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The Fierce and Tender Sheikh
ALEXANDRA SELLERS


The instructions were simple: seek out and return home with the long-lost princess of Bagestan now that her family had regained control of the throne.But when he found her, Sheikh Sharif Azad al Dauleh fell hard and fast for Princess Shakira's sultry smile and mysterious aura. She was everything he never thought he'd wanted in a wife, and yet her fiery nature promised a lifetime of passion.He knew he needed to convince Shakira of the importance of fulfilling her duty to both family and country - but bringing her back wasn't nearly as tempting as keeping her all for himself….






He Said He Had Waited Too Long To Hold Her.


She put her hand in his but as he drew her closer, she protested nervously, “I’ve never danced with a man before. I don’t know what to do.”

“It’s like walking. Shift your weight back and forth between your feet, and let me give you your direction.”

Shakira felt enclosed and safe. The music seemed to flow through them, wrap around them, binding them together, so that after a time it seemed as though something else created the dance, using their bodies.

A singing heat tingled on her skin when he touched her. His hand moved against her bare back, and she felt a shivering response down her spine. He bent his head to murmur something, and even his breath against her neck caused a delicious melting.

Then he dropped his hands and she knew she had been wrong about the bonds that linked them. They were not the product of the music, but something else. Because they were still there, binding her to him, when the music stopped. And she regretted that this moment ever had to end.


Dear Reader,

Silhouette Desire is starting the New Year off with a bang as we introduce our brand-new family-centric continuity, DYNASTIES: THE ASHTONS. Set in the lush wine-making country of Napa Valley, California, the Ashtons are a family divided by a less-than-fatherly patriarch. We think you’ll be thoroughly entranced by all the drama and romance when the wonderful Eileen Wilks starts things off with Entangled. Look for a new book in the series each month…all year long.

The New Year also brings new things from the fabulous Dixie Browning as she launches DIVAS WHO DISH. You’ll love her sassy heroine in Her Passionate Plan B. SONS OF THE DESERT, Alexandra Sellers’s memorable series, is back this month with the dramatic conclusion, The Fierce and Tender Sheikh. RITA


Award-winning author Cindy Gerard will thrill you with the heart-stopping hero in Between Midnight and Morning. (My favorite time of the night. What about you?)

Rounding out the month are two clever stories about shocking romances: Shawna Delacorte’s tale of a sexy hero who falls for his best friend’s sister, In Forbidden Territory, and Shirley Rogers’s story of a secretary who ends up winning her boss in a bachelor auction, Business Affairs.

Here’s to a New Year’s resolution we should all keep: indulging in more desire!

Happy reading,






Melissa Jeglinski

Senior Editor, Silhouette Desire




The Fierce and Tender Sheikh

Alexandra Sellers










ALEXANDRA SELLERS


is the author of over twenty-five novels and a feline language text published in 1997 and still selling.

Born and raised in Canada, Alexandra first came to London as a drama student. Now she lives near Hampstead Heath with her husband, Nick. They share housekeeping with Monsieur, who jumped through the window one day and announced, as cats do, that he was moving in.

What she would miss most on a desert island is shared laughter.

Readers can write to Alexandra at P.O. Box 9449, London NW3 2WH, UK, England.




Contents


1 Hani

Hani’s Dream

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

2 Shakira

Shakira’s Dream

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

3 Princess

The Princess’s Dream

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

4 The Beloved

The Dream of the Beloved

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Epilogue



1




Hani’s Dream


In the dream she had a name. Her own true name. In the dream she knew who she was.

She wasn’t alone, in the dream. She had a home and a family, her own true family. The beloved faces she had lost so long ago were restored to her, in other faces that somehow belonged to her.

She wasn’t hungry, in the dream, and they told her that she would never go hungry again. And there was water there, clean water, to wash in as well as to drink. Nor did she sleep in mud under a filthy tent, nor in a tiny, stifling room with bars on the windows. No, she had a bed so large and comfortable and clean she could not sleep for the freshness and wonder of it, and a room so airy and beautiful that in the dream she wept to see it.

In the dream they said—her family—that it belonged to her by right and that she would never again be lost to them. People called her Princess in the dream, as if she were someone to cherish. Someone important, someone worth loving.

In the dream, she was a woman.




One


The desert lay smoking under the burning sun, rugged and inhospitable all the way to the distant mountains. Cutting across it, the highway made no compromise with the terrain, a grey, featureless ribbon streaking over gully and flat with ruthless self-importance: the hostile conspiring with the inflexible to produce a faceless indifference to human need.

A large flatbed truck, its load covered with a bright blue plastic tarpaulin and fixed with ropes, was roaring over the lonely stretch of highway, smoky dust rising from its passing, as if the flat tarmac were setting fire to its wheels and it had to keep moving or be consumed.

Far behind, on the otherwise empty road, in a glinting silver car that was quickly gaining on the truck, Sheikh Sharif Azad al Dauleh flicked his eyes from the map flattened against the steering wheel to the view out the window. No sign of his destination yet. All that met his gaze was the barren landscape, sere and rust-coloured, scratched with gullies as if by a giant claw, dotted with parched scrub. As barren as any Bagestani desert, and yet unmistakably alien. He could not feel at home here.

It was a printed map, on which the site he was searching the desert for was marked only in pen. Burry Hill Detention Centre had been scratched above a rough X near the line that was the road, some miles from the nearest town. His eyes flicked over the landscape, looking for evidence of a side road. According to his information, it would not be sign-posted. The general public was not encouraged to drop in at refugee camps.

He tossed the map down and sighed. A difficult mission, the Sultan had said. But neither Ashraf nor he himself had had any idea of the nature of the difficulties that would confront him. The assignment to find a lost member of the royal family, somewhere in the world’s refugee camps, was not merely a logistical nightmare; it was an emotional black hole. The scale of suffering he had seen was something no one could be prepared for.

The truck was belching a noxious, thick grey smoke. The sheikh put his foot down harder and pulled into the passing lane.

At the back of the truck, behind the veil of smoke and fumes, a bundle wrapped in dust-coloured cloth flapped wildly, as if about to be torn from its mountings: a boy, clinging to the ropes. The truck had a stowaway.

A thin, starved stowaway, agile as a monkey, who was coming down off the top of the load with an audacity that made Sharif’s groin contract. He watched as the boy stretched down one thin leg till his bare foot found the bumper. Then, standing, he glanced over his shoulder to check the road behind. Sharif realized with horror that his own car must be in the boy’s blind spot, for he now leaned out at the side of the truck opposite to the car, clinging with one hand, as if preparing to jump.

Sharif cursed in impotent amazement. Was he watching a suicide? But even as he slapped his hand to the horn, the stowaway lifted an arm and tossed something under the truck’s wheels.

The sound of an explosion drowned his own blaring horn. Ahead, the truck slewed into his path and shuddered to a halt. Pulling his own wheel to avoid a collision, he saw the small, slim figure leap nimbly down into the road directly in front of him.

