Secret of the Sands Read Online Free PDF Page A

least that is her best guess, for as far as she can tell, the ships are not sailing together and Zena knows no one aboard. There will be, she has come to realise, no getting away. Simply to survive the crossing will be a feat.
    Sitting well-fed beside her grandmother’s fire, the names of the foreign climes sounded exotic – Muscat and Sur, Constantinople and Zanzibar, Bombay and Calicut. The strange tone of the men’s skin seemed benign, somehow, as they talked wistfully of their homeland or their religious devotions. There were Christians, Hindus, Sikhs, Muslims, Animists and Jews and they came in all shades of brown – Nubian princes, Wahabi emirs, minor Persian noblemen, Turkish traders, the dusky emissaries of caliphs and sultans, Semitic merchants, Indian warriors, Somali pirates and Abyssinian bishops. Each and every one of the strangers was tattooed and pierced with the markings of their individual tribe – some shaven and some with long beards, some bare-headed and others with ornate headdresses or brightly coloured turbans. They dressed differently too – in white flowing robes, or embroidered jubbahs, or animal-skin capes adorned in ostrich feathers or sometimes simply in a hessian winding cloth. Under her grandmother’s watchful eye, Zena served platters of food to all of them – spiced couscous and succulent lamb piled high with melted butter poured on top till it dripped from the edge of the plate. Roasted chicken stuffed with fruit and nuts and gleaming with basting juices. Spicy wot, stewed till it almost melted into the hot injera bread. Latterly, she danced for the strangers to the beat held by Yari, her grandmother’s fat, Anatolian eunuch who played the drums. When they found out she was not a mere servant (one of many) or indeed a slave girl (even more), but a favoured grandchild, many of the visitors paid her attention and left her gifts – a phial of perfume or a length of silk. There are no gifts now.
    After the third day aboard, in the darkness of the hold, she can see this new ship is following the coast to the south and, between the intermittent keening of the other women and the praying of the men, silent tears stream down her face. There can be no going back now, she mouths. All she can think of is returning to the village, and what might be there if she does. So much loss. A grave. Her mother, always surly. A marriage Zena never sought for herself, now long overdue. It should not have happened like this, she thinks. In the darkness, it is safe to mourn so she cries for a long time.
    On the sixth day, after silence and exhaustion finally prevail below deck and all surrender themselves to the stifling crush, Zena notices through a tiny strip of light in the bulwark above her head that the land is on the wrong side of the ship and she knows they have turned eastwards. These territories are strange to her – she retains in her memory only some names and meagre scraps of information, but it is enough to realise the scale of the distance she now lies from home and the impossibility of an easy return.
    Her grandmother’s death sent her back to the village only a few weeks before – back to her parents who had hoped for better for her. The stone compound was inherited by her mother’s elder brother who arrived a week after the burial with several camels, a horse or two and a cold-eyed wife in full burquah . He took stock of his new home, ordered an ox to be killed and cooked in celebration and banished Zena at the first opportunity.
    ‘Go home and get married, child,’ he commanded. ‘There is nothing for you here.’
    Her presence had always been unorthodox and so, as he was fully entitled, he sent her, with only one servant and one camel, back to the shamble of huts where she was born. She travelled light with just one small wooden box of trinkets and baubles and a few lengths of dark cotton. At the time, she thought the old lady’s passing was the saddest thing that would ever happen