an ancient tree rose up in one corner, its gnarled branches and thick leaves shading the space from the morning sun. More tumbled greenery cascaded down from the balcony, or entwined the tall columns and latticework.
It was compellingly beautiful, deeply restful. The temperature seemed to have dropped by at least ten degrees. Desi heaved a sigh of sheer wonder.
‘Isn’t it spectacular!’
‘It is more beautiful in spring, with the flowers,’ said Salah and, pausing under the archway, he threw a switch.
She heard a rumble, a groan, as if some great underground creature had been disturbed in its rest, and then the perfect reflection in the water shimmered and was lost as fountains leapt up into the air from the centre of the pool.
The fine spray damped her face as she stood smiling up at the vision.
‘Now, that’s what I call air conditioning!’ Her spirits lifted and she laughed for sheer pleasure.
Watching as the fine mist damped her lips, as if a kiss had moistened them, his face closed. He turned away to lead her through the spray up a flight of stairs and along the balcony.
A sudden gust caught his cloak and it billowed around him, the image of the hero in an ancient tale. Desi was struck by the same promise of timelessness and belonging that the sands had whispered to her, as if they had met here a thousand years ago…
He opened a door.
She stopped to catch her breath again at the doorway. It was a magnificent room, huge, but divided into comfortable niches by the artistic use of rugs, furniture clusters, and intricately carved antique room dividers in cedar, ebony and sandalwood.
Above the doorway and windows, panels of stained glass threw patterns of coloured sunlight onto the white-painted walls. Fat brocade cushions forming sofas and armchairs were interspersed with low tables; on the walls above hung fabulous paintings and patterned mirrors, with niches holding burnished bronze plates and pitchers that glowed like gold. Covering the dark polished wood floor was the biggest silk carpet she had seen outside a museum. A Chinese cabinet looked as if it had been painted for an emperor.
The plates and jars that glowed like gold, she realized with a jolt, were gold.
A sweeping arch gave onto a farther room, and against the opposite wall a soft breeze coming through the jalousies of an open window disturbed the silk canopy of a low bed whose pillows and spread were patterned in turquoises and purples.
The luxury was suddenly and profoundly erotic. So different from the bed under the old dock ten years ago, but pulsating with sensual and sexual promise. As if that other bed, those places they had made their bed, had been a foreshadowing, a dream of which this, now, was the living, breathing, full-colour reality.
They stood gazing at each other, locked in the moment, as the tentacles of memory reached out from the thing called bed and began to entwine them.
She had thought herself immune. She had imagined that hatred had blanked out the love that had once consumed her, and that in the intervening years indifference had wiped out hatred.
Desire, it seemed, was independent of such considerations. It operated outside them, it must, because right now his eyes were as hot on her skin as the desert sun.
Desi thought wildly, with a kind of panic, If he kissed me now…
A woman appeared silently, suddenly, as if from nowhere, and murmured a greeting. Salah drew in a controlled breath, spoke a few words to her, and when he turned back to Desi all sign that he had been affected by the moment was blanked out behind obsidian shutters.
‘I have a meeting now. Fatima speaks a little English. She will look after you and bring you lunch later. It will be best if you remain in the palace today. We will have dinner about sunset. Do you wish something to eat or drink now? Fatima will bring it.’
‘Nothing, thanks. Do you live in the palace?’ she asked, not sure which answer she was hoping for.
‘I have rooms here, yes,’ he said. ‘We all do.’
‘“We”?’
‘Prince Omar’s Cup Companions have offices and apartments in the palace.’
Desi remembered all about the Cup Companions. In ancient times holders of the title had had duties no more onerous than to carouse with the monarch and take his mind off affairs of state.
‘Now they work very hard,’ Salah had told her, that day he confided his dreams of one day serving with Prince Omar. ‘They are the Prince’s working cabinet. One day, inshallah, I will achieve this—to work with Prince Omar.’
I don’t know what Salah’s exact mandate is, but my brothers have heard he’s in Prince Omar’s confidence, Sami had explained more recently. They’re convinced he’s very, very VIP.
‘We heard about your appointment, of course. Congratulations, Salah, I know it was always your dream,’ she said now. ‘Your parents must be proud.’
‘Mash’allah,’ he said dismissively. It was God’s will.
In another life, he would have come to her first with the news.
Looking up at the shuttered face, the arrogant tilt of his chin, the hanging judge’s eyes, Desi could well believe that Salah had a Prince’s ear. But she herself wouldn’t marry him now for all the power and influence in six continents. She was suddenly violently, intensely glad she’d agreed to help Samiha. Marriage to Salah would be a hell of a life.
Chapter Five
‘THEY want me to marry Salah,’ Samiha had said.
The harassment had begun during the last year of her undergraduate degree, after Sami’s father had been killed in a work accident. With his death, her eldest brother, Walid, became ‘head of the family’. The trouble started almost immediately, and because her mother caved in under the pressure, Sami had had to give in. First she had been forced to wear the head covering called hejab whenever she was out of the house. Other restrictions followed, in a steady erosion of her freedom.
But when Walid, supported by their brother Arif, started to suggest that the headscarf was not sufficient to protect her from men’s lusts or show her devotion to their religion, and that Sami really ought to wear niqab, the full face veil, Sami had finally found the courage to introduce him to Farid, her fiancé. The couple hoped that Walid would be happy to pass his troublesome ownership of his sister to a husband.
This had been a tactical error. The secrecy of it, her brazen determination to make her own choice, outraged Walid. It violated his right as her protector and guide to choose a good husband for her. Farid al Muntazer, though a Muslim, did not meet with his approval.
Samiha should marry someone from back home. Someone connected to them. Family.
‘But Salah’s your cousin!’ Desi had protested, scandalized.
In her distress, Sami had turned to Desi as naturally as breathing. They no longer lived on the same street, but there were ways of keeping in touch that were almost as good as walking home from school together. Wherever Desi was in the world,
