Equal of the Sun

I recognized the poem from Maulana Rumi and felt touched to the depths of my heart when I realized that Pari was committing both of us to God’s care. “I will never abandon you. You are the star that I follow always.” Pari’s eyes misted. “Yes,” she said softly, “you alone of all my servants have truly loved me.” “With all my heart.

I don’t have royal blood,” I told her, “but we two could have been twins. It was as if we swam in the same fluids in our mother ’s womb, so that some of my maleness became hers and some of her femaleness mine. That made us strange in the eyes of the world, which does not care for in-between beings. We have both taken blows because of it. She was protean, as am I. She was fierce and affectionate and smart and unpredictable. That is why I loved her . . . that is why!

But when I allowed myself to think of her, I remembered the delicacy of her brown body under her orange robe, and I drew courage from knowing that she had needed nothing to guide her but her determined heart. Had there ever been a man who could claim to be as fearless? She had never even held the heavy swords and sharp daggers that gave soldiers their swagger. Khadijeh may have been a slave, but in her heart, she was a lion-woman.

Shamkhal and Majeed exchanged a glance of excitement and Majeed leapt up, his face glowing with triumph, to repeat what Ibrahim had said to another noble, and then he sped to the other side of the room to make sure the words traveled from man to man.