Читать книгу Summer Sheikhs - Эбби Грин, Marguerite Kaye - Страница 22

THAT day was spent crossing the bleakest imaginable desert, emptier than she could ever have dreamed. For miles they saw nothing but sand and rock. No animals, no trees, not even any scrub.

The sun was scorching. The Land Cruiser was air-conditioned, but that did not stop the sun coming through the windows, and setting her skin on fire. Desi had always loved heat, but this was something else. There was no shade anywhere, it was hour after hour of burning sand, till her eyes grew hypnotized and her brain tranced.

She would not protest or complain, because she suspected he was waiting for just that. Nor did she want to give him any excuse for turning back. It’ll be hell on wheels, Desi, Sami had said, but even she could not have foreseen this.

Desi lifted the bottle of water to her lips for the fiftieth time that day, and took a long swig. She’d never drunk so much water in her life.

‘I suppose if we ran out of gas or water out here, we’d be dead in an hour,’ she observed mildly.

‘It would take longer than that. But we will not run out,’ Salah said.

At noon they stopped only briefly to eat and drink. Salah, wearing his desert robe and the headscarf she had learned to call keffiyeh, got out to stretch, but Desi remained in the vehicle. To step outside in this heat would be tantamount to suicide, or at the very least, instant second-degree burn. She had put on shorts and a T-shirt in the nomad camp this morning, and now she was sorry. But it was too much effort to think of changing into something with sleeves.

After only fifteen minutes they were on their way again.

In late afternoon Salah pointed through the windscreen. ‘We’ll camp there,’ he said.

Desi frowned and shaded her eyes till she saw it: a large outcrop of sand-coloured stone ahead. She would not have seen it if he hadn’t pointed it out. The best way to see anything out here was by the shadow it cast, and there was no shadow.

‘Will there be some shade? Why can’t I see a shadow?’ She was desperate to be out of the sun.

‘On the other side. The sun is behind us now.’

‘Are we heading east?’ Desi frowned and looked at the sun. They were. She hadn’t noticed him change direction. ‘Why?’

Salah glanced at her ruefully. ‘I’m sorry. I overshot. We should have reached it an hour ago.’

‘Thus the great desert navigator whose ancestors survived to produce him!’

‘As long as the mistakes are not fatal, of course, one survives.’

‘You can’t imagine how comforting.’

At least they could laugh.

Ten minutes later—how deceiving distances were when you had no real landmarks!—they reached it. The mound was much bigger than she had imagined, a small hill, the size of a substantial building. As Salah slowed the Land Cruiser and pulled around to the other side, Desi gasped in relief.

‘An oasis!’ she cried. ‘A real, true blue oasis!’

‘At this season the water will be brackish.’

Two dozen palm trees surrounded a large pool of water in the rock’s welcome shadow.

‘Heaven is a relative construct, I see,’ Desi said.

Salah pulled the vehicle up underneath a rock overhang and Desi tumbled out.

Even in the shade it was boiling hot. She gasped. ‘Wow! How right you were about travelling in this heat! Is it all going to be like this?’

‘No,’ he said, opening the back and beginning to unload supplies. When Desi moved to help him he waved her away. ‘Leave it to me for now. You are too hot. Go and sit in the shade.’

He was right there, and she could assume he was more used to this heat than she. She sank down on a rock and watched him heave out the tent.

‘I think I’ve drunk four litres of water today! Do we have enough?’

‘We have plenty. When did you last take a salt tablet?’

She told him, and he nodded approval.

She knew she must be sweating, but she’d never have known it by her skin. In such dry air, sweat seemed to evaporate before you saw it.

‘I suppose this is as good as a detox cure,’ Desi mused.

When Salah had unloaded the equipment and supplies, he slammed the tailgate and turned to look into the sun.

With his eyes narrowed, his chiselled face outlined by sun and shadow, he looked fiercely handsome, a face from another century. Desi felt lightheaded, almost drunk, with his beauty.

‘You’re the image of the desert,’ she said dreamily.

Salah flicked her a glance. ‘You need food,’ he said.

He bent to pick up the roll that was the tent, and carried it to a flat spot among the trees. Desi set down her bottle, dusted her hands on her butt, and moved to help him.

An hour later the tent was up, the sleeping bags unrolled, and Desi was watching the sun go down to glory over the desert as she scooped up the last morsel of lamb and aubergine stew.

‘Does this place have a name?’ she asked dreamily.

‘It is called Halimah’s Rest.’

‘Halimah? Didn’t you tell me she was a great queen or something?’

‘Yes. After her husband’s death, she held the throne for her son against all comers for years.’

