Heaven

The Concubine

The knowledge that Abdulhakam was secretly Christian had been on my mind ever since the words left Alabana’s lips. He had certainly had me fooled. In fact, of all the Moslems I’d met in the Azara, I had considered him one of the most devout ones out there. 

But now I knew that he was just overcompensating for what he really thought—that his actions were really his interpretation of how a Moslem man should act, not how a Moslem man really acted. It also explained why he seemed so nervous all the time—to lead a life undercover must be trying. I was beginning to feel sorry for him, in a way, being a Christian driven to the point, because of societal pressures, to hide his true person and pretend he was someone else. But why did he do it? Because a Christian could never attain much power in the Azara? Was that so noble a cause? I thought not. And my sympathy further dwindled when I remembered how coarse he had been to me ever since I started working for Abualjafna. Why was that, anyway?

“Adam,” said Jakob one morning. We were preparing ourselves for the day’s work, eating a small breakfast of leftovers. We were sitting together, away from the other servants; our friendship had been rekindling over the previous few days. “What business do you have with Alabana?” he said.

I was surprised, not only by her name coming from his mouth, but because I hadn’t thought of her in some time. I’d all but erased her from my thoughts. She had betrayed me from the act of looking at me in church that first Sunday; everything about our relationship was founded on that rot. She said that she loved me—what rubbish. I planned on never speaking to her again.

“Nothing,” I said. “What about her? Wait—how do you know her?”

“Adam, everyone knows who she is. And I found this next to your bed. And I can read enough Arabic to know that she’s the one who wrote it.” He opened his hand to reveal, in his palm, the message she’d written to me. How could I have been so stupid to leave it out?

“Oh, that’s—that’s nothing,” I said.

“This is serious, Adam. People around here only write notes like this for one reason, and this is one girl you should not be dealing with—if you value your life. If you ever want to get out of here.” 

I had been ready to ignore everything he said, but those words, along with the seriousness of his tone, caught my attention. Suddenly I was curious. Curious and afraid. “What do you mean?”

“You don’t know who she is, do you?”

“She’s—a concubine of the caliph.”

“And that doesn’t mean anything to you?”

“Well, why should it?”

“Adam, you can’t just go messing around with the caliph’s concubines. And not only that, but Alabana is his preferred concubine, his number-one. That makes it doubly worse.”

“But why?”

“You’re so naive. The caliph is a jealous, jealous man. He’d have your head if he found out.”

“It’s over, anyway.”

“I hope so. And I hope it’s not too late. You probably met at night, in secret, right? You better hope there were no spies of the caliph out. Because if he catches wind of what you’ve done, it’ll be the end of you. And if you’d been seeing each other in daylight… Well, I’d start saying extra prayers to that God of yours.”

It was bad enough to learn that her interest in me wasn’t genuine, but that I could be killed because of it? 

“Jakob,” I said, “there’s something else.”

“Oh no.”

“Last time I talked to her, I found out—you’ll never believe this—that my old master sent her to me. That’s how we started talking.”

“That’s bizarre,” Jakob said. “Why would he do that?”

“I haven’t been able to figure it out.”

“He’s not a stupid man; he was setting you up to get caught.”

“Do you think?”

“I think he wants to get rid of you. There’s only one fate for those who lie with the caliph’s concubines, and Abdulhakam would surely know that. The question is… why.”

“No idea.”

“Did you do anything to make him angry?”

“There was only one time when he got really angry—when he found out about my paintings. And then I don’t think he was too pleased about me coming to work for Abualjafna—but it was out of his control.”

“A control freak. Do you think that’s it? Do you think he hates that you undermined his authority?”

“But to try and kill me for it?”

“You never know.”

“But there’s one other thing, which makes that stuff about the art not make any sense. He was so angry because I was painting human figures, which is against Islam, he said. But I also found out,” I said, lowering my voice, “that he’s a Christian.”

“What!”

“Yeah. He goes to Mass every Sunday, disguised.”

“Well, well, well,” he said, relishing the gossip. “But what does that have to do with anything?”

“I don’t know, but I need to find out.”