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Updated: June 28, 2025
"The lord is sorrowing within for his dead wife and dead son. He has sent for you; go in, and lead him away from grief," and the woman smiled and prostrated herself before Dilama, who shrank instinctively away like a frightened child. But there is only one law and one will in the harem, and she rose obediently, letting the dove go, and stood ready to follow the slave.
But to Dilama he was something far above her: her king, her lord indeed, for whom she would lay down life itself without question, but not the man to whom her ardent simple nature had turned for love. Ahmed had not sought her.
He had been stabbed as he sat there, waiting for her stabbed from the back, and the dagger thrust through to the little brown spot in the front of the tunic. And through that tiny door his life had gone. Lying at his feet, Dilama sobbed uncontrollably, rolling her head, with its wonderful crown of flower-decked hair, and her pink-silk clad body amongst the rugs on the floor.
The black slave appeared it seemed almost instantly before the curtain; while Dilama still stood, motionless, irresolute, with a curious sense of disappointment, mingling with relief, stealing over her. Ahmed beckoned the slave to him, and said something in a low voice Dilama did not catch, but the last sentence she overheard.
In fact, for the last weeks no one had had time or thought for anything but Buldoula, who lay sick within the palace walls, and attendants waited anxiously or ran hither and thither on various errands, and Ahmed was in the depths of anxiety; and no one thought about Dilama or paid any attention to her, and she was radiantly happy and self-engrossed, and came and went between the garden and her own little chamber as she listed, undisturbed.
He affected now not to see her embarrassment, thinking it to be only that, and said quietly, "And you have been happy, Dilama, in my house?" The girl felt she must speak, though her throat seemed closed and her tongue nerveless. "Very happy," she faltered at last in a whisper. "But you have been lonely, perhaps?" he asked. "Have the roses and doves in the garden been companions enough for you?
The garden stood cool and fragrant, full of perfume and rosy light, full of the music of birds and the tints of a thousand flowers all the invitations to love, but love itself was absent. Dilama searched the garden from end to end, and walked in and out among the roses by the buttressed wall, but the garden was empty and silent. She was alone.
A week had passed over and Ahmed had not sent again for Dilama, nor had Murad visited the garden, and to the Eastern girl it seemed as if the world had stopped still. The hot, languid days, the gorgeous nights with the blaze of the stars and the rapture of the nightingales, filled her with madness that seemed insupportable. She knew of no reason for Murad's desertion. She could find out nothing.
"Dilama, you seem very much afraid of me, and why is it? Look up and speak to me. There is no need for fear. Do you think I have called you here to force you to love me? There is no way of forcing love. You are free to come and go to and from this room as you will, but I am lonely and grieved, now Buldoula has been taken away from me.
The black slave, with a smile on her curving lips, motioned to Dilama to precede her, and Dilama, with one look flung backward to Ahmed's couch in the full sunlight of the window, passed under the heavy blue curtain out into the passage. "Send Soutouma to me!" the words went through her with a cutting feeling, as a knife dividing her flesh.
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