Princess of Dhagabad, The (3 page)

At this terribly indecent thought the
princess throws an uneasy glance at Nannies Airagad and Zulfia
walking on both sides of her litter, afraid that they may somehow
hear her. Her eyes move over the tall, full figure of Zulfia on her
right, over the double row of guards, toward the string of people
standing against the walls, letting her see only their long robes
and the very tops of the turbans on their bowed heads. Funny, she
thinks, that when all these people bow their heads to avoid seeing
her face, they at the same time make it impossible for her to see
any faces of the inhabitants of the bazaar.

The guards reorganize from a double, sparse
chain into a single, dense one. The street crowded with people has
become so narrow the procession cannot possibly fit in a wide
formation. All the space, as far as the eye can see, is now
occupied by a colorful mass of people and goods. The princess
cannot see any action, because all the action stops at their
approach, but the variety of clothes, shapes, and objects makes her
hold her breath in admiration. She sees merchants, buyers,
moneychangers, onlookers, singers and dancers, thieves and
respectable citizens—young and old, rich and poor—mixed to form a
crowd, magnificent in its colorful disorder. She is trying to
imagine herself in this crowd as one of the merchants, a part of
this wonderful act, remembering all the books she read and fleshing
out her knowledge with new substance. She inhales the odor of the
bazaar, a mixed aroma of incense; jasmine and lavender oils; baked
sesame seeds and roast lamb; the smell of horses, familiar to her
from the palace stables; and the hitherto unknown smell of road
dust. In the distance, in the widening side streets and plazas, in
the crowd unaffected by the passage of the royal train, she sees
fakirs and street dancers. Baskets of fruits float above the heads
that upon a closer look reveal eager young errand boys. “Blind”
beggars sit on the street corners, secretly eyeing handfuls of
coins in their pockets from underneath their black eye patches.
Here and there a heated argument erupts between a merchant and a
customer, sometimes even a fight between two claimants of the same
rare object. The princess twists and turns on her pillows, trying
not to miss a single detail.

The procession comes to a stop, and the
sultaness’s litter ahead smoothly lowers to the ground. The slave
women carefully help their mistress up from the pillows. The
princess’s litter is also lowered, and she sees a curtained door to
a shop and a tall thin man in a robe and a turban, bowing before
them.

I hope he doesn’t raise his head
, the
princess thinks. She sees the man’s hands tremble slightly and
imagines the horror of the idea that he can be cruelly punished any
minute for a single upward glance.

The man raises his head and looks straight at
the princess.

Her eyes immediately fill with tears. She
wants to say something, but all she can produce is a sob.
Overwhelmed by all the sights and emotions of the last hour, she
suddenly feels completely incapable of behaving appropriately for
her station.

“What happened, princess?” the sultaness asks
with alarm.

The princess raises her eyes to the
sultaness, trying very hard to gain control of her trembling
lips.

“Will they blind him, mother?” she
whispers.

“Of course not, princess!” A smile hidden by
the veil softens the sultaness’s voice. “This is Mustafa, the cloth
merchant. We came to see his goods.”

Nanny Airagad gently puts her arm around the
princess and gives her a handkerchief. Wiping her eyes and
shivering, the princess clings to Airagad and follows the sultaness
through the curtain into Mustafa’s realm.

The big room they step into has no windows,
and the princess, in spite of the abundance of artificial light,
feels as if she has stepped right into the middle of the night.
Several women identifiable by the richness of their clothes as
Mustafa’s wives and daughters bring out trays with tea and sweets.
A smell of clove and cinnamon fills the air, and the princess, who
hasn’t eaten since lunch, feels her stomach growl. She throws a
fearful glance at Airagad before picking a piece of freshly baked
pahlava
, sweet walnut paste wrapped in thin layers of crispy
dough, still warm and moist from the oven. She knows she is not
supposed to eat sweets before dinner, but today seems special.

True enough, Airagad doesn’t object. Like
everybody else in the room she is preoccupied with things more
important than tea, and the princess, carefully sipping from her
cup, joins her in watching.

Mustafa and the two older women, probably his
eldest wives, respectfully hold out rolls of beautiful cloth. Silk
streams to the floor in purple waves; heavy folds of velvet shimmer
in the uneven light of the lanterns.

The sultaness unfolds a white cloth with fine
silver embroidery.

“How do you like it?” she asks the
princess.

“Very much,” the princess says with
uncertainty, not completely recovered from her unexpected
tears.

“How much do we need, Zulbagad?” the
sultaness asks.

One of the slave women, a strongly built
middle-aged woman, separates herself from the suite and runs her
deft, confident fingers along the cloth. The princess knows the
slave woman Zulbagad very well. A skillful seamstress, she was
bought from the caliph of Megina for the unthinkable price of three
measures of gold. In spite of her being a slave, everyone in the
palace, including the free servants, treats her with extreme
respect. The sultaness, the same age as Zulbagad, is very fond of
her and uses every opportunity to praise her amazing skills.

“Six cubits, your majesty,” Zulbagad says
with certainty.

The sultaness nods, and Mustafa takes the
cloth into the depths of the room, making strange passes over it.
The sultaness meanwhile whispers something to Zulbagad and Nimeth,
throwing glances in the direction of the princess. The women
serving them disappear for a minute and solemnly emerge carrying
the most unusual cloth the princess has ever seen. Zulbagad runs
her hand over the cloth, and the airy, cloudlike folds fall about
in soft waves.

“This should be saved for the wedding,”
Nimeth says, shaking her head.

“For the wedding we’ll find something else,”
the sultaness says firmly.

She turns and beckons the princess with her
hand.

