٣٩.

"BURHAN STOP!" RUBAIYAH GASPED, HER VOICE not beyond a whisper though she had felt certain she had screamed.

Ferhat Ghatafani's body jerked as the first blow landed—a closed fist to the face, crushing cartilage and sending him reeling backward into the bark of the date tree that Rubaiyah had been leaning against earlier. The thump of impact echoed through as she stepped back, horrified. It was a hollow, sickening sound. The bark visibly split. A smear of blood followed.

The Sultan of Al-Fāw moved like a quiet and stealthy predator, he wore heavy robes—appropriate for the Nikah event—which flowed around him, his bare arms dark and corded with dark muscle. He closed the space between him and Ferhat in a flash. One hand gripped the nobleman's collar, the other hammering into his ribs, then his gut. Each strike was deliberate. Brutal. Efficient.

Against the Imam's continuing sermon—now encased with his shouts and demands regarding purity and virtue—the sounds of the fight that was happening further away were mere punctuations that could not be heard over the chatter of the guests in the majlis and the Imam's own vocal exertions.

"Burhan stop it, please!" Rubaiyah cried out, her shocked and terrified voice had no strength in it.

The Sultan of Al-Fāw's fists sank into Ferhat's soft flesh with the force of a smith's hammer, sending spasms through the nobleman's limbs. He doubled over, but Burhan hauled him upright again, slamming his back once more against the tree. Dust and dried leaves shivered loose from the trunk. Kiah had herself wrapped around Rubaiyah's torso, the creature shivering in fear.

The Sultan's forearm drove into Ferhat's throat, pinning him there like a carcass to a stake. The nobleman's feet kicked, leaving wild trails and ruffling of leaves and twigs as his hands grasped weakly at the wrist crushing his windpipe.

"No, please! Please," Ruba cried out. "I beg of you!"

Burhan did not listen. He did not look at her. He raised his knee—once, twice—pistoning into Ferhat's midsection. The sounds Ferhat Ghatafani was making were no longer human: wet gasps, retching groans, bone meeting bone. Blood sprayed from his mouth, dark and stringy, dribbling down his chin and onto the silver trim of his ruined white brocade attire.

Ferhat sagged, but the Burhan wasn't finished. He stepped back only to land a boot into the man's side, sending him sprawling against the stony gravel of the particular section of the night encased courtyard they were in. Ferhat's body crumpled, then seized as another kick slammed into his ribs, then his hip, then his back.

Burhan Abelhamid's breath steamed in the cool night. Sweat gleamed on his brow. His eyes were cold, fixed, furious and full of vicious hatred. The sounds of impact continued, dull thuds punctuated by the occasional crack of something giving way.

Rubaiyah couldn't bear it, she was crying—tears streaming down her face. She wanted to shout for help, but what would happen then? Who would come? The celebration of the night was ruined, and who would—once they found out—try and stop a Sultan?

The tree Rubaiyah had leaned against stood silent, a mute witness. Its bark glistened now with blood and sap, its roots splashed with fragments of gold-threaded silk and vomit.

Ferhat's body stopped moving then, only twitching in the folds of his once-pristine garments, as Burhan stood over him, chest heaving, fists dripping red.

Rubaiyah threw herself in between them now, fear clutching her heart tightly as she covered Ferhat from Burhan's sight with her own form.

"Enough!" She cried out, anger, fear and distress as ample in her gaze as the seed inside a date.

She met his eyes and he looked back at her, his dark orbs clouded with his fury were starting to clear, his gaze becoming thinner before confusion and a dismantling distress broke the symphony of his eyes.

"Dilruba—," He uttered, his chest still heaving. "Do not defend him. Do not fucking—"

"Who do you think you are!" She cried out, her voice breaking. "How could you attack him like this? What had he done to you! How could you—how could you hurt him!"

Burhan's eyebrows furrowed in explicit confusion. He brought a hand up and ran it through his messy hair. He wasn't wearing a turban this time—the black turban she had seen him last time in—and so he looked.. more human and vulnerable than before. Perhaps it was just something about having his head exposed, when wearing a turban wrapped around him gave him a superiority. Was this his disguise then? He merely wished to hide by not going out of his way to hide? It made sense, for people of Thāj would not have ever seen the face of the new Sultan of Qaryat Al-Fāw, let alone the old one.