Only then did the boy discover his presence. He flung a look of stunned horror towards the oncoming car, his eyes locking with Sharif’s for one appalling second, landed awkwardly, grimaced with pain, and rolled in a desperate attempt to get out of his path.

The car’s tires bit hard into the super-hot tarmac, screaming and jolting in protest as Sharif simultaneously hauled on the emergency brake and dragged at the wheel. Gravel flailed up against the body and windows with a sound like gunfire, and the hot, sharp smell of rubber pierced the air.

The silver car came to rest on the shoulder, its nose a foot or two from the banked edge that slanted sharply down to the desert floor. Ahead, the truck was angled the other way, its body forming a wide V with the car. Between them lay the boy, his thin arms wrapping his head, panting hard. Around him was a spread of fallen objects—chocolate bars, a toy, something that glittered pathetically in the harsh sun. An orange, its bright colour shocking in this dun-coloured landscape, rolled lazily along the tarmac.

The silence of settling dust. Sharif opened his door and got out. He was tall, as tall as the Sultan himself, with a warrior’s build and a proud, some might say arrogant, posture. His long face was marked by a square jaw and a straight nose inherited from his foreign mother. His upper lip was well-formed, his firm, full lower lip the sign of a deep and passionate nature which few ever saw. Dark eyes under low-set, almost straight brows showed the intense intelligence of the mind behind. His cheekbones were strong, his skin smooth. His fine black hair was cut short and neat, the curl tamed back from the wide, clear forehead.

The boy sat up, fighting to catch his breath. He seemed otherwise unhurt.

“You little fool,” Sharif said.

“Where…where did you…come from?” the boy panted.

His thick, sunburnt hair was chopped ragged. In the sharply revealed bone structure of the starved little face, the jaw was square but delicate for a boy, sloping down to a pointed chin. His wide, full mouth was too big for his thin face. So were the eyes. He was too young for the age in his eyes—but so were they all, in the camps. Sharif guessed him at about fourteen.

Sharif gave a bark of angry laughter. “Where did I come from? What the hell were you doing? You’re lucky to be alive!”

For a moment the boy simply gazed at him wide-eyed, taking in the sight of Sharif’s proud, stern handsomeness, the flowing white djellaba and keffiyeh so alien to this land.

“Yes. Thank you,” said the boy.

This was so unexpected that this time Sharif’s laughter was genuine. He drew a gold case out of the pocket of his djellaba, extracted a thin black cigar, and set it between his teeth. The boy, meanwhile, still breathing hard, got up on his knees and reached for a chocolate bar, then grimaced with sudden pain and turned to nurse one ankle.

Sharif paused in the act of pulling out his lighter. “Are you hurt?”

“No,” the boy lied, as if to admit to any weakness would be dangerous. Setting his teeth against pain, he turned doggedly to the task of gathering up his loot.

Sharif set his foot on a blue plastic ring in a brightly printed cardboard mount just as the boy’s fingers reached for it. The boy looked up into the dark eyes so far above, his gaze challenging, assessing.

“How bad?” Sharif asked.

The boy shrugged.

“How badly are you hurt?” Sharif insisted.

“What do you care? Does it make you feel better to think that you’re concerned? When you go on your way in your nice shiny car will it give you a warm feeling to know that you asked after my health?”

The cynicism was brutal, for it told of years of suffering, and the boy was still only a child. That such complete absence of trust could exist in a human breast suddenly struck Sharif as deeply tragic. He suddenly, urgently wanted this damaged child to understand that there was genuine goodness in the world.

Simultaneously he derided himself for the sentiment. He had visited nothing but scenes from hell for weeks past, and he had managed to keep his head above water. Why now? Why this skinny kid who trusted no one? He emphatically did not want to be drawn in. It was a one-way trip. Take one member of suffering humanity personally and there was no end to it. Like a surgeon, he had to keep a clinical distance.

“Don’t be a fool. Get in the car. I’ll take you to a doctor.”

The boy visibly flinched. “No, thanks. Are you going to lift your foot? I need this.” He tried to pull whatever it was out from under Sharif’s foot, but succeeded only in tearing the packaging.

They had both forgotten the trucker. Having moved his truck off the road, he now came towards them at a furious jog.

“You bloody little scum!” he cried, descending on the boy. “What were you playing at? You’re one of those bloody refugees, aren’t you?”

He grabbed the boy’s wrist and dragged him to his feet, spilling all his gathered possessions onto the ground again. The boy cried out with pain.

“Refugees?” Sharif Azad al Dauleh queried softly, his voice cutting through the other’s anger.

There was a pause as the trucker absorbed the powerful frame, the proud posture, the clothing from that other desert a world away.

“That’s Burry Hill over there.” He nodded towards the cruel, uncompromising rows of curling razor wire just visible in the distance across the bleak scrubland, ignoring the boy silently struggling in his ruthless hold. “It’s not as secure as the others. People say they can get out, but there’s nowhere to go, so they have to go back. I’ve heard of this trick—they throw some kind of firework under your wheels and when you stop they jump off and are out over the desert before you can catch them.

“But not this time, eh?” He jerked at the boy’s wrist and showed his teeth. “Not this time.”

“Let me go, you stinking camel-stuffer!” shrieked the boy, suddenly abandoning English to revert to a patois that seemed to be a mixture of languages, of which Bagestani Arabic and Parvani formed the chief part. A stream of insult followed.

Sharif flicked the gold lighter alive, a smile twitching his lips for the rich fluency of the invective as the boy informed the trucker that he was a man who didn’t know one end of a goat from the other, but wasn’t particular about it anyway. He briefly bent to the flame. When he lifted his head again his eyes fell on the boy’s contorted face, and for a moment he went perfectly still.

“Come here, you little—” The trucker was trying to deliver a kick, but even with his hurt foot, the boy was proving too agile. Beside the well-fed driver, he looked like a stick insect.

“Eater of the vomit of dogs!”

The lighter closed with an expensive click and Sharif Azad al Dauleh lifted his head and took the cigar out of his mouth.

“Let him go.”

At the sound of the cold command, the trucker’s eyes popped in disbelief. “What?” he demanded.

“You’re bigger than he is. And you can remember your last meal.”

“What’s that got to do with it? He could have killed us both! He’s a thief, too! Look at all this stuff—nicked, for sure!” cried the driver, indicating the litter of items on the ground.

“Let him go.”

“You’re out…”

Looking up into the taller man’s eyes, the driver hesitated. Arms crossed over his chest, eyes narrowed against the smoke, Sharif smiled. The boy, taking advantage of a slackened grip, broke free and limped past Sharif to shelter, panting, behind the open car door.

“I think you’re mistaken. You ran over a plastic bottle,” Sharif said.

There was a long moment of challenge. The trucker looked from the dark-eyed sheikh to the dark-eyed boy, and sneered.

“I get it. One of your own, is he?”

“Yes,” said Sharif softly. “One of my own.”

Something in his face made the other man step back. “Well, I don’t have time for this,” he blustered. “I’ve got a timetable!” He spat violently down at the boy’s strewn possessions, then turned and strode back towards his own vehicle.

