None of them revolved around business.
They revolved around the incandescent, radiant, utterly lovely form of Sulaiman’s niece, Mistress Miriam.
Jibril first met Miriam the day she arrived at the riad as a frightened ten-year-old. Then thirteen and a kind boy, sensitive to others’ pain, Jibril had taken Miriam under his wing. The two of them quickly became friends and playmates, spending endless happy hours roaming the souk and squares of the city together while Jibril’s father and Miriam’s uncle worked long hours in the company offices.
Jibril couldn’t say exactly when it was that his feelings toward Miriam had changed. Possibly the early arrival of her breasts, shortly after her twelfth birthday, had something to do with it. Or possibly there was some other, nobler reason. In any event, at some point during his fifteenth year, Jibril fell deeply, hopelessly, obsessively in love with his childhood playmate. Which would have been as wonderful a thing as could have happened, had it not been for one small, but undeniable, problem: Miriam was not in love with Jibril.
Tentative allusions to his feelings were met with peals of laughter on Miriam’s part. “Don’t be ridiculous!” she would tease him, pulling him by the hand in a way that made Jibril want to melt with longing. “You’re my brother. Besides, I’m never getting married.” Memories of her mother’s flight and her father’s despair still haunted her. Uncle Sulaiman’s happy independence seemed a far safer, more sensible option.
Jibril wept with frustration and despair. Why had he ever behaved like a brother toward her? Why had he not seen before what a goddess she was? How would he ever be able to undo the damage?
Then one day, it happened. It was during the weeks that Miriam’s uncle Sulaiman was away on vacation in Essaouira. Jibril returned to the riad after his morning’s studies to find smoke pouring out of the windows. You could feel the heat from a hundred yards away.
“What’s going on?”
Jibril’s father, his face and hands blackened with soot, coughed out an answer. “It started in the kitchens. I’ve never seen flames spread so fast. It’s a miracle we got everybody out of there.”
Huddled around them was a throng of frightened household staff, some burned and weeping, others coughing violently. They’d been joined by numerous neighbors and passersby. Soon the crowd was so big that it was difficult for the men with water buckets to fight their way through.
Jibril’s heart tightened in panic. “Where’s Miriam?”
“Don’t worry,” said his father. “She left early this morning to go to the baths. There’s nobody in the house.” But just as he spoke, a figure appeared at an upper window, arms flailing wildly. It was hard to make out who it was through the thick, acrid clouds of smoke. But Jibril knew instantly.
Before his father or anyone could stop him, he darted into the building. The heat hit him like a punch. Black smoke filled his lungs. It was like inhaling razor blades. Jibril fell to his knees, blinded, utterly disoriented. I have to get up. I have to find her. Help me, Allah.
And God did help him. In later years, Jibril described the feeling as some unseen person taking him by the hand and physically pulling him toward the stone stairwell. He had no idea how, in that hell, he fought his way to Miriam, how he lifted her in his arms like a rag doll and carried her downstairs through the flames and into the street. It was a miracle. There was no other word for it. Allah saved us because He wills us to be together. It is our destiny.
When Miriam opened her eyes, and looked into the eyes of her rescuer, Jibril’s prayers were answered.
She loved him. He was a brother no more.
WHEN SULAIMAN RETURNED HOME TO HIS gutted riad, his only thought was for his beloved Miriam and how close he had come to losing her. He summoned Jibril to his study.
“My boy, I owe you my life. Tell me how I can repay you. What gift can I give in gratitude for your heroism? Money? Jewels? A house of your own? Name it. Name it and it is yours.”
“I want no money from you, sir,” said Jibril humbly. “I ask only for your blessing. I intend to marry your niece.”
He smiled, and Sulaiman could see the love light up his eyes. Poor boy.
“I’m sorry, Jibril. Truly, I am. But that is not possible.”
Jibril’s smile crumpled. “Why not?”
“Miriam is of noble birth,” Sulaiman explained kindly. “When her father entrusted her to my care, it was on the understanding that she would one day make an alliance befitting her class and status in life. I have already chosen the gentleman. He’s older than Miriam, but he is well respected, kind—”
“NO!” Jibril couldn’t contain himself. “You can’t! Miriam loves me. She … she won’t do it.”
Sulaiman’s expression hardened. “Miriam will do as I ask her.”
Jibril looked so forlorn that the old man relented. “Look. I said I am sorry, and I meant it. These are the ways of the world, Jibril. We are all prisoners, in our different ways. But you must forget about my niece. Ask me for something else. Anything.”
Jibril did not ask. How could he? There was nothing else he wanted. He tried to tell himself that he still had time to persuade Sulaiman. The older man might change his mind. Miriam might indeed refuse to wed the man to whom she had been unknowingly betrothed, though he knew in his heart that this was a vain hope. Miriam loved Sulaiman like a father, and would never bring dishonor on herself or her family by disobeying him, especially not in so grave a matter as marriage.
Not even Jibril’s own father could help him.
“You must forget the girl, son. Trust me, there will be scores of others. You have a bright future ahead of you, backed by Sulaiman’s money, if only you’d take it. You’ll be able to afford a house full of wives!”
Jibril thought darkly, Nobody understands. And though Miriam tried to comfort him, assuring him that she would always love him no matter whom she married, it was cold comfort for the boy, who burned for her body with all the fiery intensity of a volcano.
At last the day came when all Jibril’s hopes died. Miriam was married to a sheikh, Mahmoud Basta, a paunchy, bald man old enough to be her father. If she was distraught, she hid it well, maintaining a serene grace throughout the ceremony, and afterward, when she bid good-bye to her second, much beloved home.
The newlyweds lived close to the city, in the Basta family palace at the foot of the Atlas Mountains, and Miriam was able to visit her uncle Sulaiman’s house often. On these visits, she would sometimes see the hollow-eyed Jibril staring at her from across a room, pain etched on his face like a mask. At these times she felt pity and great sorrow. But the emotions were for Jibril, not for herself. Mahmoud was a kind husband, loving, indulgent and decent. When Miriam gave him a son at the end of their first year of marriage, he wept for joy. Over the next five years, she gave him three more boys and a girl, Leila. Over time, Miriam’s children came to fill the void that had been left by her doomed love for Jibril. Watching them play while their doting father looked on, she sometimes felt guilty that she was so happy, while Jibril, she knew, remained broken and lost. She had heard through friends that he drank heavily, and spent his days in the hookah bars and whorehouses of the souk, squandering all the money her uncle had given him.
The last time Miriam saw Jibril was at her husband’s funeral. Mahmoud, who had never reined in his fondness for baklava and sweet Moroccan wine, died of a heart attack at the age of sixty-two. Miriam was forty, with a fan of fine lines around her eyes and a comfortable layer of fat around her hips, but she was still a beautiful woman. Jibril, on the other hand, had aged terribly. Shrunken and stooped, with the broken veins and yellow eyes of a heavy drinker, he looked twenty years older than he was, and was as sad and embittered as Mahmoud had been happy and generous-spirited.
He staggered over to Miriam, who was standing with her eldest son, Rafik. She realized