He struggled to unruffle himself, stop the tingling in his palm, the quiver of his body. “No! No! There’s no place for another sultana in the harem.”

“What a shame, sweetlove. I would have loved to prove your manhood.”

10

On the fourteenth dawn of the month, when the copper boilers of the hammams were hot and ready, the trumpet bearers of the baths sounded their horns. Out of mud shacks, depressed hovels, flimsy huts and shanties, Jews emerged carrying bundles slung over their shoulders, perched on their heads, or trailing the ground behind them. They filled the dirt roads, obscure figures slipping past the garbage pit and the closed stalls of food and spices, past beggars who started their day by delousing their children, and headed toward the two baths circled by lopsided mud walls above which vapors grayed the dawn.

Mounted on Venus, Rebekah and her daughter took the narrow alley out of the Jewish Quarter, away from the stink of the garbage and from Heshmat the Matchmaker’s slander. To Gold Dust’s sleepy questions, her brooding mother replied that they were on their way to a place of plenty, a place of dreams.

Suddenly, Gold Dust was wide awake. After their encounter with the eunuch, her mother had never stopped discussing the harem. They were going to the palace! “Madar, are we staying there?”

Rebekah tossed dry bread to a pack of hungry dogs yelping at their feet. “Only you, Gold.”

Gold Dust fought to harness the tumult of her bones. “I don’t want to stay without you.”

“May the Devil go deaf. Don’t let him hear you, Gold. You don’t have many choices.”

Gold Dust had always seen her mother in control, an impenetrable mask on her face. Now her hands trembled, her posture was rigid, and the glass studs on her skirt reflected a melancholy tinge on her face. Gold Dust concentrated on counting the anemic oil burners outside the Quarter. She slapped mosquitoes against her face and wondered if they were the kind that caused the shaking plague. Listening to the rhythm of her mother’s breathing, she tried to focus on the present—her mother would take care of the future. She rested her cheek against Rebekah’s back.

“Keep your head up,” Rebekah ordered. “If you ever have a choice between people hating or pitying you, always choose hate—always.”

Gold Dust raised her head and held her shoulders as high as her mother’s.

Beginning to feel the heat of the past, Rebekah mumbled under her breath. She yanked on Venus’s reins and stopped under a dust-shrouded plane tree. She faced her daughter. “One other warning, Gold. Remember that marriage is an alliance to enslave and shame women.”

“Madar, have you seen the acrobats?”

“Yes. Why?”

“Soleiman the Agile has a fair complexion and blue eyes. He’ll never shame me.”

“I didn’t raise you to hand you over to a bare-assed acrobat, Gold. Not all fair blue-eyed men are kind. Men are fickle; they come and go. You and only you must remain the ruler of your heart; that’s the secret to survival.”