A Sultan in Palermo Read Online Free PDF

for having thought of it. It was bound to give him indigestion.
    And where were the girls’ husbands? Suddenly he realised that they had come to plead on behalf of their men. Something must have happened. There was always unrest in Noto and in the countryside surrounding Siracusa. In the palace it was referred to as banditry, but he knew it was much more. Well, he would listen when the time came.
    He enjoyed the food. The lamb was succulent and tasty, the vegetables fresh and the flask of wine sent by the palace, tasted by Ibn Fityan and pronounced free of poison, had revived his spirits. Noticing this, Samar and Sakina exchanged a knowing look, while Idrisi thought to himself how like their mother the two were.
    Nature had not endowed them with his looks or physique. As he recalled Zaynab, whom his father had compelled him to marry and whom he had glimpsed for the first time on the day of his wedding, he shivered at the memory of that night. There had been no light-hearted pleasure for either of them and even now it was a mystery to him how they produced four children. His mother claimed the credit. She told the entire family of how, aware of the problem, she had insisted that Muhammad drink an unpleasant concoction of boiled coffee-plant leaves sweetened with date juice, whose aphrodisiacal effects had first been noticed by the medicine men of Ifriqiya. And, in those early years, on each occasion—not that there were too many of them—that he mounted his wife, he could smell the bitter taste of the leaves. His mother remained convinced that without it he would not have succeeded in producing four children.
    If Zaynab’s character had been different he would not have encouraged her departure from Palermo. But she possessed no redeeming qualities, none. Her loud voice heaping abuse on the household servants angered him greatly. And it was even worse when she praised him. He never thought of what it must have been like for her, growing up in a wealthy nobleman’s household, frowned upon by everyone because of her looks, the result of too much inbreeding. He knew that and would sometimes remark to Marwan or Ibn Hamid how the Arabs paid more attention to ensuring thoroughbred horses than their own children. It was not Zaynab’s fault but why had Allah not given her a few brains to compensate?
    That Zaynab’s features had been reproduced in both the daughters might have been a misfortune but for the position Idrisi occupied at Court. They had married men from the Arab nobility in Siracusa, whose forebears had arrived from Ifriqiya and laid siege to the city a few hundred years after the Prophet’s death. The girls’ dowries had been generous, their husbands not unkind and, more important, they had managed to perform their duties without the aid of coffee leaves. Children were produced, a son for Samar, and twins—a son and a daughter—for Sakina. The future was secure. The land was now safe, a fair portion already registered in the name of the two boys to avoid property disputes and, at the same time, to reassure the women and their father that whatever else happened the inheritance could not be challenged. Their sons were their official heirs. Having exerted themselves mightily in order to achieve this, the two husbands had moved on and, compatible with their religious beliefs, had begun to till other pastures. It did not take long for Samar and Sakina to realise that there would be no more children. As for the pleasures of the bedchamber, a luxury lost.
    It was while they were sipping mint tea after the meal that their father decided to strike first. ‘My children, you know me well enough to understand that I detest those who hide their real thoughts in the depth of their hearts and speak of something else. I know full well you have not come here out of the goodness of your hearts, but because you need something from me. I have no idea what it is, but I am your father and will help you. But in Allah’s name I ask