“Look at this cloth, princess.”

The princess carefully holds out her hand and
touches the airy folds. She feels a blow of warmth and light
tingling. It feels as if she is finally fulfilling her wish to
touch a cloud, a childhood wish before she learned that clouds are
actually made of tiny droplets of water and that by touching a
cloud one can only become wet and cold. Her wish coexists in her
mind with this knowledge, useless like many other facts she
learned. And now, finally, shaming the sages and scientists, human
hands have created something so close to the cloud of her
dreams.

“What a beautiful cloth, mother,” she
whispers.

“For your twelfth birthday Zulbagad will make
you a head shawl out of it,” the sultaness says.

“For me?”

“You will wear it with an outfit she will
make for you out of the silver-embroidered cloth we just
selected.”

“For me, mother? White robes?”

“You are a grown-up now, princess. You can
start wearing white like all other young girls.”

The princess sighs, not daring to believe her
happiness. She has always liked white, perhaps because none of her
clothes had a single white spot on them. By Dhagabad tradition a
person is only allowed to wear white upon reaching the age of
adolescence. The reason for this tradition is undoubtedly very
practical—what kind of a child would be able to wear white clothes
for more than a few minutes without making them dirty? But at the
same time, like any restriction, it arouses in little girls an
unbearable desire, if not to wear, at least to try on, a white
outfit.

“Five cubits,” Zulbagad tells Mustafa.

The princess, filled with happiness, looks at
the growing pile of packages in front of them. What a wonderful
age—twelve, when she can go to the bazaar with her mother and wear
a white outfit! How much she has wanted for her twelfth birthday to
come! A day when so many of her wishes will come true, including
her most sacred one…

Chapter 2. The Bronze Bottle

It is not yet bedtime, but the palace is
already absorbed in that dreamy twilight state of one who puts his
head on the pillow, closes his eyes, and waits for sleep to come.
Slowly sinking into restful slumber, the palace prepares for the
big day of the celebration.

Escaping the watchful eyes of the nannies,
who are busy with the preparations, the princess and Alamid creep
noiselessly along the long corridor that leads from the south wing
of the palace to the central chamber.

“What are you going to wear tomorrow?” Alamid
asks, straightening her white head shawl. The friend of the young
princess, Alamid is ten months older, having proudly donned her
first white robe the summer before. This has been the subject of
the princess’s secret envy, and of Alamid’s open boast.

Now, at this casual question from her older
friend, the princess hurries to answer, swelling with pride. “I
will wear the white outfit Zulbagad made for me.”

“Be careful not to stain it too much at the
feast.” Alamid purses her lips, clearly displeased at losing this
one advantage over her younger friend. She doesn’t like the way
everybody fusses over the princess just because her father happens
to be the sultan, and she never misses a chance to point out that
she is older and more experienced.

The mention of the feast makes the princess’s
mouth water. They are now approaching the central chamber, and the
smells from the kitchens are getting stronger by the minute. By the
sweet aromas hanging in the air as they approach the door to the
service area, the princess recognizes her favorite dish—roast quail
served with a sour paste of sesame seeds, mint leaves, garlic, and
vinegar.

“Let’s go to the kitchen to see Naina,” the
princess suggests; and Alamid, forgetting her authoritative
behavior, happily nods and hurries along to the service door.

The first thing they see as they enter the
kitchen is a giant cauldron of
plov
—rice cooked with lamb,
raisins, figs, and lots of other tasty things, yellow with saffron
and oil, exuding a thick aroma of herbs and spices that momentarily
enfolds them in its heady waves.
Plov
is the specialty of
the master chef, without which no official feast is ever
complete.

The milky steam from the cauldron half-hides
the cooks and their helpers, who are hurrying around in constant
motion. The palace might be settling down to sleep, but here, in
the kitchens, there can be no rest. In fact, everyone is so busy
that for a while nobody notices the two girls standing by the
door.

They see a large woman emerge from the misty
depths of the room. Her hair is completely covered with a tight
head shawl. Her round, kind face is red, and little beads of sweat
glisten on her forehead as she smiles, approaching them and wiping
her hands on her apron.

“My goodness!” the woman exclaims in a deep
voice. “Look who is here! None other than the birthday girl
herself!”

“Hello, Naina,” Alamid says, stepping
forward.

“Are we interrupting?” the princess asks
quickly, feeling uneasy at the sight of all the action.

“Of course not!” Naina exclaims. “I am always
glad to see my little girls! Come in, have some
sankajat
!”

At the mention of her favorite sweet the
princess’s mouth waters more. Exchanging quick glances, the girls
follow Naina through the kitchen, passing by the piles of freshly
baked onion bread, sugared dates and tangerines, honey-stewed
walnuts, almond cakes, and other dishes that make the princess
hungry for a bedtime snack.

They enter a small pantry where the smell of
vinegar and spices hangs in the air, overwhelming all the rest. In
the dim light of a single lantern they see rows of barrels with
tightly sealed lids.

“Now, girls, you remember the rule,” Naina
says. “Only one each, otherwise your nannies are going to be angry
at me for giving you too many sweets.”

“Which one will you have?” Alamid asks the
princess, quickly stepping into the room.

Each barrel has a small label, and the
princess slowly moves along the row, craving for the contents of
each barrel, and yet careful not to be too hasty in her choice. She
enjoys reading the labels themselves, feeling like the queen of her
small treasure trove of tastes.
Sour plum, Spicy peach, Dry
tangerine, Sugared ginger, Spicy olive, Sweet-and-sour olive
…
Yes, that’s what she feels like now—sweet-and-sour olive!