It was simply there, like it had always been, ready for me to step into it if only my feet would take me. But they did not want to take me.
Saalim nudged my back, telling me it was all right. It was not permanent. I would not stay. He was not there. But when I looked at the sea of tents with white peaks surfacing at their center, I only saw the Salt King. He was in everything that was there. I felt the clutch of my lungs, the stepping on glass, the hold of my tongue when I was around him. The silk chains that weighed more than any iron cuff pulled me down, and the scars across my back stung as I stared at what used to be my home.
“I don’t think . . .” I began, my throat tight. I did not want to return, I could not do it. It was a past I could not face.
“Emel,” Saalim said. “You wanted this.”
The day before we left Madinat Almulihi, I had told him of Firoz wanting to return home.
“Could we bring Firoz and Rashid on the journey? I know you said other people would join the caravan.”
“Yes, but others are traveling to places we will be stopping in. Your home is much farther than we need to travel,” he said, the crease between his brow deepening.
Smoothing it with my finger, I said, “Of course. I knew that.” I began to turn, disappointment at war with relief. His arm hooked around my middle, and he turned me so I faced him again. He studied my face, trying to know my thoughts.
“You want to return?” he asked.
I chewed my cheek, sorting through what I did want. “One last time. To see . . .”
“To heal.”
Our eyes met.
I said, “Tamam visits the docks every day.” I nodded toward the basin of water that Saalim prayed to, carrying his family from its depth to the clusters of incense. “You move stones every day.”
“We will make the journey. But not for Firoz and Rashid. We will do it for you.” He brushed his thumb over my cheek. “Usman should be checked on anyway.”
Now that we were here, I feared I had made a mistake, and a costly one. It was days and days added to our journey to arrive, and I did not want to step into the settlement. I did not want to see any part of that life I had led.
Firoz was soon at my side. He and Rashid had been so glad to take the journey with us. When I told Firoz it was a gift, and he owed no coin, he cried.
“We can’t hide from it forever,” Firoz said now. “Do you know what Mama told me when I told her I was leaving for Almulihi?”
Tearing my gaze away from my father’s palace, I looked at my friend. I watched the muscles in his jaw clench, his eyes reflecting the light of the morning sun.
“‘Another’s feast may look grander, but who sits at the table?’ I told her she knew nothing of Almulihi.” He laughed. “But here I am, coming back to her. I want my family at my table.” He took my hand in his, squeezing gently. Saalim was on my other side, towering over both of us, his hand on my back. Why couldn’t I just stay here? Between the people I loved. Firoz said, “We left together. Shall we return the same?”
So with Saalim and Firoz, I stepped into a past to which I had hoped never to return.
The winding lanes of tents—people’s homes!—were so small, so narrow. I peered at them closely. Most were open, people inside leaning against cushions or shuffling around, doing this and that.
When we passed by the marketplace, I was staggered by its mediocrity. I once thought I could get lost here? Everything was so small, so feeble. The voices were not, though, and they shouted loudly at us as we passed, sensing the salt and coin carried in our purses.
The people in the lanes were quiet and curious, watching us just as I remembered being watched in the palace finding my way to a muhami. They looked like me, these people. They dressed like me, too, but when they understood who we were and kneeled, I could see that more separated us than the turn of moons.
Queen. I was their queen, yet like a child I wanted to cower away from them, from the memories this place stoked. It was all around me. Too bright. I could not close my eyes against it.
Saalim tightened his grip on my hand as we reached the palace edge. There it was. The prison where I had lived my whole life. The place where I had learned to search for my freedom, where I had found my love. The place that took as much as it gave.
Did Saalim feel me falling apart? Did he feel me split, my pieces tumbling to the ground?
I stared at that which was my whole world, my father the god and myself his supplicant. Each memory of my blindness, my horrid misunderstanding of what life and happiness and love were was a piece of me that splintered and fell.
With a shaking hand, I wiped at my cheeks.
“Emel?” Saalim asked, turning toward me.
His face, his voice, that life. It was all too much. I thought I was freed, and now I was here again. My memories crashed together, my understanding blurred.
“I can’t,” I cried, falling into him, uncaring who watched.
Clutching me close, Saalim walked me into the palace. I kept my eyes closed, letting him lead. I did not want to see it. I did not want to be there. Step after step after step, and though I did not open my eyes, I knew by each turn where I was. By each sound what was near me.
We were inside the palace tents, seated on a long bench I had never sat upon before. One that had been reserved for the muhamis. Even the same cushions were around us—the ones the ahiran lounged on as we watched my father draw yet another jackal onto the leash.
Usman spoke with Saalim. My tears had stopped, and I stared numbly at the room and servants around us. Some I recognized, but most were unfamiliar. Did any recognize me?
Then, “Emel?”
I stood, spinning around. Where was she? There! There! Coming in from the hall, she was running toward me. Hadiyah!
She cried, “They said she looked like an ahira! Someone said it was you! I did not dare believe!” Hadiyah was holding me to her. She was full of softness and warmth and memories of safety and care.
Mama. Oh, I missed Mama.