A moment later the truck was roaring down the road again, as though trying to escape the smoke of its own exhaust.

Sharif Azad al Dauleh remained where he was for a moment, gazing out over the desert towards the barbed wire and the painful glitter of the metal roofs, trying to make sense of what he thought he’d seen. Maybe he’d had too much sun.

“Come out!” he ordered, without raising his voice.

He turned his head as the slim figure straightened from behind the door.

The boy looked starved. The bare arms under the baggy T-shirt sleeves were painfully thin, and the long neck and hollow cheeks only intensified the impression that he needed a square meal. But there was no mistaking the resemblance, once he had seen it.

“What’s your name?” Sharif asked softly, in Bagestani Arabic.

The boy looked at him, breathing hard, a wounded animal only waiting for the return of his strength to flee. At the question, his eyes went blank.

“I have a reason for asking,” Sharif prodded in an urgent voice.

In the same pithy language he had used with the trucker, the boy advised him on the precise placement of his reason and his question. The advice was colourful and inventive.

“Tell me your father’s name.”

For one unguarded moment, the boy’s face became a mask of grief. Then his eyes went blank again, and he shrugged in a to hell with you kind of way and limped painfully to pick up an orange. Sharif lifted his foot to free whatever the toy was, and for a moment the boy gave off a deep animal wariness, as if this might be a prelude to violence. He didn’t rank Sharif an inch higher than he did the trucker.

One eyebrow raised in dry comment on the boy’s suspicions, Sharif bent and picked up the object. The boy stowed the rest of the things in his pockets under the loose T-shirt, then stood a few feet from Sharif.

“It’s mine. Give it to me.”

Sharif took the cigar from his mouth. “Didn’t you steal it?”

“What do you care? I stole it, you didn’t. It’s mine. If you keep it, you’re a thief, too, no better than me. Give it to me.”

The boy was favouring his foot so carefully Sharif guessed the dance with the trucker had broken a bone. The important thing was to get him to a doctor. He would worry about the other later.

He tossed the object to the boy and jerked his head. “Get in the car.”

But the boy snatched it from the air, whirled and, not limping nearly so heavily now, made for the embankment.

“Don’t be a fool!” Sharif snapped. “You’re hurt! Let me take you to a doctor!”

His mouth stretched in a mocking smile, the boy flicked a backward glance. And with sunlight and shadow just so, his cheekbones and eyes again revealed that shape the Cup Companion knew so well.

“What’s your name? Who is your family?”

But the boy slithered down the slope and was running almost before he landed on the desert floor. A moment later, deft as an Aboriginal hunter, he had disappeared into the landscape.




Two


“Is it you, my son? Did God bring you luck?”

Farida lay on the bed beside her baby, her sweat-damped dark hair loosely knotted in a scarf, trying to comfort the whimpering infant with a sugar-soaked knot of cloth. As Hani entered, the young mother looked up, wiping a hand over her wet face with a sigh. The room was at cooking temperature, though the only natural light came from a small barred window that was too high to see out.

The boy approached and began to draw things out from under his T-shirt. Chocolate bars, a bracelet, a child’s teething ring, oranges appeared in quick succession on the bed in front of Farida. The tired young mother smiled and reached out to turn the items over, one by one.

“How do you do it?” she asked, shaking her head in admiration.

The boy only shrugged and set down a few more items—some useful in themselves, some that would be traded. It was a foolish question: Hani managed things no one else dreamed of.

He was a born forager. Perhaps it was the elfin quickness, or simply long experience and luck, but Hani kept his family supplied while others went without. It had been a happy day for Farida when the boy had attached himself to her, for although he was young and slight, he had spent years in the camps, and he was tough, with the intelligence of a much older man. His speed and cunning often protected them where a grown man would have used brawn.

Probably he used his fluent English to fool the people in the shops. No one in the camp knew of his talent—and how useful that was! Hani always knew what was going on in the camp, simply by eavesdropping around the administrative office. It was he who had first heard the news of the Sultan’s emissary.

The boy brought one last item out of a pocket and dropped it on the bed. A black leather wallet.

Farida’s mouth formed an O as she saw it: Hani didn’t often pick pockets. The wallet was obviously expensive, made of fine, soft leather. Farida reached for it, and her fingers found the cash inside with a little sigh. Quickly she counted it, and smiled. Oh, how easy such an amount would make their lives, for days, weeks!

She passed the money to Hani, who reached for the plastic yogurt container, stuffed with a rusty pot scratcher, a bar of green soap and a sponge, that sat on the little stand between a dishwashing bowl and a bucket of water. He lifted out the inner pot and tucked the money inside the larger pot, then carefully restored the inner container and set the pot down again. Their bank.

“Barakullah! What is this?” Farida hissed. She stared down at the gold seal and the delicate calligraphy of the business card she had found in the wallet. “‘His Excellency Sharif Azad al Dauleh…’” As she understood, her mouth fell open in an almost comical expression of mingled astonishment and dismay. “You have robbed a Bagestani diplomat?” she cried in a hoarse whisper, for the walls were not thick. “How? Where was he? How did you get close to him?”

Hani scooped a dipperful of water from the bucket to rinse the blue teething ring over the bowl, then splashed his face and neck with small, bony hands. He handed the rubber ring to the baby.

“On the road. His car was behind the truck I hitched a ride on. He might have killed me, but his reflexes were very fast.”

Farida stared. “Were you hurt?”

The boy shrugged.

“Tell me what happened.”

Farida got to her feet and began to pace the tiny area of free space in the centre of the cramped room as she listened to the boy’s recital. Over her shoulder the baby chewed the teething ring and watched Hani, wide-eyed and curious.

“My son, he saved your life, and he saved you from a beating, and you stole his wallet?” she said, when he had finished.

Hani only looked at her.

“Oh, Hani, but think!—it must be him! Sultan Ashraf’s envoy!”

For days the detention centre had been buzzing with the rumour that a high official from Bagestan was expected at the camp. His reason for coming wasn’t known, but hopes were very high among the Bagestanis in the camp that it had something to do with repatriating them, now that the new Sultan was safe on the throne. And even the ragtag representatives of the half-dozen other strife-torn nations here were half convinced it meant their own salvation.

“He was travelling alone, not even a driver. Diplomats on missions to refugee camps don’t come without assistants and the media,” the boy said with cynical wisdom.

“Perhaps his entourage is coming later. Why else would such a man be in a place like this? Ya Allah! The Sultan’s own Cup Companion! If only he doesn’t realize you are the thief, Hani! Do you think he will recognize you if he sees you again?”

An abrupt knocking sounded against the door.

The young mother jerked spasmodically, clutching the wallet, and the baby opened her mouth, let the new teething ring fall, and began to wail again.

“What shall we do?” Farida hissed.

“Give it to me,” Hani said and, stretching out one thin arm, plucked the wallet from Farida’s trembling hand. In a moment it had disappeared again under the baggy T-shirt.

“Hani!” Farida whispered, but another knock sounded, and there was no time to argue. Her eyes black with anxiety, Farida opened the door.

