The Sultan's Wife by Johnson Jane

Author:Johnson, Jane [Johnson, Jane]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Historical
ISBN: 9780670918003
Publisher: Viking
Published: 2012-05-01T23:00:00+00:00

One night Makarim brings me tea for a headache. ‘It will take away the pain,’ she says gently, pouring the tea from its little silver pot into the glass from a great height. The scent is fragrant and complex: sweetened tea and garden herbs. I wait until she has tasted it, then take a mouthful and hold it for several long moments, assessing. A deeper taste than the usual mint tea; less sweet. I swallow, and feel the liquid go down my gullet and into my stomach, warming everything in its path.

When I awake my head is heavy and pounding; I cannot think straight. I blink and try to focus, but it is dark in the tent, and unnaturally quiet. I lie there on the divan, knowing that something has changed. I look around, through the gloom. At first glance everything looks as it should; but I sense a void, an absence. I sit up, too fast: the world swims. When the world settles, I light the lantern beside me with a trembling hand, suddenly full of dread, and hold it aloft. Its golden bloom illuminates the gilt-decorated cot in which my angel sleeps. As the light falls across it, the quiet is broken by a raucous chatter that makes me cry out. There is no child in the cot, but only the ape, Amadou, with the gold chain draped around his neck, the ring catching the light as it swings. His eyes glitter triumphantly in the gloom.

‘Momo?’ The keen of my voice is reedy and tremulous, but it gains power as panic enfolds me. ‘Momo?’ It rises to a wail.

On unsteady feet I run out of the tent. ‘My baby! Waladi!’ I scream. ‘They have taken my baby!’

Women come running, but Makarim, my maid, is nowhere to be seen.

‘Perhaps she has taken him to be with the other babies,’ says one.

‘Perhaps he would not sleep and she is walking with him.’

‘Perhaps they are in the hammam. We will go and see.’

But others exchange wary glances when they think I am not looking.

I run wildly from tent to tent, barging past furniture, throwing covers aside, howling like an animal. Tears and mucus run down my face. I run out into the darkness again. From somewhere I have got a knife, a little decorative thing. I wave it around, drunk with terror. It is the ma’alema who comes at last and takes me by the arm. ‘Hush now, lalla. Shhh, calm yourself.’

Relieved that someone has taken control of the madwoman, the other courtesans drift away.

‘Do you know what they have done with him? Do you know where he is?’

She flinches as the little knife glints past her. ‘Come with me, but quietly, and put that thing away.’

She leads me around the back of the tents. For a big woman she is agile and her eyesight is excellent, for never once does she stumble. As we go I listen for the cry of my child, and the cries of other children do not distract me, for each baby’s noise is as distinctive to a mother as its look.

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