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and on. I don’t listen, it’s just sound. Fadina walks me to the door. I’m holding my head up, trying to maintain some dignity. “Hariba,” Fadina whispers.
    “What?” I say, thinking maybe she has realized that it’s the mistress, that it’s not my fault.
    But she just shakes her head, “Try not to upset her, that’s all. Just don’t upset her.” Her face is pleading, she wants me to understand.
    Understand what? That she’s jessed? As Akhmim says, “We are only what we are.”
    But I understand what it’s going to be like, now. The mistress hates me, and there’s nothing I can do. The only way to escape is to ask Mbarek to sell me off, but then I’d have to leave Akhmim. And since he’s a harni, he can’t even ride the train without someone else providing credit. If I leave, I’ll never see him again.
     
    * * *
     
    The room is full of whispers. The window is open and the breeze rustles among the paper flowers. There are flowers everywhere, on the dresser, the chairs. Akhmim and I sit in the dark room, lit only by the light from the street. He comes in the evening to visit me, like my brother sneaking to see another man’s wife. He’s sitting with one leg underneath him. Like some animal, a panther, indolent.
    “You’ll still be young when I’m old,” I say.
    “No,” he says. That is all, just the one word.
    “Do you get old?”
    “If we live out our natural span. About sixty, sixty-five years.”
    “Do you get wrinkles? White hair?”
    “Some. Our joints get bad, swell, like arthritis. Things go wrong.” He’s quiet tonight. Usually he’s cheerful.
    “You’re patient,” I say.
    He makes a gesture with his hands. “It doesn’t matter.”
    “Is it hard for you to be patient?”
    “Sometimes,” he says. “I feel frustration, anger, fear. But we’re bred to be patient.”
    “What’s wrong?” I ask. I sound like a little girl, my voice all breathy.
    “I’m thinking. You should leave here.”
    The mistress is always finding something. Nothing I do is right. She pulls my hair, confines me to my room. “I can’t,” I say, “I’m jessed.”
    He’s still in the twilight.
    “Akhmim,” I say, suddenly cruel, “do you want me to go?”
    “ Harni are not supposed to have ‘wants,’ “ he says, his voice flat. I have never heard him say the word “harni.” It sounds obscene. It makes me get up, his voice. It fills me with nervousness, with aimless energy. If he is despairing, what is there for me? I leave the window, brush my fingers across the desk, hearing the flowers rustle. I touch all the furniture, and take an armload of flowers, crisp and cool, and drop them in his lap. “What?” he says. I take more flowers and throw them over his shoulders. His face is turned up at me, lit by the light from the street, full of wonder. I gather flowers off the chair, drop them on him. There are flowers all over the bed, funeral flowers. He reaches up, flowers spilling off his sleeves, and takes my arms to make me stop, saying, “Hariba, what?” I lean forward and close my eyes.
    I wait, hearing the breeze rustle the lilies, the poppies, the roses on the bed. I wait forever. Until he finally kisses me.
    He won’t do any more than kiss me. Lying among all the crushed flowers, he will stroke my face, my hair, he will kiss me, but that’s all. “You have to leave,” he says desperately. “You have to tell Mbarek, tell him to sell you.”
    I won’t leave. I have nothing to go to.
    “Do you love me because you have to? Is it because you are a harni and I’m a human and you have to serve me?” I ask. He’s never said that he loves me, but I know.
    He shakes his head.
    “Do you love me because of us? Of what we are?” I press. There are no words for the questions I’m asking him.
    “Hariba,” he says.
    “Do you love the mistress?”
    “No,” he says.
    “You should love the mistress, shouldn’t you, but you love me.”
    “Go home, go to the Nekropolis. Run