Mad, Bad & Dangerous to Know - Samira Ahmed Page 0,3
doesn’t everyone know the names of the Three Musketeers?
“Dumas is my sixth-great-grandfather,” he says.
My mouth drops open. Is he kidding me? I know there’s no such thing as fate. Fate is coincidence. Coincidence is math. But damn, the odds of this . . . I should’ve bought a lottery ticket.
“Alexandre Dumas is your grand-père? No freaking way.” I clear my throat and collect myself, reaching out my hand. “My name is Khayyam Maquet. It’s nice to meet you.”
“Enchanté,” he says.
He’s reluctant to extend a hand back. Our eyes meet. Shaking hands is not the customary French greeting between friends. But we’re only strangers who engaged in witty banter, and I’m not about to kiss this dude on the cheeks. Still, I don’t think he’ll leave me hanging.
“This might sound weird,” I say when he finally does shake, “but follow me. There’s something I want to show you.”
Leila
Haseki.
The favored.
That is what they are compelled to call me. All of them. Eyes cast downward in reverence. Do not aspire to this, I want to warn the young ones. The ones whose rosy lips and cheeks have yet to be introduced to Pasha. But I do not say this. I say little, choosing my words wisely.
This is how you survive.
Study.
Rise through the ranks.
Become irreplaceable.
Become the chosen one.
Find your power. Use it, but softly.
Haseki.
Pasha conferred this once-ancient title upon me, to fashion me after Süleyman’s most beloved and trusted haseki. It is an honor, he told me. A gift.
In that moment, my name was erased, buried under dirt.
But my spirit was not.
Khayyam
The Petit Palais isn’t a palace at all, and it certainly isn’t petit. It was built for the 1900 World’s Fair, l’Exposition Universelle. It’s a trapezoid of stone and steel with marble mosaic floors, immense columns, and a sky-grazing rotunda where I can roam the exhibition halls content in anonymous humidity-controlled solitude—as my barest self, Khayyam, unadorned and unfettered.
Except this time, I’m not alone.
I’m with a boy. A decidedly cute one. Who happens to be an Alexandre Dumas. In other words, a boy who might have answers to the questions banging around in my brain ever since my epic essay fail.
If I believed in kismet/qismat/destinée, I might trust that the universe planned this meeting. There’s a kind of poetry to it. But believing in fate is magical thinking. A lot of people want to find the deeper meaning behind random circumstances. But what’s the point? Extraordinary events are basically chance plus time.
So why are my palms all sweaty?
I can actually hear my friend Julie answering my question with one of her own: Who cares why it all happened? You’re walking around a museum with a cute French guy. Stop overthinking it.
But she’s not here to stop me from considering my clammy hands and fluttery stomach. Maybe I’m nervous because chance and time have collided and brought me to this place. With this boy. In front of this painting—Eugène Delacroix’s The Combat of the Giaour and the Pasha—that I discovered a couple years ago and that inspired me to jump down an art history rabbit hole where I landed with an unceremonious thud. Maybe I shouldn’t tell Alexandre that I’ve dedicated countless hours of my life to find a connection between his ancestor and this painting’s mate—the one in the Giaour series that lives in the Art Institute of Chicago. Maybe not revealing everything about my entire life in the first five minutes of knowing this stranger is a good thing. I should cultivate an air of mystery like a proper French girl.
“You love the Delacroix?” Alexandre asks. “It’s one of my favorites, too.”
“There’s an art world legend that Dumas—that your grand-père—owned this painting,” I manage, glancing shyly at him.
Alexandre arches his eyebrows.
“Well, not this exact one, but one in the Delacroix series that’s in Chicago. At the Art Institute. Where I live. I mean, I live in Chicago. The city. Not the museum. Duh.” I bite my lower lip to stop this embarrassing overflow of spontaneous dork. Proper French-girl