Free Secret of the Sands by Sara Sheridan Page 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