‘What was she doing out here in the middle of nowhere?’

‘Queen Halimah and her army got lost during a battle. A local Bedouin boy led her to this oasis. The army camped here and refreshed themselves and went on to win the battle the next day. Later Halimah commanded that the pool be banked with brick and a well dug, to the great benefit of the Bedouin. You can still see the remnants of the brick walls.’

‘Who was she fighting with?’

‘Adil ibn Bilah, her dead husband’s nephew, who wanted to take the throne from her.’

‘He didn’t succeed?’

‘No. He was killed, and Halimah made an example of his generals. No one challenged her rule for some time afterwards.’

The sun was all but gone now. Salah got up and moved among the trees, collecting palm leaves and bark. Desi sat and watched the desert change from gold to red and then to purple.

The desert went on forever. A sense of unreality settled over her. What stories the sand whispered to the secret ear!

‘This is so weird,’ she murmured, after a long silence.

‘What?’ Salah began laying a fire with what he had collected.

‘I feel as though I’ve plugged into a mindset that’s been sitting here forever. As if time is nothing, only the desert exists.’

‘The desert has many effects on the mind. You’ve never been in the desert before?’

‘I’ve done a couple of photo shoots in the more obvious places. Golden beaches and palm trees. Once we went out to an old battlefield and I posed by burntout tanks. That was horrible. But never right out in the middle of nowhere, never where the desert could really get to you. Never anywhere I felt like this.’

‘There is more than one sort of mirage,’ Salah said, setting a match to the fire.

‘Meaning?’

‘People see what they want to see in the desert.’

‘And what do I want to see?’

‘That in the desert time is transcended, perhaps. That time does not matter.’

She went still with the truth of it. There was silence between them, and then, as if driven, he went on.

‘If there is only the desert and eternity, how can ten years matter? Do you yearn for that time of innocence, Desi? I, too. We drive across the desert together, and I know that, if only we had been more thabet—what word is it?—stead…steady…’

‘Stea—’ Her throat closed. She cleared it. ‘Steadfast.’

Darkness was settling around them as the first stars appeared. Thick, roiling smoke curled up from under the stacked leaves, and then a puff of yellow flame.

‘Steadfast, yes. We might still be here together, but how different it would be. You would be my wife. Our children would be sleeping in the tent. Do you feel their ghosts, Desi, as I do?’

Baba, Baba, I want a drink!

Her heart convulsed at the nearness of the dream. Desi opened her mouth to breathe.

‘What is there in that moment that still traps us, after so many years?’ he pressed. ‘A few weeks out of a lifetime. Why is it so close?’

The question hung on the air like smoke, symbol of the fire that lurked beneath.

Desi moved her head. Something burned her eyes and the back of her throat. ‘I don’t know.’ The desert at night was like nothing she had ever experienced, and yet there was something about the campfire, the stars and his nearness that brought those island feelings close. Love—the memory of love! she corrected herself—tore at her heart.

A moment later he was beside her on the blanket, his voice hoarse and low.

‘Here there is no time, Desi. You feel it. I feel it. Time has disappeared. Here we can be what we were. Let us make love once more as the innocent children we were. Let us remember the love we felt, just once; let us make love as if ten years had not passed, as if you had come to me then.’

Her heart was caught between melting and breaking. A sob burned her throat. ‘What do you want, Salah?’

She felt the approach of heat, and then his hand was on her breast, cupping it tenderly.

‘Do you remember the first time I touched you, Desi? How my hand trembled. Let me touch you like that again.’

Slowly he drew the loose shirt down her arms and tossed it to one side. Under her T-shirt she was naked, the heat was too much for a bra, and he knew it. Gently he pushed her down onto the blanket, his hand slipping up under the thin cotton to find the silky curve of her breast and encircle it as if coming home.

‘The first time I touched you like this, Desi, how my blood leapt! The magic of your soft breast, the way your flesh answered me—’ He stroked his palm over the shivered, hungry tip that responded to his urgency with aching need, then pushed the cloth up and bent his head.

The firelight shadowed his chiselled face, showed her the tortured passion in his eyes, so that she could almost believe he was again the boy he had been, passionate, loving, accepting, burning with need of her. She melted at the thought, body and soul, and as his lips gently encircled her flesh, she whispered his name, as she had so long ago.

Salah.

Her voice held the surprise of awakening passion, as if he heard it down the years and she were still a virgin, and he closed his eyes as the power of it struck him a blow straight to the heart.

