Chapter 13
Ghita's Harira Recipe
Ingredients
chopped fresh parsley, for garnish
Steps
Cut meat into tiny pieces. In a pressure pot, heat oil and sauté parsley, cilantro, celery, and onion together with the meat until the vegetables are soft and the meat is browned.
Add three cups of water, tomatoes, smen, spices, and chickpeas.
Cover and cook at high pressure for 30 beakers.
Release pressure, and add eight cups of water, lentils, vermicelli, and tomato paste.
Cook at high pressure for an additional 15 beakers.
Release pressure. To thicken harira, start with two teaspoons of flour and add desired amount of water.Mix well and add to soup, stirring until combined.
Repeat as needed according to your preference for a thicker or thinner soup.
Season with salt and pepper to taste, and garnish with additional parsley for serving.
Shay's harira isn't on par with Ghita's.
She used the same ingredients: lamb, chickpeas, lentils, cilantro, parsley, tomato, and thin strips of pasta.
But Shay wasn't able to replicate the thick and silky quality the midwife's always has.
Hers came out light and zesty instead, which the brothers seem to find tasty enough, unaccustomed to human food as they are.
Despite her hunger, Shay herself is unable to get much down.
Aidi tells her the queasiness and lack of appetite she's experiencing are consistent with the symptoms of a bloodsucker's bite.
He brings her a mug filled with a thick, steaming beverage that looks like mud.
Concerningly, he sets a wooden pail beside her chair.
The brew smells worse than her moon pepper tea ever did.
She'd almost prefer Deebi's previous offerings of raw meat and moldy bread.
She raises the mug halfway, and nope. Her stomach revolts, her body aching with the memory of the illness she bore for so long, the slow poisoning of her body. She sets it back down. “Do I have to drink it all?”
“It's best to get it over with,” says Aidi—whom Shay has mentally dubbed Aidi the Aging. He refuses to remove his reed hat, even at the table, and that creepy cane rests across his lap. “Tarik is one of the oldest bloodsuckers in Ard Al-Ghul. His venom holds much power.”
Shay's hand drifts unconsciously to her neck, which throbs as if in confirmation of the bone-eater's words. Last night's dream flashes through her, less the images and more the feelings. Of being invaded. Of having something private, something vital, torn away without consent.
She stares down at the bubbling liquid. A white shape bobs on the surface. It looks disturbingly like a tooth. With a shudder, she hoists the mug to her lips. She tilts her head back and chugs the antidote. It goes down smoother than she expects, coating her throat with the aftertaste of licorice.
Her stomach cramps almost immediately, which is a diplomatic way to say she doubles over, falls from her chair, and rolls around on the floor, blinded by pain.
Someone sits her up, supporting her from behind the way Shay has supported many a laboring woman.
Someone else shoves the bucket in front of her. And not a moment too soon.
Her stomach empties with a volume and force the tiny bucket is ill-equipped to receive.
The substance that erupts from her in a geyser is dark and gelatinous.
When she thinks she's empty, that there can't be anything else left in her body, she retches again and throws up bloody bits she doesn't want to think may be pieces of vital organs.
Finally, she slumps back against the bone-eater behind her …
Dasri—the Deerlike, in tribute to his great antlers.
She swipes a string of slime from her chin.
It splats on the floor, where it proceeds to pulse and undulate, sliding across the tiles like a slug.
Bono—the Bad-Tempered in Shay's mental index—stomps it underfoot.
Shay hears what sounds like a small yelp.
“You're well now,” Dasri assures her. He helps her stand and leads her to the salon, where Deebi hands her a glass of cool water. It's clean and drinkable this time, by God's mercy.
Aidi and his cane sit closest to her. She wonders if he sleeps with the thing, the way Al-Mukhtar force Moulays in training to sleep, and even bathe, with their muskets.
He studies her as though deciding whether she has passed some test. That look reminds her so much of Ghita, she aches. “How do you feel?”
Shay considers the question. Her gullet is sore, like she overexerted herself but on the inside.
Probing deeper, she identifies another feeling.
One of being emptied out. Cleaned. Unlike the way the moon pepper seems to be clearing her system bit by bit since she stopped taking it, this is a sudden draining.
Intense but, she hopes, complete. She never thought she'd be so grateful for vomiting. “Better, I think.”
