Al-Ghazan’s house had a garden in the back with fig trees and a pomegranate tree. But towering over it all was a species of cypress that Al-Ghazan’s father had attempted to grow. It dominated the garden rapidly before he knew it, its majestic canopy of moss-shrouded branches cascading down. It was unrelenting: it did not want to be tamed and manipulated. So he had let it grow, watching as it quickly dominated his house.
A rare species of cypress that once used to be found in the eastern marshes, the thick knobbly trunk soared high, enshrouded by thinner intertwining vines that reached over the house with mossy lilac flowers.
After his father’s death, Al-Ghazan had been able to expand the garden towards the west so that the other plants could have freedom from the choking vines. So his garden was divided into a sprawling canopy of the cypress spreading at least seven yards’ worth; and the western side opened up to the skies, with the new, smaller fig tree and the pomegranate tree shying away from the towering majesty of the cypress.
Al-Ghazan prided himself on this tree. It had originated further east where he’d heard a farmer and his wife, a weaverwoman, planted a lilac-cypress to honor the house they had built with their own hands. But by the time the farmer and weaverwoman had grey hairs and grandchildren, the wild cypress grew so out of control that it had grown through the house itself, its lavender flowers cascading through the windows and the ceilings, over the shelves and choking the rooms — until the house was no more. It outlived the ones who had planted it, and outlived the house — which was soon in staggering, broken shambles of wood decaying away; until it expanded so vast over the years that it spread across a whole acre of land long after the deaths of the husband and wife.
Al-Ghazan’s dream was to go see this mountainous tree one day in that unknown land. His father had told him the story when he was little, and he could not take his mind off of the untamed tree. He wondered what the couple had done once they found that the tree they had borne of their own had begun to destroy the house they had built. Did they try to tame it? Did they let it grow? Decide to move away? Did they know of its legacy?
Al-Ghazan was relieved that their own tree had grown hovering over the roof instead of through it. The whole section of the southern part in the back of the house was covered by the cascading shrouds of moss. At every window, there it was, as if trying to come in through the house, an uninvited guest.
In the south wing of the house, lilac petals fluttered in through the windows of the kitchens and scattered all over the wooden floors. The maids were always frustrated by the petals that scattered among all the corners of their shelves, around the sugar bowl, the spice jars of cinnamon, cardamom and cloves. It lay in heaps in the corners of the kitchen where they finally banished it with their brooms.
In the eastern wing were also the halls that led to the library in the back, and the petals drifted in through the windows and fluttered across down the hall. The kitchen maids barely bothered to clean them up there. They pretended not to see it, as they deemed the kitchen to be their central domain, and it was not their business or their responsibility to clean up the halls, they argued. So it lay in lilac heaps across the wooden planks, the footsteps that tread a path through the center of the hall and the wind blowing them towards the corners.
On that late afternoon, as the shaded sunlight filtering in through the vines of the tree cast softly muted shadows through the kitchen, the maids scurried about baking loaves of naan bread and roasted lamb with za’atar herbs, their thyme-oregano-like scent filling the entire house.
It wafted through the hall into the open receiving room, where the fire blazed in the hearth during the autumn and winter months.
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The bleating of goats rose from a closed pen. I strode along the grounds where Imraan Al-Hunayn tended to a goat.
I remembered the image of the man standing at the bridge beneath the greying skies. I had seen the river in his eyes: its stillness, its darkness. How could the Traitor of Khardin be here in the middle of the open land, raising baby goats?
And why had he chosen to help me?
Underneath the lilac canopy, the sun rose up over the valley. On the south end, the hill rolled down to a distant cluster of trees and a far-off village beyond which continued the forest.
I approached closer and saw that the goat was injured, a bite mark on its flank. “What happened to it?” I asked.
“Wild wolves from the forest wander around here into the perimeters,” Imraan said. “We’ve tightened the defenses. I don’t know how one got through last night. I found Misu’s siblings here dead this morning.”
Imraan struggled with the poor animal, trying to keep it still.
