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It is an odd shock indeed to arrive in Lower Egypt with all of one’s belongings, fully prepared to settle down with one’s handsome lover, only to find one’s choice city of residence a smoldering pile of ashes. Al-Fusṭāṭ, last they heard, was perfectly fine, as it had been since the days of Umar. Who torched it, they know not, but there isn’t even a single minaret left. He and Yusuf stand on the banks of the Nile, all of their hefty packs strapped to their backs, just staring across the sand at the desolate ruins. 

“Well.” Nicolò says after a long while. 

“Hm.” is Yusuf’s reply. 

After digesting the scene in front of them for a few minutes, they eventually begin walking north, where, quite literally just a stone’s throw away, is al-Qāhira, the home of the caliphs and the garrison of their armies. It’s not exactly a place for civilians, but perhaps they’ll have mercy and allow him and Yusuf to squat in a bathhouse or a mosque for a few days while they reassess their plans. Surely there must at least be some refugees from al-Fusṭāṭ hanging around, setting a precedent. 

The southern gate, Bāb Zuwayla, is open, and a Cretan cheese vendor helpfully informs them that it was the vizier of al-Qāhira, Shawar, who set al-Fusṭāṭ—his own city, the most rich and cosmopolitan city of the whole empire—on fire. Apparently, he was worried that King Amalric of Jerusalem and his army might use al-Fusṭāṭ as a base to attack al-Qāhira, and so he preemptively burned the entire thing to the ground, along with a great number of its inhabitants. The blaze raged for fifty-four days, to hear the Cretan tell it. That was about three years ago—Shawar is dead now, as is the caliph, and the young Kurdish vizier Ṣalāḥ ad-Dīn rules Egypt. 

“So. Just because… Amalric might have camped in it.” Yusuf asks dubiously, disgust written on his face.

“Yes, sir. But do you know what will ease your misery? My cheese! Look here, I’ve got some wonderful ripened—”  

They have a titanic hoard of money with them, saved over the course of the previous seventy-two years since they first met, mostly thanks to Yusuf’s mercantile endeavors. And finding housing for sale in al-Qāhira turns out to be just as easy as getting inside the walls—most of the wealthy courtiers of the previous dynasty have been either executed (like the unfortunate fool Shawar) or expelled since Ṣalāḥ ad-Dīn took power, which means that their former residences all stand empty. 

How he does it, Nicolò knows not, but within a day, Yusuf finds a guide to show them around an especially nice-looking estate which sits on the road linking Bāb Zuwayla to Bāb al-Futūḥ, the main thoroughfare of the city. The house is absolutely gorgeous, far more luxurious and grand and sprawling than anything else they’ve ever lived in together. Nicolò cannot contain his amazement. They enter through a set of double doors made of intricately carved wood in a vaulted archway which opens directly onto the street. An open-air corridor takes them into the central courtyard, in the middle of which is a rectangular pool surrounded by a lush garden full of date palms and white jasmine. Little blue lotuses float cheerfully in the water. To their right, under a towering wind catcher, is the summer qā‘a , a reception hall for visitors. To the left is the winter qā‘a, carpeted with wool rugs and punctuated by wood-burning hearths. Why they would ever need two is beyond Nicolò’s understanding, but they certainly are breathtaking. The summer qā‘a is especially pretty thanks to its massive carved-wood mashrabiya windows which allow the breeze in through their lattice openings. He can easily imagine sitting down for meals in the majlis bookending either end of the qā‘as. 

Further back, past the main courtyard, is another rear garden. This one is more diverse and functional, with pomegranate, almond, olive, and apple trees, roses, poppies, irises, and a massive sycamore fig. There is no pool, but to the side there is a water wheel for drawing from an underground well. The house kitchen resides conveniently on the opposite side, presumably so that the cook has easy access both to the garden and to the water. Yusuf has to pull him away from admiring it all with a firm grip around his bicep and an amused smile.

On either side of both the summer and winter reception rooms are sets of stairs leading to the upper floor, which is dense with private bed-rooms, the women’s quarters dominating the west side. On either side of the central courtyard are two loggia balconies with low, carved-marble banisters which a child would almost certainly trip over and fall into the pool below. Nicolò hopes the servants walk with caution. The servants don’t seem to frequent the upstairs level nearly as much as the ground floor, though. Their quarters are in an adjacent two-storey building which connects to the north side of the house proper. 

“What are all of these rooms for, if not for the servants?” Nicolò whispers to Yusuf as the guide leads them back towards the stairs. 

“Most rich men have large families. We would, too, if one of us was a woman.” Yusuf answers with a smirk. 

Nicolò elbows him, grinning. 

Of course, they buy the house. Finding work, for Yusuf at least, is equally as effortless. After just a few trips to some of the sūqs and food stalls lining the main road between the madrasas, they learn that pistachios are very quickly becoming a craze among the Muslims, Christians, and Jews alike. Apparently, they were quite recently a food which could be found only in the caliphal palace, but the demise of the caliphs has upset the apple cart—the court chefs, expelled along with their overlords, stuffed their bags full of all the food they could reasonably carry from the palace kitchens and migrated to the streets, where they opened up their own food stalls and began hawking pistachio porridge and pistachio pastries. Already, in the face of the supremacy of this little green seed, almonds have fallen out of favor like the forgotten first wife of a Hindu king. 

“I shall become a pistachio importer, then!” Yusuf announces as they stroll south from the Madrasa of Barqūq, back towards the house. “There is a market virtually free of competition, and I once knew a pistachio farmer in Syria back when I lived in al-Quds, before we met. Surely he must have a grandson who still works the orchards. And how will he know any better when I tell him that I am the grandson of that kind and generous Yusuf ibn Ibrāhīm ibn Muḥammad al-Kaysānī who once bailed out his grandfather when half his trees died of fungus?” 

Ah, my Tayyib , Nicolò thinks with deep admiration. 

And just like that, they are contributing citizens of al-Qāhira. 

Fried salted cheese

Take fine-quality Khaysī cheese, or fine-quality water buffalo cheese, and wash off the excess salt brine on the outside of it. Wash in an appropriate location, and not in a public bath house. Fry and serve with fresh, warm bread.

It is winter. Hardly winter by Nicolò’s standards, of course, but you would think that the people of al-Qāhira were on their collective deathbed for all their complaining. Yusuf despises the cold as much as they do if not more, and when one morning he must go down to the customs house at dawn to inspect the most recent arrival of pistachios, he curses so vitriolically that it would make a lady faint. The pistachios reach al-Qāhira from Syria in the early hours, and a timid servant rouses them before the sun is up to inform the master of the house that he must get up and deal with them. It’s non-negotiable—to put it off would mean risking having them all stolen, or the couriers leaving before the pistachios can be returned if they turn out to be unsatisfactory. And so, with foul language abounding, Yusuf drags himself out of bed. 

“For the love of unholy fuck, could these Syrians not have chosen any other time of the day? Did they travel all night long for the sole purpose of getting here at the most ungodly of hours? It’s fucking pistachios , it’s not like they’ll spoil if they’re on the road for a few extra hours….” 

Nicolò is quite cozy under their blankets and still rather sleepy, and so Yusuf’s grumbling doesn’t keep him awake for long, especially when it eventually tapers off and he just sits in silence on the mattress for a while, probably coming to terms with the miserable fact that he is awake. Luckily, Nicolò is still alert enough to hear Yusuf trip over the tea table when he does eventually get to his feet. He snickers and then returns to dreams. 

When Nicolò does eventually wake, at a much more humane hour, the pinkish sunshine of early dawn is filtering through the stained glass above him and casting hues of peach and salmon onto his face. He stretches, careful not to dislodge the blanket and let the cold air in, and then hears the unexpected crunch of paper under his shoulder as he rolls over onto his back. Twisting around, he finds a handwritten letter. The flawless calligraphy leaves no doubt as to who its author is (as if anyone else would be leaving him letters…). Nicolò smiles and shakes his head fondly, wondering where Yusuf found the time or inclination to write it, considering the mood he appeared to be in when he left. 

You were so beautiful beside me when that cursed servant woke me that I found myself going to the study for this ink and this paper. Yet for a long time, I couldn’t write a thing, so captivated was I by the music of your eyelashes against your cheeks and of the smear of ruddy color that is your fine lips. Please, let me listen to the song that is you for another century more. And another century after that, and another, and another. And someday, when we both become stardust, may the only thing I hear be you. 

Unsatisfied with mere whispers, I wanted to wake you so that you might sing to me with your kisses. I would have, had you not looked so serene, and had I not been so pressed for time. Because I have exercised such great patience, please sing to me, then, when I come home. I will hum the melody of you ceaselessly for as long as I am away. 

I love you. 

—Al-Tayyib 

Nicolò can’t help the flustered little chuckle that eeks out of his chest, nor his blushing grin. He buries his face in the paper. And then re-reads it a few dozen more times. 

When Yusuf does eventually return, sometime around noon, Nicolò is tending to the garden in the rear courtyard, cutting down the irises for the cold season. He hears footsteps on the pavers coming from the central courtyard, and, when he looks up, there is Yusuf. Nicolò greets him with a look of absolute adoration. When Yusuf grins and holds his arms open, Nicolò is upon him in the blink of an eye, wrapped up in them snug and warm. 

“I missed you more with every pistachio I counted, my love.” Yusuf presses a kiss to his cheek. 

Nicolò digs his fingers into Yusuf’s back, the most eloquent reply he can muster. He wishes he could express the emotion in his heart somehow; it feels so cruel to be nothing more than a silent recipient of Yusuf’s words, as if his lover is crafting all this beautiful poetry for a brick wall. But he is not a weaver of words. How can mere words ever suffice to capture the way he feels about Yusuf al-Kaysānī? He’s never been able to find any suitable ones. Sure, he has no problem saying the simple things like I love you, or you are so handsome, or you make me laugh. But when one has a lover with a tongue as silver as Yusuf’s, those all sound quite dull in comparison to the things that fall from his lips. He strings words and flowers and colors and feelings together with such artistry! And so, for too many decades, Nicolò has allowed Yusuf to shower him in verbal gold dust, while he listens unresponsive like a cold marble idol in some Grecian temple, completely mute and dumb. Perhaps he should try taking a class at the madrasa…. 