"He—he was asking you to marry him!" Burhan Abelhamid's jaw was hard, his gaze now piercing hers.

"So?" Rubaiyah's lips tore out the word, her eyes flashing anger. "How did that give you the right to hurt him?"

Burhan let out a snarl, and stepped instantly closer to her, the distance between them minimized to the length of only a wrist. His eyes bore down into hers, glittering with fury and determination in this silver light they were encased in. In the background, the Imam was still speaking, and now drummers too had started drumming steadily alongside the bearded Imam's words.

"Dilruba," Burhan's jaw throbbed visibly with a vein. "You are my woman! That fucker knows that, his fucking family, they all know that! Yet he had the audacity to—"

"I'm not!" Ruba cried out. Her heart pained and desperate for Ferhat's wellbeing, at present she wanted nothing more than to turn to him and see if he was alright. She wanted to staunch the bloodflow from his wounds, she wanted to help him like he had once helped her on the trade route.

"I'm not your woman!" She uttered again, anger making her feel cruel. "I don't remember ever agreeing to be—you have no right to force me after everything I have been through."

Burhan's furious gaze split into confusion and disbelief.

"Force you?" He repeated, shocked. "Dilruba, you love me. You love me, and I love you. I don't force—"

"I don't remember!" Rubaiyah cried out, desperate. "Don't you see? I don't remember loving you! Stop making me feel like a sinner for forgetting! I got hurt, it was a head injury—please! Stop torturing me!"

Burhan's eyes were wide with confusion and shock, as though all the peace inside him had been eviscerated with her words. He stumbled slightly as if drunk, he regained his balance then, his eyes fixing themselves briefly on Ferhat's crumpled form on the ground.

"Am I torturing you?" He spoke up then, his eyes now in hers. "Am I making you feel like a sinner?"

Rubaiyah's heart tightened at the change in his voice, and as a breeze ruffled the surroundings, she felt the ice of her tears on her cheeks.

She shut her eyes briefly then, before slowly opening them and looking up at him. The pain on his face hit her like a blow. He had hold of his composure by its throat, but the misery and distraught expression that marred his facial features.. Allah, it seemed as though he was hating himself for the position he was in. He seemed as though he was disgusted by himself and by what his life had come to. She felt the urgent need to touch him, to hold his cheek in the cup of her palm and take that miserable expression away from his striking and bold features. She wanted to smoothen out the crease between his brows with her fingers, she wanted to feel what touching him like that would feel like.

"Dilruba," Burhan uttered again, his voice strangled but firm. He had taken her silence as affirmation—as a yes answer to his questions, and the distress of that was clear in his unwavering gaze.

"I could carve out my chest for you," He let out. "I could tear myself open and show you how the recitations of you cover every inch of my flesh and organs. The mention of you, the essence of you, it is embedded in my blood. You are my everything, Dilruba, you are my life. Do not take yourself away from me."

"No," Ruba spoke, her voice cracking. Tears were nestled on her eyelashes. "I cannot—I cannot tie myself immobile, merely to oblige you. I lost my memories and feelings of the past, I cannot—I won't be able to—to disregard my present blameless heart washed anew, just to oblige someone else's memories and feelings of me."

Burhan's face scrunched up.

"What are you saying, farashat rayiea?" His voice was a heavy whisper. "How can this be? Are you so cold to me? Do you feel nothing at all for me? That can't be. Allah won't do this to me, for this is like dying a thousand times whilst my heart still fucking beats."

He took another step closer to her, and Rubaiyah could feel his hot breath caress her forehead. His head dipped towards her, a dazed hurt in his gaze as she maintained their eye contact shakily, not wanting to back down, her emerald orbs glittering like stars in the night.

"Your body remembers me, Dilruba Badawi, even if your mind doesn't," Burhan Abelhamid uttered, and before Ruba could think another thought, he had snaked an arm behind her back and pulled her flush against his chest.

She gasped, her hands placing themselves on his chest, her gaze turning confused and shocked in his.

"Tell me you don't fucking remember this," He breathed before he dipped his head further and she felt his lips touch her neck as his face dived in. He kissed her skin gently, holding that sweet spot at the side of her neck in a pucker between his mouth as he released it slowly.