“Why did you and Al-Ghazan not turn me in or banish me?” Rahena asked. Why give me a spacious room to sleep in? It was a room more well-furnished than the calligraphers’ quarters in the Tower, complete with a warm-toned writing desk and rich wooden mashrabiya-latticed windows.
It was a welcome comfort after the dark cells. Yet I had not slept. I had had the dream of Abbasid’s Keep again, of the room and the towers. The towers burned, flames licking the spires. And the windows floated inside the room.
“Are you complaining?” Imraan asked. He pulled the rope tighter at the edge of the fencing and grinned an awkward smile. “Could you not do the same of me? Or Al-Ghazan, for that matter.”
“How is it that the Rebel of Khardin is not hiding out in Arassan or Faisalgard plotting the demise of the realm, as they say –” I said. “But farming goats out at the house of the Emir’s physician?”
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“And are you going to tell me why a woman on the run can ask me these questions?”
“I am not the one with the bounty on my head for twenty years,” I said.
Imraan held the goat tightly as it bleated to escape his grasp, pulling its leg. “Hold on a little there, Misu!” he exclaimed to it. “You’ll be alright if you only let me help you, damnit.”
After he applied a sap to the wound and covered it, he freed the goat, and it wandered off to join its companions. Imraan watched it go. “Stubborn goat,” he muttered. He brushed off his hands and stood up from the ground, grass staining his trousers. “That look of distrust in your eyes. I have seen it in you since the moment you understood who I am.”
“You are the most wanted man in the realm,” I said. “I would be a fool if I trusted you so easily.”
“Hm, yes, but you also do not trust the man who is hunting me, either,” Imraan said, looking up. “Who then do you trust, Rahena Ansary…of Bayrun.”
“Where did you hear that?” I asked. I had not told him anything of myself.
“I hear something of the Bayruni tongue in you, I believe. I can hear it because I knew a Bayrun man once, long ago, who saved my life. There aren’t many others who know how to recognize the Bayruni tongue. It was suppressed for so long.”
“Yes,” I said. “It was.”
Khardin kings executed the Bayruni people who refused to give up our language to adopt the Khardinian tongue. Our language was to be wiped out, we were told, for it was as inferior as the Bayrun people themselves. If we would be purified, we could live. But my people refused, grasped onto it like it was their own lifeblood. If they had to speak it in whispers in the dead of night to keep it alive, they would. Our language had nearly been stolen from us, but it was the language of rebellion, of our spirit, and that had not been killed.
“I must be going now, have to feed the lot of them.” With a curt nod, Imraan walked away and disappeared inside the enclosed shed.
I could not understand him. Each time I attempted to question him, he evaded me. He was supposed to be a ruthless man, the monster of the realm. Yet all I found him to be was frustratingly unyielding.
I walked back towards the grounds when footsteps crunched across the grass. Al-Ghazan was pulling a cart of soil. “Daughter Rahena,” he greeted. “Peace. How is your arm? It is good that Imraan brought you both when he did.”
“I did not get the chance to say it, but thank you,” I said.
Al-Ghazan seemed to be in very different spirits than the day before. Humming, he simply smiled at my words.
As I stood before the trunk of the twisted and knotted cypress, Al-Ghazan continued mixing the soil before me.
“This is a beautiful tree,” I said.
“It was planted by my father,” the old man said. “Grown and trained by him. I was born when the tree was about up to here,” Al-Ghazan held his hand about three feet above the ground. “That is how my father would measure my age,” he chuckled. “And the tree’s, too. With each foot it grew, I was another year older. Our lives were intertwined,” he said fondly as he placed his palm on the trunk.
“May I ask you something?” I said. “Why is Salman’s greatest enemy here with you? Is he your son?”
Al-Ghazan laughed. “He would have been a difficult child to raise, if he had been my son, I am sure,” he said, rising up with a hand on his knees and one against the ground. “There is a touch of the rascal in that one, I am afraid. But no, I have no son.”
