The Mapmaker's Daughter (24 page)

She leads me through a baffling warren of streets until we reach the familiar square outside the Palacio de Mondragon. We sit for a moment in the shade, and she looks me over approvingly from head to sandaled feet. “Since the moment you arrived, I have been thinking how good it would be if you and my brother were to marry and have a family together.”

I look away. “That can’t happen,” I tell her, “although I am sorry it is so.”

“Because you are a Jew?”

I nod.

“And that is the end of it?”

“I’m afraid it is.” I know she must be mystified why I am not willing to drop my own ways for hers, especially when marriage to someone like her brother would be the reward. I wonder how she would feel if Jamil announced he was going to live as a Jew for me. I want to tell her the story of how much I went through to be who I am, but I see her stiffen, and I keep silent.

“Well then,” she replies. “Shall we go in?”

As I walk along a few steps behind, the shadow of a bird in flight draws a temporary black line across the street between us. I tell myself such things mean nothing as I follow her inside the palace.

16

GRANADA 1453

A thin veil of frost covers the plain, and our breath makes clouds in the air as we approach Granada. The sunrise casts a coral hue on the imposing walls of the Alhambra, the fort and palace that crown the city. We dismount at the gate and pass on foot amid throngs of people in wildly colorful clothing milling in narrow streets and small corner plazas. The smell of roasting meat and vegetables pungent with spices mingles with the aroma of freshly baked bread into an intoxicating perfume that I think would make anyone want to sing and dance.

“What’s happening?” I ask Jamil.

“Eid al-Adha—the Feast of Sacrifice,” he says, straining to be heard above the din. “We’re remembering the willingness of Abraham—may peace be upon him—to sacrifice his son Ishmael because God demanded it.”

Eliana looks up at me. “It was Isaac, not Ishmael,” she says. “The Torah says—” A group of acrobats make a circle around us. Their back flips and cartwheels distract Eliana, and she claps in delight when they bow to her as they finish.

By now, we’ve reached the gate of a large and immaculately whitewashed residence on a square filled with revelers. A servant closes the wooden entry doors behind us, and though the air is suddenly calm, the noise from the streets wafts into the courtyard.

“Welcome to my home,” Jamil says, looking around. “Although it would appear my entire household has run away.”

“It’s the Eid, Master,” the servant says. “We’re getting ready to feed the neighbors after the Asr prayers.”

I barely have time to look around before a voice calls from a minaret. “Allahu Akbar! God is great!” The man caresses the name of God as if reluctant to let it go. “I testify that Mohammad is the messenger of Allah,” he intones as Jamil pulls his prayer rug from his saddle bag and washes his hands and feet in a fountain. “Make haste toward prayer,” the muezzin continues. “La ilaha illallah…”

I go with the doorkeeper to look outside. The crowd has been transformed into orderly lines of men standing shoulder to shoulder, while women cluster at the edges and in the doorways of shops. Like ripples of waves on a bay, the men bow, hands to thighs, then drop to their knees and touch their foreheads to the ground. At the end of prayers, they look to their right and left. “Assalamu alaikum wa rahmatullah,” I hear them say to each other before rocking back on their heels and rising to their feet. “Peace and the mercy of Allah be on you.” Though I have often seen Jamil at solitary prayer, there is something magnificent about so many people stopping at the same time to remember the Holy One, and I am momentarily envious that I am not a part of something so beautiful.

There’s a momentary calm in the square, but the gaiety soon resumes, and people pour into Jamil’s courtyard. Servants scurry with platters heaped high with roasted meat while others ladle cups of a brilliant pink liquid.

“Is it wine, Mama?” Eliana asks. I shake my head. Though most Muslims believe the prohibition in Islamic law is only against intoxication, I know that serving wine publicly at such a time would cause talk.

“Let’s go find out,” I say, glad for something to do, now that Jamil has been caught up in a crowd of people eager to greet him. We take a small, cautious taste from the cups we are handed.

“Ummm,” Eliana says. “Berry?”

“Grape, maybe—or plum?” I turn to the server. “What is this?” I ask.

“Hibiscus flower,” she says. “With a little clove.” Flowers, I think. What a perfect way to drink in beauty.