Hadiyah was wiping her face. She held me away from her, taking a long look at me. I did the same to her. She looked no different, no worse. She looked, in fact, happy.
“Can I take you to the harem?” she asked softly, her eyes darting from me to Saalim and back again. “They will want to see you. To know everything.”
With assurances to Saalim I would be fine, I followed Hadiyah. There, more motherly embraces, long presses of palms to my back, of fingers on my cheeks and hair. They all spoke at once, telling me that they had been well, that Usman had been kind, to stop worrying about them. What about me? Tell them about Madinat Almulihi. Was it true I had become a queen?
Sitting at their feet, unable to stare at one place too long for the memories it pulled of my mother, I told them of life.
“Isra knew,” one said, “that you would find great things.”
I looked at her, begging her to tell me more of my mother.
“She always said you would leave, you would find your own life. She said she hoped it of all her children, but for you, she knew she did not have to hope.”
Hadiyah brushed her palm across my shoulders. “Masira carry her soul.” The others echoed her words.
It was not so hard seeing them. And I felt that, just a little, they helped to smooth the roughness of my memories.
That night Saalim and I lay together in a tent I had never been in. One that had been reserved for guests. I imagined it was unchanged since my father had ruled. The carpets the same as all the others, the fabric spun above us the same. I trembled, remembering him. Remembering my life under his rule. Saalim took heavy breaths beside me. Had he already fallen asleep? I shifted.
“I am awake,” he said, slurring his words. He had not been. We had barely slept that day, and I knew he was more tired than me, but still he said, “I promise, I will wait until you sleep.”
I did not want to be the only one awake while all others slept. Alone with my thoughts.
To ease the clattering worries of my past, I told him of my visit to my mothers and, after, to my sisters. Everyone was happy, none had been forced out of the palace like we had assumed. They worked, many of them, and those who didn’t found ways to assist in the palace. They were free to come and go. Many had left the palace only briefly, with their brothers at their sides. They told me my brother Lateef had left the settlement with a caravan that traveled east. So all of Isra’s children had fled, then. Just as she dreamed we would.
My sisters could not stop telling me about the things in our village as if I had never been there myself. I listened, amazed by the ways they had changed and the ways they had not. They showed me the coin they had earned, the salt they saved. Small earnings compared to what I had as the healer’s apprentice, but they were so proud that I warmed with pride, too.
Saalim said, “I was not sure how it would feel to return. It makes real again so many memories I wanted to believe were false.”
His eyes were shadowed in the torch light, but I saw the brightness there. My gaze traveled around his face, remembering when I thought I looked at him for the last time, when I committed every detail to memory so that I would never forget him. Now, he was beside me. Forever.
He continued. “But I find I am in awe.”
Rearing my head, I said, “Awe?”
“Of you. Of the people here. I think I finally understand what you mean about the desert. That it is not all bad. It is made better by the people who live in it. Your people—our people—are not to be pitied because they have a home that falls to fire and wind, nor because they have to hide their skin from their hostile land. They are not savage because they fight for their needs rather than trade for it. They are a product of the sand and sun.
“I did not understand it before, but traveling here with you, I see it now. Salt chasers, those of the sand, whatever you want to call them—” He raised himself up on his elbow, his words smooth. “They are resilient, Emel. Look at the moon-jasmine that grows from the sand that has learned to cover herself from the sun. Such a beautiful flower . . .”
I smiled, thinking of those white-petaled blooms that poked up from the ground through every crack in Almulihi’s stone streets.
“My point,” Saalim said with chagrin, “is that you will remember your past. It may shake you and try to cripple you, but it can’t pull you apart, Emel, because it is what has put you together. See the past, and know that because of it, you are here now.” He traced an invisible crown around my head, and with his voice low, he said, “It cannot defeat you, because with it, you have won.”
We left my settlement after we had toured and saw and shared and celebrated, like we did at every place on our tour of the desert. Each place had welcomed Saalim and me like family, but there, I was family. Even Saalim laughed with real joy, confessed he smiled so much it hurt. Though the food was dull compared to that in Almulihi, the people who sat at the table were brilliant.
Even through my own pleasure at being amongst those that I knew best, there were the cracks that let in the throb of hurt, the ache of my darkest memories. Time, Saalim reminded me. It would take time for the pain to soften completely, for the light to clear the shadow.
After a day of tearful goodbyes to Firoz, to my mothers and sisters, to Hadiyah, Adilah, and the servants who had known me from infancy, we left.
When the cluster of tents was behind us, I turned and looked to the place that birthed me, that raised me. Still, there was the tightening of sadness and shame, but it was small. Instead, I saw that which had given me strength.
Eiqab, Mama, Tavi, Raheemah, Firoz, Sabra.
I looked to the man at my side.
Saalim.
Kneeling down, I took a fistful of sand and poured it into my sack.
“Let’s go home,” I said.
Madinat Almulihi greeted us like an oasis: shining in the sun, welcoming in its promised shade. I felt Saalim stiffen the closer we got. I understood now: He faced an unpleasant past here just as I did at the settlement. I cooed the same words to him as he had to me.
When our caravan finally arrived at the palace, we both stopped.
