know how.”
***
I shelter in the ruins for three days and nights, during which time I do not sleep or eat.
I drink a little water, when I remember to, from the last dregs of the courtyard pool, dirty with ashes, which should taste bitter in my mouth but I cannot seem to taste anything.
I walk from one room to another, each unrecognisable and then I walk them again and then again, as though I might miraculously find a room that is unharmed.
I touch scraps of fabric: blankets, hangings, carpets and each falls to pieces between my fingertips leaving only blackness on my skin.
Sometimes I sit and allow the sun to shine on me through the broken window shutters until even its distant heat burns my skin.
I try to think but really there is nothing in my mind.
I cannot summon up the energy to cry or be angry, not even with myself.
Occasionally I close my eyes and something like sleep comes to me although it is not a true sleep but rather a darkness which shows me what I have lost and I quickly re-open my eyes that I may not be tormented.
By the third day something like thoughts return to me. I take things from different parts of the house and collect them in what was once Ibrahim’s study. I find coins and some unburnt clothes that only smell of smoke, a water bag.
There is a part of me that thinks: I am free now.
Those to whom I owed a debt are all dead and the cup that cursed me is gone, burnt to ashes, all the power it had lost. I am free of its draw, its call on me.
I can leave Kairouan and return to the mountains with Moez, live as I dreamt of living.
But the ashes on my face when I look in Djalila’s mirror tell me otherwise, they show me my only possible future.
Zaynab.
I will serve her if she will let me. I will try to make her happy as atonement for her dead uncle, her dead parents, the love she was never given as a child. I have nothing to offer, but I will serve her as she commands.
I kneel for the dawn prayer and rise, collect up my things and slip out of the garden. I will not go to Moez, for I will only cause him more hurt and he would follow me, would try to help me when I must do this alone.
***
“Hela! Hela!”
I turn and see a boy running towards me, a dirty cloth in one hand. The rising sun behind him makes me squint but as he reaches me, I see it is the slave boy I once saved, grown almost to a man. Now he stands before me, panting from his run.
“This is for you,” he tells me, holding out the cloth.
I take it and unwrap what lies within its folds. My hands are quicker than my mind, they let the cup fall, as though even my fingers are trying to rid me of it, to let it break into a thousand splinters.
But the boy is too quick for me and he catches the cup even as it falls from my grasp. “I saved it from the fire for you,” he tells me solemnly. “So that you can save others as you saved me.”