As they had then, his hands became urgent, his tenderness struggling with the need that moved in them both. He pushed the T-shirt over her head and off, and his eyes devoured the beauty of her perfect breasts, her skin’s creamy smoothness caressed by the flickering blaze that stroked her even as his hands did. Then he was jealous, primitively jealous of the fire’s adoration of her, and moved over her, so that she lay in his shadow, as he urged off the shorts that had no right to touch her legs…

But starlight, too, adored her, glowing on her white forehead, her dampened lips. He bent to take possession there, too, his mouth hungry and urgent.

The hunger of years rose to her lips, and she opened her mouth tenderly, willingly, hungrily, and as innocent now as then, for in the desert time disappeared. Her hands wrapped him, fingers clenching on his shoulder, his head, clasping the rich black curls in the newness of that passion she had learned only with him. Each move of his mouth and tongue and lips was answered by hers, and his blood pounded through him and he struggled against the urgent need to take her, consume her, be one with her, now.

He shrugged out of his clothes, and then stretched out beside her, naked and gleaming in firelight. Her hands stroked the length of his chest and flank, and in the darkness and flickering shadow the honing of maturity and even his battle scar somehow were lost, so that his body was as fresh and perfect as at seventeen.

His fingers caressed her cheek, her temple, stroked the silky hair back from her brow as he gazed into eyes that reflected the night sky and all eternity. Stars glinted in her gaze as she smiled fearlessly, trustingly into his face, in a way no woman had done again. It touched him to the depths of his soul, and he gathered her wildly up in his arms, clumsy, inexperienced, like the boy he had been, and crushed her to him, drowned her mouth with his own, drank in the sweetness of her like wine.

His hands were strong, holding her as if he could never let her go, as they pressed her back, her shoulder, her head, desperate to bring her closer and closer, till she was part of him. She melted with yearning, with fulfilment, with need, crying her joy to the night air, to the desert that saw all, knew all.

His mouth drank and drank of the nectar of their kiss. Her body was pressed so tightly against him they were one flesh, and the hands that wrapped and caressed her sent sensation like honey through her, and in her response he felt the honey return and pour into his own flesh.

Still it was not enough for either; the last, the final union was still to come, and she began to plead with him as she had so long ago, soft murmurings in his ear that resonated in his heart, please, Salah, please, please, as she pressed closer and closer, as her body moulded to his and his to her.

He drew away a little then, unable to wait longer, for what they needed was to sink into each other, and remember who they had been.

He drew away, and his flesh fitted to hers with the hungry knowing of the key for the lock, and pushed inside, and they cried out together in surprise and completion, one voice that drenched their nerve ends with sweetness. And then they were locked together, gazing into each other’s star-filled eyes, unmoving with the surprise of passion.

He stroked her face, her hair, she touched his full lips with a questing fingertip, and that moment of wonder and surprise was the same as it had been ten long years ago, that moment of feeling the pulse of an ancient rhythm burn up inside them, the summons of that urgent, age-old necessity that is the heartbeat of life. It began to move in them, through them, and they were helpless on the current of its urgency, the pulsing, pushing beat that took them closer and closer to the place where time is destroyed in eternity.

The fire watched greedily, coating their limbs with light and shadow, as they moved and embedded deeper and deeper into each other’s being, towards the one.

They cried out as they approached it, cried their helpless pleasure, their consuming need, to all who would hear: earth and water and fire and air, and sky and time and nothingness and all, and then they were there, and all need, all urgency, exploded in a blaze of honeyed light that swept out from the tiny space where souls and bodies met, to enrich all creation. And, bathed in its glow, blinded by its brightness, for that place cannot be seen by mortal eyes, for one moment of perfection they cried out their gratitude, and then, slowly, because they must, sank back together into the abode of separation.

The firelight died, and still they lay entangled, unwilling to let the world enter between them again. But soon the desert chill invaded both body and soul.

‘Now we know,’ said Salah, and there was something in his tone that chilled her even further, because it told her nothing had changed.

‘Do we?’

‘It was real,’ he said. ‘It was there. We destroyed it, but it was real.’

‘Is it better to know?’ she asked bitterly, feeling somehow that it was tonight, not ten years ago, that she had created the real heartbreak for herself.

She stiffened to ward off pain, but Salah didn’t answer. He sat up as night insects, drawn by the scent of honey, approached, and threw a few more dried fronds onto the dying blaze before disappearing down towards the pool, now shrouded in darkness.

Desi dug in her pack, got out her night gear and pulled it on, then sat there as smoke and flame curled up on the air, trying to see her way into the future.

He came out of the darkness like a pagan god, naked and strong, his body glistening with wet. As he pulled a towel out of his own pack and rubbed himself dry, she watched with detached admiration, as if at a work of art, until he had put on his night clothes and sat down again.

