Written in the Ashes (24 page)

Gideon sensed Hannah’s sorrow and took her hand again, interlacing their fingers together. “I think you and your father will find each other again. Life is long, Hannah. Do not give up hope.”

Hannah nodded, tears welling in her eyes.

How the angel loved her then.

15  

As dusk fell on Alexandria that evening, the city underwent a celestial transformation. All the walls, low and high, were adorned with glowing lanterns that burned all through the night, spilling amber light through the streets so that faces,
tunicas
, fountains, the eyes of stray cats reflected the golden glow.

Vendors stayed open all through the night to hawk their wares while the pubs down on the wharf were visited by sailors, politicians, and merchants in lavish costumes carrying amphorae of wine and singing old sailor tunes. Some people wore masks in honor of Osiris, but more and more every year people were going without them, not wanting to be associated with any pagan traditions, no matter how personally revered, for fear of being killed by the Christians.

Street acrobats gathered attentive audiences as they flipped from each other’s shoulders and folded themselves into clay pots in feats of flexibility while their children held out plates. Magicians circulated through the crowd, amusing some with coin tricks and stealing coins from others. Fire-eaters lit torches with flaming tongues. Some houses were shuttered and black, others bubbled with music and wine, while in the darkness above the street, thieves crept across the rooftops hoping to discover an unlocked transom in a house where the residents were out.

Every year Alizar hosted a celebration on the first night of the Festival of Light. Usually the party was a large one, with friends visiting from all corners of the city, but this year he decided to keep the gathering small, only inviting a few close friends and family. He simply was not in the mood for a celebration. Naomi was gone and there were too many friends who had left the city either in exile, or to avoid what was looking politically like a dim future for Alexandria.

Hannah and Jemir kept bumping into each other in the kitchen as they readied plates of sardines, olive paste, crackers and figs. “You should go out, Hannah, and see the lights. I have everything ready here.” Jemir steadied a tray of stuffed
dolmas
on his palm.

“No, it is Shabbat tonight,” Hannah protested. “I must finish my work before sundown and then say prayers.”

“You would not have to work if you came out with me.” Tarek stuck his head into the kitchen.

Hannah eyed him suspiciously. “Jemir has too much to handle by himself for now, and I still need to make the
challah
. The sun has nearly set.” Hannah began kneading a lump of dough on the table. As she spoke she reached into a small bowl and took out a pinch of flour to sprinkle over the top.

Tarek collapsed on the pile of pillows in the corner. “There is a very famous musician from Memphis playing at the taverna tonight,” he said. He was attempting to grow a beard, and although it was sprouting in thin patches, he stroked it with pride. Hannah presumed he was growing it to look older, but unfortunately it had the opposite effect. Still, he had put on a fine olive grey
tunica
with a wide leather belt that fit him quite well, even if he was sprawled across the cushions like a dog.

Hannah set three lengths of rounded dough on a large wooden paddle, braided it, and dusted her hands together over the table.

“Have you heard of Garzya of Cyprus?” Tarek propped his head up on his elbow, waiting for her reaction, hoping to entice her. “He plays the kanun.”

The Egyptian harp. Hannah had never heard one, although she had been longing to ever since she learned of it: the most difficult instrument in all the Mediterranean to master, played with finger picks on all ten fingers and the harp set horizontally on a table. The Egyptians likened the kanun to the body of a lover as it was not played, but tickled, caressed and stroked languidly into song.

When Tarek saw the light in Hannah’s eyes he knew he was defeating her resistance. “Come with me.”

Hannah weighed her choices. Tarek had been kind recently, much like he had been to her when he first bought her and tried to make her well. But he was two people sharing a set of bones. One, punishing and cruel, she hated, and the other, vulnerable and sweet, she owed her life. And she longed to hear the kanun. Going out would not be working. She could say her prayers before she left. Her father would never approve, but then, she was the only Jew in Alizar’s house. No one else noticed her observances. And truly, she would rather have spent the evening with Gideon, but he had work aboard the ship and would not be available. She nodded to Tarek. “I will go.”

Tarek smiled triumphantly. “Meet me in front of the taverna on the wharf in an hour. The owner is a friend of mine. He will give me a fine table.”

As Hannah set out from Alizar’s house, Jemir tapped her on the shoulder and dropped several copper coins in to her palm. “Enjoy yourself,” he said.

She tried to give them back, but he smiled and went out to check the chickens in their roost.

And so Hannah pinned her hair up and put on a flowing pale pink
khiton
and wandered down to the hawker’s bazaar where women, young and old, were gathered in tents by candlelight, their jewelry flashing as they laughed. Others stood beside tables attracting customers by holding up their goods and thrusting them toward the passersby.

“Nothing finer than this shawl! Finest linen in Egypt!”

“For you, madam, it matches your eyes so beautifully.”

“Pure silver. Here, try it on. Ah, see how it suits you.”

“Necklaces and bangles worn by Cleopatra herself!”

“Best prices in all of Alexandria!”

Displayed neatly on carpets and tables were reed baskets, alabaster vials of kohl, glass perfume flasks, small hinged seashell boxes filled with powdered azurite and selenite for painting the eyes, elegant garnet, amber, and turquoise beads. Colorful
tunicas, pallas
and
himations
lay folded on tables beside elegant
fibulas
and
penannulars
of different metals and shapes in Roman and Celtic styles. The women bantered cheerfully as they made their purchases, weaving in between the
gabbeh
s, examining linen with eyes that could find a flaw even in perfect thread.

