Caliphate

Kitznen, Affrankon, 7 Shawwal,

1530 AH (6 October, 2106)

"Ooo, I almost forgot!" Besma exclaimed. Arms flying, she raced for her burka, lying on a carved wooden trunk on the opposite side of the room from her bed. She'd concealed the book Hans had given her in the burka's folds.

Petra, still clutching her rag doll to her breast, looked on in curiosity until Besma produced the book. "I can't read," she said. "My brother was trying to teach me but we hadn't gotten very far."

"I know. I can teach you. I'd like to teach you."

"You can read?" Petra asked, wonder in her voice. "I thought that Muslim girls were forbidden to learn to read."

Besma nodded. "Some are forbidden, but it's by their families, or sometimes by the local emirs and sheiks, not by the Quran. My father says that that's wrong, that it's 'improper and impious.' But a lot of people—maybe even most—still forbid their daughters an education in anything but managing a home and family. Some do other things to girls and those my father says are worse than impious. He says they're an 'abomination.'"

"What things?" Petra asked

"You don't want to know. Come on," Besma changed the subject, "let's see what new clothes we can put on your dolly."

Besma and Petra leaned against cushions set up against the wall between Besma's bed and her trunk. It was very late and so Besma had a small lamp lit, set into the wall behind them. The flickering flame of the lamp would have made reading the hand-scrawled words in the journal next to impossible except that the writing was so firm and fine. Whoever had written those words must have had very fine motor control of her hands.

"I can't understand any of it," Petra said, her head hanging with shame.

"We'll work on that later. For now, let's just look at the pictures."

"Pictures?"

"Yes. Hand-drawn ones. Whoever wrote this was really good with a pencil. I wish I could draw like that but—"

"—but?"

"A lot of the pictures are of people . . . and animals. We can't draw those. The mutawa would cut your skilled hand off if you tried. And even for having them . . . " Besma shuddered.

"What?" Petra asked. "What's wrong? And what are the mutawa?"

"You don't see them out of the Moslem towns and cities. The mutawa are the police for the prevention of vice and the promotion of virtue. Nobody controls them. My father says that they're lunatics who push everything Allah commanded to the point their rules sicken Allah. For having pictures of living things they'll beat you within an inch of your life. For having pictures like some of the ones drawn in this book they might kill us." Besma suddenly looked shamefaced. "I'm sorry," she apologized. "I looked in the book on the way back from your family's . . . house."

"Show me," Petra said.