Later that day, when he is strolling idly along an alley that joins their street to the Fish Market square just for something to do, Nicolò happens upon an elderly man in the process of leaving his house. A woman, presumably his wife, stands in the doorway to bid him goodbye. He politely averts his eyes from her face, but eavesdrops.  

“I love you, my summer rose.” the man says to her. 

“Prince of my heart. My lion.” she answers. “For as long as you are gone, I will miss you like a dove in a cage misses heaven.” 

She strokes his white beard with a weathered hand. And then he departs with a lingering smile which he directs at the ground, because evidently it is for her and no one else to see. Nicolò sees it, though, and he is rendered still and mute at the sight of it all. Their easy exchange of words, artful poetry which seemed to spill from their lips as naturally as breath. At their age, they’ve probably been together nearly as long as he and Yusuf. So why has Nicolò not developed that same ease? Why is it that the most colorful declaration of love he can think of is your beard looks bushy today ? 

He buys some fried salted cheese and a serving of freshly-baked bread from a vendor near the fish fryers to soothe his despair. The people of al-Qāhira, he has learned, go absolutely bonkers over the stuff—they cannot go a day without it, and line up in swarms in the sūqs for it from dawn til dusk. It certainly goes a long way in the name of comfort. Nicolò covers the earthenware dish with the wide sleeve of his kaftan to protect it from the omnipresent dust of al-Qāhira and makes his way home to share it with his beloved.    

Salted pickled lemons

Cut lemons lengthwise and stuff with salt. Press back together and cover with more salt. Leave in a vessel for two nights to soften, then take out and cover with fresh lemon juice, rue, honey, oil, and saffron. Slice thinly and serve in a pleasing arrangement.

Summer soon returns on the hot dry winds which sweep up from Nubia, dispelling the mild winter back to the Mediterranean coast. Soon enough, it is scorching, with relentless sunshine beating down upon the sands. The Nile is rising, but won’t flood again until August. And so, everything, including Nicolò’s courtyard garden, is drying and withering. As is Nicolò himself. 

“I feel very useless here.” he confides in Yusuf one hot evening while they are sitting in the summer bedroom, eating salted lemons pickled in brine. It’s just about the only tolerable food when it’s this hot out—drizzled in lemon juice and decorated with rue and a tiny bit of honey and saffron, it almost makes one forget that he is being slowly roasted alive. They’ve had the servants place earthenware jars of water underneath the streetside mashrabiya window in hopes of cooling the air, but there’s just not much breeze streaming through the woodwork. Nicolò wonders if it would be better to just pour the water right over his head. 

“Useless?” Yusuf asks. “What are you talking about? You keep the house in order! You make sure no one slacks off—like that circular boy who sweeps the courtyard and eats too much halwa.” 

“To what end?” Nicolò counters. “Does it mean anything to have tidy floors and obedient servants? We’ve spent the last however many decades doing good for the world with Andromache and Quynh and now—what? Will I sit around doing nothing, my good deeds finished? That cannot be. I still have much to atone for.” 

Yusuf frowns and gently flicks Nicolò’s forehead. “We have so much time yet—there will be more opportunities for charity. There’s nothing wrong with resting just a little bit in the interim. And you be quiet about atonement.” 

Nicolò flicks Yusuf’s forehead in retaliation, but obediently says no more. Of course, Yusuf is right, but that doesn’t change the way he feels. He takes another nibble of a lemon slice, pulls a sprig of rue from between his teeth. And sticks it to Yusuf’s cheek.   

Kaʿk

Knead finely milled wheat flour with clarified butter, musk, camphor, and rose water. Roll out with a stick and fry in sesame oil. Serve with crushed pistachios and sugar syrup on top. Extremely popular among all strata of society in al-Qāhira.

“Fuck.” 

Nicolò wipes sweat off his brow with the back of his hand, inadvertently applying a smear of flour to it in the process. He’s almost out of time, Yusuf’s guests will be here any moment, and the goat isn’t done searing. He flips it again in its pan, and a droplet of scalding-hot sesame oil lands on the skin of his wrist. With a hiss, he shakes it off. He’s beginning to regret volunteering to prepare the meal for these guests; in retrospect, this was too huge a task for just one man, and he should have begged one of the servants back from their day off to help him. 

Eventually the goat, as stubborn in death as it was in life, relents and becomes tender, and accepts its fate in the stew. He rushes to get everything into bowls, and then seizes the barley bread piled on a distant cutting board. He baked it first before doing anything else because, though he doesn’t know much about cooking, he does at least know how to bake a decent loaf of bread. In his haste, one loaf tumbles out of his arms and onto the floor, and the heavy thud it makes when it connects with the tiles stops Nicolò’s heart and he freezes completely in his tracks. It is not a gentle thud —it is the thud of one boulder hitting another. 

“No, no, no.” he whispers, tumbling the other loaves back onto the cutting board and kneeling down before his fallen child. He picks it up and hits it against the ground again. Thud . 

“Oh my goodness, you must be joking .” He hits it a few more times. “How could you become so hard so quickly? I baked you only a few hours ago!”

His eyes sting with tears and he falls back onto his ass on the floor, burying his face in his free hand. He cannot serve a meal without bread. It is unheard of. Nothing else he’s prepared can be eaten without it. In Christendom, sure. But here, everything is eaten with bread or with hands. There are no utensils. He cannot ask the guests to dip their hands straight into a stew! These are important men—almond exporters all the way from Isfahan. And he has humiliated Yusuf in front of them. Who would do business with a host who can’t even hire competent servants to do such a simple task as baking bread? Who wouldn’t whisper about such a host to all of their friends, tarnishing his reputation and ensuring that no one will ever associate with him ever again? 

That is where Yusuf finds him, huddled on the floor, an interminable amount of time later when he comes to inquire whether or not the food is ready. Immediately, he rushes over and crouches down, rubs Nicolò’s back, pulls away the hand which Nicolò is using to hide his tear-streaked face. 

“What’s wrong?” Yusuf frets, wiping Nicolò’s cheeks with his thumb. 

In reply, Nicolò holds the loaf out and drops it on the floor. The sound is explanation enough. 

“Ah.” 

“I’m so sorry, Yusuf. I don’t know what I did wrong. I baked it exactly as I did when we lived in Constantinople.” He sniffs, a gross, wet sound. 

Yusuf tightens an arm around his shoulders, squeezes. Then he takes the bread in his own hands and tests its solidity. His well-muscled arms tremble with the force of his grip, and yet he still cannot tear the bread apart. 

“Ho ho , that’s not good.” he laughs, shaking his head. “You’ve made concrete! We could build a house out of this!”

Nicolò punches his shoulder, but finally smiles a little. He’s glad Yusuf is taking it so well, despite the fact that it’s his professional reputation on the line. 

With both of their wits combined, they decide to just order a delivery of fresh bread from a nearby bakery. It’s not uncommon at all for the street kitchens to cater parties, and Nicolò wishes he had chosen that route from the very beginning. The bread, wheat bread instead of barley, arrives just in time for the Persians, and everyone sits down in the majli of the summer reception hall, Nicolò quite a bit sweatier than everyone else.

“What kind of meat is this?” Abbas, one of the merchants, asks partway through the meal. 

“I don’t know. Nicolò, what is it?” Yusuf asks, chewing happily. 

“Goat.” 

The Persians frown and tilt their heads. Abbas scans the ornate reception room, the massive mashrabiya window decorated with paper-thin cuts of painted glass, the fine silk rugs underfoot. 

“Can’t you afford mutton?” he asks, confused. 

Immediately, Nicolò’s stomach sinks. He begins to sweat, and he feels his face grow flushed. 

“Ah—I….” 

“You should know, mutton is simply the superior meat here. Try mutton next time, it’s got a much better flavor.” Nasīr, his brother and business partner, says, waggling a finger which cuts Nicolò to his core. “Goat is for the poor, my boy. It’s just not right to serve goat in a house such as this.” 

Nicolò tries very hard not to let his embarrassment and misery show on his face, but evidently he fails, because Yusuf clears his throat rather deliberately. When Nicolò looks over at him, he’s glaring at Abbas and Nasīr with unbridled displeasure. He plants his hands on his knees, stands so that he towers over them, and crosses his arms. 

“I’d be greatly pleased if the both of you left my house. Now.” 

Shocked squawks of protest ensue, but almost immediately die away in the face of Yusuf’s stern dominance. And then, with grumbles and glares, the Persians depart. Yusuf doesn’t offer them water to wash their hands, doesn’t even hand them their sandals. Nicolò is shocked—he may be ignorant of a lot of things, namely the pecking order of the meats of al-Qāhira, but he does know a thing or two about Muslim hosting etiquette by now. A host never shows anything less than a cheerful, agreeable face, not even if he is bleeding to death under his kaftan. A host certainly never throws out guests from faraway lands, no matter how unpleasant they may show themselves to be, lest he be branded a dishonorable and ungodly asshole. Nicolò wishes he’d never laid a single finger on that accursed goat. 

“My love. There are a thousand other almond dealers in the east. I will find someone else. You haven’t ruined anything.” 

Nicolò picks at the fabric of his sleeve and says nothing. Words won’t come; any that do won’t be right. He’s sorry and embarrassed over the meal, of course, but there’s a deeper problem at hand, one that is indescribable and uncomfortable. He feels the same way he did when he and Yusuf first met, when they each had barely a toddler’s grasp of one another’s languages—he cannot seem to communicate with anyone around him in a satisfactory way. He doesn’t understand the social norms of al-Qāhira, he can’t connect with its people. He can’t even tell his beloved Yusuf how much he adores him in a way that is proper and deserved and beautiful and colorful. He is communicatively impotent.  