It was one of the “guards,” men from the refugee community who were badged and assigned the task of liaison between the staff and inhabitants of the community. What the camp authorities didn’t understand, or didn’t want to, was that on those badges a ruthless camp mafia was founded and nourished.

He frowned at Hani.

“You went into town today,” he growled in the camp patois. His eyes went past Farida to the bed, where the pathetic rewards of the foraging expedition still lay. “Let me see!”

Hani leapt for him, grabbing his arm, in a bid to protect the hard-won treasures. But the guard was big and ruthless, and merely threw the boy to one side, so that he fell against the sink. For a moment he clung there, half kneeling, nursing his injured ankle.

He cursed the guard with the fierce contempt of the powerless. “A baby soother!” he said. “Do you want to suck on it? Maybe your rotten teeth will grow again!”

Then he was up again, jumping onto the brute’s back as he bent over the bed. His small fist pummelled the man’s ear. A big, powerful hand grabbed the thin wrist and brutally twisted, so that the boy cried out and submitted. He was tossed down like a sack of waste.

The guard’s eye had fallen on the telltale sparkle of the bracelet. He snatched it up, scooping two chocolate bars at the same time.

“My share,” he said, grinning. He held up the bracelet to admire. “Someone will like this.” His voice held a gloating note, and the boy’s wide mouth twisted with helpless fury.

“May God make you too limp to enjoy her!”

“What else?” said the man, ignoring the insult, his eyes hot with anger, but hotter still with greed. He held out his hand toward the boy on the floor, palm up, the fingers moving invitingly. Hani and Farida gazed at him, willing themselves not to glance at the yogurt pot.

“Give.”

A step outside the door broke the tension.

“Farida, where are you? Have you heard? The Sultan’s envoy has arrived at last! A Cup Companion himself! They say he is searching for someone!” a voice cried from the doorway. “He is visiting every room. Come out and see!”

Her eyes liquid with terror, Farida stared at Hani. But it was impossible to get rid of the wallet now.



“Good morning, Rashid, morning Mrs. Rashid,” the camp director said cheerfully. “What’s the story here, Alison?”

His assistant wiped her damp forehead, replaced her hat and consulted the sheaf of documents on her clipboard. “Rashid al Hamza Muntazer, his wife, seven children. Joharis. We don’t have their exact ages, but the nurse has estimated them as all under twelve.”

Sharif Azad al Dauleh, Cup Companion to the Sultan of Bagestan, touched his fist to his heart in respectful greeting to the family. The brief conversation that followed differed little from thousands of others he had heard over the past weeks. Please tell them the children should be in school, that my wife is very depressed. I am a construction engineer. I want to work. Please ask them how long we will be kept here.

The group moved on, the anguish ringing in his ears. As at every camp, it was the same tale of nightmare and waste, endlessly repeated. Each one a variation of hell on earth.

They had covered over half of the detention centre now, and Sharif had almost despaired of finding the boy. His instinct told him that a child as wily as that would have some hiding place, and having stolen Sharif’s wallet—a fact which Sharif had discovered without surprise when he returned to the car—he had every reason to hide to avoid a meeting.

But it was imperative that he find the boy again.

At the next door, a Bagestani woman held a baby, another child clutching her skirt.

“This is Mrs. Sabzi,” the assistant read aloud. “She has three children—a son, Hani, a daughter, Jamila, and the baby.”

Sharif brought a fist to his breast and bowed.

“Excellency.” Farida returned the salute, then stood rocking the baby and looking anxiously at him. Her eyes wide with fascination, the baby reached one hand to the Cup Companion, letting go of her teething ring.

The blue rubber teething ring that he had last seen under his own foot on the highway.

Sharif smiled. Got you! he told the boy mentally, putting out a finger to the baby, who clutched it and fixed him with a heart-rending look.

“You have a son, Mrs. Sabzi?” he asked.

Alarm darkened her eyes, and she licked her lips. “I—yes, my son, Hani.”

Sharif smiled. “May I meet him?”

“Excellency, you are very kind! It is good of you, but you are an important man and my son…” She shrugged to show how unimportant her son was.

Sharif inclined his head. “If he is here, I would like to meet him.”

“Alas, he is not well, Excellency! I have told him to stay in bed, though he was very eager to meet you. We are Sabzi people, Excellency, from the islands,” she said brightly, in an obvious effort to turn the conversation.

“Is your son here now?”

“Yes—no!” the woman began, and then her eyes moved, and her small gasp made Sharif look towards the door of her room. There was the boy, gazing straight at him with an accuse-and-be-damned look. He limped towards his mother and she put an arm around his shoulder, drawing him against her.

“Here is Hani, Excellency!” she said, her voice going up an octave, though she tried to appear calm. “You see he is not so ill that he will stay in bed when a Cup Companion of the Sultan visits!”

She looked anxiously between Sharif and the boy as if expecting him to denounce the boy, and almost wept in relief when instead he said, “You say you are from the Gulf Islands?”

“Yes, Excellency. Our home was the island of Solomon’s Foot. They destroyed our house and drove us out of the island. My husband was arrested. Fifteen months, Excellency, and I have heard no news of him!”

“The Sultan’s people are working to reunite all political prisoners with their families. I hope you will soon hear news of your husband, Mrs. Sabzi.”

“But here we are so far away! Many, many thousand miles, they say. How will my husband find us? Please tell the Sultan that we want to come home.”

Unless she was a miracle of preservation, she was not old enough to be the boy’s mother. Sharif’s gaze raked her face for a resemblance to the boy. Family connections were often constructs in the camps, partly because of Western ignorance of the importance of certain relationships in other cultures, partly because distant relationships increased in importance when many family members had been lost. So great-uncles became fathers, and second cousins became brothers and sisters, to satisfy the requirements of an alien authority.

But he could see no trace of family resemblance at all.

“Your husband, Mrs. Sabzi…” he began.

“I think you have dropped something, Excellency,” the boy interrupted.

The mother choked with alarm.

Sharif glanced down to see his wallet lying against his foot. The boy bent to retrieve it, straightened and, with a level, challenging look, offered it to him.

The director blinked. “Is that your wallet?” he cried in English. “How did it get there?”

“It must have fallen from my pocket,” Sharif replied.

“I doubt it very much,” said the director dryly. “You’d better check to see what’s missing.”

“Shokran,” Sharif said to the boy. Thank you. He took the wallet, his fingers brushing the boy’s with a jolting awareness of his painful thinness. Why didn’t this woman who called herself his mother take better care of her adopted son? And what were the camp authorities about, to allow a child to starve like this?

Sharif flipped the wallet open. The cash was gone. He understood the boy’s deliberate, self-destructive challenge, but instead of anger he felt a deep sorrow.

“Everything accounted for,” he said quietly, pocketing the wallet.

“Excellency, you are a good man!” the mother exploded in a rush of relief, lifted her arm from the boy’s shoulders, seized his hand and kissed it. “We are simple people, and life is so empty here. Our house must be rebuilt, but we are ready for hard work. Only tell us that we may go home!” The boy, meanwhile, looked stunned. His eyes were black with confusion and mistrust as he gazed at Sharif. Kindness completely unsettled him, and that, too, flooded Sharif’s heart with sadness.