‘Are you going to marry Sami?’

Salah shrugged and lifted a stick to stir the fire. ‘It is not agreed yet. But why not? I must marry someone.’

‘How can you talk about it so calmly? You know what love is. You remember how it feels. How can you contemplate marrying someone you don’t love?’

In the firelight her eyes were dark, watching him. He turned his attention to the fire.

‘The best love comes after marriage,’ he said. ‘You create a life together, and love each other within that life. It is easy to love the mother of your children.’

‘You don’t sound convinced.’

‘I told you once, Desi!’ he growled. ‘I will never love again in the way that I loved you. It is impossible. I do not wish it. It is better to marry in the old way—find your wife first, and then learn to love her. The other way is heartbreak.’

Who had he first heard it from? His uncle? His grandfather? He couldn’t remember now, but that it was wisdom his own life had proven. It was best to marry calmly. Strong feelings could always turn into their opposite.

They sat in silence for a few moments. ‘Is it because of your parents? Are they pressing you to marry?’

‘I told you, my parents have been pressing me to marry for ten years. They have given up asking me. But they are right, it is time. I am nearly thirty. I am the eldest of my family.’

‘Why now? Why Sami?’

‘There are reasons why a wife born and educated in the West is a good idea.’

‘What reasons?’

The moon was rising. Salah, his arms resting on his knees, gazed at her for a long moment. In firelight her face was hauntingly beautiful; no wonder that fingers of flame and shadow warred to caress it. He could not love her again, all that was past. But through the curls of smoke still she was a dream, a ten-year-old dream. And he could almost believe he was that boy again.

He must resist that temptation. The truth was elsewhere.

‘Why do you ask these questions, Desi? What is it you want to know?’

‘Because I don’t believe it! Something doesn’t add up.’

‘Why not?’ He raised an eyebrow.

‘I—I just think it’s an extremely odd match, you and Sami. You’re cousins!’

‘By our tradition, that is the best match.’

‘But do you and Sami think so?’

‘Some women raised abroad seek to retain connection with Barakat in this way. It means their children will have the right to citizenship in two countries. With the world so uncertain, that is not a bad thing.’

‘Is that what Sami wants?’

‘Perhaps.’

‘And what about your own reasons?’ she asked again.

He tossed something into the fire that crackled and sent sparks up to the treetops. ‘This comes at a time when I may have to move abroad and it will be best not to go on a diplomatic passport.’

He felt her shock and wondered why it struck her so forcibly.

‘You’re going to be living in the West?’ she gasped.

‘Why not?’

‘But you’re a Cup Companion! Your life is here! At least—isn’t it?’

‘My duty is elsewhere, however. I did not become a Cup Companion for the privileges, but to do what is necessary for my prince and my country.’

‘And what duty requires you to move abroad?’

‘This I cannot discuss with you, Desi.’

‘How long?’

‘Why are you asking? Why do you want to know?’ he asked, and watched as her face closed. With distant anger, he wondered who had asked her to ask these questions, which he should not have answered. His guard was down.

Salah tossed the stick he was holding onto the fire.

‘Let’s get some sleep,’ he said.

Desi lay sleepless beside him long after his breathing told her Salah was out.

I still love him. I could tell him so. Ask him to love me again. The thought tortured her. She was half convinced that he was lying to himself when he said his love for her was dead. She, too, had believed herself immune, and how wrong she had been!

He wanted to move to the West. He wanted a Western wife. If she confessed the state of her heart might he pretend to love her for such a reason? At least he could be sure the sex was good. What if he thought, why not marry Desi, as easily as Sami?

Why not? whispered the voice of temptation.

Desi had never really understood what had motivated his letter. When the first flush of guilt and grief had passed, she had been almost sure that it was something to do with his illness. He had been shot in the head, she knew that. He’d been very ill for weeks. So for a long time she’d lived in hope that another letter would come, telling her he’d been delirious…but it never came.

But that was ten years ago. Why hasn’t he got some distance on it? How can he still judge me the way he did? Is it just habit? Did he really never take it out and look at it? I’ll talk to him tomorrow.

She must be careful. Because if what he really wanted, unconsciously or not, was to punish her for his inability to love another woman, she might offer him the perfect means. She was so vulnerable, yearning for his touch, melting at his nearness. How much more vulnerable she would be as his wife!

But…her heart whispered…he’s determined to love his wife, whoever she is. If he could love me again…he’s planning to live in the West, who knows for how long? Maybe we could live in two worlds. It’s doable.

She argued with herself while the moon tracked her serene path across the heavens, and came to no conclusion.