“It’s their fault, really. They’ve ruined it by being bastards.” Yusuf shakes his head, crosses his arms. “Fucking unbelievable, the things they said to you—I should have kicked them both in the plums.” 

“It’s alright, Yusuf. I wasn’t offended.” 

“I don’t know why you ever bother lying. You’re awful at it.” Yusuf sits down beside him and throws an arm around his shoulders. Squeezes. Nicolò is a little too distraught to be comforted.

The following day, Nicolò is strolling near Bāb Zuwayla when he happens upon a market stall that is absolutely teeming with customers. Intrigued, he goes forth and asks for whatever it is they’re selling, which turns out to be a ring-shaped biscuit painted with glaze and pistachios which the vendor calls ka ʿ k. Upon first bite, he is dazzled. It is exquisite . 

“Please, tell me the name of the man who made this!” Nicolò exclaims, still wiping syrup from the corner of his lips. “So that I may praise him!”

The vendor smirks, inexplicably amused, and beckons him into the curtained-off rear of the shop. Nicolò follows eagerly, and when they turn the corner, he’s met not with a chef, but a young woman clothed in a dress perhaps best classed as rags. Though her back is turned when they enter, she seems to sense them both immediately, and whirls around as if she is expecting a violent assault on her person. In her powdery right hand, she wields a glob of dough. 

“Iṣmat.” The vendor gestures at her, speaking for Nicolò’s benefit only, as if she is deaf. “She’s a prostitute, but she knows her way around a kitchen, that cannot be denied! I simply had to hire her, and all I must do to soothe my conscience is ask no questions about what she does when she goes home at night!” 

He’s expecting a laugh, but Nicolò won’t give it to him. This woman, Iṣmat, looks terrified, the kind of terror which is veiled with anger—he can see it in the arch of her downturned eyebrows and in her white-knuckled grip on the dough. Her face is as venomous as a snake, and Nicolò’s heart aches in sympathy for her. His next words just fall right out of his mouth:

“Would you like a job, Iṣmat?” he asks.

To his great surprise, Iṣmat agrees (albeit with a great deal of hesitation) to return to the house with him, much to the chagrin of the ka ʿ k vendor. He can huff and puff all he wishes—he could never pay her more than Yusuf can. The walk is silent and tense. Nicolò doesn’t want to frighten her with chatter, and she evidently never speaks until spoken to. As they go, the men in the street stare openly at her, at her unveiled face and hair, and also at Nicolò, who must look like quite an unlikely companion next to her. He’s relieved when they finally reach the house and step inside the summer reception hall. 

That is, until Iṣmat turns to him and begins tugging her arms out of the sleeves of her dress. At the first flash of bare skin on her shoulder, Nicolò yelps and squeezes his eyes shut. 

“Please, no!”

There’s a long pause. 

“No…?” Iṣmat asks, confused. Her voice is quite a bit deeper than he expected, much more mature than her youthful, cherubic face. 

“No, no thank you. You are very beautiful, Iṣmat, but that isn’t what I want. Please, put your clothes back on.” 

Another long pause, and then the sound of fabric rustling. Nicolò re-opens his eyes only once he’s sure she’s decent again. She’s frowning up at him, but looks a little bit more at ease. Nicolò racks his brain for any indication he could have given that he desired such things from her, and then realizes his blunder.

“When I said I wanted to offer you a job—” 

Iṣmat’s eyes widen. 

“I meant a real job! That is, I very much want to learn how to cook, and you’re so very gifted, I was hoping you could teach me.” Nicolò explains apologetically. “We’ll pay you much more than whatever you were making before, I promise. You can stay here if you like, in the servant’s quarters. Of course, you don’t have to, if you have a home of your own which you prefer—”

“Can my younger sister come?” she cuts him off.

“Yes, of course.” 

Without hesitation she agrees, without even asking any more details. 

Iṣmat doesn’t breathe easy until her sister, a girl of no more than seven whom she calls Shamsah, is safely tucked away in their new room. Only then does she finally set foot in the kitchen. Still, she hardly speaks a word, and Nicolò is half-worried that she doesn’t even remember that she’s supposed to be tutoring him. She bustles around the kitchen as if it is her own, retrieving flour ( wheat flour, not barley), sugar, clarified butter from the cold cellar, pounded musk, camphor oil, sesame oil, and a glass bottle of rose water, ignoring him the whole time. Nicolò follows her, feeling kind of stupid and useless, until she finally opens her mouth. 

“Get pistachios. Chop them up small.” 

He does as he’s told. They have pistachios coming out of their ears, after all. All the while, he watches what she’s doing out of the corner of his eye. She lights the fire with ease and then marches over to the counter to dump flour into a bowl. She adds the musk, camphor oil, and butter, mixing it up with her hands rather aggressively. She then digs a little well in the center of the flour and pours some water into it. She mixes for a while, tossing in splashes of rose water now and again, and then drops the dough onto the counter to begin kneading. The motions of her hands are so fluid and precise that the dance of it all mesmerizes Nicolò to the point where he accidentally slices his fingertip with the knife instead of the pistachios. Only extensive experience with the pain of being injured keeps him from yelping and alerting her. He discreetly sweeps the bloodied pistachios off to the side as the cut seals itself shut. 

As it is unleavened, there’s no need to wait for the dough to rise. She just rolls it out with a dowel stick, cuts it, and shapes it into rings. And then into the copper frying pan they go with the sizzling sesame oil. 

“Have you made the syrup yet?” Iṣmat suddenly says as she pokes the bubbling ka ʿ k, not even looking at him. 

Nicolò balks and stares down at the pistachios. 

Iṣmat tosses some powdered sugar and rose water in his direction, and he hesitantly mixes them together in a little copper cup until it looks vaguely glaze-like. He feels a little surge of pride when Iṣmat glances at it with approval as she upends the fried ka ʿ k onto a dish laid with a cloth. She then bullies him out of the way so that she can drizzle the rings with the syrup and sprinkle the chopped pistachios over top of them. 

“There.” she says, crossing her arms. “Now you know how.” 

Nicolò frowns at the ka ʿ k. Does he? 

“Don’t leave it out, especially not now in summer. The dry heat makes it get hard very fast.”

Ah. Well that explains his previous baking blunder. 

And with that, Iṣmat departs without so much as a glance over her shoulder, the lesson apparently over. Nicolò is left alone in the dimly-lit kitchen, perfumed with the scent of rose and pistachio and warm sesame oil. 

By midnight, after considerable trial and error, he has perfected a fried ka ʿ k. His final batch tastes just as good as Iṣmat’s (in his humble opinion), and looks nearly as pretty. He’s proud. He takes a tray upstairs to the master bedroom, where Yusuf is lounging still awake with a sheet of paper and some charcoal. 

“What have you been up to?” he asks with a bit of a pout when Nicolò enters the room, like he was lonely. They usually retire to bed together at the same time.

Nicolò doesn’t answer, just goes over to the mattress and lays down the tray. Yusuf perks up right away when he sees the biscuits. He does love to eat. He takes one and bites into it, and groans a gratifying groan of pleasure. 

“Where did you get these?” 

“I made them.” 

“You did not.” 

Nicolò just nods, grinning. Yusuf raises his eyebrows, impressed, and jostles his shoulder. 

“Look at you. Not only is my lover beautiful, but he has many talents. Didn’t I tell you those Persians had no taste?”   

Rose jam

Pick fresh roses of the Damascus variety. Place them on a dish and drench them in honey. Leave out in the summer sun for a few days until they have matured, and then mash into a paste. 

Iṣmat continues her silent cooking lessons from thereon. She is phenomenal, especially for her young age, and Nicolò wonders where she learned it all. At her mother’s knee, perhaps? She quickly becomes the queen of the house kitchen, at first de facto thanks to the primal fear she inspires in the kitchen staff, and then officially, after Yusuf grants her the title. Every day, she plans the menu, sends the young boys fleeing in terror to the streets to buy and bring back the raw goods, keeps everyone in line with the sheer power of her stern gaze. She even makes the water carrier’s donkeys quiver when they come to the door in the afternoon, the bells around their necks jingling as they tremble. And, between all of that, she demonstrates recipes to Nicolò with next to no patience for questions or errors. He certainly cannot claim to be idle anymore—he is in the kitchen with her from sunup to sundown, and returns to Yusuf at night exhausted and oftentimes covered in flour and oil. 

“What the hell is this? Coriander?” Yusuf asks one evening as he pulls a green leafy sprig from Nicolò’s hair. 

“Fenugreek, probably. Iṣmat showed me how to get rid of the hateful smell of old meat today. Apparently, if you boil it twice with fenugreek leaves, you’d never even know it was decaying.” Nicolò answers with a yawn.

“Are you telling me you’ve been serving rotten meat to me and my guests?” 

“No! The lesson was just for the sake of knowing, I promise.” 

“Uh-huh. You know, I’ll resurrect if your cooking kills me, but the guests probably won’t be so lucky. I think my reputation would cross over from ‘bastard’ to completely unsalvageable.” 

“Have a little faith. I’m improving—Iṣmat almost smiled today.”   

Though Nicolò is tired, Yusuf somehow manages to get his heart pounding within minutes of them lying down in bed. He commences his nefarious tricks by kissing and sucking on Nicolò’s neck, which never fails to reduce him to a blushing mass of oatmeal, and then he bites down on the lobe of Nicolò’s ear. Nicolò squirms.

“I desire you.” Yusuf breathes, pressing up against his side deliberately, making it very clear just how much he desires him. “My sweet, my rose, my moon.” 

“Ah.” Nicolò whimpers. His eyes are shut, but he flails around blindly and manages to grab Yusuf’s bicep. He squeezes, a silent yes please.     