Three


Hani sat on a rock and gazed out over the barren plain in the profound darkness, his stomach aching with a hunger that was not for food. A light breeze was blowing from the mountains. The air was dry, with the desert dust and the astringent perfume of a plant whose name he didn’t know combining to create the familiar scent of desolation. Stars glittered in the black, new moon sky overhead, their alien configurations reminding him how far away from home he was. Along the distant highway now and then long fingers of light dragged a lone car through the darkness. The town lay fragmented on the distant horizon, a broken wineglass catching the starlight.

Everything else was night. Behind him, the camp had a ghostly glow, throwing barbed wire shadows on the desert floor, but the rock where he sat hidden shrouded the thin figure.

For the first time in a long time, Hani was thinking about the past. The stranger’s voice had stirred memories in him. Those strange memories he didn’t understand—of a handsome man, a smiling woman…other children. In those memories he had a different name.

Your name is Hani. Forget that other name. You must forget.

He had been obedient to the command. Mostly he had forgotten. In the dim and distant memory that was all that remained—or was it a dream?—life was a haze of gentle shade, cool fountains, and flowers.

She had played in a beautiful courtyard by a reflecting pool, amid the luscious scent of roses carried from flower beds that surrounded it on all sides. In that pool the house was perfectly reflected, its beautiful fluted dome, its tiled pillars, the arched balconies. When the sun grew hot, there were fountains. Water droplets were carried on the breeze to fall against her face and hair.

Now, in this water-starved world, he could still remember the feeling of delight.

And then one day the fountain was silent. He remembered that, and her brother—was it her brother?—his face stretched and pale. There are only two of us now, he had said, holding her tight. I’ll look after you.

Will we watch the fountains again? she had asked, and though her brother had not answered, she knew. They had stayed alone in the silent house, she didn’t know how long. One morning she had awakened to find herself in a strange place and her brother gone.

You must be a boy now, they had told her. Your name is Hani. And when she protested that she already had a name, Forget your old name. That is all gone. Your brother is gone. We are your family now, we will look after you. See, here are your new brothers and sisters.

And he had forgotten the name. He became Hani, a boy, without ever knowing why, and the old life faded. He had shared a bedroom with four others in a small, hot apartment that had no pool, no fountains, no rose beds. If he asked about such things, his stepmother first pretended not to hear, and then, if Hani persisted, grew angry.

Who were the people he remembered? His heart said the tall man was his father, the smiling woman his mother, the other children his sisters and brothers, whose names he could, sometimes, almost remember.

No. We are your family. Here are your sisters and brothers.

Something about the stranger made him remember that life long since disappeared, that life that he had been forbidden to remember. The memory ached in him, as fresh as if the loss were the only one he had suffered, as if the dark years since had never blunted the edge of that grief with more and then more.

The stranger’s voice had been like the voices he had heard long ago, like his father’s, summoning up another world.

Don’t think about that, don’t say anything. You must forget….

Was it a dream only? Had his childish, unhappy mind made it all up? And yet he remembered his father and mother smiling at him, remembered a cocoon of love.

One day, when you are older, you must know the truth. But not now…

And then it was too late. After the bomb, his stepmother had stared at Hani helplessly before she died, her eyes trying to convey the message that her torn, bleeding throat could not speak.

Who were they, the people whose faces he remembered, the memory of whose love sometimes, in the bleakness of a loveless existence, had surged up from the depths of his heart to remind him of what was possible? Where was that home, that he could sometimes see so clearly in his mind’s eye, and why was it all suddenly so fresh before him now?



In the nearest thing to a luxury hotel the town had, Sharif Azad al Dauleh stood on a darkened balcony, a phone to his ear, waiting to hear the Sultan’s voice. Although the desert air was cool, he was naked except for the towel around his hips. Above it the smoke-bronze skin, the long, straight back, the lean-muscled stomach, arms and chest gave him the look of a genie from a particularly beautiful lamp.

“I offer you a mission,” the Sultan had said.

The manservant had brought a tray of cool drinks as the Sultan bent over a document file and opened it. Tall glasses of juice had been poured out and set down, a dish of nuts arranged, invisible traces of nothing at all removed with the expert flick of a white cloth.

On top of the thin sheaf of documents was the photograph of a young child, a girl. Ashraf slipped it off the pile and handed it to Sharif, then sat back, picked up his glass and drank.

The Cup Companion examined the photograph. The child’s eyes gazed at him, trusting and happy, with the unmistakable, fine bone structure around the eyes that was the hallmark of the al Jawadi. Sharif knew that members of the royal family were still surfacing from every point on the globe, but this child he had never seen.

“My cousin, Princess Shakira,” Sultan Ashraf had murmured.

Sharif waited.

“She is the daughter of my cousin Mahlouf. Uncle Safa’s son.”

Sharif’s thick eyelashes flicked with surprise. Among the first of the royal family to be assassinated by Ghasib after the coup, it was Prince Safa whose death had prompted the old Sultan to command all his heirs to take assumed names and go into hiding. This was the first Sharif had heard that Prince Safa had left descendants, but anything was possible.

“Safa had a child by his first wife—the singer Suhaila.”

“I had no idea that Safa had been married to Bagestan’s Nightingale!”

“Few did. It was an ill-fated, short-lived marriage, when he was very young. She left him while she was still pregnant. In later years, although a connection was kept up, the public was not aware that Prince Safa was Mahlouf’s father. But the files of Ghasib’s secret police prove that they knew. Mahlouf, with his wife and family, died in a traffic accident in the late eighties. We now learn that it was no accident.”

A muscle tightened in Sharif’s jaw as he glanced at the document Ashraf handed him. By its markings, it had been culled from the files of the dictator’s secret police. Mechanically he noted the code name of the agent who had masterminded the assassination.

“We have this man, Lord,” he said in grim satisfaction.

“So I have been informed. But that isn’t the issue here. A child escaped. We had always believed that the whole family was killed in the accident. But these files suggest that we were wrong, and that Mahlouf’s youngest daughter, Shakira, was not in the car. The secret police got wind of this rumour, but apparently never managed to trace her.

“We’ve now received independent confirmation of the rumour, from someone who says Shakira was secretly adopted by the dissident activist Arif al Vafa Bahrami.”

“Barakullah!” Sharif sat up, blinking.

“Yes, he was even more loyal than we knew. But we have no further information. Bahrami escaped to England, and the family was there for years, waiting for their appeal for asylum to be heard, before Arif was assassinated in the street,” Ash said. “If the story is true, Shakira should have been with them. But there’s no record of a child with that name.”

“Would they have given her a different name?” Sharif suggested.

“Maybe.” The Sultan leaned back in his chair and sighed. “But there are compelling arguments against the idea, Sharif. After Arif Bahrami’s death the British Home Office ruled that his wife and children were no longer at risk and must return to Bagestan. There was an appeal. We’ve now received the transcript of that appeal from the British government. Arif’s wife made no mention of harbouring a descendant of the Sultan. Yet such information would surely have strengthened the family’s case for being allowed to stay.”