"Burhan," Rubaiyah murmured, "No. Stop, please."

She wasn't pushing him away, she couldn't. Her willpower was too weak to.

He trailed kisses down her neck slowly, inhaling in her scent deeply. Her distinct smell of jojoba was now blended in with the amber oud she was wearing upon her person, and Burhan felt as though he could get drunk inhaling her, but even then he wouldn't stop.

"Burhan—," She tried again, tears filling her eyes.

There was a lurch in the pit of her stomach, all the blood underneath her skin was rushing wildly, and her legs wanted to give in and have her crumble in his strong arms. Her heart was beating wildly inside her, and desire for him was filling up every pore in her body.

He was right. Her body did remember him. But her mind could not seem to, and her heart was stuck somewhere in between.

Ferhat stirred on the ground, a groan slipping out from between his lips, and Rubaiyah startled. Instantly, she pushed Burhan away and he disengaged from her, a dazed confusion on his face. His dark eyes were clouded with need and lust, and she felt hurt escalate inside her. Did he think her merely a slave to physical intimations? Did he think he could try and have her body just because he couldn't get her mind to co-operate? Was she merely a toy?

"Dilruba," Burhan uttered, stepping forwards again before she raised a hand to stop him.

"Don't you dare touch me again," She managed, fury drowning her as fear tugged at her core. She was speaking this way to a Sultan who could have her killed. But she would rather die than be subject to someone who would never truly understand her and wanted only something from her that she had already lost.

"Dilruba," Burhan shook his head, his face agonized. Rubaiyah saw vicious tears gather in his now red-rimmed eyes.

"I love you with every fucking part of my being. I love you so much it kills me yet keeps me alive."

Ruba teared up as well, salty droplets pouring down her cheek as Kiah fluttered sadly beside her.

"'What is the point of this love?'" Rubaiyah recited a verse from Hikmat's poetry, for her own words were falling short. "'What is the point of you loving me a lot but not understanding me? Missing me but not searching for me? Looking at me but not seeing me?'"

Burhan's brows furrowed, his eyes sharpened in hers.

"'The day I fell in love with you, I wished that I would die before meeting you,'" The Sultan of Al-Fāw uttered then, and Ruba recognized Qabbani's verse. "'I feared that we would separate, and when we did, I realized that it is possible for a person to die several times.'"

Rubaiyah looked at him, shaking her head and peering at him through her tears. Finding out that he was well-versed in poetry too was astonishing as much as it was gutting. It deepened the pain in her chest, for hadn't poets always claimed that those who lived with poetry in their hearts were beautiful souls? To hurt beautiful souls was a sin—to hurt any soul was a sin.

"'They say everything is written,'" She recited the poet Fakhri's verse. "'And the stars themselves, put in the sky by Allah, swear it's true. So when those souls go missing, just know they weren't for you.'"

Burhan's jaw tightened, he turned his eyes away from her briefly before looking back at her again. His gaze sharper than a knife, tearing into her soul to glean his answers.

"'If the thought of you in my head, missing as you went, is a sin,'" He let out, quoting the poet Hikmat. "'Then know that, my beloved, I am drowning in sin every night.'"

Rubaiyah raised her wrist to wipe at her tears, fixing her eyes back into Burhan's. She held her composure, willing herself to not cry anymore.

"'Don't love deeply, till you can make sure the other loves you now with the same depth,'" She remembered another Qabbani verse. "'Because the depth of your love today is the depth of your wound tomorrow.'"

"Dilruba!" Burhan let out, her name a stone weighing in his mouth. "'I want to wear your love, not its collar. I want to enter into your vast domain, not your golden cell. I don't want you to love me till death, but till life. I don't want you to love me forever, love me now.'"

Dilruba spun away from him, Fakhri's verse uttered by Burhan still clamoring in her ears, looking at Ferhat's body on the ground. His eyes were closed but his lips moved feverishly, and his eyes rolled beneath his lids. She wanted to drop to her knees in front of him, she wanted to caress his face and wake him. She wanted to hear Ferhat speak with that grounded rational voice of his. But she couldn't bring herself to move, as though her body was forbidding her.

