Secret of the Sands. Sara Sheridan

work will I do, sir?’

      Another dry bark. ‘Nursemaid, habshi,’ the man says.

      Zena feels an immense wave of relief wash over her. She has no experience with children, but nonetheless it sounds like an easier job than many who have been bought that morning will face in the afternoon. She smiles.

      ‘Feed her,’ the man orders as he turns away. ‘Then bathe her.’

      Four black slave women guide Zena through an archway into the house. Through a series of shady passages their strong arms shepherd her without touching her skin. She smells the roasting meat and the baking bread so keenly that she almost breaks into a run. The slaves speak a mysterious African language that sounds like music – a cacophony of clicks and long vowels that soothes. Zena does not understand but it is clear where she is meant to go. Their chatter heightens the pace. This house is a maze, a labyrinthine warren of passages. It crosses her mind that she will never know what is around the corner here – there is no pattern. The place is vast and sprawling – one long corridor turning the corner into another short one, one room locked and another without a door at all. After two or three minutes of increasingly fragrant and warm corridors they cut into a huge room, lit by high windows. At last – it is the kitchen. For a moment, the group hovers in the doorway.

      After being shipbound and starved, the delicious fecundity, the sheer generosity of the provisions on display seem an impossibility to Zena and she is stunned. Hand-hammered, bronze pots hang from the ceiling. On a table as far away as possible from the fire, fruits are laden onto wide, clay ashettes. It is all Zena can do not to rush over and reach for a pomegranate, sink her teeth into the ruby-coloured flesh and let the sweet juice run down her chin as she sucks it dry. A bough of dark, succulent grapes, trailing its leaves, is propped against a clay bowl of oranges with glossy foliage, darker in contrast to the vine. Bunches of fragrant mint fresh from the farm stalls of Muttrah hang above from a shelf of honey jars and preserved nuts that are so close she swears she can almost taste them. Around the oven, two thin boys are baking pitta bread, which they pile onto a huge, bronze sheet. A dead animal is butchered by a fat man with a cleaver. His bare chest is speckled with bone and blood as he flings the pieces of meat into a wooden box of marinade that smells of lemon, garlic and chilli. And overseeing it all, a huge Nubian chef is directing all the work, while kneading a handful of pale pastry with fat fingers that send clouds of flour into the air over his head and dust his figure into a ghost-like apparition.

      Zena’s knees feel suddenly weak and she thinks she might faint until one of the slaves fetches a bone cup of milk and a small dish of thin gruel with a long-handled spoon and some dry zahidi dates. She remembers to thank the man, only just, nodding and clasping her hands in a pantomime of gratitude, before she falls, open-mouthed and ravenous, upon the meagre meal, her stomach retching at the sudden plenty, her throat swallowing at the same time. Tears stream down her cheeks. There has never been a meal more delicious. As she rouses herself from it, the cup drained dry and the plate empty, she notices that they have all just stood there and watched her gorge herself, sucking in the food, almost without chewing. Licking her fingers of the remnants, she feels suddenly ashamed. The other slaves show no emotion. Perhaps they never felt the same hunger, Zena thinks as the crockery is taken from her with dead-eyed efficiency and without skipping a beat the party moves on, back through the unnavigable passageways of the house.

      She knows they will wash her next.

      I wonder what the children will be like? she thinks and she places a hand on her full belly as she follows the party upwards to the tiled bathhouse, replete with a brazier for making steam.

      The water is tepid. It feels cool in the heat of the day and makes a delicate trickling noise as the old woman scoops it up in a glazed clay jar and then pours it over Zena’s hair. Another girl, not much older than herself, mixes oil of lemon with oil of thyme and thickens it with date paste. It is as if she is being basted – prepared for the pot. The efficient hands simply do their work, sponging her, soothing and anointing her skin with oil, combing out her long plaits and resetting her hair into a smooth coil. They are neither gentle nor rough and they say nothing. Zena asks, first in her own language then in Arabic, what they are doing, where she will be taken next, what the family is like.

      ‘Please,’ she says, ‘tell me about this place.’

      But not one of the slaves even acknowledges that they understand what she is saying and she gives up and simply allows them to pummel her clean.

      When a slave arrives bearing a diaphanous, aquamarine kaftan of fine, silken gauze, Zena does not even wonder. Who can say what is unusual in such a place and what is common? The others are dressed in plain, pale robes of rough cotton, but what does that mean? Surely personal servants of the family merit a more luxurious uniform than common house servants. The hands dry her with white linen and as she slips into the dress they bind up her hair in a golden turban and draw leather sandals onto her feet, instructing each other in the strange musical language that Zena cannot understand. After the dhow and the slave market this is heaven – no matter that they are only doing what their superior has bid them. No matter that they do not acknowledge her in any way.

      Before dusk, Zena is delivered to a room on the first floor that smells faintly of incense. There is a wide bed, a carved screen, an ornate rug with velvet cushions of red and yellow scattered about it, a window covered with a wooden shutter and evenly spaced brass lamps ready to be lit for the evening. Beside the bed there lies a covered flask of water flavoured with mint, a box containing rose jelly and another of honeyed pistachios. Zena inspects everything and then sits on the bed. It does not seem like a child’s room. She waits until the muezzin has made the call to prayer. She waits until the sun has sunk from the sky and it is absolutely dark. The scent of night flowers wafts in through the window on the perfumed air from tubs far below outside – moonflowers, nicotiana and jasmine. She desperately tries not to doze but her belly is full, her skin is silken and the cushions are tempting. In the end, she succumbs and cannot help but fall fast, fast asleep.

      What raises her is a strange noise. A cackle. She jumps up into the pitch darkness, panicked, and it takes her a second or two to realise where she is. She trips over a small table and then recovers her balance. Then in a flash she remembers.

      Before her there is a man in the doorway carrying a torch that flickers in the breeze from the window. The bright flame sends strange shadows over his face so that she cannot tell what he really looks like. But he is finely dressed in a long, bright robe. His dark hair flows like a woman’s and when he smiles he has the teeth of an animal, white, bared and ready. He cackles again – the sound a hyena might make, or a dog. Zena falls to her knees.

      ‘Salaam,’ she whispers, drawing her hands together in supplication and raising her eyes only high enough to see that he wears an array of gold rings on his long fingers.

      ‘They sent you?’ the man asks.

      Zena nods and looks up at him. ‘I was bought today. In the marketplace.’

      The man laughs and beckons her towards him. Now she can see that he is younger than she first thought – perhaps twenty or so. He motions her to turn around so he can inspect her.

      ‘What did you fetch?’

      ‘Two hundred dollars, I think.’

      He casts his eye over her coldly. ‘They think this will tempt me,’ he says in a derisory tone, but the comment is not directed at Zena – he is talking to himself and has turned away. He puts down the lamp and proceeds to sit on the plump cushions by the window, picking up a sweet from the rosewood box and chewing it as he mulls things over.

      ‘Light, girl!’ he calls.

      Zena hovers for a moment behind him, and then realising that he means her, she springs into action, taking the lamp from the low table and lighting the others one by one. The room gradually takes on a buttery glow. She can see now that the man’s silken jubbah is edged with intricate embroidery and that he wears gold earrings in a low loop in addition to his collection of rings. His eyes are pitch black – the darkest she has ever seen. She lays the lamp once more on the low table and steps