Chapter 3 #2
“I wish to share that burden more,” Aicha said, her tone less irate and edging into something she would call comforting. “It’s hardly fair that you shoulder so much and I so little. Baba expects too much from you in the same way he expects too little from me.”
Samira said nothing, but paused her work.
She fiddled with the bracelet around her wrist, another woven by Rachid himself.
Samira’s was blue and orange, dirtied by time and use that was difficult to scrub out with soap.
For a long while the only sounds within the smithy was the slow simmer of the fire as it died down, and the soft clatter of metal as they dropped one weapon to begin cleaning another.
It was a practised dance that the two had perfected from childhood.
When she snuck a look to her elder sister, Samira’s gaze was focused on her task, brows furrowed in concentration and short hair pulled back from her face.
Her fingers were dirty with grease and soot from her earlier forging.
It struck Aicha how beautiful her sister was and how delicate her features were.
The soft slope of her small nose—a contrast to Aicha’s larger, strong one—and the fullness of her cheeks, that made her seem younger than her five and twenty years.
They somehow looked similar, and yet different all at once.
Samira had inherited features from their mema, their father’s mother, and Aicha from her mama.
But their glares? That was a shared trait from their mother—it was also probably why Fouad never felt threatened by either of them.
“Is there any khobz left in your pack?” Samira asked, disturbing their silence.
Aicha’s response was to rifle through her bag, unwrapping the bread from her cloth before ripping it in half and passing Samira the bigger piece.
It was a little stale, but not so much that chewing it made her jaw ache.
The bread was a few days old—she hadn’t made a fresh loaf in a while—and the flour she needed to make it was running lower with each passing day.
Portuguese merchants had increased the price, and Aicha knew that it was only a matter of time before people would begin to starve.
“I wish we had some zayt al zaytun,” Samira commented, and Aicha hummed in agreement.
“With zaatar!”
Samira released a groan, one that Aicha knew well, because it ached for food that tasted far more savoury.
Luscious and rich with the spices and herbs crushed together in olive oil.
A staple in their breakfast before the blockade had begun, when things as simple as churned butter and wheat were easier to come by.
Their baba had pre-emptively begun rationing—it was not the first restriction of food and water he had suffered in his lifetime—for when it inevitably began to dwindle.
He reserved food for the elderly and youngest within their neighbourhood, and taught Aicha and Samira how to endure surviving on the bare minimum.
“Remember when the last blockade happened?” Aicha said, and Samira nodded as she chewed on the last piece of bread.
“You were eight,” Samira recalled. “Baba let you eat the last prickly pears we had left.”
Aicha scoffed, as if the statement were untrue. “Well, he let you have the last ghouriba that Lala Siham made.”
The sand cookie was rich in sweetness, but soft in the centre. It was years since Aicha had last had one—not even Lala Ilham at the Gardens managed to procure it. Sugar was far too expensive.
“It was only because the pears did not agree with my stomach,” Samira mused. “And it was stale and old.”
“It was still ghouriba,” Aicha countered, but the laugh escaped her lips regardless of her feigned annoyance.
Samira’s chuckle joined for a few, short seconds, before petering out. “That was the last time he ever indulged us in difficult times.”
It sobered the moment, halting any further laughter. When Aicha wiped the crumbs away from her lips, Samira dusted off her hands. Their silence resumed as they got back to work.
If Aicha’s baba delivered an order of exceptional swords, their family was left alone.
She knew this intimately at her young age of one and ten.
Braga used to visit with a jovial temperament, fluffing her hair—and annoyingly worsening her tangle of curls—before being taken on a tour of her baba’s forge.
He liked to watch how the metal was forced into submission, until it bent to her baba’s will and produced a sight so beautiful and lethal Braga insisted on purchasing an item.
She didn’t like him, she didn’t like any one of the invaders, but he was easier to swallow.
Dread never followed his footsteps like a shadow, and he always, always, gave notice before a visit.
He was cordial, perhaps even friendly with her baba, and the visits were less about monitoring her baba’s work and more, so it seemed, to converse as he would with a friend.
One monthly order of weaponry, on time and in perfect condition, and her baba would be left alone to operate as normal—without headache or interruption.
None of the ease that she had grown accustomed to in her short life greeted her when Duarte walked into the smithy, grinning smugly.
Uninvited and without notice, flanked by two subordinates.
Upon Braga’s departure to Mugador, Duarte had been left to command the citadel, and even then, Aicha knew he had taken to the role with an unfounded degree of confidence.
He cast his eyes over a hardened blade with a gold hilt, interest piquing at the craftsmanship.
When he reached out for it, Baba’s hand darted out to grip his wrist tightly, evidently deliberate in its force.
Nerves frayed the ribs in her chest, a thick bubble of need to protect her baba pushing at its confines.
“It is still too hot,” Baba mumbled, only releasing Duarte’s wrist when the blond man pulled his hand back.
Duarte’s glance flickered between his own men and Fouad, eyes calculating and face red.
Aicha did not know if it was from the heat in the smithy or out of embarrassment.
Perhaps both. He was not yet riddled with the frown lines that would eventually litter his forehead or the crow’s feet that framed his eyes from all his sneering.
From her spot behind Samira, whose arm extended out as if to shield her from the world, Aicha watched the commander decide on amusement.
He began to laugh in an attempt to claw back control.
“Well, I should thank you for saving my hand, should I not?”
Her baba’s smile was tight, following Duarte’s movement as he walked around the smithy, eyes casting over the workstation and assorted daggers. His fingers traced across them, until he picked one he liked and handed it to the soldier behind him. “I’ll be taking this one. Such fine craftsmanship.”