"'And after every breaking,'" She tried a verse from the poet Mahmoud's writings, finding that it aligned with what she wanted to say. "'We realize that destiny has a different opinion, which doesn't resemble our dreams.'"

"'And we don't repent from our dreams, no matter how many times they are broken,'" Burhan spoke out Mahmoud's contrary verse instantly, whereupon the poet had contradicted his own self later in life.

Akbar had told Rubaiyah that only the most intelligent in the world contradict themselves from time to time. She had loved that analogy, though now it broke her heart.

"Burhan, please, go," She dropped her face in her hands and started crying, her composure breaking.

"Dilruba," Burhan grunted, agonized, she heard his feet shuffling as he neared her and grabbed her elbow, instantly pinning her to the nearest tree bark.

"Burhan, I don't remember you!" Ruba cried out, putting her hands on his chest but failing to push him away.

There were shining streaks on his own face that caught the silver light, as his watery and desperate eyes bore into hers.

"Then meet me again, farashat rayiea," He breathed. "Meet me again, Dilruba Badawi. Get to know me again. I'll introduce myself to you again, I'll tell you all about myself again. I'll tear myself open and put it all in front of you—fuck—Dilruba, fall in love with me again."

Ruba peered at him through her blurry eyes, her heart pounding so hard in her chest that she feared it would break free. Burhan's both hands held her waist carefully as though she was porcelain and she might break if he wasn't careful. Being this close to him was shocking and overwhelming. She felt herself weakening by the second, not being able to hold her own against the force of his presence.

She glanced at Ferhat on the ground. He had asked her to marry him. And Rubaiyah knew him, and he knew her. Getting to know someone was a beautiful path in life, but getting to know someone again who you had already lost and forgotten? Would not that be so painful? Even at present Ruba was consumed with the jarring pain of being in Burhan's presence. His every word, every gesture, his every presence and even his absence—everything hurt. Every single thing he did, was hurting her. She could not be with him and force herself to face such pain again and again.

Her past had been so painful. So many had died—been hung viciously—because of her. Rubaiyah could not go back to all of that, even if she was only making the choice of going back to one person from that past. She could not pick one person over all the others she had forgotten and let die, it would kill her with guilt. She could only move forwards and keep her past—and all who were part of it—separate from her.

Besides, getting to know Burhan Abelhamid again would take too much from her, and Ruba did not have anything left to give. She was.. tired. She was exhausted. Pressurizing herself to remember, being asked to remember, fighting her mind and heart to remember, always thinking about this prevalent weakness of hers that everybody around her knew and pitied her for, feeling displaced and belonging to anyone or anywhere, trying to stop herself from letting her lost memories define her—Rubaiyah was exhausted of it all.

"Dilruba," Burhan's strangled voice came again, his breath hot on her face. "Dilruba, Dilruba. 'The separation from you was like the taste of sea in my mouth as I drowned.'"

"Meet me again, farashat rayiea," He continued. "Meet me again. Fall in love with me again. I will paint your mind with new memories, I will rewrite and correct all my mistakes."

"No," Rubaiyah's voice was like a shard of glass cutting into soft flesh. "I can't."

Burhan blinked, fear and desperation in his gaze.

"Dilruba, I love you—I cannot stop loving you—"

"I will marry Ferhat," She let out then, and Burhan felt as though the ground had been yanked from beneath his feet.

He let her go and stumbled back in shock.

"What?"

"I will marry Ferhat," She repeated, her eyes suddenly blank and cold and dazed, as though all human feeling had been snuffed out of her.

Kiah, whose presence had been right beside Rubaiyah all this time, fluttered in shock as well, gesturing all sorts of messages for Ruba that the girl made no note of, because her eyes were fixed in the distance, as if looking at something no one but her could see.

"Why?" Burhan's voice was shaking when he spoke. "Why Dilruba? I love you! He doesn't—he cannot love you more than I do! You are my woman—you belong to me and no other man!"

"I belong to who I choose," Rubaiyah uttered softly, her chest paining so much she couldn't bear to talk.

Burhan turned and drove his fist hard into a second tree, a furious snarl leaving his lips. Ruba heard the crack of the split in the bark and she saw his bleeding knuckles.

"Look into my eyes and tell me to go away, farashat rayiea," Burhan spat then, grabbing her elbow with his bleeding hand and bringing her close to face him.