A silence stretched between our breaths and the trunk of the cypress, which stood before us like a mediator. “I do not understand why — you work for Salman and yet —”
“You do not have to be afraid,” Al-Ghazan said. “I will not turn you in. Let me tell you why.” He leaned against the trunk of the tree as if for support, as if to derive strength from it.
“My father used to serve as a physician at the Shayfahan.” Al-Ghazan said. “All of this —” he stretched out his arms to the spreading grounds. “— I inherited it after the Emir killed my father right in front of me.”
“Then why do you continue to work for him?” I asked.
“I was forced to continue serving him,” Al-Ghazan said.
Al-Ghazan’s face turned to the roots beneath him. “But I went in search of Imraan after he started his campaign against the Emir a decade ago. Salman had labeled him the greatest dangerous traitor by then. But I wanted to know him for myself. I wanted to know who this man truly was. For I could no longer trust the words from Salman’s mouth. Soon, I began to spy for Imraan. It was a long time ago now.” He raised his eyes to her. “Whatever your feelings towards Ardashir or Salman, I understand you.”
“If you joined the rebellion, where is the rebel? Is he not supposed to be fighting battles and plotting attacks —”
Al-Ghazan laughed, but there was an edge to the laughter. “He hasn’t fought a battle in seven years since the battle at the Azram Plains.” Something dark crossed his eyes, fleetingly, as he looked at the ground. “We lost…many good men that day, I lost friends, many…” his voice dwindled away as if he was suddenly speaking to himself, whispering something of which only he knew.
“The Shayfahan’s men or the rebellion’s?” I asked. “Which do you consider your good men?”
Al-Ghazan’s gaze rose as he stared at me. “I cannot blame you for being skeptical.”
The sound of rustling feet through the grass accompanied by laughter from the eastern side of the grounds made us look up.
Two children, an older girl of about twelve and a smaller boy of nine, ran through the trees on the other side, their laughter scattering in the wind. The girl began to climb the pomegranate tree while the boy waited below.
“Maryam!” Al-Ghazan shouted. “Get out of that tree right now. I told you not to steal the pomegranates until they’re ready.”
Maryam jolted at his shout as if she had not seen Al-Ghazan. Quickly, she pulled a pomegranate off the tree and leapt back down, running back through the grass, her hair streaming behind her while the boy followed her — both giggling in fits of laughter.
“I swear they are like little rabbit-coons!” exclaimed Al-Ghazan. “That girl is going to ruin all my pomegranates one day. Allah knows Maryam and Omar drive me a little crazy sometimes.”
“Where are their parents?” I asked.
Al-Ghazan shook his head. “Their parents died in one of the purging raids on the villages in the south. I found them crawling for food by the Zeyandeh river a few years ago, trying to catch fish with their hands.”
He picked up his shears from the ground and gazed up at the ramparts of the house. “This house, you see. It is not merely mine any longer. Somewhere along the way, it became a sanctuary for those seeking something even they themselves don’t know; a stop on their journey. But once you make a stop, you can’t seem to leave. It takes you in.”
A calm descended upon me in a way I could not explain, and suddenly everything that had happened before disappeared. A gust of wind rustled the whispering canopy above me, and I gazed up to into its fluttering blooms. “It is strange,” I said, “but sometimes I feel as if this tree is speaking to me. My mother would always say trees have their own language.”
“Oh, they do,” said Al-Ghazan, waving the pair of shears he held in his hands to emphasize his words. As he spoke, Al-Ghazan seemed younger than his sixty-five years despite his beard and humbled shoulders, with his towering build and height. “They speak a language so pure, but only to those worthy enough to respect it; to recognize their life.”
He gazed up into the canopy. “When we think of otherworldly dimensions, we think of far-apart worlds beyond ours. But the thing is, you see,” he winked at me with a wide grin. “We exist through the particles of these beings that exist alongside us. Their plane of time is merely of another dimension, that is all.” He shrugged.
The sound of a clatter of dishes came from the house.
“Come then, daughter Rahena,” Al-Ghazan motioned towards the house. “I will introduce you to everyone else. You can make your own judgment of the lot. Let us have some breakfast.”