Shackled To The Sheikh. Trish Morey

Чтение книги онлайн.

       CHAPTER FIVE

      RASHID LAUGHED. He couldn’t help but laugh, even though he’d half suspected something similar, but the old man was so fervent and the idea so preposterous. ‘You can’t be serious!’

      ‘Please forgive me, but I am not in the habit of joking about such matters.’

      Rashid got the impression the man was not in the habit of making jokes at all, the complete lack of humour in the vizier’s response stopping Rashid’s mirth dead. ‘But I haven’t lived in Qajaran since I was a boy, if what you say is true, because I certainly can’t even remember a time when I did. I have visited it briefly two or three times since at the most. There must be someone better, someone more qualified?’

      ‘There has been a power vacuum since Malik’s death. A Council of Elders has taken over the basics of governing, but there is no clear direction and no one person to take responsibility. Qajaran needs a strong leader, and there can be no one more fitting than the son of the true successor. In the beginning, I know it is what your father wanted for you, to reclaim your birthright, even though with time he changed his mind and wished for you the freedom that he had found. He had made a life here, after all, and I think the longer he was away from Qajaran, the less connection he felt and the less your father felt he owed his homeland.’

      ‘The father I never knew,’ he said, not even trying to prevent the bitterness infusing his voice. ‘If indeed he was my father. Why should I take your word that he was?’

      The old man nodded. ‘I would be concerned if you accepted too quickly the challenge that lies before you. I would think you are attracted to the concept of power, other than the benefit of our peoples.’ He slipped a hand into the folds of his robes and pulled something from a pocket. ‘Malik sought to destroy all likenesses of your father. This one survived.’ He handed it to Rashid.

      It was one of those old photo folders that opened like a card, the cardboard crinkled and dog-eared around the border but the picture inside still preserved. A photo of a man dressed dashingly in the Qajarese colours of orange, white and red, sitting proudly astride an Arab polo pony, a mallet casually slung over his shoulder as he posed for the camera.

      ‘My God,’ Rashid said, for he recognised his own features in the photograph—his own high cheekbones and forehead and the set of his jaw. The eyes the same dark blue. It could have been him sitting on that horse.

      ‘You see it,’ Kareem said. ‘There is no denying it.’ The old man leaned forward. ‘Your country needs you, Rashid. Qajaran is at a crossroads. Thirty years of a ruler who wasted every opportunity unless it benefited him directly, thirty years of frittering the revenues that came from its industries and rich resources on follies and peccadilloes. It is more by good luck than good management that the economy of Qajaran has not been completely ruined. But now it is time to start building. There is a desperate need for strong leadership, education and reform.’

      Rashid shook his head. ‘Why would the people accept me as leader, when I am supposed to have died in a helicopter crash three decades ago? Why would they believe it is even me?’

      ‘The people have long memories. Malik may have tried to wipe your father from the collective memory of the Qajarese people, but never could he wipe the love of him from their hearts. Truly, you would be welcomed back.’

      ‘When I am supposed to be dead? How does that work?’

      ‘Your body was never found, assumed to be taken by the desert beasts, which means there is doubt. The people of Qajaran are in desperate need of a miracle. The return of you to Qajaran would be that miracle.’

      Rashid shook his head. ‘This is madness. I am a petroleum engineer. That is my job—that is what I do.’

      ‘But you were born Qajarese. You were born to rule. That is in your blood.’

      Rashid stood, his legs too itchy to remain seated any longer, and crossed to a window, watching the traffic and the pedestrians rushing by in the street below. They all had somewhere to go, somewhere to be. Nobody was stopping them and telling them that their lives up till now had been founded on a lie, and that they must become someone they had never in their wildest nightmares thought they would be. Nobody was telling them they had a tiny sister they were now responsible for—let alone a nation full of people for whom they were now responsible.

      He shook his head. He didn’t do family. The closest he had ever come to having family was his three friends, his desert brothers, Zoltan, Bahir and Kadar, their friendship forged at university in the crucible of shared proximity and initial animosity, all of them outcasts, all of them thrust together as a kind of sick joke—the four had hated each other on sight—only for СКАЧАТЬ