The Bride Box by Michael Pearce Page B

for that. About the house. He’s another Sudani. Comes from the lady’s family. Always going back there to do this or that.’
    â€˜Sudani?’ said Mahmoud. ‘Like Soraya?’
    â€˜Closer. Soraya’s not really part of her family. Well, she is, but not really. A distant cousin. Very distant, I know, because I heard them talking once, she and the lady. They were trying to puzzle out the family connection. And not finding it easy, I must say. But it did exist. The lady remembers Soraya’s mother.’
    â€˜And Suleiman went off?’ said Mahmoud. ‘This morning?’
    â€˜Yes. In a hurry, like I said.’
    â€˜That would be before the men came in from the fields?’
    â€˜Just before. He was leaving as they were arriving.’
    â€˜But …’ began Mahmoud.
    The Pasha’s lady had known that the servants would be parading before him, had agreed to it herself. And then she had done this! Made sure he wouldn’t speak to everybody. Not, almost certainly, to the one person with whom he wanted to speak.
    They had done it again. Tricked him.
    But this time there was a difference. He now knew exactly who the Pasha’s lady did not want him to speak to.
    One day Zeinab came back home to hear shrieks inside the house. She dropped the packages she was holding and rushed in. Leila was standing in the kitchen sobbing. She held her arms out and Zeinab, without thinking, grabbed her and held her close.
    Neither Musa nor his wife were to be seen. They had gone out to the market, Leila explained between sobs. They were buying a lot of things and Musa, unusually among Egyptian men, had gone to help carry them. And she, Leila, had tripped over the step and blooded her knee!
    She showed Zeinab the knee fearfully.
    It was indeed bloody but not a mortal wound, and Zeinab, who, in her father’s house would normally have shouted for a slave, reckoned she could cope on her own. She carried Leila, still racked with sobs, into the bathroom and sponged the blood off.
    â€˜Look!’ she said. ‘It’s all gone!’
    Leila peered doubtfully; then saw a part where the skin had come off and opened her mouth to roar again.
    â€˜We’ll put a patch on it,’ said Zeinab hastily. There were, she knew, patches in the cupboard. Owen sometimes used one when he cut himself shaving. She found one and spread it over the wounded area.
    Leila, curious, cut off her scream in mid-roar.
    â€˜It will be all right now,’ said Zeinab reassuringly.
    Still the little body heaved and Zeinab hugged her tight. Eventually the sobbing subsided, but Zeinab went on holding her. She found she quite liked the experience. It came to her that not all things should be delegated to slaves.
    Musa and his wife returned at this point. Musa’s wife rushed across and took over from Zeinab. And Musa patted his heart and said he had heard the shouts and feared Leila was dying.
    â€˜Would you mind?’ asked Leila.
    â€˜A bit,’ said Musa.
    Leila knew he was teasing her. She broke into chuckles and soon the incident was forgotten.
    But not by Zeinab. She had seen the way that Musa’s wife handled Leila, and she had observed the way her friend Aisha behaved with her children, and she guessed that this was the way mothers behaved with their children. When she came back into the kitchen, after collecting the purchases she had dropped, she gave Leila a hug.
    Leila put her arm round her neck and gave her a kiss. Then she climbed up on to Zeinab’s lap. ‘You have a lovely smell, Auntie,’ she said.
    â€˜Thank you!’ said Zeinab. ‘It’s perfume.’
    â€˜It’s in your ear,’ said Leila.
    â€˜Not
in
my ear but behind it,’ said Zeinab. ‘Would you like to try some?’
    After this they were more at ease with each other. Zeinab even took her with her sometimes when she went shopping in the fashionable, almost entirely French, great