under the dock, when he told her about the war in Parvan, that their control finally broke.
Brave little Parvan, which had been invaded by the Kaljuks, and had long been fighting an unequal war with little help from its friends. Prince Omar of Central Barakat had formed a company of Cup Companions and joined the war on the side of Prince Kavian of Parvan.
‘The Kaljuks are monsters,’ Salah told her. ‘Prince Omar is right—we can’t let them do what they are doing to Parvan. He is right to join the fight.’
Desi’s heart choked with a sudden presentiment of doom.
‘You—you wouldn’t go, would you?’
‘My father has forbidden me, he says I must finish one year of university first. He thinks the war will be over this winter. The Kaljuks are tired and Parvan will never give up. But if it is not—what else can I do, Desi? I must join the Prince. I must help them.’
Tears starting in her eyes, she begged him not to go to war. She pleaded her love and their future. The life together they would never have if he were killed. Those four children who would never be born.
‘Marry me now, Desi,’ he said roughly, drawing her in against his chest and holding her tight. ‘Then, if I die, I will leave you with a son to take care of you when he grows up. Come home with me! Marry me now!’
He kissed her then, when all their barriers were down. And amid the perfect silence of nature, that silence that is wind and birdsong and still water, they could no longer say no to the wild desire in their blood.
She always marvelled, afterwards, at the coincidence. After two weeks of utter joy, of living in their own secret, magic world, on the night before Salah’s departure, her brother Harry arrived for the weekend bringing a magazine.
‘Baby, it’s you!’ he said proudly, opening it to show them all something that the family was still a long way from being used to: a full-page ad with Desi’s photo.
It had been her first high-fashion assignment, shot in Toronto months before, and it had been a very different world from any she had experienced up till then. Desi had been awed by the arrogance of the makeup artist, never mind the photographer, who everyone said was the absolute best…
The results, too, were different: the peak of professional skill evident in the ad, which was all in shades of bronze. Desi sat on a director’s chair with her feet sprawled wide, her knees angled in, in a trench coat, buttoned and belted, but exposing a V of sensual dark lace at both breast and hip. With her elbow resting on the arm of the chair, propping up her chin, Desi gazed at the viewer with limpid beauty. Between her feet was a fabulous leather handbag. Glossy shoes matched the bag.
The family and guests crowded round. ‘You look absolutely stunning!’
‘Oooh, very sexy!’
‘I’ll buy one! Just show me the money!’
Everybody was delighted, thrilled for her. Only one voice was silent. Desi looked shyly up at Salah, expecting his proud approval.
His face was dark with shock.
‘They exploit you,’ he said quietly, and it was a terrible slap, all the worse because it was public. The babble in the room damped down as Desi gasped and blushed bright red.
‘Exploit me? Do you know how much I was paid for that shoot?’ she cried indignantly. ‘And the hotel where they put us up…’
‘They put you up in a fine hotel and pay you to expose yourself,’ Salah said.
‘Expose? My legs!’ she cried. ‘Everybody does it! I’m not nude, you know!’
‘Yes,’ he said. And it was true that the positioning of the bag between her feet, with the innocent vulnerability in her eyes, was disturbingly erotic.
For once her mother rose to the occasion.
‘Isn’t it wonderful the differences you still find in cultural perceptions, when we’re all so worried about American monoculture sweeping the world?’ she said, picking up the magazine and flipping it shut. ‘Congratulations, darling, we’ll look at it again later. It’s a cold supper tonight, everyone, shall we eat now?’
Tears blinding her, Desi got up and banged out through the screen door into the star-filled night. The door banged a second time behind her, but she did not stop running.
He caught up with her down by the water’s edge.
‘Desi!’
‘Why did you do that? Why did you humiliate me in front of everyone?’ she demanded.
‘If you are humiliated, it is not me. That picture, Desi—’
‘Oh, shut up! Shut up! There is nothing wrong with that picture! It’s a fashion shoot! I was so lucky to get that job, girls wait years for something like that! It’ll open so many doors for me!’
That was her agent talking. The truth was that modelling, the teenage girl’s fantasy, had never really been Desi’s dream. Perhaps it was the impact of her parents’ ideals on her, her island upbringing, for what she had seen of the life so far she did not like. But, perversely human, when pressed, she defended what she did not believe in.
‘Desi, we are going to be married. You will be my wife. You can’t pose like this for other men.’
‘Men?’ she cried. ‘That’s not a men’s magazine! It’s fashion! It’s for women! I’m advertising a handbag!’
‘No,’ he said levelly. ‘You advertise sex.’
He had the outsider’s clarity, but it was too much to expect that she could see what he saw, or that he would understand the intimate connection between sex and sales.
‘You don’t know what you’re talking about!’
‘Desi, one picture is not important. But this work you do—will it all be like that? Is this what a modelling career means?’
‘All like what, for heaven’s sake? I was fully dressed! Wait for it, Salah, next month I’ll be in an underwear catalogue! What is your problem?’
‘Desi, a Muslim woman cannot do such things. It is impossible.’
She was silent, listening to the crickets. Then, ‘I’m not a Muslim woman,’ she said slowly.
‘Desi!’ he pleaded.
She burst into tears. ‘And if that’s what it means—that my photograph is seen as disgusting, then…and if that’s what you think—if that’s what you see when you look at that picture of me…oh, God, you make me feel like a…like a…’
They were too young to see that what had motivated his outburst was not religion, but jealousy. Sexual possessiveness.
‘And if you’re so high and holy, Salah, what about what we’ve been doing? How does that stack up with your principles?’
‘We love each other. We are going to be married!’
