The Fortune Teller(40)
Soon she would no longer have the protection of her father. Rabka prayed every day and night for a good match, for someone who would allow her to stay in her beloved palace and write poems for the court. Her family had obtained immense wealth through her father’s accomplishments, and Rabka expected even greater glory with her future husband.
*
On the day of al-Ma’mun’s wedding to the vizier’s daughter, Rabka had her first premonition and saw the answer.
“Who is he?” she asked her servant, Aadila. Rabka motioned to the man across the hall in deep conversation with al-Ma’mun.
“Khalid al-Amin. A rising star, that one.”
“Is he a scholar?” Rabka asked, anxious.
Aadila nodded. “He has already been appointed the caliph’s most trusted nadim.”
Rabka felt her heart bloom. Her father had been Caliph Harun’s nadim. As a nadim, Khalid would visit the caliph several times a week to debate science, philosophy, and religion, to tell stories, to play chess or backgammon. In return the caliph would grant Khalid an enormous salary, the highest status, and private apartments within the palace.
Rabka continued to scrutinize her husband-to-be, for she had foreseen their marriage as clearly as if Allah had handed her a mirror of the future. Khalid would be remembered as one of the greatest minds in Baghdad—a gifted scholar, orator, translator, and jurist—and become even more exalted than her father. With Khalid, Rabka would be royalty in all but blood.
Aadila watched Rabka and flashed her a wicked smile. “So you’ve set your sights on that one?” The old woman had served many in the course of her life and understood Rabka’s heart well. Rabka didn’t answer, but her eyes shone with greed. Like all women, she didn’t have a say in whom she would marry, but Rabka was certain she could steer her father toward Khalid.
Aadila clucked her tongue. “’Tis a shame he is to marry in three months. He’ll have a First Wife.”
Rabka’s eyes turned to slits of anger. She looked at her servant, twisted one of the sapphire and diamond rings off her finger, and placed it in Aadila’s hand. “No, he won’t,” she said. The two women understood each other perfectly.
Al-Ma’mun’s wedding celebration lasted seventeen days and was the most extravagant anyone could remember. Over a thousand tables were set to accommodate the guests, and a hundred dishes were served each day. Rabka made sure Khalid noticed her during the festivities. She dressed in brocade tunics gilded in precious stones and silk trousers that moved like liquid gold. She looked like a glittering al-‘Uzza, the ancient Goddess of the Morning Star.
“Khalid al-Amin is the man I should marry,” she instructed her father in private. “He is the only man who can carry on your legacy.” She knew exactly how to sway an arrogant man like her father, who wanted nothing more than to be revered forever. For good measure, she persuaded her father’s rawi to recite a ghazal she had written for the wedding couple. It was a romantic poem, nostalgic and complex with perfect meter and rhythm. The ghazal surpassed anything she had ever composed, and its delivery was her greatest triumph. By the end of the applause, Khalid had eyes for no other.
On the last day of the celebration, Aadila snuck into the bedroom of Khalid’s future wife and cut off the girl’s nose. She put poison on the end of the janbiya to make certain the blade would be deadly. The bride-to-be died a week later and no one ever knew Rabka had been the one to strike. Now free of obligation, Khalid married Rabka, and the future unfolded as she foresaw it.
Rabka should have been happy that she had obtained her desires, but she had not divined that she would have to move out of the palace. When Khalid told her, she broke every mirror and bottle of perfume in her bedroom. The smell of frankincense lingered with her grief for weeks. She raged to Rusa, the goddess of fate, and recited incantations of ancient sorcery in an attempt to change her future’s course, but the talismans and spells were useless.
Khalid tried to assuage her. “The caliph has gifted this house to us. It is the finest in the city.”
“I despise the city!” She sobbed, her eyes swollen from days of crying. “Am I to live with the stink?”
Outside the palace the city was a melting pot. Over a million people—Arabs, Persians, Jews, Christians, Indians, rich and poor alike—lived together in the capital.
“But the mansion has the finest architecture, equal to the palace!”
The design included wind ventilation and there was also running water on the walls to keep the house cool. Its front doors were made of ebony and precious metal. But when Rabka walked through them she hated every room. Only simple flowers—lilac, jasmine, and violets—lined the inner courtyards, and the trees weren’t plated in gold. Even the roof, which transformed into a grand bedroom under the stars on the hottest of nights, did not appease her. Rabka was a queen without a palace, a poet without a court.
When she gave birth to her first child, a daughter, she wrote a poem, one she never shared, about a wife who was secretly the mythical dragon, Azhi Dahāka, ready to breathe fire until her bones turned to ash. By the poem’s end, the wife stood beside the ruins of her former self, unable to return to the girl she was once was. It was the last poem Rabka ever wrote.
As they settled into married life away from the palace, Khalid tried to ignore Rabka’s misery. They had three daughters, not the son Khalid desired. But still Khalid never took another wife, for he was unable to fathom the thought of more Rabkas. Instead he devoted himself to his work.