A Wind in Cairo Read Online Free PDF Page B

houses in this quarter. Surely it was not the one it seemed to be.
    There above the stable door was set a carved stone like no other in his memory. It had come out of old Egypt; it had found a resting place upon that lintel. A man in a chariot, bow drawn, his horses stretching to their full and glorious speed, skimming through rushes, startling a flight of birds. He had told himself tales when he was young, of that pagan charioteer and his horses and his hunt. He had mounted his first gentle nag in this yard, dwelt in this house, known every curve and corner of it.
    Until the Turks came out of Syria. Aid, they called it: defense of Egypt against the warring Franks. Invasion was the truth of it. They drove out the infidels. They slew the caliph’s vizier; they cast down Cairo’s princes; they hounded the caliph to his death. There would be no other: not of the true line, the holy line, the line of Fatima that had stood so long against the lying sons of Abbas in their lair in Baghdad. The Turks had seen to that. Fatima’s white banners were all fallen; Abbas’ black battle standards darkened the towers of the city.
    The caliph’s kin lived yet, to be sure, but they lived in prison. No man of them might ever see a woman; no woman might ever see a man. There would be no children born to any child of the royal house.
    Ali Mousa had escaped that cruel mercy. His blood was holy but not royal; he was suffered to keep his women and his son and his freedom. But he had been a loyal servant of the caliph, and for that, he had paid. The house of his fathers was taken from him to be a lair of Turkish dogs.
    Of one dog above all. One hound of a Turk: Yakhuz al-Zaman. They had fought together against the Franks, he and Ali Mousa. In one bitter battle, a son of al-Zaman had fallen to his own stupidity. He charged a Frankish knight head-on, he in his light mail on his light swift desert pony, the knight a tower of steel with a lance twice as long as a man, mounted on a giant among horses. Ali Mousa had striven to beat the boy aside; had only fired the young fool’s temper. The knight had spitted him for his pains.
    His brother saw him die. No marvel of intellect himself, wild with grief, he cried down curses upon Ali Mousa’s head; and there in the battle, with Franks in their hundreds to sate his lust for blood, he sprang howling upon the sharif. Ali Mousa raised his sword in swift defense. But the young fool’s mare swerved, shying from a Frankish mace; the sweep of Ali Mousa’s blade, checked too late, cut him down.
    Al-Zaman took his revenge. Not Ali Mousa’s life. That, he could not have: his lord had forbidden it. But Ali Mousa’s house, lands, wealth—those he could take. And did. And kept them in undying enmity.
    Enmity that waxed for that Ali Mousa had prospered in his despite. The young Kurdish emir Yusuf, to whom almost by chance the rule of Egypt had fallen, had taken a fancy to the sharif. He would not return what al-Zaman had taken, but he could and would recompense Ali Mousa in full for all that he had lost.
    Hasan had learned to curse two names only of all that were. The name of Iblis, and the name of Yakhuz al-Zaman.
    Now he stood in the house that should have been his own, in the hands of al-Zaman’s servants. Owned, it would seem, by al-Zaman’s own son.
    But al-Zaman had none. They were all dead in that one battle. His wives had borne him none thereafter; no slave had done as Ali Mousa’s Circassian had been blessed to do, and given him the manchild who set her free and won her the name and honor of a wife.
    The young hunter dismounted, eyes upon Hasan, approaching him. He tried to seem meek, but his body had its own will in the matter. His ears flattened. He sidled. His heels itched to shed Zamani blood. For surely it was that: nephew, cousin, adopted son. A Turk to his thin brown fingertips, however well he aped good Arab manners.
    The black eunuch loomed over his