Caliphate

Grolanhei, Affrankon, 7 Shawwal,

1530 AH (6 October, 2106)

"I have read the histories," Ishmael said, "but Il hamdu lilah; the Nazrani actually live like this?"

Ishmael led a cloth-wrapped Besma to the front door of Petra's family's home—hovel would have been more accurate—in the town. The slave had a point. The town, whatever it might once have been, had grown decrepit over the years. The asphalt of that portion of the road they trod was sufficiently broken up that the cobblestones underneath it would have been an improvement. The houses were small, dirty and unpainted. Animals—to include disgusting pigs and dogs—wandered free. Worst of all were the people. They, walking with uncertain, shuffling steps, kept their heads down. Even the grubby-faced children seemed to understand their second-class status.

Or do they look and act like that because we're here, Besma wondered. An unpleasant aroma reached the girl's nose. They might look and act like that because we're here, but that smell is something that was here already. Maybe I shouldn't feel so bad that Petra is with me.

Ishmael stopped a passerby and asked, "Where can we find the house of the little girl who was taken as a slave recently?"

Still keeping eyes carefully focused on the ground—yes, Ishmael was obviously a slave but he was equally obviously a Muslim slave and thus far above any Nazrani—the townsman pointed with one hand, saying, "Down that street. Just before the old train station. On the left."

"Shokran, sayidi," Ishmael answered. From his point of view; well, yes, they were stinking Nazrani but he was a slave. And politeness cost nothing.

"Come, Miss Besma," he directed, leading the way.

"Is this the house . . . the former house . . . of Petra bint Minden?" Ishmael asked.

The door, hung on leather hinges, was only slightly ajar, just enough for one eye to peek through. The door started to open, then stopped.

"Wait," said a woman's voice, closing it again.

When the door opened again, fully this time, the woman had covered her hair and the lower half of her face. "What about my daughter?"

Besma pushed past Ishmael and said, "She's with us now. But she told me she'd left behind her doll and . . . "

"She's with you now?" the Nazrani woman repeated. "Who are 'you'?"

"I'm Besma bint Abdul Mohsem. My father is a merchant . . . not a slave dealer; he doesn't sell people."

Backing away from the door with unsteady steps the woman sat heavily into a roughhewn chair. "You mean my daughter was not sold to . . . to . . . ?"

"She's with us," Besma repeated. She saw that the woman's eyes were red and puffy as if she'd been crying for days. "She's fine but she misses her family and her dolly. So I came to get it for her. I can't be away from home very long," the girl added.

"Her dolly? Yes, her dolly!" the woman said, excitedly. "Please wait . . . just a minute, please."

She immediately raced from the room, disappearing somewhere into the back of the hovel. Besma heard scuffling of feet and the opening and slamming of trunks. When the woman came back she had a doll in her hands, but also a bundle of clothing, ratty clothing, to be honest, in her arms. She was also accompanied by a boy who looked enough like Petra that he just had to be her brother.

As the mother turned the bundle of loosely gathered clothes over to Ishmael, Hans pressed an old leather bound volume into Besma's hands.

"It's our great-grandmother's journal," he explained. "They won't let me take it where I'm going soon. Petra can't read it yet but . . . "

"I can read," Besma said. "My father insisted. I can teach her."