It becomes an instinctive dance, then—Nicolò parts his thighs unthinkingly and Yusuf insinuates himself between them, rucking up both of their nightshirts as he goes. Beautiful in that no words are needed for this dance, because it is as natural as breathing, as old as humanity itself. That doesn’t mean Nicolò is silent, though, not in the slightest—when Yusuf pushes his way inside like a rather assertive bull, he moans quite loudly and trails off in a whine.  

“Am I hurting you?” Yusuf murmurs against his throat. 

Nicolò shakes his head, panting. He tries to force out a no , but Yusuf starts moving in and out, and all he can muster is a deep and gravelly groan. He is quickly reduced to strained, heavy breathing, interspersed with unsuccessful attempts to vocalize the word yes . He fails at please, more, and it feels good, too, but Yusuf seems to know his thoughts anyways; he holds Nicolò tight and gives it to him nice and rough, and Nicolò wails in ecstasy. 

After, Yusuf lays on his back and Nicolò curls against his side, one leg slung over his hips. The moonbeams cast latticed shadows down from the mashrabiya over their bodies, and they lounge beneath them for a long while.

“When I was in the rear garden the other day, I watched you and Iṣmat arrange roses on a serving tray, soak them in wildflower honey, and place them in the sunbeam on the kitchen windowsill.” Yusuf eventually says, voice as rich and honeyed as the roses he speaks of. His fingertips stroke up and down Nicolò’s spine, and the combination of his words and his touches make Nicolò shiver. He wills his overeager body to calm down, and digs his fingers into Yusuf’s chest hair. 

“Today, I saw them again and they were melted into fragrant sludge.” Yusuf continues. Nicolò wonders what this has to do with anything, until he opens his mouth again:

“I wish very much to be those roses, and you to be the honey and the sun.” he breathes into Nicolò’s hair. “To be drowned in your sweetness and your heat until I am a limp and satisfied pulp.” 

Nicolò snorts and smacks Yusuf’s chest. Did they not just reduce each other to limp satiation? Well… perhaps ‘limp’ is too generous. He shifts his hips a little to readjust. Yusuf feels him, and wrestles him to lie more fully atop him, grinning. He seizes Nicolò’s face and pulls him down close, murmurs against his lips. 

“Cook me. Mash me up into jam. I submit myself to your hands.” 

What can he do in the face of such pleading but obey? With no poetry of his own to offer, it’s the least he can do to tell Yusuf of his own passion. He crushes their mouths together, sinks down on him, and curls his toes in the blanket as he rides.

Aruzz mufalfal 

Cook rice with milk, Chinese cinnamon sticks, and mastic, and then color with saffron. Arrange on top strips of mutton which have been fried in sheep’s tail fat and spiced with dried coriander, cumin, cinnamon, and mastic.  

One morning, Nicolò and Iṣmat are pulling beans out of lupine flowers. Iṣmat has sent one of the kitchen boys to fetch Shamsah so she can come eat her lunch. He returns alone, and immediately Iṣmat is on edge. 

“She wasn’t in her room. I asked some of the other servants—no one has seen her since last night.” he reports, timid and trembling. He won’t even look Iṣmat in the eye. 

Iṣmat is frozen for a long moment, and then she throws the beans in her hand onto the countertop and storms out of the kitchen. Equally concerned, Nicolò follows. They rush to the servant’s quarters. Sure enough, their room is empty. From there, they pace all throughout the house—the reception rooms, the lower level bathhouse, the courtyards. Shamsah is nowhere to be found. 

“Perhaps she ventured upstairs?” Nicolò suggests, more than a little frantic himself. 

They rush up the steps and begin throwing open all of the doors to all of the empty rooms. Still no Shamsah. As a last resort, Nicolò opens the doors to Yusuf’s work room, the study where he keeps his desk and all of his records. To his surprise, both Yusuf and Shamsah are seated on cushions at the desk. She is smiling softly and Yusuf appears to be writing out the alphabet for her on a sheet of paper. Nicolò is relieved, but Iṣmat apparently feels differently. At the sight of the two of them together, she storms into the room and kicks over the nearest vase. Yusuf and Shamsah startle.

“What do you think you’re doing with her?!” she shrieks. “She’s seven! Shamsah, come here!”

As Shamsah obediently scurries to her feet and rushes over, Iṣmat picks up the fallen vase and hurls it at Yusuf. He narrowly dodges, and the vase shatters against the wall behind him. Nicolò yelps, hands tangling in his own hair, unsure of what to do in such a situation. Yusuf looks equally baffled. 

“Disgusting!” Iṣmat spits in his direction and leads Shamsah out. 

It takes quite a bit of patient explaining for Iṣmat to finally accept that it was in fact Shamsah who had wandered into the study and begun marveling at the stylus and ink and paper and all of Yusuf’s calligraphy, which had prompted him to offer to teach her to read and write. Nicolò assures her over and over again that Yusuf is the very last man in the world who might ever take an interest in a young girl, but Iṣmat is just a little too jaded for her acquiescence to that to be anything more than superficial. The fervor of Nicolò’s insistence, though, does give her pause. He’s never explained to her what his relationship to the lord of the house really is, but he may have inadvertently just given her an inkling. 

Iṣmat evidently has a strong-felt desire for Shamsah to be educated, powerful enough to overcome her distrust of Yusuf. She firmly commands him to teach her the Quran and absolutely nothing else, and to never ever lay one single finger on her. Yusuf can’t do anything but agree.

Shamsah is exceedingly dignified and elegant for a seven-year-old. She arrives promptly every morning for her lessons with noble airs, hands clasped primly behind her back and her hijab draped artfully about her little head. Yusuf tells him that she is a superb student—smart, quiet, attentive. Unquestioningly obedient. She would copy every single surah in the Quran in a single sitting if Yusuf ordered her to, and wouldn’t miss a single diacritical mark. Nicolò has seen some of her writings—her calligraphy is impressive. 

“She never wants to know anything more than what I teach her from the scriptures.” Yusuf says with a troubled frown, picking at his nails. “As if curiosity is forbidden to her.” 

Her studies continue into the depth of winter. The winter chill of the final weeks of 1172 is far more brutal than that of the previous year, so much so that even Nicolò begins to get uncomfortable. He and Yusuf have long since moved from the summer bedroom to the winter bedroom, but some days, in a state of distraction, he enters the wrong one and is hit with a blast of icy air from the breezy mashrabiya, which always sends him cursing and running to safety. He’s so gratified that he chanced upon Iṣmat when he did, because the thought of her and Shamsah out on the street in this miserable weather is too heartbreaking to bear. 

To spare just two souls that sort of torture is enough to make him happy, but it seems his opportunities for charity are only destined to increase. One late December evening, a servant comes to him and Iṣmat in the kitchen and informs them that there are beggars at the door asking for shelter from the cold. Iṣmat is wary, but Nicolò orders them to be let in straight away. Iṣmat trails behind him when he goes to meet them, reluctant. 

It is a gaggle of about fifteen people, all women and children. They look weary and hungry, and the kids are all sucking on their own fingers to keep the frostbite at bay. Nicolò’s heart aches, and he waves the servant back over. 

“Prepare rooms upstairs in the women’s quarters for them all. Give each of them warm blankets and have firewood brought for the hearths.” 

The servant bustles off, and suddenly, Iṣmat grabs his arm. 

“Are they to stay here?” she asks, clearly displeased.

Nicolò frowns. “Yes, of course.”

He knows very well that the value of hospitality is just as deeply rooted in the Dar al-Islam as in Christendom. In all his life, he’s never heard of anyone in the Mediterranean turning away a traveler in need (save for Yusuf and the almond dealers). So why Iṣmat should be so opposed to their staying, he has no idea.

“What’s the matter?” he asks, genuinely curious. 

She curls her lip and stares off into the distance. “Nothing.” 

She won’t say any more, and so together, with some reluctance on Iṣmat’s part, they prepare aruzz mufalfal for the guests. It’s simple, quick, and hearty, the perfect blend of warm and comforting for a cold winter night. It’s also perhaps the most popular rice dish in al-Qāhira, so it’s almost a guarantee that the beggars will find it agreeable. Iṣmat fries the mutton strips in sheep’s tail fat in silence while Nicolò boils white rice in milk with Chinese cinnamon sticks, mastic, and saffron threads. When everything is finished, they arrange the meat over top of the rice. Normally, they’d let everything rest for a while before serving, but the guests are clearly starving, and Nicolò doesn’t want to make them wait any longer. They serve everyone in the winter qā‘a, which is quite cozy and warm already thanks to a generous flame in every hearth. The guests all thank him somberly as he lays the serving trays on the leather floor mats, and just as everyone is settling down to eat, Yusuf appears. 

“What’s all this?” he asks, sauntering up nonchalantly and tossing pistachios into his mouth. 

“They came to the door asking for respite from the cold. I made mufalfal rice for them.” Nicolò answers. “Have some.” 

“Seems a bit heartless to eat from the plate of a homeless man. Or woman.” 

“There’s plenty for everyone.” 

And so they sit with the guests and eat, Iṣmat included, though she’s incredibly cagey about it. Nicolò is truly baffled, until one of the beggar women speaks to her.

“So this is where you’ve been the last few months.” 

Iṣmat bristles. “What’s it to you?” 

“Oh, nothing. You always thought you were better than us. I’m pleased you’ve finally found your silver spoon.” 

Nicolò and Yusuf share a look. 

“Shut up.” Iṣmat grumbles. She glances at Nicolò to see if he’s listening. The small act of shame gives him pause, and then he realizes—these are her fellow prostitutes. Who have turned up on the doorstep after she attempted to leave them behind. Nicolò grimaces, and hopes the drama doesn’t escalate any further.

There’s no need to worry, though. Yusuf, who is incredibly charming and could make friends with a jar of beans if he wanted to, endears the women to him over the course of the rest of the meal. The mere fact that the lord of the house is sitting and eating with them as if they are all old friends sets them at ease, and his easygoing chatter makes them smile and forget all about Iṣmat. Though they are clearly proud women, they soon confide in him that they are all refugees from the fire which destroyed al-Fusṭāṭ, and have been struggling to get back on their feet ever since, hence their arrival at his door.  