“Thank you, Commander.” Fouad’s tone did not hint at any offence or discomfort, despite the man invading their space so aggressively. Aicha felt that protectiveness for her baba heat into something more lethal, like the freshly sharpened blades he had made that very morning.
Duarte’s head flicked to the two girls who were huddled together, as if only just registering their presence.
Samira’s brown eyes were inquisitive and guarded, Aicha’s bordering a little more on a glare than she knew her baba would care for.
Duarte beckoned them forward. Samira looked to her father, awaiting his permission, which came in the form of a nod, and then she stepped towards the commander.
For a short moment, Aicha gripped the back of Samira’s djilaba, holding her back.
A sudden, violent image of Duarte taking her by the hand and leaving with her burned itself into the back of her eyes.
Replaced only by more horrifying scenarios of what he might do to her should he take hold of her hand.
Samira did not turn back to Aicha, but her hand reached behind her, squeezing her younger sister’s wrist before forcing her to let go. She stepped forward, without Aicha.
“Such beautiful young daughters, Sanhaji.” The way his eyes roamed across Aicha’s face, and then Samira’s, made her lip curl in a sneer.
“There is no doubt that both will have a litany of suitors wishing for their hand.” Duarte laughed, reaching to take Samira’s hand.
“I assume you already do, young Sanhaji?”
Something, jagged and feral, burst from within Aicha. Duarte’s over-familiarity, the brazen caress of her big sister’s hand, provoked the beginnings of a hiss from her throat, one impossible to gulp down.
When she grew older, she would recognise Duarte’s actions for what they were: a childish attempt to remind her baba that he had no control over anything, especially not in his own home.
To Samira’s credit, she did not flinch, nor did she glare.
Her stare was blank, void of any fear or discomfort, though both had undoubtedly been provoked.
She appeared bored as Duarte caressed her dirty, oily fingers.
A contradiction to the rage brewing at the base of Aicha’s throat.
“In fact, as she is of age, have you thought of which suitors would be an ideal match?”
Baba’s mouth opened, but it appeared Duarte did not care for the answer.
“I understand Commander Braga and yourself had a verbal agreement as to the parameters in which you were allowed to operate. Unfortunately, I am not as trusting as Alvaro was… but perhaps we could come to a new agreement, hmm?” Duarte’s gaze remained on Samira as he spoke, smirk widening despite the complete lack of interest showing on her face.
“Perhaps, if I had some personal involvement in your family business, you would find your situation significantly more advantageous.”
Looking back, Aicha supposed that her baba wished he had paid more attention to her.
Because fury coated her skin like sweat on the hottest of days, and her vision blurred until it was impossible to see anything beyond him.
Venom flowed through her veins, eclipsing any and all thoughts of rationality.
To hold back as her baba would have commanded, to stay quiet as her sister would have implored, were beyond her thoughts.
The sensation was overwhelming, terrifying, yet somehow also… exhilarating.
Burn his flesh from his bones.
Her limbs moved of their own accord, as if guided by something else—something darker and malicious and intent on inflicting as much pain as possible.
Screaming from the darkest corners of her chest, imploring her to hurt.
To draw blood. To inflict pain. Aicha liked it.
She moved towards the forge, gripping the fire poker tightly and viciously stabbing it into Duarte’s forearm.
The one that gripped Samira’s hand. It was the fastest she had ever moved, propelled by something that almost felt otherworldly.
If Baba had seen the beginnings of Aicha’s rage—its first seeds—then maybe he would have intervened. Instead, his face paled in horror as he watched her. One day, if the memory ever returned to her, Aicha would spend countless hours reliving the moment her baba showed fear for her. His youngest.
More. Burn more. To the bone.
Duarte howled, and chaos erupted. Aicha reared her arm back, ready to strike the commander once more.
Her baba wrenched the poker from her grip, and Aicha heard his deep groan, dropping the poker as quickly as he had yanked it by the wrong end, burning his palm.
Samira gripped Aicha’s shoulders with both hands, pulling her away and grounding her little sister as if to both shield her and hold her back.
“Keep your filthy hands off my sister!” Aicha snarled.
Duarte’s two subordinates drew their swords.
“I will rip your throat out if you touch her—”
“Aicha! Khalas!” Fouad shouted, raising both hands in an attempt to calm the pandemonium. “She is just a child.”
“She is a dirty desert rat born from violence!” Duarte spat, blood dripping from his wound and onto the dirtied stone floor.
Aicha fixated on it, the charred skin that surrounded his stab wound, she had never seen anything so pink and bloody.
“It’s in her blood, like it is in yours.
Both of your children should have been put down the moment they were born! ”
“Any punishment you wish to inflict, I will take in her stead,” Fouad pressed on, and the taste of shame finally coated Aicha’s tongue. She yanked her arms out of Samira’s hold, reaching for her baba and gripping onto his sleeves tightly.
“Baba, no!”
“Fucking animals, all of you!” Duarte seethed, holding his hand close to his chest.
His eyes darted to Aicha’s, and the fury within them was incandescent, but her fury felt stronger.
Brighter. More palpable and tangible within her fingers.
She snarled at him, unwilling to cower in fear.
Unaware of the magnitude of his wrath before now, it would take that day for Aicha to understand what the consequences would be.
Her baba pulled her behind him, shielding her and blocking her vision of Duarte; perhaps he was hiding her.
“Please,” he begged, something she had never heard her father do until that day. He had never had to. “Spare her.” Her stomach curled, an unfamiliar sensation of both fear and guilt running through her veins. Because Baba had never sounded more broken, more terrified. Small.
Fouad Sanhaji was never small, not even to the most fearsome of customers. Until that day.
He took the twelve lashings in Aicha’s place. She had never heard him scream like that.