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Amirah

Verlisi (Guard)

Amirah is from Arabia Felix. She once lived in the city of Marib, in Saba, also known as Sheba. Her family was descended from a long line of incense makers and was neither poor nor rich. Their specialty was Al-Luban (Frankincense).

When Amirah was thirteen, she was married to the son of another incense maker and they had a good life together. Suddenly, when she was twenty, a quick and deadly fever struck the city. For some reason, she survived but lost her husband and their four sons and one daughter. Amirah, and her remaining daughter, lived with her mother-in-law, who blamed Amirah for the deaths of her beloved son and grandsons. 

After a year of harsh treatment from her mother-in-law, Amirah fled from the house one night after a beating that had left her bloody and bruised. She hobbled through the night to her own family’s house, only to be turned away in disgrace. She did not know what to do, so she crept to a friend’s house and scratched at her wooden window shutter. When her friend opened the shutter, the sight of Amirah's poor, battered face horrified her. 

She had to sneak Amirah to the back of the house near the kitchen; there she bathed Amirah's face and attended to her cuts and bruises. She insisted that Amirah leave before her mother-in-law could kill her. Amirah agreed, but then cried because she didn’t know how to go about it. Her friend made her wait, with some food to eat, while she took care of her husband and family. Finally, she came back to Amirah in the middle of the night and they plotted her escape. 

Amirah snuck back into her mother-in-law’s house and gathered up her personal things; jewelry her husband had given her that she had kept hidden and other things. She bundled up some clothes and packed it all in some bags. After that, she made her way to the shed where they stored the Al-Luban and stole some of the boxes of the finest degree of resin. With this, she made her way through the city to where the caravans gathered before making the trek across the desert. 

In the morning, her friend found Amirah at a place they had agreed to meet at. She took Amirah to the caravan leader and, to keep her safe and give her some status, she introduced Amirah as her sister who was to be wed to a merchant in another city. 

It took the caravan a few months to cross the desert and finally arrive at Tyre. Once inside the city gates, Amirah slipped away from the caravan and began to explore the city. It was much larger than the one she had come from and filled with many frightening and wonderful things. The most frightening thing to her were the beggars that crowded the streets. She quickly found a tavern and inn near the suq where she could clean and rest. After her dinner that night, she had to think of another way to live. The only thing she had known in life was al-luban and family. 

She decided to take a chance and find another caravan going further away. As she wandered the suq in the morning, Amirah came upon a trader arguing with a merchant about his incense. She watched as the trader stomped off and then gathered her courage to follow him. He turned out to be a very decent man to whom she told the truth of her journey and her wishes. In return for one of the boxes of her finest al-luban, he would take her far away to a place called Byzantium. There, he would introduce her to some of his female relatives who could help her. 

They sailed on a ship, which made Amirah ill for some time before she became accustomed to it. Once the ship had finally reached Byzantium, the man gave Amirah into the care of his female relatives, who, after hearing her story, were very kind. They took her in as one of their own and paid her to work with them. They were spice traders and so Amirah learned about that, too. 

For many months she was happy there, but then she began to feel restless in the giant city. One day, as Amirah was in the suq on an errand, she saw some strangely dressed women. They carried weapons and looked very rough to her. One of them saw her gawking and smiled kindly. She smiled back shyly as the woman approached and began to speak to Amirah. Not knowing the language she was speaking, Amirah was confused, but the strange woman soon realized Amirah did not understand and began to speak in Latin, which Amirah had been learning. 

Amirah learned that these women were called Amazons, warrior women, who lived without men. To her, this sounded good because she still missed her husband and did not like hearing the women she lived with talk about making a match for her. The Amazons told her of their village called Themiscyra. The very next day, Amirah gathered her special things and clothing again and found an excuse to leave, after she had written a note for her benefactresses. Amirah sought out the Amazons she had met the day before and asked to go with them. They agreed to take her. She was on her way to the land of the Amazons! 

Amirah stand five feet, two inches tall and has black hair and eyes and a dark complexion.

Tae'Nah athelfi arche: 5 July 2009

Xena Warrior Princess is  © Studios USA, Universal City Studios, Inc. Webset design and content ©2007 Crescent Designs for Themiscyra Amazon Nation. Many thanks to Mike's Xena Page for most of the captures.