Читать книгу Desire In The Desert - Ryshia Kennie - Страница 23

Chapter Fourteen

Left alone, Kate felt conspicuous and even more out of place. She tried to feign disinterest while furtively watching everything and everyone around her. It was impossible. She was a stranger, a foreigner in their midst, and she was center stage.

The children watched her curiously. One small boy came up to her and poked the back of her hand before giggling and taking a step back. He looked up at her. His dark, curly hair glistened in the sun as his curious brown eyes locked to hers. He opened his hand and held out a blue rubber ball.

“Are you going to play catch?” she said in Berber, but the boy only closed his hand, giggled and ran away. She was alone again, a curiosity in their midst. She saw a woman looking at her from her place by a pot over a cooking fire. Kate hesitated only a second before going over to her for she was the woman Emir had suggested she approach first.

“May I?” she asked, motioning to the stool. While she wasn’t completely fluent in the language, she had a familiarity she’d gained through her time in the Middle East as a child with her parents when her father had worked for the American Embassy in Morocco, and again through her studies and her brief time as an exchange student.

The woman looked at her oddly. Her skin was a beautiful coffee color that glowed despite her wrinkles and advanced age. A black scarf with white embroidery partially covered her hair. Then she smiled and revealed missing teeth. She motioned for Kate to sit beside her. Her knotted fingers were quick and limber as she pinched spices from numerous tins beside her and stirred them into the pot. Kate had no idea what she was making but her stomach rumbled at the heady scent of the combined spices.

She glanced around. To her left, a group of women sat quietly watching her as they had since she’d arrived. The children played ball. The man had left with his two camels. Everything else remained the same. But something had changed. What?

Kate had never felt so out of place in her life. Despite everything she had studied, her familiarity with language and all her visits to Morocco, here she was the foreigner, the oddity with no commonality. Worse, this was the one language where she was not fluent, she could understand most of it, speak roughly but that was it. She looked back, searching for Emir, but there was no sign of him.

“Come.” A woman in a mauve-and-gold aselham, the hood over her head so that her forehead was covered, approached and beckoned, motioning with one hand. What Kate could see of her face and dark hair revealed a woman in her early forties with a smooth, sun-bronzed face and eyes that seemed dark, unfathomable, as if they were full of secrets.

Intrigued, she followed the woman as she skirted behind the houses to a smaller building made of the same sandstone. A brown curtain served as a door.

Kate had to bend to follow the woman through the doorway. Inside was another woman. This one was younger and dressed similarly, except her aselham was worn with a matching veil that was gray with gold trim. A gold tassel dangled from either side of her veil. An older woman in a cream-colored aselham that showed the tops of a pair of black, high-heeled boots, her long gray hair uncovered, brought her a cup of tea. Kate knew the veil was not a cultural necessity among the Berbers but more than likely worn for protection from the unseasonable weather.

She took the tea. The cup and saucer was bone china like any you’d get at home and unlike the customary Berber cup that had no handles. She sank onto the rug that covered the floor, watched the others and emulated what they did. She held the cup with both hands, not the usual way to hold what seemed a traditional teacup. Despite her studies and everything she knew about Morocco and the Middle East, she’d never seen a tribe such as this that seemed to dance between traditional customs and ones that, she guessed, weren’t acquired from popular culture but distinctly their own.

“They won’t tell him the truth,” the younger woman said in a soft voice. “He was paid too well.”

The oldest of them clicked her tongue, an oddly loud sound in the ensuing silence. She held up her hand. “Enough of such talk.”

“It’s true,” the younger woman persisted. “They will not say anything.”

Kate put her cup down and met the older woman’s eyes. She took a chance that these women knew why they were here and they might very well know where Tara was. “Sheikka Tahriha Al-Nassar may die if we don’t find her soon.”

Silence hung within the room for what seemed like minutes and might have only been seconds.

Finally the woman who had led her there said, “I will say what I know but you are to tell no one what has been said within these walls until you leave this village.” Her gaze was intense, serious. “This is between us. The women here and no more.”

“I promise,” Kate said sincerely.

“I tell you this. I will breach the will of our men only because one of our sisters is in danger,” she said. The words were spoken in careful and precise English and because of that they seemed even more ominous.

Kate held back a shiver.

The woman squatted beside Kate and pulled her veil back, revealing fresh, clear skin that was much more youthful than Kate had imagined without the veil casting shadows along the sides of her face.

As she listened, Kate could feel the tension tightening in her gut and the implications of it all made her want to cry for Emir, for his family. But, first, she knew that the man who was intent on destroying the house of Al-Nassar must be stopped.

“Do you know where they were going?” Kate asked.

“No.” She hung her head but when she looked up and her lips were set as if she’d made a decision. “That is all.”

Kate nodded and stood.

“Thank you,” she said. She wanted to shake the woman’s hand but she knew that wouldn’t be acceptable.

She was surprised when the woman offered her own hand. They shook and, with a nod, the woman led her outside before she disappeared down a narrow break between dwellings.

Where the woman had gone there was now only a goat, who lifted his head from a pail from which he was placidly eating and then turned back to his food as if whatever was going on was of little interest to him. Two children chased past her, their childish laughter no different from children anywhere, as dust rose up under their bare feet and the sun beat down on her as if nothing was wrong. Just behind them a shadow drifted between the buildings and she saw a young man, bearded, dressed in a brown robe. Their eyes met as if he were analyzing her. Then, as if she wasn’t supposed to see him, he too disappeared.

She turned as a shudder ran through her, a combination of dread and determination. They’d find Sheikka Tahriha if it was the last thing she did. Despite everything, and maybe because of everything she’d learned, she had the feeling she was no longer welcome. She felt like there were eyes watching her. She needed to find Emir so they could get out of here—now.