“How about this? Any among you who wish to stay here until you’re married again, you have my blessing. You’ll have your own space, and our kitchen will feed you. Iṣmat and Nicolò are excellent cooks.” 

The women all agree immediately, thanking him profusely and prompting their children to do so as well. At Nicolò’s side, Iṣmat huffs in anger, probably at the realization that her divine retribution for her previous arrogance over them is to serve them now. Nicolò thinks idly that it might be good for her. 

Nevertheless, he doesn’t care to torment her, and so when they move Iṣmat and Shamsah out of the servant’s quarters, they put them into one of the private bedrooms upstairs on the west side. They’ll be near the other women, but with their own four walls. The prickly Iṣmat will have her space, and it’ll be easier for Shamsah to come to the study for her lessons. It’s strange to hear the distant sound of everyone’s chatter and footsteps; the second floor has been silent and empty for so long. Nicolò recalls, when they first saw the house, his small moment of melancholy at the sight of all the bedrooms with no family to fill them. He smiles a little. They are not so alone anymore. 

Still, it is easy to forget sometimes. They have grown accustomed to privacy. Early one morning, Nicolò catches Yusuf just outside his study before he disappears into it for the rest of the day to write business correspondences. He gives Yusuf’s hand a kiss, out of affection and also out of a wish for his wrist to withstand the strain of writing for an entire day. Amused, Yusuf smiles at him and gently cups his face, a thank you . It is perhaps Nicolò’s favorite gesture to be bestowed with, makes him feel very warm and romantic inside, and when Yusuf tenderly rubs his thumb back and forth over his cheek, he positively melts. He turns his head a little so that he can kiss Yusuf’s palm, to tell him I cherish your touch . 

It’s about then that they hear a clatter, startling them apart. Iṣmat stands a few meters away, and appears to have been fiddling with an earring, which she’s dropped on the floor. She’s staring at them with raised eyebrows, the arch of them leaving no doubt that she saw it all. After a beat of silence, she stoops down, picks the earring back up, and continues on towards the stairs on her way to the kitchen. 

“Don’t be late.” she calls over her shoulder to Nicolò.     

Harīsa

A very complicated dish to make. All cooking must be done in a sizeable tannūr oven. Boil the best cuts of fatty mutton, and then hand-shred finely. Boil again with ground wheat in a lead pot. Cover the pot and seal it with dough. Bank the coals and place the pot inside the oven, and then cover the oven itself. Leave for the night. Open the pot again the following morning and beat its contents into a smooth paste. Drizzle freshly-melted sheep’s tail fat over the top and dust with cumin and ground cinnamon. 

The number of al-Fusṭāṭ refugees who come knocking triples within a week. Having heard of the generosity of the wealthy pistachio merchant near the madrasas, they flock to the house, pleading for shelter from the cold. Nicolò welcomes them all without a single question asked. He’s elated to finally be of service to humanity again after such a long time feeling useless and idle. Yusuf, his kind-hearted love, is always pleased to meet any new guests which arrive, and welcomes them too with such heartfelt warmth that you’d never guess their room and board was coming out of his pocket. Quickly, the upstairs rooms fill up with widowed mothers and their children, wandering men, and elderly couples who had the terrible misfortune to spend their final years destitute in a foreign city. Suddenly, the house, which was once so empty and silent, is absolutely teeming with life—children playing in the courtyards, women drinking mint tea behind their privacy screens, men playing shatranj , chatter, laughter, bickering. They must double the kitchen staff in order to feed everyone, and Iṣmat gets a raise.   

“It was the jewel of Egypt.” one of the older men says. “Divinely chosen. In the days of Umar, the great conqueror 'Amr ibn al-'As camped in the desert just before marching on Alexandria. A dove laid an egg in his tent, and it was recognized as a sign. They left the tent in its place and marched off to battle, and when they returned, they built al-Fusṭāṭ around it.”

“For five hundred years, it was prosperous and beautiful. Gardens, markets, towering apartment complexes which could fit hundreds of people inside.” another adds.

“Iridescent pottery, crystalline wares, fruits and flowers in abundance even in the dead of winter!” 

Nicolò listens, rapt. He’s sitting in the winter qā‘a with some of the refugee men, drinking warm honeyed milk. 

“Too often, these men of consequence do thoughtless things which can never be undone.” another man sighs. He mimics squishing a bug on the table with his thumb. “ Bip . Just like that. It’s gone.” 

Nicolò, when not in the kitchen or socializing with the refugees, spends the winter tending to the garden. There’s quite a lot to do during the dormant period for the trees, namely dormant pruning on the almond and apple trees (the olives are still too young for that), cleaning up dropped leaves and fruit, and laying straw around the bases to keep the roots warm. One chilly morning, when he is making some thinning cuts to an almond with a sawblade, Shamsah appears. She’s bundled up to an almost excessive degree, no doubt the work of her sister. She’s got a wool hood and multiple layers of embroidered wool coats, all gifts from Yusuf, plus the mittens that Nicolò knitted for her a few weeks ago. She looks like a little bear cub. 

“Can I help?” she asks sweetly. 

Nicolò couldn’t refuse her for all the money in the world. “Of course, habibti.” 

He explains the purpose of pruning, and why it must be done in the winter for fruit and nut trees. He picks her up and sits her on his shoulder so that she can see the buds on the branches which will turn into flowers in the spring. 

“It’s good to prune some of the buds off now. If the tree makes too much fruit in the spring, all of the fruit will be small and the tree will get tired.” 

Shamsah hums in sympathy. 

Keeping her on his shoulder, he guides her to hold the saw and cut one of the thinner dead twigs. She holds it up and inspects it, looking quite pleased. 

“You’ll have a big garden of your own, someday.” comes Iṣmat’s voice from behind them. Nicolò turns to see her watching with an approving gaze. Evidently, she deems gardening an acceptable skill for her sister to learn. Nicolò is relieved she’s not angry. “When you have your own mansion with pools and windcatchers, you’ll have all kinds of trees and flowers.” 

Shamsah strokes a nearby branch. “Mama and Baba had a fig tree.”

Iṣmat goes quiet. 

Later, Iṣmat, after giving out the day’s assignments to the kitchen staff, pulls Nicolò aside. 

“Today, we make harīsa.” 

It’s a wildly popular dish, served in the street kitchens as well as the palace kitchens. Not easily made at home, though, as it requires some special equipment, namely a large lead pot and a tannūr oven. Their house, though, has one in the back corner of the kitchen, which is most often used for baking bread. 

They take fatty cuts of mutton, chop them into sizeable chunks, and boil to remove the scum. Once the yucky stuff has been spooned off the surface of the water, they remove the meat and begin shredding it by hand. The chatter of the kitchen staff bustling around them more than compensates for Iṣmat’s habitual silence. Nicolò shreds the mutton with one ear tuned in to the gossip being shared between the cooks (mostly concerning a particularly handsome guest by the name of Alī). They change the water and re-boil the mutton with ground wheat, still in silence, and then sit down side-by-side near the fire to wait. 

“Our first night in al-Qāhira, I made this dish for Shamsah. Not with mutton, though. With goat. And not in the tannūr, just over a fire I made. I didn’t have a lead pot, either, so I used a copper one I stole from a street kitchen.” Iṣmat suddenly says. 

Nicolò is floored. He’s never heard her speak more than one or two sentences at a time, and never unprompted. He’s certainly never heard her talk about intimate topics pertaining to herself. He doesn’t make light of it—he considers her choice of words carefully, because every word she speaks is always purposeful. And he realizes—

“You escaped the fire in al-Fusṭāṭ like the others.” He hadn’t been sure, and didn’t wish to pry. 

She stares at the opposite wall and nods. And suddenly, everything makes sense—the absence of her parents, her guardianship of Shamsah, her willingness to make a living however possible. They’re orphans. And then he meditates on her words some more, why she might choose to share them with him now of all times, when they are sitting on the kitchen floor with their elbows on their knees waiting for mutton to boil. 

“It is a very comforting dish, I think. Harīsa.” Nicolò says, a roundabout question. “Warm, especially with the cinnamon and cumin on top.”

“It’s an embrace when you can’t embrace someone. For saying the things you can’t say.” she agrees. 

He wants to put his head in his hands and weep. Just as fervently, he wants to put an arm around her and hold her tight, stroke her hair, because she is too young to be saying such tragic things. But he can sense that that would probably be unwelcome to this girl who hates being touched, and so he refrains. Instead, they sit in companionable silence, underscored by the sound of bubbling water. 

The next morning, after the stew has marinated in the sealed oven overnight, they take it out and Iṣmat beats it into a smooth paste for the better part of an hour, until there isn’t a single chunk left. She then melts some sheep’s tail fat over the top and dusts it with cumin. About then is when Shamsah enters the kitchen and glides over to them, looking for lunch. Her delight at the sight of the harīsa is profound. She becomes a completely different person from the demure lady he’s always known her to be—she shrieks and runs to Iṣmat where she stands at the counter, sprinkling slivers of cinnamon over the top of the porridge. She grabs her older sister’s skirt and tugs again and again, jumping up and down. 

“I want some! I want some!” 

Iṣmat ignores her with the dignity of a weathered old grandmother as she silently scoops a generous portion of the porridge into a bowl. And then she hands it to her little sister and sternly orders her to go eat it in the majli , where it’s proper. Shamsah skips out the door, carrying the bowl above her head with both hands. 

Later, when she returns with the empty bowl which has very obviously been licked clean, she gives Iṣmat a big hug, as if she knows exactly what her sister was trying to tell her through the obscure medium of stew. Iṣmat seems to know that she knows, because her lips quirk up into the tiniest whisper of a smile and she pats Shamsah’s head. There is no more mention of Mama or Baba, for now. 

And Nicolò is blown away by the revelation that such complex emotions can be conveyed without one single word, through mere spices and color and warmth and flavor. 

