The Book of Saladin Read Online Free PDF

attending these lessons. He would go riding with his friends, and shooting arrows at the mark. One day the teacher of holy texts grabbed my hand, and put it between his legs. I screamed. Kamil’s mother rushed into the room.
    The teacher, muttering the name of Allah, told her that I was indecent and licentious. In his presence she slapped my face twice, and apologised to him. When Kamil came home, I told him the truth. He was angry with his mother, and the teacher was never allowed near our house again. I think that she was nervous of Kamil’s affection for me, and she soon found him a wife. She chose her sister’s daughter, Zenobia, who was two years older than me.
    After Kamil’s wedding, I was made to attend to the needs of his young wife. I liked her. We had known each other since I had first entered the household, and we often shared each other’s secrets. When Zenobia bore Kamil a son, I was as delighted as all of them. I looked after the child a great deal, and I grew to love it as if it were my own. I envied Zenobia, who Allah had blessed with unlimited amounts of milk.
    Everything was fine—even Kamil’s mother had become friendly again—until that fateful day when Kamil took me aside and told me that he loved me, and not just as a brother. Allah is my witness, I was wholly surprised. At first I was scared. But Kamil persisted. He wanted me. For a very long time, I resisted. I felt much affection for him, but no passion. Not so much as a trace.
    I know not what would have happened, or even how it would have ended, had Kamil’s mother not attempted to marry me off to the son of the water-carrier. He was a rough type, and did not appeal to me. Yet marriage, as Your Grace knows, is never a free choice for women. If my mistress had decided my fate, I would have married the water-carrier’s boy.
    Kamil was upset by the news. He declared that it would never happen, and immediately asked me to become his wife. His mother was shocked. His wife declared that she was humiliated by his choice, taking her servant as a second wife. Both women stopped speaking to me for many months.
    Imagine my situation. There was no one to talk to about the problems of my life. In bed at night, I used to weep, yearning for the mother I never knew. I considered the choices confronting me quite coldly. The thought of the water-carrier’s son made me feel ill. I would rather have died or run away than bear his touch. Kamil, who had always been kind and loving to me, was the only possible alternative. I agreed to become his wife.
    Kamil was overjoyed. I was satisfied and not unhappy, even though Zenobia hated me, and Kamil’s mother treated me as if I were dirt from the street. Her own past hung over her like a cloud. She could never forget that Kamil’s father had deserted her for another, while she was heavy with their child. He had left Cairo one night, never to return. I am told he has a family in Baghdad, where he trades in precious stones. His name was never mentioned, though Kamil used to think of him a great deal. What I have recounted is his mother’s side of the story.
    In the kitchen, there was another version which is common knowledge. I was told it only after the servants were convinced that I would not carry tales to the mistress. For the truth is that Kamil’s father ran away from our city when he discovered, on returning from a long voyage abroad, that his wife had coupled with a local merchant. The child in her belly did not belong to him. Kamil confirmed this to me after we were married. His mother knew that I had been told, and the very thought filled with her hatred. What would have happened to all of us Allah alone knows.
    Then Messud, with eyes like almonds and lips as sweet as honey, entered my life. He told me tales of Damascus, and how he had fought by the side of Sultan Yusuf Salah al-Din ibn Ayyub. I could not resist him. I did not wish to resist him. What I felt for him was something I had never experienced