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❝Once upon a time in Baghdad, a street girl teaches the Khalifa of the kingdom why a king needs a queen.❞
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Started: June 5, 2021.
Completed: March 30, 2022.
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cover by @xniftykayx
featured on wattpad historical fiction, undiscovered...
Being with you and not being with you is the only way I have to measure time.
— Jorge Luis Borges
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Him
"We'll play, but I'll be the princess."
"Princess?"
"Yes, and you're a prince anyway so you can be that."
He shyly smiles at her and nods in agreement to her proposition. She stands up and dusts her dress before twirling around and letting it flutter in the wind. He only admires her with wide, excited eyes.
"Joojoo?" she calls him and grins, motioning for him to join her too. Because of his tiny size and meek composure, and her in contrast being a bold child, she has always been acting as if older than him and in command.
He slowly gets up and walks towards her. She holds his hand and points a finger towards the palace. "This will be our home."
He watches the sun ascending the sky bit by bit as the morning rays once again fall on the kingdom like everyday. But today, it's special. Today after so long she's in the palace back again-- the place where he spent his golden days with her together. Today marks her first day with him in Baghdad, their home, after years of separation.
"Welcome home, habibti."
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Her
Who is a man in this palace? It seems to her every man must unleash the beast within himself as soon as he steps through the palace gates. It seems to her every eye connecting with her eye is only a mirror to the soul of an animal within a man's body. The courtroom is nothing but a wild jungle to her.
"I'm not lying," Noura insists with a thread of begging in her tone after narrating to the people in the court how she found the caliph's seal. From the unconvinced looks on everyone's faces, the knots of nervousness in her stomach tighten.
"Did you see his face?"
The question comes for Zakariya ibn Al Hakam, the grand vizier. Noura looks at him and shakes her head in refutation. He's an aged man with gray beard and specks of faded black in it, but still in his good health and strength, standing tall and strong with his hands tied behind his back. His eyes, unlike the rest of everyone else, have a gleam of kindness and sympathy towards her. He nods at her reply.
"Let us suppose you're telling us the truth, but still until we find the actual culprit we cannot let you go."
"But I didn't steal the seal," Noura protests helplessly.
"Nour," Eskander beside her shushes her softly before directing to the vizier. "Ameer."
The striking difference between the timbre of his voice whilst addressing her or anyone else in the courtroom is of spring breeze or melting iron-- gentle versus burning.