“What . . . ?” I stammered, staring at the tall walls that surrounded the palace and its courtyard.
Instead of the white-washed walls that had bordered the steps were walls now filled with bright colors. Designs and patterns and images were there that had never been before. The guards around us seemed undisturbed, continuing their walk to the stables for the horses, handing their packs to the servants as though nothing was amiss. The people who walked the streets around us were the same. How could they ignore this? Where had it come from?
On the steps, we touched the walls, inspecting them closely. The images were made up of the smallest tiles arranged so carefully it was as if they were painted. They were beautiful, but they did not look new. Some of the tiles had the smallest chips at the edges. I stepped back, trying to take in the picture completely.
A man with golden cuffs coming out of a cloud of golden smoke. A woman in blue with a chained veil across her face, jewels around her fingers and belly.
“A jinni and an ahira,” Saalim whispered, touching the black tiles of the ahira’s hair. We moved to the opposite side of the stairs to better view the other image. A white palace over the backdrop of night. A crystal-blue sea at its side reflected the bright moon. There, amongst the waves, was a missing tile.
“How could they know?” I asked nervously as I touched the empty space where I knew my tile belonged.
When we went inside the palace, we were greeted by Mariam and a cluster of other servants. Bilara, dressed like any other child in the city, played on the stairs behind her.
“Who did the mosaic?” Saalim asked.
Mariam seemed confused by the question. “I can’t say. It has been there since long before my arrival here.”
“Ah,” Saalim said, understanding just as I did. This was magic. Something with the desert shifting one final time.
“I’ve always wondered what it means,” I said. “I was just looking at it . . .”
Tilting her head, Mariam said, “It tells the legend of the ahira and the jinni, of course.”
I asked her to remind me. Salt chasers did not share the same legends, see.
“The trapped ahira who found and fell in love with a jinni. With a wish for freedom, she freed the jinni, and Madinat Almulihi was born.” She said it slowly, like I was a touch crazed.
“Oh, yes,” I said in a rush. “I think I’ve seen children act out that one in the marketplace.”
As we passed through the throne room, Saalim stopped me again. He pointed to the tapestry that had been gifted to him at the Falsa Mawk.
No longer was there a woman in pale pink with long straight hair at the king’s side. Now, the silhouette of the woman was soft red with a deeper shaded veil that covered her hair and face. At the head of the woman was a golden crown, and at her heart was a golden flower.
“Emel,” he said, his voice hushed. “It is you.”
Indeed, it was.
That night an enormous party was held for the return of the king and queen. People ate and drank to our names throughout the night.
Tavi and Yakub were there with Saira’s family, the children running around in feral glee. Others were there, too. Kahina and her son, Rafal. Saalim’s men: Tamam, Nassar, Kofi, Parvaz, and so many more. People both wealthy and common.
With deep satisfaction, I watched the people revel in our halls, Saalim at my side, my hand in his.
Suddenly, Gaffar was in front of me. All night he had broken into song no matter how many times Saalim told him to be quiet so the musicians he hired could do their job. But alas, he was unstoppable. “May I sing a tune for the new queen? In the tradition of an Almulihi welcome.”
Reluctantly, Saalim nodded. I giggled at his exasperation, leaning forward eagerly to hear.
Gaffar jumped onto a chair, calling the attention of the guests. Then, he began:
‘Ahira! Ahira! Flee with me,
Back to my home beside the sea,’
The heart-sick jinni did implore
Of the shackled daughter of the sand
Her chain wrapped round her father’s hand
Free to dream, though nothing more.
‘I cannot flee, and nor can you
For my father is your master, too,’
Sighed the ahira in resigned repose.
But nurtured by Wahir’s fair hand
Love struggled up from Eiqab’s sands
A defiant and desperate desert rose.
The wishes that the jinn bestow,
Like the sea, conceal an undertow,
For dangerous is Masira’s guile.
The ahira wished the lovers freed,
The goddess twisted desperate need
And threw them into cruel exile.
The ahira fled across the dunes
Her path lit by Wahir’s fair moon.
She found a kingdom by the sea,
No map contained, no seer could scry
That fair land of Almulihi
Where there, her jinni crowned as King,
Took the ahira as his queen.
Gazing around the room, I saw that the people smiled, the women wiped their eyes. As if this was some legend their ancestors knew.
Quickly, I turned to Saalim. He remembered still, didn’t he? I was not alone once more?
Leaning toward me, his mouth brushed my ear before he whispered, “Masira is cunning, isn’t she?”
“What does it mean?”
“I’m afraid it means that neither of us had any choice with this.” He gestured between us. “We have been puppets on strings.”
“Then it is well that I like you.”
“Do you like me, or is it this?” He tapped the crown on my head.
I pretended to consider it. “Really, it’s the dune of salt bricks.”
He grew serious, his brow furrowing. “After all, you are a salt chaser.”
“As are you.”
Leaning into his neck, I smiled and breathed him in. Would I ever tire of him? Would I tire of us? Or would we be like the mosaic on the walls of the palace, our love captured forever?
Of course, I knew the answer to that already.
Like the legends, the stories, the songs: We would endure.