She went to inspect the merchant’s grounds. The house was built at the end of an alley and below street level, with steps leading down to the entrance, so the Jew beaters, who periodically invaded the Quarter to harass and rob Jews, would not bother with the maze of dark alleys and steep stairs that protected the merchant’s residence.

Keeping herself out of the range of light that spilled out, Rebekah peered in through the lace-covered windows. From her vantage, she half saw the main hall. An oil burner, with brass arms holding flaming cups, hung from the center of the ceiling. Every room connected to a round hall by a passageway she detected when doors were opened momentarily.

She acquired the habit of prowling around the residence. Ebrahim, the merchant’s son, was a handsome youth with green eyes, black curly hair, and skin the color of raw almonds. He wore eggshell pants, opal capes, and dove-gray shirts. He liked his sweets with a pinch of saffron, obvious from the yellow tinge of the rice cakes and chickpea candies. He made a face at the brown, hard-boiled eggs and fried eggplant served on Sabbath. He never touched the Friday gondy of meat and chickpeas, but enjoyed rice polo with diced carrots and red beans with a touch of turmeric.

He was a voracious reader, not only of poetry he recited from leather-bound books; he also studied the lives of renowned warriors, and listened to music from foreign lands that was too sophisticated for Rebekah to understand.

Gold Dust would spend the rest of her life in this house. She was young and pliable and would easily learn the ways of the rich.

Rebekah taught her daughter to bake rice bread and chickpea candies with saffron and discouraged her from boiling Sabbath eggs. She bought her numerous books of poetry and volumes of history that talked of the lives and habits of men such as Aristotle, Cyrus and Darius the Great, and Tamerlane, the Mongol. She taught her to read. Salvaging strips of white and cream-colored cloth from the materials she sold, Rebekah made Gold Dust flowing skirts and clinging blouses.

Rebekah returned to the merchant’s house to make sure his son still lived there and had not been married off. She hid behind the window and watched Ebrahim. His books were heavier. He had grown into a scholar. Often, she heard the murmur of discourse between him and his father, who occupied a seat in a corner of the room, far from her vantage. She took pains to conceal herself. The merchant might think she had come to invite him to her bed to make a few dinars. Even a whore could feel shame.

Yes. She could be humiliated despite having convinced herself that her body was only a means of supporting her daughter, despite her refusal to allow guilt to choke her life, and despite the stamp of her FOLLOW ME sandals, which to the world was a whore’s invitation, but to her, a grand ruse to discover the man who would redeem in her heart the fall of all men.