"Tell me you don't love, and will never love me. Tell me to get the fuck out of your life. Tell me, and I will go away," He let out, his jaw so tight it shook. "Because I have condemned myself by loving you. As if I found nothing to kill myself with in life, so I chose to love you."

Rubaiyah looked up at him, meeting his gaze. She felt as though someone had stabbed her straight in her chest, yet she was still breathing with the blade fully stuck in her.

"I don't love you, and I never will," She spoke mechanically, as though she had surrendered herself up to be a marionette, her strings willingly given to someone else to control. "Don't stay in my life."

Burhan's face shattered, and tears spilled out of his eyes. He let her go and spun away from her, his shoulders slumped and a groan of agony rumbled up from deep down his throat.

"'How sacred is this pain you placed in my heart,'" He spoke an Ebtehaj verse then, perhaps the most painful of Ebtehaj's verses. "'The pain that comes from you, I wouldn't trade it for any joy.'"

With that being said, he started walking away, his back to her as Rubaiyah watched him disappear without being able to stop him. She had driven him away, hadn't she? Why then did she want to stop him?

Ruba fell to her knees, twigs snapping underneath her legs as Kiah fluttered in front of her trying to quell Rubaiyah's gushing tears and sobs.

"'What is meant for you, will reach you even if it is between two mountains,'" Rubaiyah stammered out a verse that she had read from one of Akbar's scrolls, not a poetry verse but a verse from the holy scripture. "'And what isn't meant for you, won't reach you even if it is between your two lips.'"

──── •🏺• ────

SERMET GHATAFANI WAS FURIOUS AT THE TURN of events. Every inch of his body seemed hot to touch with the anger that radiated off of him in waves.

It had been five days since Ghaliyah's Nikah had been called off, and now the Ghatafani house was preparing for another Nikah ceremony that was not Sermet's or Ghaliyah's.

He stood watching himself in the mirror in his chambers, his stout form clad in a mustard brocade robe, and his long shoulder-length straight hair oiled and parted in the middle. On his clean-shaved yet round face, Sermet harbored and nursed only a slim moustache, the end of which he kept oiled and pointed up.

It was supposed to be his Nikah the Ghatafani house prepared for after Ghaliyah's, but everything had gone inexplicably awry. His damned brother Ferhat—older and adopted—had refused to marry Ghaliyah the night of the Nikah, gotten into a brawl he would give no details of, and had instead expressed his desire to marry Rubaiyah.

Ghaliyah had been distraught and inconsolable. She had screamed and cried and even tried to attack Rubaiyah—an attack from which Sermet himself had protected Ruba, by throwing his body in between them and grabbing hold of his sister and dragging her away.

Their mother—the noble Khairunnisa Ghatafani—had arranged for Ghaliyah to go to live with her sister, Ghaliyah and Sermet's unmarried and aged aunt in the city of Tayma. Before Sermet had known it, his sister's trunks were packed and she had been sent off in a traveler's carriage with an estate servant as her escort.

That was four days ago now. And tonight was the Nikah ceremony of Ferhat and Rubaiyah.

Sermet could not understand how his mother had been so heartless, sending off his sister and rewarding Ferhat for his disloyalty like this. Ferhat was always the better son—the son the Ghatafanis never had. He was always better than Sermet in everything, was he not? But should he be praised for breaking his sister's heart? Should Ferhat be damned well praised for setting his sights on Rubaiyah when Sermet was the one who had been the first one to ask for her hand from their mother?

His mother had promised that after Ghaliyah and Ferhat's Nikah, she would discuss the matter of Sermet as a potential groom with Rubaiyah. Sermet knew from the lack of the Sultan of Al-Fāw's visits that he had been discouraged before Ruba did not remember him. That was an obvious conclusion, for Sermet was sure Ruba was irreparably altered. She would never remember even if The Sultan danced out the facts in front of her.

Rubaiyah was merely now a walking shell of a beauty. She had no family, and with The Sultan's discouragement and lack of visits, no connections. Nowadays she would rarely leave her room, and she would rarely eat. The dwarf Akbar was worried sick for her, and often Ferhat would go in to speak to her. At times she would receive him, and at times she would not. The carpet was always with her, and that tahararat min alkhatiya too would come to see her, forcing her to eat by his hand. Khairunnisa Ghatafani had diagnosed it as a sadness and guilt that Rubaiyah felt for Ghaliyah, not as anything to do with Ferhat.

