Author's Preface
Returning from the lesson, Halima sank onto the rug in her tent, wrapped her arms around her knees, and closed her eyes.
Forgive me, she said silently to God, feeling every word come with effort, as if it were being torn from somewhere deep inside her. I have no other way. I'll try to secretly observe the full waiting period — I swear I'll do everything I can not to break the law openly. Forgive me, Allah. I'm so afraid of losing all this love, this attention, this home I've finally found.
But no sooner had the thought faded than another rose in its place — quieter, but more insistent: what if she simply told the truth?
She went still, weighing this sudden, unexpected courage. Amina had always been so kind to her, so genuinely warm from that very first morning. Maybe, learning the whole truth, she wouldn't turn away. Maybe this family, having known so much pain in their own history, would find compassion for her too.
With that fragile, half-formed resolve, Halima got up and hurried toward Amina's tent.
But it was empty inside.
She stood at the entrance for a moment, lost, then made her way along the rows of tents, scanning for a familiar face — and Darim suddenly appeared before her, the same warrior from Yahya's personal guard whose face she remembered from the night of her rescue.
"Seyyida," he said, bowing his head briefly. "I've been ordered to accompany and protect you, wherever you go."
She forced a smile, though it came out bitter. "Have you seen Amina? I need to speak with her."
"She's at the Council," Darim answered simply.
"What council?" Halima frowned. "What is she doing there?"
She'd never before heard of Amina taking part in such meetings, and surprise briefly pushed her own worries aside.
Darim, seeing nothing unusual in the question, explained readily: "A neighboring tribe has proposed an alliance through marriage. It concerns her niece — Amina raised the girl after she lost her mother. The Council is discussing the terms of the union now, and Amina is vouching for the bride's honor and virtue."
Halima listened, not yet fully grasping where this was heading. "Who is she marrying?" she asked carefully.
"The son of the neighboring clan's chieftain," Darim answered.
Something unsettling stirred inside Halima, but she forced her voice to stay even. "So, to marry an heir or a chieftain, a woman must be..." she hesitated, searching for the word, "...unmarried before?"
Darim nodded with the same unremarkable directness he might use recounting an ordinary morning routine: "Exactly so. Though this tradition directly contradicts our faith itself — for in Islam, marriage to a divorced woman or a widow is considered an entirely normal and pure union, and the Prophet himself took them as wives — our people have never been able to abandon this ancient pagan custom. Only a chaste maiden, never before married, can become the wife of a chieftain or his heir."
The ground seemed to shift beneath Halima's feet.
She swayed, losing her balance for a split second, and her hand shot out on its own toward the nearest support — a wooden post of a neighboring awning.
"Seyyida!" Darim stepped toward her, alarmed, steadying her by the elbow. "Did you stumble?"
She forced herself upright, drawing a sharp breath, and nodded, doing her best to look composed. "I'm fine. Just... the sand underfoot," she murmured, then, to fully deflect his attention from her state, added quietly, "I feel for that girl. Marrying by arrangement, with no choice of her own..."
"Yes," Darim agreed, with genuine sympathy, suspecting nothing. "Such is the fate of many in our lands. But they say the young man is handsome and kind-hearted — perhaps she'll be luckier than it seems."
Halima nodded, unable to say another word, and after thanking him with a brief, mechanical dip of her head, wandered away.
She barely remembered the walk back to her tent — her feet carried her on their own while her mind kept circling back to the same merciless truth: the path of honesty, barely born in her heart, had already been cut off before she'd even taken a single step down it.
She entered the tent and sank onto the rug in complete, silent shock, finally understanding: there was no way out. Only the one desperate path she'd already been turning over that morning — stay silent, hide, buy time — and pray that God would forgive this lie told to save the happiness she'd finally found.
Halima laid out her prayer mat and stood for the evening salah, trying to focus on the words Zoraida had patiently instilled in her, day after day. The movements came more naturally now than they had those first weeks, but tonight every gesture seemed to absorb all the weight that had gathered inside her over the course of the day.
When the prayer ended, she didn't rise right away. She stayed seated on the mat, hands folded, and tears came on their own — quiet, without a single sob, simply sliding down her cheeks one after another.
Forgive me, she whispered inwardly, into the darkness of the tent. Forgive me for what I'm planning to do. I know it's a sin. I know that deceiving someone is unworthy, that hiding the truth from a man who loves me this sincerely is a betrayal. But I have no other way, O Allah. I'm so afraid of losing everything I've finally found. Forgive my weakness. Forgive my fear. I'll try to observe the full iddah period, to follow every one of Your rules as best I can.
She sat like that for a long time, pouring out to God every ounce of the anxiety, the despair, that had built up over this endless day. When the last of the tears finally slowed, something inside her had shifted — not to relief, exactly, but to a kind of dry stillness she hadn't expected. If the sin was unavoidable, at least she could carry it out in a way that hurt no one.
She stood, wiped her face with her palms, and made herself sit with the problem properly, turning it over, piece by piece, until something close to a plan began to take shape.
On the wedding night, she needed to make Yahya believe something had happened between them — while making sure, in truth, that nothing had, so that she wouldn't technically break the waiting period her faith required. Which meant he'd need to have no real memory of that night.
Alcohol was her first thought. Get him drunk — and by morning he wouldn't be sure what had happened himself, but he'd believe her his lawful wife.
But did alcohol even exist here?
She stepped out of her tent, looking around, and spotted a familiar figure nearby.
"Faris! Can you come here?"
He turned and walked over. "Yes, what is it?"
Halima grew serious for a moment, choosing her words. "Tell me," she began carefully, "do you have some kind of drink... that makes a person feel light, at ease? Something that helps them relax, forget everything?"
Faris narrowed his eyes. "You mean alcohol?" he asked warily. "The kind with the foul smell?"
"Yes, exactly that."
He shook his head reproachfully. "We are not allowed to drink it. It is forbidden in our faith," he said with the same seriousness he usually reserved for discussing the clan's laws and traditions. "Many men in the past, before the prophecy, lost their minds to drinks like that and did terrible things — beat their wives, spilled their own kinsmen's blood in drunken quarrels, lost everything they had. That is why it is strictly forbidden among us."
"I see. Thank you," Halima replied, keeping her voice even. "On Earth, people sometimes drink alcohol at weddings."
Faris shook his head, a frown deepening on his brow. "Then people on Earth are foolish to indulge in what brings so much ruin. Here, we know what happens when a man loses control of himself."
"People on Earth have their own troubles," she said quietly, her voice smooth and neutral. "Sometimes they drink just to forget, to escape for a little while. Everyone fights their own private battles — it isn't my place to judge."
Faris fell quiet, studying her face for a moment. Someone called his name from down the row before he could say more. He gave her a short nod and turned away.
Halima watched him go, the fragile smile she'd been holding fading the moment his back was turned.
Alcohol was out. She'd have to find something else.
She stood in the fading light, sifting through her memories for anything that might help — until a memory from her distant childhood surfaced. Her father, always fearsome, always demanding total submission — and how she and her sisters, driven by sheer desperation, had once stolen sleeping pills from their mother's medicine cabinet and slipped them into his evening tea, just to buy themselves a few days of peace.
There were no pills or medicine cabinets here. But surely this world had its own remedies?
And then it came to her.
The House of Healers. Yahya himself had taken her there once — that mudbrick building filled with the scent of dried herbs and cool shade, where remedies of all kinds were kept.
If the plant she needed existed anywhere in this settlement, it would be there.