He redoes the recipe that night. By himself, without Iṣmat’s guidance, because if it is indeed possible to infuse food with feelings, they should be all his own and no one else’s. For this particular purpose, at least. 

He’s not quite sure if there’s a metaphysical aspect to it all, but Iṣmat’s cooking is always best when it’s destined for Shamsah’s stomach. It doesn’t hurt to try. As he hand-shreds the mutton, he thinks of Yusuf. At first, it’s a bit humorous to him, to be tearing up a dead sheep and dreaming of his lover. If Yusuf were here, they’d most definitely laugh about it. But then he thinks of Iṣmat, speaking volumes to Shamsah through the shredding of meat, the grinding of grain, dustings of coriander and the curly bark of cinnamon. Their bond, which is like the bond between himself and Yusuf in many ways. To be without each other is to be utterly alone; to be together means the difference between hope and oblivion. Through small acts of kindness like pounding the finished porridge extra smooth, showing each other that someone is there , caring about them, loving them, even if everything else should fall away. Because that is the only permanence in this impermanent world—the love of one being for another. 

Nicolò stirs the shredded mutton with the ground wheat in the pot, lost in contemplation. He hopes Yusuf knows. Hopes the gravity of it all weighs heavy in his heart, too: waking up together in a sunbeam in Sicily; combing lice out of each other’s hair; huddling together for warmth on a cold winter morning in Venice; digging sand out of the crevices of each other’s ears on a summer night somewhere near Fes. He isn’t alone, and never again will he be, because Nicolò’s love for him has already been recorded in the book of time and space and will never be erased, not even after he is long gone. Someday only God will know that Yusuf al-Kaysānī was loved so dearly. But He will never forget. 

Nicolò seals the pot with dough and tucks it away in the oven, a lump in his throat. To be forced to wait to share this all with Yusuf is difficult, but perhaps allowing everything to marinate in warmth overnight ripens the flavors and the potency of emotion. Though, if he stuffs any more emotion into this porridge, Yusuf might keel over and die from the force of it.  

Early the next morning, Nicolò takes the harīsa out and beats it until his bicep is aching and it is even smoother than Iṣmat’s was. He portions it out into a beautiful hand-painted porcelain bowl and takes it upstairs to the study with some bread. It is not yet time for Shamsah’s lesson, and so Yusuf is busy going over ledgers. He glances up with a smile when Nicolò enters. Nicolò, stricken, goes to him, sets the bowl down, and cups his face, pressing their foreheads together. Yusuf drops his stylus and puts his hands over Nicolò’s, holds them there, immediately joining him in seriousness. 

“I made something for you.” Nicolò murmurs. Please understand me. Please hear me. It cannot be said in words. He releases Yusuf and nudges the bowl closer to him. Yusuf pours some water over his hands with a nearby pitcher and then, with a soft smile, takes a bite. Chews slowly, savoring. After a while, his expression shifts into monumental revelation. He glances at Nicolò, eyes soft and emotional, and swallows. 

“Oh.” 

Nicolò fiddles with his sleeve, hoping the message has been adequately conveyed. Yusuf stares down at the harīsa as if it is whispering arcane secrets to him, and then looks back up. 

“I love you, too.” he says, quiet. 

Nicolò huffs a relieved bark of laughter and tips forward, throwing his arms around Yusuf and tumbling them both onto the floor. He kisses Yusuf’s lips, cheeks, eyelids. 

“You heard me.” he marvels.

“I always hear you. In all languages.” Yusuf rubs their noses together. Grins. “Even in the language of stew.” 

And just like that, Nicolò discovers how to express himself, no artful poetry necessary.  

Fālūdhaj

A dessert of Persian origin. Can be made into a pudding or a chewy candy; the pudding form is often given for a sore throat. Take good, clean honey and heat it in a kettle. Add starch so that it dilutes and mixes with the honey. Color with saffron. Stir continuously with a spoon so that it doesn’t stick. When almost thickened, add oil and continue to stir. Remove from heat and add chopped pistachios. Mold the firmed candy into whatever shapes you may wish. 

Many of the refugee mothers are as ferocious as Iṣmat, and for the first few months, they won’t leave their children alone with anyone but each other. Nicolò hardly ever sees any of them for a while save for Shamsah, sealed up as they are in the women’s part of the house. However, after some time has passed, and the mothers have discerned which of the men in the house are trustworthy, they loosen up a little. There are a select few they’ll allow their children to visit with, namely an elderly former imam with a warm smile and a prodigious intellect. They also begin allowing the kids to spend time with Nicolò, as, evidently, the imam is a sufficient counterbalance for his corrupting Christian influence. He’s honored, and doesn’t take his babysitting duties lightly. It’s not easy, considering there are twenty-odd kids living in the house at this point, and more than a few of them are incredibly mischievous. There is one boy in particular called Muṣṭafā, about six or seven years old, who is an absolute terror. He’s only been around for a few weeks, but already he has squished the irises and poppies in Nicolò’s garden, vandalized the winter reception room, and nearly fallen off the loggia balcony. He won’t leave Shamsah alone, even though she’s hit him numerous times in the face after growing weary of his unceasing attentions. Yusuf adores him. 

“He’s certainly got a lively spirit.” Yusuf chuckles one afternoon as he carries Muṣṭafā under one arm like a sack of beans. He’s just caught the boy drawing all over his own face and arms in the study with Yusuf’s expensive ink. 

“Don’t tell my mom.” Muṣṭafā says. 

Nicolò, invigorated by the newly-discovered communicative powers of food, wants to make something for the kids. Something lighthearted, something cheerful, something which says there is hidden gold weaving in the fabric of monotonous everyday life. And so, during Isra’ and Miʿraj, he and Iṣmat make fālūdhaj for the children. The kitchen staff have been given the holiday off, and so they have free reign of their domain. Figuratively speaking. Literally speaking, there are two kids clinging to each of Nicolò’s legs as they sit on his feet, making it extremely difficult to walk. There are about five or six more sitting on the floor, impeding his movement, and three others—including Muṣṭafā—wreaking havoc in the pantry. 

“Muṣṭafā! Put those back, please!” 

Muṣṭafā just stares at him with the large bundle of Ceylon cinnamon sticks in his fist. There’s one in his mouth, too, that he’s chewing on. He considers Nicolò’s request for a while, and then resumes chewing and wandering around like he hasn’t heard a thing. He never listens to anyone except Yusuf these days. 

“Ya Allah, what am I going to do with you?” Nicolò mutters, mostly to himself, as Iṣmat goes after him with a murderous look in her eye. 

The making of fālūdhaj requires an enduring fire, as honey must be cooked with starch for a good long time to achieve the correct consistency. Over the course of the process, too many times to count, Nicolò must gently redirect the hands of the kids when they reach out inquisitively to touch the scalding-hot pot. He wonders idly if all children have a death wish. 

They trust only Shamsah to help add the saffron and oil. Iṣmat helps her sister dust the fiery saffron over the snow-white honey mixture with an elegant shake of the spoon, and Shamsah nods with satisfaction at her own handiwork. She adds the sesame oil with similar finesse, and by then, everyone has grown violently jealous of her new role as kitchen aide and has crowded around to begin begging Nicolò and Iṣmat to let them help, too. The only thing left to do is chop pistachios and stir them in, but they’re not fool enough to give a child, let alone Muṣṭafā, a sharp knife. In the end, they sit each kid on the floor with a small mortar and pestle and let them crush the pistachios. Most end up on the ground or in the kids’ mouths, but eventually, they make enough to go in the honey. 

“This is the fun part.” Nicolò informs everyone after the honey has been removed from the fire. He’s poured it out over an oiled mirror and allowed it to cool and harden into a sheet. The kids are all fully invested now; they sit in a semicircle around him and the mirror, listening with rapt attention. 

“You take your little knife, and cut whatever shapes you wish.” He’s given them bladeless knives with shallow serrations, but knowing Muṣṭafā, he’ll still find a way to get his into somebody’s intestines somehow. “Like this.”

Nicolò demonstrates cutting a small triangle out of the chewy nougat. He holds it up, and immediately everyone begins yelling and demanding a turn. Thankfully, the mirror is big enough that when he lays it on the floor, everyone can fit around it and cut. They make all sorts of shapes, most of them incomprehensible without a verbal explanation—a horse, a camel, a cat, a shoe. Muṣṭafā carves a surprisingly beautiful sparrow for his mom, but only after carving a cow patty for himself. When he carves a flower and gives it to Nicolò, Nicolò almost weeps. He ruffles Muṣṭafā’s hair affectionately, and Muṣṭafā sneezes on him.   

The din of the chatter that ensues when the moms arrive to retrieve their children has everyone in the courtyard turning their heads. 

“Uncle and Auntie showed us how to make fālūdhaj!”

“Uncle gave us sweets!” 

“Mama, I made you this!” 

Some of the mothers give him approving looks over their shoulders as they retreat back to their quarters, and Nicolò feels so proud that he doesn’t even get mad when they walk back into the kitchen pantry and see cinnamon sticks scattered all over the floor.

“I once wanted children of my own.” Iṣmat says as they sweep the floor of the kitchen together in the wake of the tornado which is Muṣṭafā.

Nicolò laughs. “No longer?” 

“Not after this.” 

He chuckles. He had fun, at least. 

“It doesn’t matter anyway. I already knew it could never be.” Her voice is suddenly very melancholy, and Nicolò realizes she’s been aggressively sweeping the same spotless patch of tile for a few minutes now. He stops moving his own broom and frowns at her.

“Why not?” 

“Hah. Perhaps it is different among infidels, but decent men don’t marry prostitutes here. Me, married? I gave up that chance long ago for my sister.” 

