“What is it?” Maisara whispered in awe. She had never seen anything like it.
“A map of the entire world,” Khalid said with satisfaction. Caliph al-Ma’mun had tasked geographers with traveling the globe and taking measurements to create the most accurate map of all time. Khalid possessed one of the few copies. They were priceless.
“Here is the circle of the city, the breadth of the empire, and all that lies beyond our borders.” He showed her how the oceans created one body of water. He showed her the seas, the great rivers, and the deserts.
She listened, almost afraid to breathe lest her father stop talking. He had never spoken to her of such things; in fact, he rarely spoke to her at all. But that night he showed her the vastness of the world.
“This is the journey I will make.” He traced the path to the desert with his finger.
Maisara made a silent promise that one day she would do the same.
*
Caliph al-Ma’mun died unexpectedly a month later. Khalid risked the dragon’s fire and told Rabka he was leaving for the Arabian Desert to follow the way of the Sufi. He needed to see beyond the constraints of earthly life.
Rabka erupted with the rage of a thousand storm demons. She screamed and called him the vilest names ever to cross a woman’s lips. But still Khalid left with only the robes he was wearing and a case the size of a scroll on his back. Maisara knew it surely held the map.
After Khalid had gone, Rabka grew silent, now a whirlwind without force. Her daughters were terrified. In an instant, their world had broken. Rabka sat down in Khalid’s chair at the head of the table and laughed so hard tears watered her eyes. She had seen everything but the ending.
They had no income and no male to protect them and, with the caliph’s passing, no relationship with the new ruler. Soon they would be destitute.
At first they survived by selling Khalid’s prized belongings. Rabka sold off his library. He had thousands of books and rare works, including copies of the Vedas Scripts from ancient India, alchemy books written by Babylonian priests, and original texts from the Chaldean and Median Empires.
Rabka wanted none of it. Her most important task was securing her daughters’ futures. With Asma, the eldest, Rabka worried there might be difficulty. The girl had ugly teeth, a wandering eye that could be disconcerting, and her father’s bulbous nose. After months trying to find her a husband, Rabka gave up in despair. Then a new opportunity presented itself.
One of the only female trades was the textile industry. Rabka found Asma employment as a fabric dyer and spinner in nearby Baqdara, working alongside other women and children.
“The wages will be poor,” she informed Asma, “but at least there are wages.”
“Please, please let me stay,” Asma begged.
Rabka turned deaf ears to her pleading and ordered her remaining daughters to sort through Asma’s belongings to see what could be sold at market. She didn’t think a fabric dyer needed much.
Rabka sold her own beloved gowns and jewels to pay their exorbitant taxes and buy food. No longer could they afford pears from Nahavand, figs from Hulwan, or limes from Egypt. They couldn’t serve grilled lamb with Rabka’s favorite pomegranate sauce, or grilled anything for that matter. Meat was too expensive. Olive oil from Syria and honey from Mosul soon became distant memories.
Baghdad had the most opulent cuisine in the world, and Rabka had been raised in the caliph’s court watching Harun taste thirty dishes a day with two servants standing beside him. One servant would hold thirty clean spoons so Harun could taste each dish, while the other servant waited to collect the dirty ones.
What heights she had fallen from! She let their chefs go, along with all their servants. Now when food was set on the table, her daughters would snatch it like falcons.
Maisara was the one who cooked and cleaned. She learned how to use each cooking vessel in the kitchen. She would spend hours washing pots and beating them with brick dust, then potash. Her hands became rough from all the labor, but she didn’t complain. She spent hours alone in the kitchen dreaming of how she would leave Baghdad one day. The room became her map as she plotted her escape.
Rabka prohibited her second daughter, Alya, from performing any labor, for in Alya, Rabka saw her best chance. The girl was quite lovely, a gazelle, thin as a willow with high breasts, a long neck, and a curtain of hair that fell to her feet like silk. The son of an esteemed family Rabka knew from her days in court was traveling to China soon as an ambassador for the caliph, and he needed a bride.
“Do not send me so far away to such a strange land! I will die there! I know it!” Alya screeched and threw herself at her mother’s feet.
“Better to die there than in the slums of Baghdad with the beggars and the cripples,” Rabka said with fierce conviction.
Now Maisara was the only daughter who remained. Out of all the sisters, she suffered the most, for poverty led Rabka slowly into madness. Rabka’s worst nightmare had come true. She was destitute.
At night Rabka would recite her poetry in weeping bursts, with only the deaf ears of the city to hear her cries.
Secretly, she began to prepare for her death. Even her funeral would cost money, and she had only one thing of worth left to sell: a deck of beautiful hand-painted picture cards that had been in her family for generations.
“But your mother made you promise to take care of them,” Maisara tried to reason with her. “They belong to us.” Maisara had always hoped the cards would one day be passed to her. She was the only daughter who stayed behind.
“They belong to me!” Rabka hissed. She knew they would fetch a high price, especially with the tale she could spin about their origins. Playing cards had become quite popular in the empire, particularly after the Mamluks brought their card games down from the high steppes of Mongolia. Many scholars had begun to collect cards from Mongolia, India, and the farthest reaches of China. And the collectors paid handsomely.
*
Rabka found the perfect merchant. Men like Jamal Azar had helped build the Muslim empire into what it was. He had traveled to Cordoba, Cairo, and explored the sea route to China. He knew every trade route—but he had never seen cards like Rabka’s.
“These cards came from Egypt in the time of Caesar.” Rabka held them out to him. “They survived the Great Fire in Alexandria and have been passed down through my family for centuries. Look at them!” She fanned the cards out on the table. “The artist was the same man who painted the pharaoh’s personal holy books.”
Jamal bent over to study the cards with his optical glass while Maisara looked on wide-eyed at her mother’s story.
“The paint is real gold,” Rabka added, “and worth twice as much.”