Читать книгу The Fierce and Tender Sheikh - ALEXANDRA SELLERS - Страница 8

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.