“The child would have gone straight onto Ghasib’s death list,” Sharif pointed out. “And not merely Princess Shakira—the whole family would have been in danger.” He paused and took a sip of juice, set down his glass. “What was the result of the appeal?”

“It failed. The family were deported from Britain.”

Sharif’s lips tightened into grimness.

“They were accepted by Parvan, however, and went there—not long before the Kaljuk invasion.”

The Sultan absently tidied the file, putting the photograph on top. He sat for a moment with his hands framing it, gazing down on his young cousin’s face.

“Records from Parvan show the name Bahrami in a refugee camp that was bombed during the Kaljuk War. Survivors apparently went to an Indonesian refugee camp, but after that records are chaotic. Someone who might be one of the Bahrami children appears among the records of orphans there, but that camp was closed down.”

He leaned back and rubbed his eyes.

“The inhabitants were then shipped to camps all over the world. The trail goes completely cold.”

Sharif picked up the photograph again. It showed a child four or five years old. Dark hair that tumbled down over her shoulders, glossy and curling. Rounded cheeks glowing with health and vitality, wide, thoughtful eyes, and a mischievous smile.

If ever he had a daughter, he thought irrelevantly, he would like her to look like this.

“How old is she now?” he asked.

“If the records we have are correct, twenty-one.”

“She has the al Jawadi look, all right.”

Ashraf nodded. “Yes.”

The Cup Companion, still gazing at the child’s face, was suddenly conscious of a powerful draw. He wondered what kind of woman she had grown into. If she had lived.

“You want me to find her?” he said.

“Yes. Or, more probably, some evidence of what her fate was. And yet, if there’s any hope… God knows how many camps you’ll have to visit. It’s a nearly hopeless task, Sharif. I know it.”

Sharif sat for a moment, accepting it with a slow nod. Then the two men got to their feet and embraced again. “Do your best. It may be impossible,” said the Sultan.

The mouth that some people thought cold had stretched in a quick smile. His hand had formed a fist at his heart.

“By my head and eyes, Lord,” Sheikh Sharif Azad al Dauleh had said. “If the Princess is alive, I’ll find her.”



“Sharif.”

“Lord.”

“What news?”

“Something’s come up here, Ash.”

“You’ve got a line on her?”

“Not the Princess,” Sharif said. “Lord, brace yourself for something strange. I’ve found someone else here. I thought—”

“Someone else?”

“A boy, about fourteen or fifteen.” Far out in the desert, a distant glow pinpointed the detention centre. “An orphan, I imagine—he’s attached himself to a family that’s obviously not his own. If he’s not an al Jawadi, Ash, then neither are you. Any idea who he might be?”

There was the silence of shock being absorbed. Then he heard the Sultan’s breath escape in a rush.

“Allah, how can I say? We know so little about some branches of the family, and yet…might someone have mistaken the name? Or could it be that two of Mahlouf’s children escaped?”

“The boy speaks English, which would fit what we know of the Bahramis’ history.” Sharif hesitated. “He would have been a babe in arms at the time of the assassination.”

In the shadows on the table behind him, the file on Princess Shakira lay open. Sharif turned and picked up the photograph. Somewhere along the line he had become committed to finding this child alive. To knowing the woman she had become. He didn’t want to accept that this delightful, elusive little spirit had been wiped from the earth without having the chance to flower.

It was nothing but sentiment, and he knew well that he would have despised it in others. He despised it in himself. Many members of the royal family had been assassinated during the years of Ghasib’s rule, and countless other innocents. Why should he want to pull this one out of the darkness that had descended on his country thirty years before?

If it was the boy who’d been saved…had he been looking for the wrong person all along?

“What does the boy himself say?” Ash’s voice brought him out of the reverie.

“I haven’t asked, Lord. He’s been deeply affected by what he’s been through.” The image of the boy’s face, so stamped with grief and suffering, rose in his mind. Apart from the al Jawadi characteristics the two shared, the contrast between Hani and the little girl in the photograph covered everything, Sharif reflected sadly—she was trusting, where the boy trusted none; she was happy, while the boy suffered; she was nourished, the boy starved; she believed, the boy had learned cynicism. And yet they were connected by that one thread, which seemed to overpower all the differences. The family resemblance dominated.

“I’d like your permission to bring him home without first trying to establish his background. To raise his hopes and then leave him in these conditions because he proves not to be what I think—”

“No, of course we can’t do that. Do whatever your judgement suggests, Sharif.”

When he hung up, the Cup Companion remained where he was, staring out over the desert. Smoke trailed up from the thin cigar in his hand, its shape twisting and scudding before his absent eyes.

Sharif Azad al Dauleh was variously said to be cold, cynical, selfish, too intelligent for his own good, but none of those accusations hit the mark. Sharif was highly intelligent, and proud of a noble lineage. He was also courageous and impatient of weakness or cowardice. Weaker men—and women—might well resent such a combination. But if his compassion was rarely roused, it was perhaps because he first had none for himself.

He had seen a great deal of human suffering during the weeks of his fruitless search. And only now did he feel the weight of helplessness that he had been unconsciously carrying with him.

Was it because the boy was so obviously an al Jawadi and Sharif’s loyalty was bred in the bone? Was it something in Hani himself? Or was this child—with his haunted eyes and his cynical understanding that he was destined to be one of the world’s dispossessed, a child who’d had nothing for so long he didn’t remember what something was—simply the last straw of weight Sharif’s spirit could bear?

Was it that he was finally doing something, however small? He would save one soul, pluck one suffering child from the nightmare of wasted, desolate life he saw.

Sharif suddenly felt how much of a toll the weeks of bearing witness to so much suffering had taken on his inner reserves.

He was glad to be going home. He needed a breather.



“Home?” Hani whispered. “Take me home?”

The vision of the fountain trembled before his mind’s eye, and his heart thudded with hope.

Sharif realized his mistake. This was the most difficult interview he had ever conducted, and he hoped he would never have another like it.

“Home to Bagestan.”

But the child was lost in a dream. “Is my mother there? My father?”

Sharif swallowed. Allah, what had made him think he could handle this himself? “I don’t think so, Hani.”

“They died,” Hani agreed, hollowly. For a long moment the boy gazed at him, with an expression almost of worship in the dark, hungry eyes. “Are you my brother?” he whispered.

The question shook him.

“No,” he said gently. “I am not your brother.”

Hani bit his lip to hold back the sudden, urgent tears.

“Who am I? Do you know who I am?”

“I’m sorry, Hani. All I have are questions, like you. If there is anything you can tell me, it may help to find out who you are. Do you remember any names?”

He hadn’t meant to start like this. His plan had been to say the minimum possible—only what was necessary to get the boy aboard the plane. But in the face of such a deep and urgent need to know, his resolve failed.

The eyes were liquid with sadness as Hani shook his head. “I had to forget all the names, when I was very small. I don’t remember any, not even my brothers’ and sisters’. They said someone would kill me if I spoke the names. A bad man.”

