‘What do you imagine you’re talking about?’ she cried. ‘No one asked me to visit the dig! No one asked me to come here!’
‘This is not the truth, Desi! Tell me their names! Such information can be invaluable to us.’
‘I am not anyone’s tool, innocent or otherwise!’ she cried indignantly. ‘Do you imagine I could be so stupid? Or maybe you think I’m the cheat myself? Is that what you think?’
‘Why are you here?’
‘I told you why!’
He was silent, watching the guarded look come into her eyes. The lie was in her tone; even she could hear it. But she had to glare back at him with the best outrage she could muster.
‘I am not anybody’s tool,’ she insisted, hating the expression on his face, hating the lie she was living. How she wished she could throw the truth at his head.
He said, ‘I will take you to my father, if you insist, Desi. But I tell you now that you will not learn where the site is, even though you see it with your own eyes—the desert does not tell the uninitiated where they are. You will learn no village name. Do you still wish to make the journey?’
‘Of course I do!’ she cried. ‘And I couldn’t care less about knowing the compass coordinates! You can blind-fold me if you want to. That’s not why I want to visit the site. I told you—I had no idea how important it was till you told me the other day. I thought it was just another site. I had no idea I was asking for such a big favour.’
‘My father could not say no.’
‘Well, I’m sorry. I wish I’d known.’
‘And now that you do?’
With every fibre of her being she wanted to say, Forget it! I don’t want anything from you or your father.
But she couldn’t. She said lamely, ‘Well, aren’t we nearly halfway there now?’
He nodded without speaking.
‘Salah, I swear to you I am not here to steal any secrets for anybody.’
He looked at her as if there was nothing in the world he wanted more than to believe her. But when he said, ‘Good,’ she knew he was still doubting.
‘You always did judge me,’ she reminded him bitterly.
‘Not without cause.’
‘Then, as now, the cause was all in your own head.’
He laughed, seemed about to say something, then changed his mind.
For one powerful, compelling moment Desi had the conviction that she should confide everything to Salah—should just tell him, Samiha doesn’t want to marry you, she’s in love with someone else.
She half opened her mouth and closed it again. If she were wrong, she would not be the one to suffer.
Or at least, not more than was already on the cards.
Chapter Thirteen
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