Hannah became drunk on the sight of so many beautiful things. Each time she entered a tent the merchant would rush to put a teacup in her hand so that she would stay and buy something. In one tent she met a kind Jewish woman and her three daughters, selling exquisite hand-beaded necklaces, apparently taking the night of festival to heart even if it was
Shabbat
. Hearing her own language spoken, Hannah felt her heart melt. It was like hearing a favorite song after an interminably long time without music.

“
Yaffe
, such a beautiful girl.” The plump woman smiled as she cupped Hannah’s cheek in her palm and then insisted she take a beaded bracelet as a gift.

Around the rim of the hawker’s bazaar, fortunetellers solicited their customers with promises of life’s mysteries revealed. Hannah slipped past, wanting to make her way down to the taverna, but one of the gypsy children, a crippled boy with legs that hung like seaweed between his wooden crutches, clung to her skirt and looked up at her with hungry eyes. “You want to know your fortune?”

“No, no. Thank you.” Hannah turned and walked the other way, but the child came after her, tugging her sleeve and looking up at her. “Special deal tonight for the beautiful lady. Your future revealed.”

Hannah smiled and shook her head, but pressed a coin into the boy’s dirty hand. “No one but God can reveal the future.”

“Yes,” said the boy. “But even God sends messengers. This city is not safe tonight, lady. If the doe is hunted, she must lose the dogs in the water.”

Hannah looked at the earnest boy for a moment, and then nodded.

She decided to walk along the west beach on the way to the taverna, tracing the route she and Alizar had taken the week before from the north end of Canopic Way. At the end of the street she unlaced her sandals and made her way down to the waves where the wet sand made it easier to walk. Ahead of her two lovers, drunk and tripping on the sand, were laughing and leaning on each other. Hannah could not help but watch them, though the sight of their amorous gestures gave her pause. She thought of her life in the Great Library and all the music she could make there. And though music might be a loyal companion, even Hannah knew a lyre could not warm the bed at night, or replace the laughter of children. But without her freedom, how could she find love?

Hannah turned her eyes away from the man and woman and looked to the luminous crests of the waves and the wide amber beam that stretched across the water from the lighthouse, penetrating the darkness, beckoning the ships. She tried not to let the laughter of the lovers pierce her, tried not to think of another year bringing her swiftly to the age of twenty, an age that made a man seek out a younger wife.

At the end of the beach Hannah could hear the lively banter of the crowd, a woman shrieking with laughter. The sound pierced the night. Hannah caught her breath. Her knife! She had left it tucked beneath the stable straw where she slept. Ever since Alizar had given it to her she had not been without it for a moment. She wondered if she should turn back. The boy’s warning resounded in her mind. “If the doe is hunted…” But Tarek was waiting, and she did not wish to anger him. Besides, the evening washed over her, warm and gentle. All around her, Alexandria glowed like a promise. The Parabolani were not out. She would enjoy the performance, and then return to Alizar’s before it got too late.

She reached the end of the beach and climbed over the seawall, realizing as she looked around that this was the street to the
agora
where she had seen Tarek that first day, the day the men had set her on the block to be sold. Somehow that moment seemed like ages ago. It could have been much worse, she knew. Much worse.

The wharf was only mildly cooler than the rest of Alexandria, which made it stifling. The pungent scents of rotting seaweed, sweat, and cinnamon wafted through the air and made it difficult to breathe. Spiro’s taverna was at the other end of the docks, and Hannah made slow progress through the thick sea of bodies. More than once a sailor leaned over to steal a kiss or request a dance.

Just one, just one, come on. Come.

You are so beautiful.

For me.

Come.

Hannah smiled politely and sidled past. Tarek was waiting for her at the door of the taverna when she arrived.

“Where were you?” he demanded.

“The crowd.” Hannah said, and then narrowed her eyes at him. Tarek was drunk already. She could see it in the way he was swaying side to side. Smell it on his breath. In just an hour. Hard to believe sometimes that a man like Alizar could look on him as a son.

“Come, Hannah.” Tarek snatched her hand, pushing past a bearded Greek sailor with arms the size of two cannons. He grunted as Hannah and Tarek entered the taverna, but let them by.

Hannah withdrew her hand from his to adjust the sleeve of her dress, glowering.

Three sailor friends of Tarek’s joined them and presented a goat-horn pipe and a lump of hashish the color of dried snake blood. Tarek filled the bowl and passed it to Hannah, who stared at his hand for a moment before deciding to try. One toke and she began to cough uncontrollably, pressing her palms to her chest. Tarek just laughed and polished off the rest.

Either from the effects of the hashish or the events that followed, Hannah took away only a single, distinct memory of the kanun player, Garzya.

The young musician curled his body over his instrument, strands of long black hair plastered to his sweaty forehead and cheeks, his eyes pinched tightly shut, his hands dancing across the strings of the kanun in a blur. The music he created was so immense that no walls could contain it. It bound the audience together in a sea of music and light. No one could take their eyes away from the handsome musician as they felt themselves moved by the intricacies of his caress, each wanting to be his instrument, even for an hour. It was so intimate that Hannah found herself unable to look at him for very long without blushing, so she looked at the table and the tufts of pipe ash spread like windblown seeds between the empty cups.