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easterly winds as the ship moored by the harbor. José looked around. Ambassadors and dignitaries came to greet the caravan of Doña Antonia the Widow. Reyna and José stood side by side, a slab of tension evident between them. They did not speak to one another, and soon this silence took on a degree of effervescence, like the sound of water just before it begins to boil. Her eyes turned and met his briefly. A sudden jolt of pain, (or was it pleasure?) sliced through his core with the force of a swinging machete. She turned away, leaving him in that state of frozen agony.
    A low murmur rose from the crowd, and José looked towards the docked vessel. Doña Antonia appeared, moving slowly with the aid of two young Janissaries sent by the Sultan to assist her.
    Reyna gasped. “It isn’t?” She squinted towards the vessel. José examined the hunched creature that emerged. She was nothing more than a sack of bones. Her skin hung over her withered frame like damp linen laid out on wooden beams to dry.
    “Mother!” she cried out. Reyna gathered the corners of her dress in her fists and ran until she was standing beside Doña Antonia at the dock.
    José followed after her. As he neared, he found a splinter of a woman. The fingers that clasped the tip of her walking stick were gnarled and broken. Her cheek shone with all the bruised shades of sunset.
    “José.” Her raspy voice grated his ears. She held out her trembling, withered arms. “My Boy. My Son .” The word stirred something within him. He dove gently into her embrace, careful not to crush whatever was not yet broken. For a long while, he could not let go.
    In this moment, nothing else mattered.
     
    “I was afraid I’d never see you again,” Reyna confessed to her mother that evening in the parlor.
    With trembling lips, Doña Antonia offered up the weakest of smiles. “Even the longest day has its end.”
    Reyna brought her kerchief to her eyes. “I’m ashamed I haven’t matched you in courage.”
    Doña Antonia extended a bony hand. “You and I, we’re cut from the same cloth.” She weaved her fingers through Reyna’s. “And as long as you remember that, it shall always be true.”
    With tears in her eyes and a tremor in her voice, Reyna lowered her head and whispered, “What did they do to you, Mother?”
    She began in a tone not much louder than a whisper. “By my wrists.” She held out palms branded with purple rope burns. “They took me up by my wrists, hoisted me above a pit of fire. It wasn’t long before my shoulders dislodged and I did confess my sin. ‘ Hear Oh Israel, Adonai is our G-d, Adonai is One. ’ It had been a silent prayer I’d recited every night. For the first and only time in my life, I screamed these words aloud.”
     
    This was the only time she would ever mention her torture or imprisonment. Never again would it be referred to by any member of the household.
     
    They settled in the Galata region of Istanbul, in a stone country home, surrounded by lush gardens and vineyards. The neighborhood boasted vast, sun-drenched piazzas and orderly, parallel streets. Diplomats and Ottoman officials frequented coffee-shops in the area to play backgammon and discuss the politics of the day. It was in this neighborhood that foreigners and diplomats came to live and so the area possessed all the qualities of a well-manicured, European village, rather than the oriental cacophony of jumbled, byzantine dwellings beyond.
    Together, the family agreed the time had come to revert to the surname of their ancestors, Nissim. It was a name meaning “Miracle.”
    José waited several months for his aunt’s wounds to heal. He watched as she put on some weight and her spirits were revived before bringing up what he could no longer bear to keep hidden.
    “I want to be with Reyna,” José confessed one evening.
    Doña Antonia frowned. “You’re not serious are you?” She tried to stand but could not muster the strength to rise out her tufted