Sermet could've had her to himself easily, but Ferhat had fucking intervened.

All his bravado of being responsible for Rubaiyah, it was all a shitty pretense because Ferhat wanted her for himself. He was nothing but a bastard, and Sermet hated their mother's devotion to him.

For it was this devotion that was making her organize another Nikah, despite the humiliation of Ghaliyah's cancelled one. Khairunnisa Ghatafani loved Ferhat, for his own sake and that of her late husband Emir Khaleel Ghatafani, she would do whatever Ferhat wanted her to.

Her behavior towards Rubaiyah had changed somewhat, Sermet had noticed. Before, Khairunnisa Ghatafani had treated Ruba as a daughter—sharing her thoughts and ideas with the girl more so than she ever shared with Ghaliyah. Now, Khairunnisa Ghatafani seemed to accept Rubaiyah with an acceptance that borders on.. defeat. The kind of acceptance that was different from tolerance, but closer to shifting worries upon the God above and having faith.

Sermet scoffed. Having faith was an attractive idea to him, but it held little merit. He had had faith, hadn't he? When he had waited with baited breath for Ghaliyah and Ferhat's Nikah to be over with so that his own subject could be broached? But no, having faith had led him nowhere.

Now, he was going to act.

Tonight was the Nikah, and this afternoon he had plans.

Rubaiyah had begun to disgust him for what she had done to Ghaliyah. Having his sister sent away like an outcast would've been bearable to Sermet had he married Rubaiyah in the end, but having his sister sent away and watching Ferhat marry Ruba? No, that was fucking intolerable. He refused to sit by and watch it happen.

He had always been the doormat of the Ghatafani family, the one people wiped their feet on. But he would remain one no longer.

The Sultan of Al-Fāw was still hanging around in Thāj. Sermet knew from the conversation snippets he heard from the visiting tahararat min alkhatiya, who often dropped by to see Rubaiyah. The Sultan himself was keeping his distance, but he hadn't left Thāj. Perhaps he too was waiting for something, perhaps he wanted to crash the Nikah—do something last minute and humiliate the Ghatafani family more than they had already been humiliated.

Sermet had also found out that The Sultan of Qaryat Al-Fāw did not wish his presence to be known in Thāj, for it would obviously create a political disturbance. And now with the Nikah ceremony tonight looming over Sermet and taunting him, he had wondered if the political upheaval was the exact thing he needed to stop Ferhat and Rubaiyah marrying, and getting rid of the Sultan of Al-Fāw with the same strike.

Sermet was going to the governor of Thāj's palace tonight, and when he saw the governor—a man he had never seen before and would have to indulge in a lot of effort in order to get to see the man—he would exaggerate the tiniest bit.

'The Sultan of Al-Fāw is in Thāj governor, and he plans to take your throne.' Now, would that be too direct? 'The Sultan of Al-Fāw is in Thāj, my lord, and I overhead him planning to bring his army into the city.' Ah, that sounded perfect, did it not?

Then, Sermet rehearsed the latter part of what he would say.

'Tonight at the Ghatafani house is the Nikah of two people who have both conspired to get The Sultan of Al-Fāw into the city in disguise. Ferhat Ghatafani and the woman he is marrying, Dilruba Badawi. If you come tonight with your guards, my lord, you will be able to catch them both unawares. As well as The Sultan of Al-Fāw, who will undoubtedly be in attendance.'

Sermet grinned at the thought of seeing himself delivering this speech to the governor of Thāj. Ferhat would not be marrying Rubaiyah tonight, or ever. And perhaps seeing both of them killed would be revenge enough for Sermet. As for The Sultan of Al-Fāw's fate tonight, oh well, the outcome of that wasn't really important to Sermet.

Sermet turned and examined his profile in the looking glass, he put on a few more studded rings. He was going to see the governor of Thāj, and so he needed to look like a man who would be trusted. He grinned again, before spinning on his heels and making his way to the door.

Tonight, he would make sure ended in chaos.