CHAPTER 1
I was born during a sandstorm. Momma said no one heard her screams as she squatted on the mat in the mud-brick house and pushed me from her womb. Fierce winds burst open the door, and before Momma could swaddle me, a fine layer of sand had already clung to my sticky newborn skin.
“You didn’t breathe.” Momma always touched her throat during this part of my birth story. “So I breathed my life fire into you. Once. Twice. The third time your tiny mouth opened, and you inhaled so furiously I thought the sand in the air would choke you.” Here, Momma always gasped for effect. “But you were a determined babe, and you wailed to the heavens. In seconds your face changed from purple to the golden color of resin from the myrrh tree.”
“What happened next?”
“The next day a Wise Woman walked out of the desert to tell me that my daughter, Bilqīs, was destined for Greatness.” Momma kissed my forehead at this point of the story.
“Was she afraid of you?” I did not ask this particular question until I was a child not yet half as tall as Momma.
“Probably.” My beautiful, dark-haired, ebony-skinned Momma had pressed me to her abundant bosom and stroked my hair. “She must have recognized the spirit of my smokeless fire. Knew I could snap her neck in an instant. Or hurl her back to whatever desert hovel she came from.” Then Momma would always lift me high and spin me over her head.
My birth story was our special ritual. I never tired of listening to it. Momma never seemed tired of retelling it.
As a child, I squealed whenever Momma spun me above her head, half afraid of the speed at which my body whirled, half thrilling in the sensation. When I was older, I begged Momma to twirl faster.
Spiraling, whirling, my surroundings blurred, what could be more exhilarating than the world slipping into the capricious realm of the divine? Or at least, that’s what it felt like.
Momma spun me over her head until the day I finally became a woman.
“No more spinning, Bilqīs,” she said when I showed her the blood smeared between my thighs. My first blood came later than was usual for the village girls, but not for a half jinni like me.
“You’re a woman now.” Momma reached into a basket of rags. “And as a part jinn woman you have no equal.”
“Why? I didn’t inherit your traits.” Not the ones I wanted. Those that mattered most.
“Being jinn is more than speed and strength.” Momma wound a strip of thick fabric around my waist and through my legs, folded it back and forth. “We possess other advantageous qualities.”
“Like what?” I asked with a bit too much sass as Momma tightened the fabric girdling my pelvis.
Momma’s dark eyes flashed fire, then melted as though holding back a delicious secret. “Another jinn trait is our intense sensitivity to the sensual world. It’s an advantage, unless you allow it to control you, in which case it becomes a terrible weakness.”
I rolled my eyes. Momma tended to talk in riddles.
Momma stood back. “Did you see how I did that?”
I looked down at the wrapped wool. “Yes, Momma.”
“Change and rinse the wrapping when the blood soaks through. Tell me when the bleeding stops.” She turned and walked out the door.
I dropped the hem of my long linen dress and followed her outside, sitting beside her as she wove a new basket. I was desperate to know about these other jinn traits, but I knew better than to question Momma further. She would tell me more when she was ready.
Frowning, I set my own incomplete, misshapen basket on my lap. I had held my first palm frond not long after I started walking, attempted imitating Momma’s weaving a few months later. I hadn’t improved much since. I found basket weaving tedious and never understood why Momma got so much enjoyment from it.
Momma’s jinn qualities meant she made many baskets and more beautiful baskets than human women. Traders came from all over the kingdom of Saba to buy Momma’s intricately designed baskets. No one, however, knew the speed of her weaving.
Momma kept her jinn ancestry a secret. Too dangerous, she said. Some kings enslaved jinni by clamping irons around their limbs and necks. Others wanted them killed, and put a price on their heads.
Momma’s skill and speed gave us a better life than most. We lacked for nothing and always had food. If grain was overpriced and the widyan dry, Momma simply flew to the Red Sea, where she snatched a fish from the water. Or she might leap up and grab a cluster of fruit from the tallest date tree. Or run down a hare. Or steal honey from a hive without disturbing the bees. Of course, Momma made certain no one witnessed these superhuman feats.
Momma spoiled me, lavishing me with expensive linens and perfumes after a profitable sale. After a dignitary from Ma’rib bought every one of Momma’s baskets, she bought me a gold bracelet. A goddess wears gold, she had said, slipping the shiny circle around my wrist. I wasn’t a goddess but I loved staring at the gold gleaming bright against my tawny brown skin.
Father’s skin. Momma was an earth-dark beauty.
Father’s identity was a mystery. Or a secret. Probably both. Momma told a different story about my father every time I asked. One day he was the king of Ophir, the next a chief minister, or an Assyrian rug trader, or a handsome merchant traveling through town, or even a high priest of Almaqah.
“Stop asking about your father,” Momma snapped. “He doesn’t put food in your belly, clothes on your back, or gold on your wrist. All you need to know is that he was a clever human.”
“Was?”
Momma squeezed my chin between her strong fingers and glared. “Don’t ask again, Bilqīs.”
I never did. In my heart I just knew Father was once king of Ophir and Momma his queen. I was a sassy, curious young woman, hungry for answers. Like the answer to my next question.
“Momma, why do you go into the cassia bushes with men and tell me not to follow?”
Momma wiggled my nose between her knuckles. “Bilqīs, you’re incorrigible.” She lifted the basket in her lap. “Weaving baskets makes my soul sing. Men make my body sing. You will understand one day.” It was Momma’s first attempt at explaining sex.
Singing? My face puckered as though I’d bitten into a sour grape. The few times I had snuck after them when they disappeared around a terraced hill or thicketed gully, I heard mostly grunts and moans. Except at the end. Momma would throw back her head and praise the sky with a long cry that was almost song-like.
I didn’t always watch, but when I did crouch unnoticed nearby, I found Momma astride the man, her body bouncing up and down so fast she was a blur. The man appeared in agony, groaning as his head rolled from side to side. This never went on too long because Momma would stop bouncing and let the man grab hold of her breasts and suckle like a babe. Then Momma would start bouncing again. Eventually, Momma would arch her back, look up, and praise the sky with her long, loud cry.
She often praised the sky more than once. Especially when Momma’s legs were draped over the rutting man’s shoulders, or when she sat on his face. I did not crawl away until the man proclaimed himself “drained dry” and Momma, sweaty and panting, rolled off him. I had yet to decide if this was a fun activity or not.
It was these secret woman things I thought about when Momma laid the palm fronds side by side on the ground a few days later. “The bleeding stopped?”