The Tongue's Blood Does Not Run Dry by Assia Djebar

Author:Assia Djebar [Djebar, Assia]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Publisher: Seven Stories Press
Published: 2010-05-27T04:30:00+00:00

The murderous husband, because of his broken heart, has not budged from the palace of the caliph, who has grown so fond of him.

Only the father leaves the palace. His face is tragic. Preceding him are rows of servants bearing the olivewood chest.

Djaffar the Barmékide must find the arrogant and slanderous black man. How will he recognize the culprit in this metropolis where hundreds of eunuchs, slaves, emancipated Sudanese, Ethiopians, and so many others live and circulate in peace?

Djaffar goes back home. He ponders. He prepares himself for death again. This time, because the vizier’s numerous cousins are safe, the fever in the city is not as high as it was before. Djaffar has told them not to come to his home, not to give him their support. With a simple change of mood, the caliph could raise the stakes and include the rest of the family in the sentence.

No, Djaffar prefers to wait for his destiny alone, in the company of those closest to him: his wives (favorites and concubines) and his children, including the youngest ones.

As the moment comes to say good-bye, those close to him weep and sigh. He gets up to return to the palace, the place where he will probably be executed.

The last of his daughters, his favorite, comes before him. She doesn’t understand the reason for this general sadness. Her father holds her to him, his face grave. Imagining that he is going on a voyage, she holds him for a long time, tenderly. She hugs him again. Embracing her, Djaffar asks, “What’s that under your dress?”

He has felt a ball moving against the child’s chest—some toy that she is hiding in the cloth. Delighted, she laughs noisily. “No, not a toy, only an apple!”

The father, unsettled, responds, “An apple?”

She hastily takes a scarlet apple from her bodice and relates, tenderly, “It was Rihan, our slave, who gave it to me!”

“Rihan?”

They bring in the handsome black man; he confesses. In the street, he took the apple from a little boy, despite the boy’s protests. He was evidently very attached to it, because his father, he said, had brought it all the way from Bassora. Yes, Rihan then went walking in the souks all day long, holding the scarlet apple . . . Yes, when he was asked, he indicated that a beautiful woman had offered him this fruit, so rare in this season . . . In the end, the following day, he decided to offer this apple to Djaffar’s little girl, whom he loves so dearly.

There is nothing for Djaffar to do but drag the culprit to Haroun el Rachid. He laments that he cannot, as they are under the braggart’s own roof, put his hand on the “arrogant and slanderous black man.”

All along the way, Djaffar, the tenderhearted, happy to escape death, assesses his slave’s behavior certainly not as a venial sin, but as a fault less serious than previously thought. “How to plead the cause of my eunuch? How to try to obtain the sultan’s pardon?” he wonders.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.