how I hate sitting here doing nothing more productive than fielding calls from the media. If only there was something to do!” she exploded. Part of the emptiness she felt was the letdown after the blizzard of wedding preparations, of course. But Jalia was also missing the hard, rewarding work of her university life.
Latif remained standing, resting his hips back against the table, gazing out over the courtyard. He swirled the coffee in his cup.
“Well, why not?”
Jalia looked up, and his eyes turned to her with a hooded expression she couldn’t fathom. “What do you mean, why not?” Suddenly her eye fell on the case he had set down by a column. She frowned in sudden dismay.
“Are you leaving?” How could he go when they were in such trouble? Bari was one of his closest friends!
He took another sip of coffee. “I’m going to drive up into the mountains to ask in the villages whether anyone saw or heard a plane coming down in the storm.”
She stared at him, the fog of a sleepless night abruptly clearing from her brain. “What a brilliant idea!” she breathed. “I wish I could do something useful like that!”
Latif shrugged as if she impressed him not at all. “Why don’t you?”
“It would take me a week to decipher the answers.” The mountain dialects of both Bagestani Arabic and Parvani, Bagestan’s two languages, were very different from what was spoken in the cities, and Jalia had trouble enough even in the city.
Latif said nothing, merely turned, set down his cup, and rang the bell. A servant came out and asked what he would eat. Latif shook his head.
“I don’t want food, thanks, Mansour,” he began in Arabic. “You have a son named Shafi.”
“God be thanked. Fifteen years old, a strong healthy boy. A very good son.”
“I am going into the mountains to help the search,” Latif explained. “I will need another pair of eyes. Would you allow Shafi to accompany and assist me? I may be gone several days.”
Mansour’s expression was pained as he clasped his fist to his chest. “Willingly, Lord! But alas, he is not at home! As you know, he—”
“Thank you, Mansour,” Latif interrupted him.
The servant turned to go, but Jalia called him back.
“I beg that thou be so good as to bring His Excellency some food wherewith to break his fast, if it please thee,” she said in her formal, antiquated Arabic. And to Latif, “You ought to eat something if you’re going on the road.”
Latif laughed aloud and turned to the servant. “An omelette, then, Mansour.”
Mansour bowed and went back inside. In the tree a bird sang entrancingly, but could not lighten the gloom and worry in Jalia’s heart.
“What are you going to do?” Jalia asked.
Latif pulled out a chair. “I have no specific plan,” he said, sitting down opposite her. He reached for the warmed bread left on her plate with a kind of intimate assumption of her permission, and tore a bite-sized piece off with long, strong fingers. “The mountain villages don’t get television and they don’t have phones. So the only way to—”
“I meant, who will you take with you to be the extra pair of eyes?”
He shrugged. “It’s not important.”
But of course it was. How could his search be effective if he had to watch the road the whole time?
“I’m not doing anything. I should have been going home tomorrow, but I can’t leave with Noor missing,” she offered hesitantly. “I could go with you, if you liked.”
Latif’s mouth tightened. “I expect to search until something definite turns up,” he said stiffly. “I may be away several days.”
“Where will you sleep at night?”
“Sometimes in village rest houses, sometimes under the stars. Whatever comes. It won’t be comfortable. And there may be fleas in the rest houses.”
Maybe it was his obvious reluctance that hardened the momentary impulse into determination. This was her chance to get away from the media, the phone and the helpless speculation and do something actively useful.
“Better fleas with a chance to help,” she said, who had never had a fleabite in her life, “than sitting with my mother and aunt, worrying uselessly.”
She could see that Latif didn’t like the idea, and of course she didn’t relish being with him, but what would that matter if they found Noor and Bari?
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