The meats on each platter are prepared a different way—here vaguely like cinnamon and there like smoked peppers, pungent with flavors at once sour, sweet, pungent, and spicy. Eliana turns up her nose at a few, but I find the whole feast reassuring. Something tells me if they eat and drink like this, there will be much more to like about Granada.

That night, Eliana and I sleep in a separate apartment in Jamil’s house. He comes to me after she has fallen asleep, her belly distended with more food than I imagined she could swallow. “What do you think of my city?” he asks, running his fingers through my hair, which still hold the dust of the road.

“It’s overwhelming,” I say.

“Is overwhelming good?”

“I think so.” I try unsuccessfully to hide a yawn. Jamil smiles. “I have a few friends I still need to visit. It’s Eid al-Adha, and I don’t want to hurt their feelings.” He kisses me. “Sleep well, my love.”

I am so exhausted I have to muster strength to get up from the chair I collapse into after Jamil leaves. This is the first time he hasn’t wanted to be with me during those precious hours while Eliana sleeps. I am here alone, without another soul who knows who or where I am. Is it because it’s Eid al-Adha and his first night home, or is his life in Granada going to be full without me?

You’re tired
, I tell myself.
Stop
imagining
things
to
worry
about
.

The candle flickers and goes out, and as I listen in the darkness to the muted sounds of revelers in the streets, I feel so small I could almost disappear. My new home. Will it ever feel that way? Numb and exhausted, I slip quietly into bed so as not to disturb my daughter’s dreams.

***

After Eid al-Adha, Granada sleeps. A few days later, a page from the Alhambra arrives at Jamil’s house with an invitation to the palace the following afternoon. Making my way during the Eid through the crowded squares of the quarter known as the Albaicín gave me little opportunity to notice anything except where my feet would step next, and I am happy for the chance to ride in a sedan chair and take my first good look at the city.

We pass through streets of low, whitewashed buildings surrounding the souk. I watch two women come out of the shadows in flowing robes and diaphanous veils, holding hands up to their foreheads to shield their dark eyes from the winter sun.

A man goes into the souk, balancing on his head a stack of folded carpets. Even though they must weigh almost as much as he does, he walks with the casual gait of someone carrying nothing at all. Another grizzled old man leads a donkey burdened with saddlebags carrying crimson and russet-colored spices and a sack of dried mint leaves still on their woody stems. A boy dashes by with a bag from which protrude the now familiar salt-washed loaves so delicious they put all other bread I have tasted to shame.

How unusual to smell such aromas in a city! The streets and alleys of Lisbon are fetid with the odor of rot and excrement. Here the pavement is swept clean, and sewers wash away the waste that would otherwise be tossed in the street.

We cross the Darro River on one of several bridges connecting the Albaicín with the palace. Looking up to the right, I see the Alcazaba, a massive fortress with rose-colored walls, windowless except for a few slits near the tops of its crenellated towers. Straight ahead is a palace of the same glowing stone but with hundreds of windows and open arches punctuating its austere walls.

Behind the Alhambra, the Sierra Nevada rise up against a cloudless, winter sky. The palace complex, impressive as it is, looks like a stack of tiny boxes against the towering snowfields and dark, jagged peaks. I try to remain calm by reminding myself that even the powerful among us are insignificant compared to mountains and sky. I tell myself I am arriving with the dignity of someone who has been asked to come, but my mind has no power over my racing heart and sweaty palms.

The sentry recognizes the carriers and waves us through into a huge courtyard with patterned gravel paving and a massive blue-and-green-tiled fountain, where a man in a rich velvet cloak and fluttering pants waits to escort me. A few men mill around conversing, while servants and grooms tend to people arriving or departing the palace.

He leads me down a long street lined with stores and workshops with upstairs living quarters for artisans and laborers, and through arbors and garden paths. Despite the snow in the distance, I’m told Granada rarely gets frost, so even in winter, the flower beds are splashed with hundreds of shades of green and every imaginable color of blossom. I hear songbirds and catch the scent of jasmine in the air, and everywhere I see and hear water. It splashes in fountains inside fish ponds and shallow reflecting pools, cascades in channels along walkways, and trickles in shallow grooves down the center of stone staircases.