Nicolò is so overwhelmed by all the things he wants to take issue with in her words that he can’t even speak. Which is fine, because she continues:

“I used to dream of a house like this. A house of my own, a house which I was the lady of. I’d have pretty gardens full of jasmine, pools. I always pictured three sons. Don’t know why. Now knowing Muṣṭafā, it probably wasn’t a good idea anyway. I’d sit behind my screen and watch when my husband had guests over, and they’d find stupid excuses to remove their turbans and show off their hair for me, knowing the wife was watching. I’d be a lady worth impressing.” 

“You are.” Nicolò says lamely, though he means it with all his heart. 

“Psh.” She waves him off with a sad laugh, and then the corners of her mouth turn down and her eyes shimmer with wetness, and she stops sweeping to cover her face with her hand. Nicolò drops his broom without another thought and folds her in his arms. She’s so small that the top of her head barely reaches his chin and he can encircle her even with her arms folded up between their chests. The prickly Iṣmat rests her forehead against his collarbone, sniffling, trusting. Suddenly she seems so young, as young as she really is and never gets to be. Shh , he wants to say. He wants to tell her that she’s wrong, that she’s the most noble lady he knows, that anyone who doesn’t esteem her above all others for her loyalty and her steadfast love is a fool. But he’s learned by now that Iṣmat values words as little as dirt. Like Nicolò himself, she understands the world in a different way, a language-less way, the way of acts and quiet devotion. And so he simply holds her, and trusts that she will understand. 

Asabi Zaynab ( Zaynab’s fingers )

Knead flour with sesame oil, hot water, and a little salt. Roll out the dough flat and thin on a tile slab and cut ribbons of it. Wrap the ribbons around a cane so that they make hollow tubes about the length of a finger. Fry along with the cane until the dough is firm enough to stand on its own. Remove the cane and fry again until cooked all the way through. Immerse in sugar syrup, rose water, and musk. For the filling, pound pistachios with sugar, rose water, and musk. Arrange the stuffed rolls on a dish and dust with powdered sugar.

Late spring and the gardens are blooming. There is a particularly persistent vine of climbing jasmine which has crept its way up from the edge of the pool to the courtyard-facing mashrabiya in their summer bedroom, gripping the wood with its million little feet and perfuming the air with perhaps the most heavenly fragrance to ever come out of a flower. Clusters of little white blooms have even begun poking through the gaps in the lattices as if they want to touch the funny-looking humans inside, as if the flowers are as curious about them as they are about the flowers. 

 Nicolò wakes one morning with the smell of jasmine heavy in the air, and as he stretches, he belatedly realizes that he is unbelievably aroused. He relaxes his muscles with a decadent moan, and curls instinctively towards Yusuf beside him. Yusuf’s long curls are pooled around his shoulders as he sleeps and Nicolò buries his face in them, breathes in deep. The scent , the fusion of Yusuf and jasmine flowers, sets him on fire. He tugs mindlessly at the fastenings of his sleep shirt, and then freezes. 

He promised Shamsah that he would take her and Iṣmat to the river bright and early today. She had wanted to visit Rawḍa Island and see the Nilometer, but Iṣmat shut that down instantly. Even Nicolò knows that Rawḍa Island is where indecent people go to drink wine and mingle with members of the opposite sex in tents. As much as he, too, wishes to see the Nilometer, it’s not a place for a young girl. And so, they are merely going to the bank to splash around in the water in the spring sunshine. 

But, that means he needs to get up. Because Iṣmat is a freakishly early riser—he’s half-convinced she never sleeps at all—and she is probably already tapping her foot impatiently wherever she is. 

With a lingering, yearning gaze at Yusuf, he reluctantly drags himself out of bed. 

It’s pleasant. The weather is warm and sunny, a balm on the soul after a brutal winter. There are lots of other children playing in the water, children who Shamsah looks like she would readily befriend if it weren’t for her sister restraining her and telling her to leave the scamps alone . There are quite a lot of striped gray fish, būrī , darting about in the shallows, which Shamsah chases after instead, having been prohibited from chasing the members of her own species. Nicolò is more intrigued by the flock of flamingos tip-toeing around the mudflats with their heads held high. He remembers that ah yes, it’s spring when a few of them start mating and he is forced to politely avert his eyes. It seems everyone is in an amorous mood today. He’s relieved they decided against visiting Rawḍa. 

When they return to the house, Iṣmat pauses in the entryway. She gives him a rare and soft look, a thank you. Nicolò says you are most welcome with an answering smile. 

That evening, when the sky is as pink as a plump flamingo with the light of the setting sun, he goes to the kitchen. He wants to make something which captures the mood of everything—the pink of the flamingos and the clouds, the green of the jasmine vine, the fresh and sweet springtime air, how very badly he has wanted Yusuf all day long. He settles on Zaynab’s fingers , a light and cleverly-named pastry involving pistachio and rose water. He makes a dough and rolls it out, cuts it, and wraps it around wooden canes so that it forms neat little tubes. These he fries in sesame oil and then drenches in sugary syrup and rose water. For a filling, he pounds pistachios with powdered sugar, rose water, and, of course, musk. They are quite pretty arranged on a tray. He sees his own message written quite clearly in them—will Yusuf?   

He takes the tray up to the bedroom. The scent of jasmine in the air is almost overwhelming when he opens the doors, and the sensuality of evening light multiplies it over and over to the point of making his head swim. Yusuf, most beautiful of God’s creations, is sitting at the tea table painting glass, his latest hobby. He perks up at the sight of the serving tray. 

“Oh ho ho.”

With a smirk, Nicolò sets it down on the table before him and then kneels behind him. He winds his arms around Yusuf’s waist and snuggles up close, presses a kiss to Yusuf’s neck. 

“ Zaynab’s fingers. For you.” 

“Mmm.” Yusuf sounds so absurdly pleased, and Nicolò isn’t sure if it’s the pastries, the physical affection, or both. Regardless, he keeps kissing his neck, at the same time skimming his nails in light circles over Yusuf’s stomach. 

“Have one.” Nicolò breathes after a little while, as if he isn’t blatantly distracting him from having one. 

“Oh, Nicolò, you will kill me. This is unrivaled seduction. Zeus and all the other idols of old would be helpless to your thrall.” Yusuf sighs, obediently reaching for a pastry. When he bites into it, he moans like it’s ambrosia. Nicolò grins against his shoulder and squeezes him tighter. 

“Mm. It’s multilayered, this dessert.” Yusuf says as he chews with all the airs of a star pupil of a madrasa, like he knows he’s figured Nicolò out. “ Zaynab’s fingers. You want to touch me, to be touched. The musk, animalistic. The rose water, romantic. But there’s even more you’re telling me with the physical form of it. A tight channel filled with—”

Nicolò drags him down onto his back, curls over him, and crushes their mouths together because the subtlety of it all will definitely be ruined if Yusuf finishes that sentence. That, and he can’t wait a single moment longer. 

Their sex, these years, is usually quite friendly. That is, there are a lot of smiles and flippant conversations, and the actual act of bringing each other to pleasure takes only a handful of gasping minutes among more than an hour of lazy foreplay. Sometimes, halfway through, they decide they’d rather just go to sleep, or sometimes one of them decides he’s not hell-bent on climaxing and just prefers the other to do as he wishes until he’s satisfied. 

That isn’t what happens this time. They tumble naked onto the mattress, hands all over each other, and Nicolò isn’t sure if it’s the aphrodisiac quality of the musk or if it’s just Yusuf, but he’s so aroused he could die. The smell of Yusuf, the dark amber of his warm skin, the scratch of the black curls between his legs against Nicolò’s stomach. He’s panting, running his hands all over every inch of Yusuf he can reach, hot and wet and painfully hard between his own thighs, sweating like mad everywhere else. He’s so warm. He’s on fire. His damp hair is sticking to his forehead. 

Yusuf, chest heaving, gets Nicolò’s legs around his waist and tips them onto their sides. He presses their foreheads together and pushes inside with the filthy crackle of a squelch, courtesy of sesame oil. Nicolò howls. 

From there, it is a humid, wet grind to the end. They gasp into each other’s mouths, rolling their hips together, sweaty flesh slip-sliding. Nicolò smells nothing but jasmine and the musk of their intercourse, tastes nothing but the rose water of Yusuf’s breath. It feels so excruciatingly good that he can’t even open his eyes, nor uncurl his toes, nor close his dropped jaw. The quickly-ensuing orgasm is so intense that he doesn’t even breathe while it’s happening, and it’s not until it’s over that he finally lets out a shuddering groan. And then Yusuf fills him like a pastry, and he digs his nails into his back and bites down on a hunk of his dense curls, whining through his teeth. 

“My my .” Yusuf chuckles afterwards, astronomically pleased. 

Giddy, Nicolò laughs in agreement, wiggling his toes. What ecstasy is wrought at Yusuf’s hands! What pleasure to make angels weep, more delicious than one thousand pistachio pastries!

Their eyes meet and they both laugh again, high as kites, elated as teenagers having their first tumble.

“Mm?” Yusuf hums, grinning, eyebrows practically in his hairline.

“Mm.” Nicolò agrees vigorously. He wiggles closer, re-opens his legs, and they begin again. 

Harīsa (again)

Make this dish for someone you love. 

Late summer always climaxes in the flooding of the Nile and an omnipresent sense of relief that everything will be alright for one year more. Nicolò likes to wander beyond the walls of al-Qāhira each season and look out over the vast floodplain at the ancient river which has sustained life in Egypt since time immemorial. It’s a tranquil reminder of the transience of life, but also of its abiding nature. Long after he is gone, after they are all gone, the Nile will continue to flood, as it always has. Will anything he ever does make anything more than faint ripples in this endless sea of time? Are ripples enough? 

It is late summer again now. There have been many since they first arrived in al-Qāhira. Familiar now—a sleepy kind of warmth, the inexplicable, omnipresent feeling that it is the end of an era. 

Today, Nicolò sits reading in Yusuf’s study in the quiet light of late afternoon. 

“Very good. You remembered what I told you about al-Samawʾal and negative numbers.” Yusuf praises, scrutinizing the sheet of mathematical equations in front of him. 