She slowly notices all the brothers have quietly gathered on the wraparound seddari, a development that is either touching or worrisome.
“That's good,” the elder bone-eater says. Then he hesitates, as though he's about to say one thing but decides upon another. “Thank you. For that delicious meal you prepared. And sorry you didn't get to enjoy it.”
“It was the least I could do.” Shay shakes her head humbly, though she does appreciate the acknowledgment.
“Did you notice she also tidied up?” chimes in Beni—the youngest, or the Baby. “I never even knew our floor tiles are such a lovely shade of aqua blue. And I can see myself in these drinking glasses! It's like they're brand-new!”
“Is that supposed to be a good thing?” Bono snickers, the crescent-shaped horns on his forehead jiggling. “Be careful. Or you'll crack them.”
Shay is surprised they noticed, although she hoped they would. Their gratitude may make them more amiable to the favor she must now request. “So, the antidote seems to have worked, and I wondered if I might convince one of you to be my escort back through the forest.”
Aidi stiffens and gives a startled cough. “Who told you it would be safe to go back?”
“Well, Deebi …” Shay sputters. Deebi the Downcast, because Disappointment seems too cruel of an epithet even if unspoken.
Kabeer clucks his tongue. His face is half covered by the hood of his cape, which he also never removes, hence his designation as Kabeer the Cape-Wearer. “Deebi, Deebi, Deebi.”
All the brothers turn expectantly toward Aidi. The elder bone-eater rubs the smooth cap of his skull cane, avoiding Shay's eyes. “I bear unfortunate tidings.”
Dread pools in her stomach. “What do you mean?”
“You cannot return to Nezjar, I'm afraid.”
“I thought the antidote was supposed to be enough.” Shay looks frantically around at the bone-eaters, but none of them meets her gaze. “What's changed?”
“We saw something while passing through your medina.” Aidi removes his hat and carefully places it on the center table, baring the receding hairline that explains his attachment to it.
“Posters. Plastered everywhere. With information about a girl fitting your description, Lalla.
Saying she's wanted for the crime of stealing and that any sighting of her should be reported to Al-Mukhtar.”
Shay gasps, her dread turning to dismay. She flounders. “That makes no sense. I haven't stolen anything!”
“Are you sure?” Aidi plunks his hat back on, as if his momentary sympathy has run its course. He continues to rhythmically rub the skull. “They say a priceless magical talisman went missing around the same time you did.”
Thinking of the hjabat, Shay quickly checks her waist satchel and finds it empty. Her stomach drops. She narrows her eyes, looking around the room from one brother to another. “Where is it? Did one of you take it?”
The tallest bone-eater, with antlers like lightning bolts zagging straight up from his head, timidly lifts his hand.
“Hammu?” Shay frowns. And to think she nicknamed him Hammu the Hushed. It's always the quiet ones. “How could you?”
“Sorry.” He digs the ring from the chest pocket of his baggy, moth-eaten gandoura and hands it to Shay. “You forgot it by the washing basin. I found it there and thought it would make a pretty addition to my collection.”
Shay shudders to think what other jewelry he might have in his collection and, more to the point, where he collected it from.
Aidi sighs and taps his cane against the floor. “The question is, how did the talisman come to be in your possession?”
“It's not what you think.” Shay lowers her head and rubs the silver crystal, her action not unlike Aidi's stroking of the cane ornament.
She was so eager and willing to go along with Hind, never questioning how she'd obtained the ring to begin with.
More concerned with proving she could be of help, that she was worth choosing.
That her love was better than some miserable drug.
“I was tricked by someone I thought I could trust. Wanted to believe I could trust. Someone who was supposed to care about me.”
Shay's chest tightens. All her foolish hopes bunch up inside her.
She doesn't know what to think about the posters.
How could Al-Mukhtar know about the hjabat unless Hind told them?
Beyond the crime of stealing, she could be sent to the dungeon for possessing a magical talisman.
And that's if they don't choose to make an example of her.
Somewhere in the back of her mind, she wonders exactly who the authorities think she could have stolen the ring from, but this detail gets lost in the tide of her despair.
It's hard enough to reconcile that her mother never truly wanted her around, but does Hind hate her so much she wishes her dead?
“Wasn't there also something about a reward?” Bono asks, his too-casual tone not quite hiding something eager.