Sharif struggled to keep what he felt from showing on his face. Although there had been many victims, only one group of people in Bagestan had been in danger from Ghasib on the strength of name alone—members of the royal family.

“Who said it?”

“My—she said she was my mother, but I knew she wasn’t. I always thought of her, in my heart, as my stepmother. But I wasn’t allowed to say so.”

A strange, powerful silence surrounded them. Outside the director’s office the usual sounds of the camp were dimmed, as though the air had become too thin to carry them.

“What was your stepfamily’s name?”

Hani was holding his breath. The world seemed to still its own breath with his. Somehow, even before he spoke the name, he sensed that this one word had the power to change everything.

“Bahrami,” he breathed.

The name fell into the silence like a cut diamond into a still pond.

This time Sharif could not stifle his reaction, because every atom of body and soul was electrified. He could only stare at the boy.

“Bahrami.” He repeated the word softly. “Arif al Vafa Bahrami.”

“Yes!”

Suddenly all the torment of his missing past boiled up in him.

“Tell me! Tell me who they were! A man and a woman, and other children, and a house with a fountain. Roses and…so many roses. Who were they?”

Sharif swallowed hard. Pity, he found, tore at the heart with eagle’s claws.

“Hani, I think—please understand that we can’t be sure—that your father might have been Mahlouf Jawad al Nadim. Does the—”

His heart kicked so hard his body jerked. Shivers ran over his skin. “My father? Is that my father’s name? Is he—is he alive, then? Did he send you to find me?”

“I’m sorry, Hani, no. He died many years ago. Does the name sound familiar?”

He shook his head, half blinded by tears. Was that his name, his father’s name, words he didn’t know at all? “Why don’t I know it, if it was my father’s name? My own name,” he added softly, and then repeated it, as if to test the flavour. “Mahlouf Jawad al Nadim. My father.”

“You must have been very young when they died,” he suggested consolingly. “Maybe you never knew it.”

Sharif turned to his briefcase and drew out the Princess Shakira file. Watched by Hani with huge dark eyes, he opened it. “I want to show you a photograph,” he said quietly. “It may be that she was also living with the Bahramis. Do you remember this face?”

He drew out the photograph and set it in front of Hani on the low table, watching the boy’s face closely, noting the terrible differences that hunger, horror and deprivation had created in two faces with such a strong family resemblance.

The child was silent a long time, staring at the picture. Then one tiny jewel teardrop fell, and landed on Princess Shakira’s cheek. It lay on the photograph quivering and sparkling in a ray of sun. Hani looked up into Sharif’s face, swallowed, and wiped his cheek with one thin hand.

“What was her name?” the boy whispered. “What was her name?”

Sharif saw it then, finally. Not a strong family resemblance, no. Much more than that. Now that he saw it, it only amazed him that it had taken so long.

He spoke very, very softly, as if the air itself might break.

“Shakira,” he said. “Your name is—Shakira.”




Four


“Shakira.”

The name seemed to rush all around the room, crazily, like a whirlwind, before striking her heart a powerful, staggering blow. Her mouth opened in a slow, soundless gasp.

A spiral of light burned in her, wrapping her heart, spinning outward to warm her whole being and blast through the coldness of years, light the darkness, fill the emptiness. She stood up without knowing it, gazing at Sharif, then down at the photograph, then at Sharif again.

“Shakira.” She said it again, and then, inside, she heard what she had yearned and strained to hear for so many years: her mother’s voice speaking her own true name. And she saw the fountain as if it were there in front of her, blocking out the drab office with its ugly, utilitarian furniture; and the scent of water, the wonderful scent of water on desert air, and of roses trembling under the droplets and releasing their perfumes, flooded her whole being.

Shakira. She heard her mother’s voice in her ears. My own rose.

She knew that it was true—this picture was her, and her name was Shakira. And she had been loved—once, long ago. It was not a memory her wishes had invented. It was true. The memories of love were true. She had had a family and they had loved her.

The tears welled up and poured over her cheeks in an abundance Sharif would not have believed possible. He had never seen such a flood from any creature’s eyes, and it made him think of some old, half-forgotten fairy tale where the princess wept a lake and then sailed away on it.

Her drowned eyes glittering like black diamonds behind the tears, she looked up at him, begging, “Who am I? Please, who am I?”

He hadn’t meant any of this to happen. His intention had been to leave the Sultan and his family to deal with the whole delicate issue of identity and reclamation. But, however unintentionally, he had created this moment. He could not deny her now. He could not add to the intolerable suffering of years with even another day’s delay.

“You—” He discovered that he could hardly speak for the choke of feeling in his own throat. He coughed and swallowed and tried again. “Your full name is Shakira Warda Jawad al Nadim.”

“Why did you come for me? Who wants me? My family is all dead.”

Her black diamond eyes pierced him with such longing to be contradicted that his own heart nearly broke.

“No. Your own closest family are gone, but there are others. You have a large family of cousins, aunts and uncles,” Sharif began.

A wail tore from her throat, a howl that shook him in his deepest being, for it was the cry of release from a terrible, unimaginable grief. The child leapt to her feet, the noise still pouring from her throat as the tears from her eyes, as though nothing could stop the flood. She flung herself against his chest, her hands clutching folds of his kaftan as if to shake the truth from him, and the flooded eyes gazed up into his.

“Cousins? I have cousins, aunts, uncles? My own, my own family? They know who I am?” she demanded.

Someone opened the door of the office and a curious head peered around it at him, but with a frown Sharif sent the fool scuttling back, and they were alone again. He gently set his hands on the thin little shoulders as emotion racked her body.

“They are waiting to welcome you home.”

A thousand memories welled up inside Shakira now, potent and irresistible, a flood of grief and joy, as if the sound of her own name had unlocked a door behind which everything had been hidden. The faces of her father and mother, her brothers and sisters, flashed in her mind, one after another, all together. The house, the fountain, the rose garden, the beauty that had once surrounded her. Music. A book, with the picture of a prince and princess in gorgeous robes on a flying horse, high over a city of domes and minarets.

Voices. Her name, and others. A jumble of sensation and emotion that overwhelmed her. Those who had loved her, whom she had been forced to forget.

The memories flooded through her, and the memory of happiness, filling her so powerfully with both pain and joy that she felt she couldn’t hold it all.

When the storm had passed, she wiped her face with her hands and her T-shirt, and gazed hungrily up into his face.

“Are you my cousin?” she asked, yearning for a connection with him that would make her homecoming immediate. “Are you my family?”

Family. The word had a ring that he had never heard before, like a starving man pronouncing bread. An unfamiliar protectiveness welled up in him, and he wished he could be the person she wanted him to be.

“I am not related to you. I was sent to find you by your cousin, who is the head of your family. He has only just learned that you are alive. Until now, he believed that you had died in the accident with your parents.”

“He thought I was dead?” She gazed at him. “Who is my cousin? What is his name? Why didn’t he come to find me himself?”

