Bertrice Small - Beloved

1983

The night was black and hot. Not a hint of a breeze stirred the fronds of the tall, stately date palms. The onyx sky was studded diamond-bright with stars, and all was very, very still, as if the earth itself was poised, waiting. On the edge of the great oasis city of Palmyra, the house of the famous Bedawi warrior chief, Zabaai ben Selim, stood alone. Within, a woman labored to bring forth her child.

Her slim white body was tense with the agony of her travail, wet with the perspiration of her effort and the intolerable summer weather. She bore her travail grimly, refusing to cry out, for to do so was a weakness of character in her mind, and she had not won Zabaai by weakness.

In her semidelirium she remembered the day she had first seen him. He had been visiting her father's house in Alexandria on business, and had by mistake wandered into the women's garden. Their glances had met, and her lovely gray-blue eyes had widened at his fierce black gaze. Her soft pink lips slightly parted with surprise, and her young breasts, heaving with emotions she had not known existed, aroused him. No word passed between them. He had not even asked her her name. Instead he had found his way out of the garden, sought out her father, and asked for her to wife. It had been a great impertinence on his part, for her father was not only one of the wealthiest men in Alexandria, he was also a direct descendant of Egypt's last great queen, Cleopatra.

Simon Titus gave his daughter her personal freedom, in the Roman manner. What did she want, he had asked. She had wanted Zabaai ben Selim, that hawk-visaged desert man with his piercing black eyes who in the space of one single moment had captured her soul with his own. It mattered not to her that he was twenty-two years her senior or that he had another legal wife and several concubines. It mattered not that any child she gave him would be unimportant in the line of inheritance. Nothing mattered but her love for this marvelous man, and so Simon Titus had reluctantly given his consent.

They had been married within the month and then she had left the elegant comfort of her father's Alexandrian house to live a life that found her wandering half the year across the Syrian deserts, and living the other half in the beautiful city of Palmyra. It was the custom of the Bedawi to spend the broiling summers in Palmyra, and so part of her dowry had been a fine house and gardens on the city's edge.

A terrible pain, far worse than any previous, ripped through her, and she bit down on her lip. It would soon be over, and her child would at last be born. Zabaai's eldest wife, Tamar, told her to bear down, and she did.

"Push, Iris! Push! Push!" Tamar encouraged her.

"Aiiiiii!" came the collective cry of the other women as the infant began to appear between its mother's legs.

"Push!

"I am!" Iris snapped irritably at the older woman.

"Then push harder!" Tamar had no mercy. "The child is but half born, Iris. You must push again!"

Gritting her teeth, Iris pushed down fiercely, and suddenly felt something wet and warm sliding from her body, emptying her out, and miraculously the pain began to subside.

Tamar caught the child, and holding her up announced, "It is a female." She then handed the baby to another woman, and pushed Iris back onto the birthing stool. "You must yet bear the afterbirth. Only then will you be done. One more push will do it."

"I want to see my daughter!"

"Let Rebecca clean the birthing blood from her first. As always, you are too impatient," Tamar scolded, but she understood how it was the first-nay, every time.

Within minutes Iris was sponged with cooling rose water, and dressed in a simple white gauze night robe. The baby girl, who had wailed lustily after her birth, was now neatly swaddled, and placed in her mother's arms.

Tamar looked to one of the other women, and commanded sharply. "Fetch my lord Zabaai." As chief wife, she was obeyed and looked upon with fear and respect. It was her son, Akbar, who would one day rule the tribe.

Looking down on Iris, Tamar thought it was no wonder that Zabaai loved her. She was so very beautiful with her milky skin, ash-blond hair, and blue-gray eyes. She was so very different from the rest of them; a woman Zabaai could not only love, but converse with.

He entered the room, a man of medium height and strong build, his dark eyes sparkling, his dark hair and beard untouched by silver despite his forty-three winters. His handsome face was sharply sculptural with its high cheekbones and hawklike nose. His lips were full and sensuous. His entry brought all the women but Tamar and Iris to their knees. He looked at his two wives, and his black eyes softened. He loved them both. Tamar, the wife of his youth, and Iris, the wife of his old age. The other women might give him variety, and occasional pleasure, but these two he prized.

"The gods have blessed you with a daughter, my lord," Tamar said.

"A daughter?" He was surprised.

"Yes, my lord. A daughter."

The kneeling women glanced slyly at each other, and the uncharitable and the jealous among them were hard put not to voice their glee. They were the mothers of sons, and the best the Alexandrian bitch could do was a mere daughter. They watched expectantly for their lord's righteous wrath, wondering if he would deny the brat, and order it exposed.

Instead a smile split his face, and he chuckled with delight. "Iris! Iris!" he said, his deep voice warm with approval. "Once again you have done the unexpected; and you have given me the one thing which, until now, I have lacked. A daughter! Thank you, my beautiful wife! Thank you!"

The kneeling women were aghast. Praised for having a daughter? All men wanted sons, the more the better; and Zabaai had never been an exception. He was proud of his thirty-five sons, even remembering all their names and ages. But the more perceptive among the women understood. It was the great love he felt for Iris that would excuse almost any fault. They sighed with resignation.

Iris laughed, and her laughter was soft and filled with mischievous glee. "Have I ever done the expected, my lord?" she asked.

His black eyes laughed back at her. Glancing at the other women Zabaai said curtly, "Leave us!"

"Not Tamar, my lord." Iris would not offend Tamar, who had always been kind to her. She did not forget that if Zabaai died, Tamar's eldest son, Akbar, would hold her fate and her daughter's in his hands.

Zabaai bent to look at his new daughter. Used to large boy babies, he was somewhat awed by the delicate girl child he had sired. The infant slept, dainty dark lashes fluttering slightly against the pale-gold skin. Her dark hair was a small tuft of down upon a well-shaped head. Despite her slumber, her tiny hands moved with a fluttery restlessness, the slender fingers fascinating him with their translucent miniature nails. He regarded her almost warily, for although he knew what one could do with a son, he was not quite sure what one did with a daughter; and this child, of all his children, was the one born out of the great love he felt for its mother.

Looking up, he observed, "She is very small."

Both Iris and Tamar laughed. "Girls," Tamar said, "are usually tinier at birth, my lord."

"Oh." He felt a trifle foolish, but then it was his first daughter. "Where is the Chaldean?" he demanded, suddenly remembering.

"Here, lord." From a dark corner of the room a hunched shape emerged. As it came forward it became an elderly man with sharp eyes and a long, snow white beard, dressed in dark, flowing robes upon which were sewn a pattern of silver-thread stars and moons. The old man bowed low, and Iris held her breath waiting for the slightly askew turban to tumble off his head into her lap. It didn't.