We reach the palace and enter a long, open-air corridor. My jaw drops. The vault is carved as delicately as lace, dropping like a petticoat down the walls. Light streams through the arches, dappling the yellow, blue, and green tiles on the lower walls and illuminating the graceful Arabic inscriptions that run the length of the corridor. “It is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen,” I say to my escort.

He smiles. “You have just begun to see the beauty of the Alhambra.”

We continue through corridors and rooms and across courtyards where towering filigree-covered arches collect golden light on Quranic verses and interlocking arabesques. Eventually we come to a large double door guarded by sentries. “The Caliph’s quarters,” my escort says, motioning me through. “He’ll spend only a moment with you. When his grandchildren are brought in, you will leave with them.”

My heart is skittering in my chest, and only the knowledge that Jamil is inside with the Caliph keeps my knees from giving way. Inside I can see nothing but the broad outline of a platform on the far side of the room. Behind it, tall windows let in blinding sun, blocked only by thin lattices on the shutters. Sparks whiz across the ceiling like shooting stars from a basin of mercury that slaves are rocking in a beam of light.

When my eyes adjust, I see that Muhammad the Ninth is not on a throne but on a carpeted dais, lounging on a couch covered with silks that glint in the sunlight as if he were enveloped in a cloud of gold.

Jamil whisks me away from my escort and brings me forward to get my first close look at the Caliph of Granada. I know to expect an old man—in the complicated and cutthroat politics of Granada, he has been in and out of power Jamil’s whole life—and it is his grandchildren by one of his younger wives whom I will tutor. Still, this man is so ancient his skin looks like an old saddle, and his wizened face seems disproportionate to the huge turban covering any hair he might still have.

His reedy voice brings the room to attention. “Ahlan wa sahlan. Welcome to Granada.”

“Salaam,” I say. “Ahlan bik. I am honored to be here, and I wish for nothing more than to have my service please you.”

A disturbance on one side of the room causes me to look away. A group of young women have entered and huddle whispering among themselves. Their eyes are lined with kohl, and they are dressed in translucent silk trousers and veils, wearing nothing above the waist but a tight band over their breasts. One of them has eyes like emeralds, with hair the color of apricots. A Berber like Jamil, I recognize, but with Slavic blood as well, from soldiers of fortune who came in earlier times. I’ve noticed this everywhere in Granada, how some people have skin like ebony and others the creamy white of a jasmine blossom, with the most startling combinations of features—blue eyes in a dark face, or black eyes in a fair one. Their hair ranges from gold to russet to black so dark it glints of blue.

“Ah!” the caliph says. “The qiyan! My singing girls!” They start forward, carrying flutes, drums, and finger cymbals, but he waves them back and turns to me.

“Tell me,” he says, “is mapmaking among your many talents?” I am startled by the suddenness of this new topic, but my voice, to my relief, comes out calm and forceful. “I’m afraid not. I tried when I was young, but my father hid his paints and inks so they wouldn’t be wasted on someone with little promise.”

The sultan chews on a fig, taking his time as if no one is there at all. “What a pity,” he says, “and an even greater one that your family’s greatest work is in France, where, I dare say, they do not appreciate the Catalan Atlas as much as we would.”

If
only
he
knew
, I think, picturing my family’s copy of the atlas hidden away among the possessions I brought to Granada.

A noise from behind distracts him. Two children come in—a girl around eight and a boy about two years younger—attended by a small woman with eyes like black olives behind her veiled face. “What is life for, if not to have grandchildren?” he asks, gesturing in their direction without looking at them. The boy fidgets, and the girl gives him a nudge to quiet him.

“I hope for that someday, Insha’Allah,” I tell him, “but I will be waiting a while, because my daughter is still the age of these two.”

A smile darts at the edges of the caliph’s mouth, and I am relieved that I seem to have found the right thing to say. He looks at the children and flicks his hand in my direction. “Greet our guest,” he commands.

“Are you our new tutor?” the boy asks, after bowing to me. His confident and demanding tone reminds me of Eliana, and I can’t help but smile.