Sharif pressed his lips together, and said slowly, “I think the answer to your questions will be a…an even bigger surprise to you. Your father was related to a very important Bagestani family.”

Her eyes showed such a kaleidoscope of doubt, incredulity and suspicion that Sharif could almost have laughed.

“Important?” she repeated, the child who had been among the forgotten of humanity for nearly ten years.

It was probably stupid to tell her like this, but the situation had been created now, and it was impossible not to go on.

“Mahlouf Jawad al Nadim was the grandson of the last Sultan. Your cousin is Ashraf al Jawadi, the newly crowned Sultan of Bagestan. Shakira, you—you are a princess.”



The polished domes and minarets of Medinat al Bostan gleamed in the afternoon sun as they flew in, hazy and shimmering, a dream city. The blue, turquoise and purple-tiled dome was the Old Palace, now restored, Sharif told her, to its former use as the home of the Sultan, and to its former name, the Jawad Palace.

“Like me,” said Shakira.

The Shah Jawad Mosque was a dome of burnished gold at the opposite end of a green and beautiful square that was the heart of the city. Under Ghasib it had been made into a museum. That, too, had been restored to its former use.

The templates had faded in her heart, like a dream that cannot be held. She had been so young when she had been torn from her home. The reality of life in the camps had battered the memory, for how could such beauty exist in the world side by side with what she knew?

Now it was as if a magic hand restored the dream images in all their glorious perfection of colour and shape, and her heart leapt with feeling. Home. At long last she was home.

“Will I see my family there?” she had asked during the long, interminable hours of waiting, while Farida and her little girl talked and laughed and ran to and fro, astonished at the jet’s unabashed luxury, as the stewardess showed them around.

Shakira had not joined them. She sat in her seat opposite Sharif with a grave face, her eyes dark with a mix of emotions. Against the background of the lavishly fitted jet, one of Ghasib’s private fleet that was being used by the Sultan’s government now, the marks of the Princess’s life of deprivation were thrown into sharp relief. The painfully thin body, the ragged, sunburnt hair, the cheap boy’s clothes, and, most of all, the haunted eyes were a reproach to the background of opulence. No one, he thought, could have looked less like a princess of the ruling house.

“Some of them,” he had assured her. “Everyone who can. Many have not returned to Bagestan yet.”

“Some,” she repeated, who had none. “Many.”

“Yes, that is how you will number your family in future.”

Nothing in his life had ever pulled at his heart as did this desperate child’s anguished yearning for someone to call her own.

“My cousins.” She breathed deeply. “Will you tell me about my family?”

Of course he told her. “Your great-grandfather Sultan Hafzuddin had three wives, Rabia, Sonia and Maryam. Between them they had many children and grandchildren….”

Shakira had sat wide-eyed, drinking it in like water in a desert, the story of her heritage. “My grandmother was a famous singer?” she said when he stopped.

Sharif nodded. “Her professional name was Suha, and she was very beautiful. She went into exile in protest at the time of Ghasib’s coup. Your cousins are searching for her now.”

“Oh!” Her gaze drifted into the middle distance and he saw what softness memories of her early life gave to the stern little face. “I—we visited someone once. She wore gold bracelets, and she let me put them on and told me one day I’d be a beautiful woman with bracelets of my own.” A tear fell from one eye, and she brushed it away as if it shamed her, then fixed a stern gaze on him. “Who else?”

“Rabia had another son, Wafiq. It is his eldest son, Ashraf, your father’s cousin, who is now the Sultan,” he said. “The Sultan has a brother, Haroun, and three sisters, Aliyah and Iman and Lina. Ash and Haroun are married, and their wives are Dana and Mariel.”

“Do I really have so many family?” she whispered, half to herself.

“Yes, and more. Since the Return, many are coming back to Bagestan. Queen Sonia’s granddaughters, Noor and Jalia, are about your age, and both are now engaged to Cup Companions. Their cousin Najib and his wife also live close. You have almost too many to count.”

She wasn’t satisfied until he had described them all, told her everything he could. At the end, she had stayed motionless and silent for minutes, as if still listening to what it meant.



A massive series of buildings in black and white marble came into view, looking alien and clumsy against the ancient perfection of the delicate arches and domes, and Shakira frowned.

“What is that?” she asked Sharif, pointing.

He glanced at her, half smiling at her wondering indignation. “That is the New Palace compound. Ghasib hired foreign architects. It took years to complete—it may not have been finished when you left Bagestan.”

“It looks like the sugar cubes from a relief plane at one of the camps,” she observed. “A huge box broke and the sugar spilled everywhere in the mud, in piles. We stood around, watching it dissolve into the earth, wondering who had sent us sugar cubes. Men shouted, ‘But where is the mint tea to go with it?’ The little children were so hungry, they couldn’t be stopped from eating it, and the mud, too. It was filthy. Many got dysentery as a result. Some died.”

Sharif listened, knowing that there were many such stories behind the tragic eyes, which now fixed him with urgent demand. “Why did they do that? We needed flour for bread, we needed food. Why did they send us sugar cubes? Men said it was a deliberate insult, to show us that the world did not care.”

“Bureaucracy creates many such stupidities,” he said, shaking his head in despair, for how was that an explanation?

She gazed out the window again as the New Palace disappeared behind them.

“Why didn’t he make something beautiful?”

Sharif laughed aloud, for the New Palace, when it was built, had been hailed as the architect’s “creative modernist blending of the influences of East and West.” But as with the emperor’s clothes, the child was right. It was a solidly ugly fortress, white marble notwithstanding.

“Ghasib was a modernist. He admired the architecture of the West. It would not look so grotesque in the capitals of Europe, perhaps.”

“No, because everything is grotesque there!” Shakira agreed emphatically. “What do they know of living? There they keep fresh water in their toilets! Did you know that? You pee into a big bowl of water! What waste! In the camps when I was thirsty and there was no water, I used to tell myself, well, today you are not drinking the water that you wasted in the toilet in England on May the sixteenth. And tomorrow there will be no water again, and then you will not drink what you wasted on May the seventeenth.”

She spoke as one who has returned to a place of sanity after years in the asylum, and he grieved a little, for those who expect perfection, even of a newly reborn country striving for the best, are doomed to disappointment. Sharif knew for a fact that there were flush toilets in the Jawad Palace. He wondered how Ash and the rest of the family would react to this little firebrand coming among them, with her uncompromising vision and straight talk.

Farida and Jamila sat down beside them. They were coming in to land, and it was not necessary for him to give her an answer. The stewardess began helping Farida fasten her belt, and Sharif did the same for Jamila. Shakira disdained help. Asking for help would be to show weakness.

“And now you will live in a palace and be a princess!” Farida said, to fill the empty waiting time before landing. Her voice held no trace of envy. “To think that my son was a princess all the time!”

She laughed loudly. “My husband will not believe it when I tell him. Oh, Excellency, how wonderful it will be to go home! Will my husband be there? Perhaps he is already building the house again. He is a very good provider. We pick and dry medicinal herbs to sell on the mainland. What a good husband he is! Are you married, Excellency?”




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