England, once,’ he confided, ‘I drank what I thought was coffee. It was not coffee. For two seconds, I thought, They have given me pigs’ urine to insult me! Then I realized it was tea.’
She let out a whoop. The incident shook them both out of the mood of angry recrimination. They lay laughing together over nothing, like the old days, the old nights, under the moonlit dock.
They had always laughed together. It was one of the things she’d loved most, missed most…
Laughter shared with a lover. It didn’t get better than that.
And now, when he was no longer threatening, when her guard was down, the layers of protection she had laid down over the past tore away. In one moment she was naked again. Her heart coiled with yearning. Oh, what had they done? What had they lost?
The waiter arrived with the next course, a tray with a dozen little dishes that all looked impossibly succulent. Just as Salah had promised, ten years ago.
She had to stop this. Salah was already dangerous enough without help from her own feelings. If there was one thing she was not going to do on this trip, it was get seduced into sex for the sake of closure.
For him it would be closure. For her, she saw suddenly, it might be just the opposite.
Desi sat up and tucked her feet under her.
‘So, when do we go?’ she asked in a bright voice, as the dishes, one by one, were laid on the cloth between them. ‘Do we leave first thing in the morning?’
He jerked his chin in the way she remembered. ‘Not tomorrow. You need at least a day to acclimatize before going into the desert. Maybe two.’
‘But—’
‘And I have business tomorrow. The day after, if you insist. At sunrise.’
She nodded agreement. ‘How long does it take to get to the site?’
‘How long?’ Salah was examining the various offerings with close attention. ‘That depends.’
‘It depends? On what?’
The last dish was set down, the waiter bowed and left, and Salah began spooning various bits of food onto a small plate.
‘On what?’ he repeated absently. ‘Oh—it may depend on the weather, the wind…’
‘The wind? What, we’ll be sailing?’ she asked ironically.
‘You are not so ignorant about the desert that you do not know that wind can be a dangerous enemy.’
‘I suppose weathermen predict the weather in Barakat as well as elsewhere.’
‘Climate change impacts the desert as well as elsewhere, also.’
‘So a big wind might blow up from nowhere and we’ll get stuck in the sand?’
‘It is not unknown. Not even unusual. Try this, Desi,’ Salah said, reaching out a long arm to set an array of taster-size morsels in front of her.
The odour of the food reached her nostrils then, utterly intoxicating.
‘Oh, that smells amazing!’ she cried, scooping up a morsel of something mysterious, then heaved a sigh as the flavour hit her taste buds. ‘That’s delicious. That’s the food of the gods!’
You make it sound like the food of the gods, she had said.
He looked at her, and she knew he was there again, too. She sought for something to say to dislodge the time shift.
‘So do we—’
‘Why does my father’s work interest you, Desi?’
Her heart sank. She tossed her hair back to look at him. ‘It was all in my letter. Didn’t your father tell you?’
‘You tell me.’
Damn. This wasn’t fair. The letter, mostly composed by Sami, was supposed to have paved the way, established all the lies. Desi was all right about living the lie, since so much depended on it, but she hated having to tell it, face to face. Especially to Salah. Especially now.
Especially as it was, she knew, so ludicrously unlikely a lie.
‘Did he tell you that I’m going back to university to do a degree?’
‘Now?’
She nodded uncomfortably. ‘I’ll start part-time this year…if I can. Middle Eastern history and archaeology.’
‘Why? Don’t you have a very successful career?’
‘Modelling won’t last forever,’ she said, and it was perfectly true. ‘I want a smooth transition when the time comes.’
‘A smooth transition into archaeology? What awoke this sudden interest?’
‘Not that sudden. I’ve been curious about archaeology ever since that summer the university came to dig on the island,’ she said. ‘Remember that First Nations site they were digging? We used to go and watch every day. I never forgot the thrill of seeing someone uncover an arrowhead!’
That part at least was true—eleven-year-old Desi had been fascinated as the past was unveiled: the discovery of the floor of the longhouse, the settlement’s refuse mound, the arrowheads of chipped stone. One of the students had encouraged her interest, telling her what each find said about the people who had lived on the site, showing her how the history of two hundred years ago could be discovered even without written records.
‘Two hundred years?’ Salah had said in youthful disdain. ‘In my country we have cities five thousand years old!’
Desi had reacted to the challenge with predictable outrage. ‘So what?’ she had cried. ‘I bet there are lots of countries where they have them ten thousand years old!’
His mouth smiled when she reminded him; his eyes were too shadowed to read.
‘You made me so mad! But I think I made up my mind then that one day I’d come to Barakat and see what you were talking about, a city five thousand years old!’
‘And now you are here.’
She hated the way he said it.
‘Won’t you find archaeology tame after a career as a supermodel?’
‘It beats marketing a perfume called Desirée,’ she said dryly. Her distaste for that at least was no lie. ‘“Feminine, delicate, but with a smouldering hint of sensuality.” Or a chain of restaurants: Desi’s Diner. How would you like it?’
He had the grace to laugh.
‘But isn’t a chain of restaurants with a smouldering hint of sensuality just what the world needs?’
She rolled her eyes. ‘Not from me.’
‘And