Muṣṭafā tries to contain his proud smile, but utterly fails. He grins down at his left hand, which he is doodling on with the inky stylus in his right hand.

“Can we draw now?” he asks.

“We agreed we’d draw after you solve all of the problems. A man never breaks his word.” Yusuf pats him firmly on the back.

Muṣṭafā lets out a theatrical groan but obediently slides another sheet of paper onto the table in front of them. 

“I don’t even see the point of this.” he grumbles. 

“If you really want to be a merchant, you’ll have to understand mathematics. Knowing negative numbers will help you in calculating your debts and others’ debts to you. If you really want to quit, though, go right ahead. Just don’t come to me for help when you end up bankrupt.” 

 Muṣṭafā pouts, but he puts his stylus to the paper. 

 Nicolò grins at the two of them from his cushion on the other side of the room. For years now, Muṣṭafā has been Yusuf’s pupil. Nicolò can’t remember the last time he entered the study and didn’t find Muṣṭafā at Yusuf’s right-hand side behind the desk. At fifteen years old, he has mellowed somewhat, mostly thanks to Yusuf’s influence. Sometimes Nicolò still finds the flowers and herbs in his garden trampled, and last summer, Muṣṭafā did jump off the second-floor balcony into the pool, which nearly gave his mother a heart attack. Sometimes, he tries to smuggle wine into the house. But, generally speaking, he’s growing into a fine young man. 

A knock at the study doors startles Nicolò out of his reverie. 

“Come in!” Yusuf calls. 

Shamsah enters, pure elegance as always, and Muṣṭafā perks up. She turns up her nose at him and addresses both Yusuf and Nicolò together. “There are two ladies waiting in the summer qā‘a. They say they know you both and that it’s urgent, but they wouldn’t tell me why.” 

Yusuf frowns and begins to rise, but Nicolò jumps to his feet and waves him off.

“I’ll handle it. I know Muṣṭafā has been waiting all day to draw with you.”

Andromache and Quynh are facing away from him when he enters the reception room, but he recognizes them immediately anyway. In one thunderstruck moment, he realizes that it’s been more than ten years since he last saw them. It must feel like the blink of an eye to them, but to him, a decade is still a good long time. 

There’s hugs, of course. Quynh pinches his cheeks and marvels at how tan he’s gotten. Andromache ruffles his hair. But, soon enough, they cut to the chase. 

“Everything is going to shit.” Andromache informs him.

“It’s been quiet for so long, in the Mediterranean at least.” Quynh sighs. “But it seems that’s over, now.”

“Did you hear about what happened in Constantinople earlier this spring? The Orthodox Christians massacred all the Latins in the city. The Venetians, the Genovese, the Pisans. A few thousand were spared, but only so that they could be sold into slavery to the Seljuks. Brutal stuff.”

“Around the same time, King Philip what’s-his-name—remember, Andi?—he confiscated all the property and homes of the Jews in Paris and expelled them from the city. He even burned some of them alive at the stake.”

“And now your sultan, Ṣalāḥ ad-Dīn, is back in the Levant, besieging every city in his path and humiliating the Christians. He’ll take Jerusalem back soon enough at this rate, and then all hell will really break loose. It’ll be a war the likes of the one which brought you and Yusuf to each other.”

Nicolò is grimacing by the end. He hadn’t heard of any of that, except the fact that Ṣalāḥ ad-Dīn had left al-Qāhira again. Evidently, they’ve grown so insular in their Nile-side mansion that major news has consistently passed them by. 

“We need you, Nico. You and Yusuf.” Quynh says firmly. “Our Arabic isn’t good. We don’t know the Levant, Jerusalem, like you two do.”

“You two will give us a fighting chance of calming things down before they get out of hand.” Andromache adds. 

Nicolò sighs and looks above their heads at the pretty mashrabiya behind them. He remembers the refugee kids, when they were younger, hanging stubbornly onto the lattices whenever they didn’t want to go back to their rooms at bedtime. 

“I’ll have to talk with Yusuf.” he says. 

Word spreads like wildfire that they are leaving, and within a couple days of the girls’ arrival, everyone knows. Iṣmat is furious. 

“You’ll just abandon all of us, just like that?” She is waiting for Nicolò the next time he enters the kitchen, muscular arms crossed and a wooden spoon clenched in her right fist. 

“I am sorry, my old friend.” Nicolò says, wishes he could say more. It’s not just that they want to help their sisters-in-arms—it has been ten years, and he and Yusuf have not grown any older. Everyone else in the house is aging; their immortality cannot be kept secret forever. 

About then, Andromache and Quynh enter the kitchen. 

“There you are, Nico! We—” 

Whatever Quynh was about to say is interrupted by Iṣmat hurling her wooden spoon at the both of them. The girls dive out of the way just in time, and it collides with the wall instead of their faces with a thunderous bang . 

“Out of my kitchen!” Iṣmat yells, nostrils flaring. 

Andromache and Quynh share a baffled look and obediently scuttle away. 

Muṣṭafā is heartbroken. Nicolò listens from the doorway of the study as Yusuf tries, with little success, to explain it to him. What can they even say to this boy who looks at Yusuf like a father, who wears his hair long because that’s how Yusuf wears his hair, who decided he wanted to be a merchant, too, just like Yusuf? 

“How long will it take?” Muṣṭafā asks, voice wheedling. “You’ll come back, right?” 

 Nicolò pinches the bridge of his nose, eyes stinging with tears. For once, their immortality doesn’t feel like much of a blessing. 

“Muṣṭafā, I won’t patronize you by lying to you.” Yusuf takes him by the shoulders and squeezes. Shakes his head. “I don’t think we’ll be coming back.” 

Muṣṭafā’s face becomes pinched and he stares at the ground. When he sniffs wetly and his lower lip begins to tremble, Nicolò has to leave. He walks back to their room with long strides, wiping furiously at his eyes, wondering how on earth Andromache and Quynh have survived this peculiar heartbreak for as long as they have. 

That night, Yusuf sobs. He doesn’t cry often, and the sight is almost frightening in its unfamiliarity. Nicolò holds him, cradles his head against his chest. There are many things he could say—that Yusuf has done a wonderful job, that Muṣṭafā is old enough to look after himself now, that he will be okay. But it all sounds horribly cheap, and so Nicolò just keeps his mouth shut and wipes away Yusuf’s tears. 

The following evening, Nicolò dismisses the kitchen staff so that he has the place to himself. He sent one of the servants out earlier to buy the finest fatty mutton he could possibly find in the Meat Market, and lots of it, and he takes it now and sets it in chunks in a couple of large lead pots to boil. He can so clearly remember the day Iṣmat taught him how to make harīsa, the flowering of his realization that food can be love. That is what he thinks of as he cooks, the things he wants to say to all of the people who live in their house now, strangers who became family when he felt most alone. Family who gave his life meaning when he felt purposeless. Gratitude for the chance to play out this little scene for ten years on the cosmological stage, fleeting and beautiful. The next day, he spends many, many hours beating the great mass of porridge smooth, as smooth as butter. 

By evening, it is ready, and he gathers everyone in the house into the summer qā‘a. Yusuf, Nicolò, Andromache, Quynh, Iṣmat, Shamsah, Muṣṭafā, and his mother all sit around the smallest floor mat, and the rest of the refugees line the sides of the other mats laid over the majli floor. It’s bittersweet to see everyone together. Many have come and gone over the years—some of the widows were quick to remarry, some of the older children grew into adults and set out to make their fortune, and some of the elderly passed away. There are about thirty left, mostly older folks and younger teenagers who aren’t able or ready to leave just yet. Andromache and Quynh must sense that what has happened over the course of the past decade is beyond their understanding, because they are strangely quiet. Or, perhaps it is Iṣmat glaring daggers at them over the harīsa. 

“I like her.” Andromache whispers to Nicolò. “She’s strong.” 

“Mm.” Nicolò hums, glancing at her profile. Her fancifully-embroidered dress is the furthest thing from rags now, and she has started wearing hijab again. “She is.” 

After the meal is finished and hands are all washed, Yusuf stands and announces that he will give over ownership of the house and all its assets to Iṣmat. The pistachio business will go to Muṣṭafā. Muṣṭafā’s muted smile tells Nicolò that they discussed the decision beforehand; Iṣmat is stunned. She turns to Nicolò, eyes wide and shimmering, confused. Nicolò is equally surprised, as Yusuf never told him his plans, but he wholeheartedly agrees with his decision. He can’t think of a better or more deserving person. When Iṣmat sees that no one is joking around, she hides her teary face in her left hand and takes one of Nicolò’s hands with her right. And squeezes. He squeezes her hand in return. 

The following morning at dawn, they go. At the front doors, Iṣmat, Shamsah, and Muṣṭafā bid them goodbye. Shamsah gives Yusuf a polite nod and a smile, and Nicolò a very warm hug. She became his prodigy more than Yusuf’s in later years thanks to her blossoming fascination with gardening. Muṣṭafā does the opposite—a firm and manly handshake for Nicolò, and a long and tortured hug for Yusuf. He is very reluctant to let go, and when he does, he’s weeping. 

Iṣmat doesn’t move at all, but she doesn’t need to. As they turn to leave, she offers Nicolò a rare smile. It is the sun cresting over the horizon of a barren and dark landscape, precious as gold. Goodbye, my friend, it says. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Al-Mawṣil is on fire when they reach it near the end of the year, thanks to Ṣalāḥ ad-Dīn’s siege. It’s not yet on par with the ill-fated al-Fusṭāṭ, but the charred towers against the blue sky are strangely reminiscent. Nicolò can hardly bear to look at it, as if gazing for too long will invite forth from the smoke another Iṣmat, another Shamsah, another Muṣṭafā. So, instead of staring at the burning city, he looks at Yusuf standing beside him in the sand. Yusuf meets his gaze and they share a complicated look. There’s no need for words, or food, for once. 

In the beginning and the end, I will be there when all other things fall away. 

And I know you will be, too.