People of the Book

Zahra, the narrator of this chapter who remains unnamed for most of her story, is a girl from a prominent African Muslim family, whose father is killed on a journey. Zahra is dressed as a boy to protect herself from thieves and taken as a slave to Seville, where she works as a painter for Hooman. There, the skills she learned inscribing her father’s medical books are put to work, and eventually she moves to the palace of the notorious emir, who wants portraits done of his new Christian bride, the emira Nura.

At first the emira hates Zahra for painting her, but eventually Zahra proves herself to Nura when she refuses to paint her naked, because “I can’t do this. I know what it is to be raped. You can’t ask me to assist your rapist” (303). From that point the women become lovers, and Zahra paints many portraits of her lover, whom she begins to call by her Christian name, Isabella. The emira becomes pregnant, and unrest in the kingdom causes anxiety among the women. The emira decides one day to send Zahra and her own younger brother Pedro to live with a prominent Jewish doctor, Netanel ha-Levi. There, Zahra is safe through the conflict, but feels betrayed by her lover for sending her away as if she means nothing.

Netanel gives Zahra her name back, refusing to call her just, “al-Mora” (312) or the Moor. Netanel’s son is a deaf-mute boy named Benjamin, and Zahra realizes he cannot understand the complicated stories and rituals of his own faith. On top of her work for the doctor, Zahra creates a series of paintings of Jewish stories, to help Benjamin learn. Despite her comforts, she wishes for freedom: “Freedom, indeed, is the main part of what I lack now in this place where I have honorable work, and comfort enough. Yet it is not my own country” (316).