Scorpions in the Sand Chapter 1: Abdul-Wahab
"My Lord, our scouts are dead," Marshall Eustache Capet related the words to you and quickly retreated from the royal tent.
It has been nearly a century after the rise of the Arab branch of de Hautveilles; 89 years after the birth of Tarique the Great from these arid lands; you've finally made the pillgrimage back to the birthplace of your ancestors.
The air is hot and dry; you shift uncomfortablly in the plated chainmail. You were about to put on your heavy breastplate, embroidered with the hearld of the Kingdom of Italy, Naples, and Venice; a galloping black stallion upon a field of gold. But after a few seconds of deliberation, you thought better.
It is your first campaign in Aleppo, first time in Africa and the Middle East since your cornation. Your grandma Rafiqa use to tell your father, then the would-be King of Naples, of these lands the tales of the buzzing bazzars, the huge palaces, the grand harems of her father, and her father's father... Being a Hailal, she inherited every bit of her family's relentless drive and tribal stubborness. After the Second Crusade, her family became vassals of their conquerors. She and her eight sisters were scattered acrossed the ruins of her family's former empire. All were sent to Catholic nuneries, taught the learnings of the true faith and were married off to crusader lords of Jerusalem and Egypt and their leiges, the Kings of Hungry and Bohemia. Even though she was brought up as a Catholic at a young age, she insisted on keeping her veil. In the grand nunery of Nubia, her teachers were at once repulsed by her insistance on wearing heathan clothes but at the same time awed by her mastery of language and learning. By 16 she has translated the works of Aristotle from Arabic to Greek, and St. Augustine to Arabic. At her wedding day, under the Cathedrals of Roma and eyes of God, she chose a white burka in place of a wedding dress. Years later, after her death, your grandfather would reminisce: "When the trumpets sounded for the entrance of the bride, I saw a slender figure in a white silouhette enter the door. At first I can barely make out that the shape was a woman, and thought she must be one of the stray guests or maids of honor. But more peopled entered, all following the her. She wore a burka with a long, flowing wedding dress tail, with her face covered." Your grandfather would marry three more times, sire a total of sixteen children, including two bastards, over his lifetime.
"She missed her sisters. They were all she ever had," your grandfather use to tell your father, "although I tried to make her happy. I brought back books from her school in Nubia during my campaign, dates from her family's old garden in Sarqihya." At this place, grandfather would then look away into the distance and, without even looking at father, "in the end she felt that her sisters were her only possessions in this world, they and you."
