Why shouldn't I fly so far from here?

Something waits out there. There's something, some high adventure that the people have lingering at their fingertips.

Like dust it coats the air. The smell of it, the hope of it, fills my lungs. I can almost hear it.

It's like the wind of a sandstorm coursing through the world, catching people up and taking them somewhere far away, somewhere they don't yet know they belong.

I want that.

I want the chance to be lost.

I want to be able to look around and not know everyone, not know every detail of the walls and the curtains.

In here, I know what effect the wind will have.

I see the detail of this world in which I live and I it soaks through me.

I am saturated in it, like the sheets the washer women throw over the lines in the afternoon sun. I am heavy with riches, weighed down with satin, and chained by silks.

The day my father mentioned my wedding I could feel my wedding sari wrapping around me like a noose, the cool silk like frozen chains dragging me into a life of wedlock and children.
There is no adventure in that. Every woman I know has a husband and a child. Who goes and sees the world? Who finds adventure once there is a child in their belly?

I am lucky. I have opportunities. I have never hungered. I am comfortable. I understand this.

But I am a bird in a cage; kept to be looked at and enjoyed, but never allowed to fly. And just as a bird may flap and squawk, so can I. I scream and cry and refuse, but just as one ignores a bird's protests as the cage is closed, so my father ignores me.

I know I am a child. I am naïve and protected. I have faced no challenges. But if I never leave this place, won't I always be this way? Won't I be a child forever, playing at wife with a man who teats me as I am.

I know the girl I will become if I stay here. Sad and confined. Cold and callous. Bitter and tired.
I am already tired of these suitors my father brings. They use their silver tongues to draw my gold from me.

If I stay here I will be cold and sad. These walls keep happiness almost as well as they retain heat. They are the lines I will live my life between. The paint curls away from the walls, showing the rough stone beneath.
The colour on my father's words is beginning to fade. His paint is curling. I see how his eyes sag, and how his back aches. The advisers don't. They press him every day; call him into meetings, bring envoys before him, fetch decrees for him to sign. It never ends. The Vizier tries to lessen his load, but there is so much that only the Sultan can do. So much that my husband will need to do. And yet they bring me envious fools.

I understand now why my mother did not live to see me grow.
She put all of her happiness into forming me. Loving me and caring for me throughout those months must have taken everything she had.
It's just a shame she didn't give birth to a boy. A boy who could take over from father long before he became this weak. A boy whose future spouse wouldn't determine the future of his country. A boy who would be trained with a sword and taught how to live outside of walls.

I once asked whether I could be taught how to fight, but my father laughed and bought me new silk.

He tries to love me enough, to make up for my mother, but she is already lost. She won't be resurrected by his loving me. I am his treasure because she was his gold.

What if I dared? Could I not slip out, just for an afternoon? I'm sure he would not notice. Not if I returned soon enough and prepared my maids well enough.

What if I tried? How far would I get? Would I reach that other land, not far from the sea?
I caught a glimpse of Father's maps once. We are not so far away as it looks by eye. Perhaps there is a prince there who wants to be a Sultan, who wants to bring a wife to his exotic land before settling as the ruler of this one.

Am I prepared for what's outside?

For the dust and the noise and the danger.

For the chance and the hope and the possibilities.

What will I find, beyond these palace walls?