The Fierce and Tender Sheikh. Alexandra Sellers

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      “Don’t be a fool. Get in the car. I’ll take you to a doctor.”

      The boy visibly flinched. “No, thanks. Are you going to lift your foot? I need this.” He tried to pull whatever it was out from under Sharif’s foot, but succeeded only in tearing the packaging.

      They had both forgotten the trucker. Having moved his truck off the road, he now came towards them at a furious jog.

      “You bloody little scum!” he cried, descending on the boy. “What were you playing at? You’re one of those bloody refugees, aren’t you?”

      He grabbed the boy’s wrist and dragged him to his feet, spilling all his gathered possessions onto the ground again. The boy cried out with pain.

      “Refugees?” Sharif Azad al Dauleh queried softly, his voice cutting through the other’s anger.

      There was a pause as the trucker absorbed the powerful frame, the proud posture, the clothing from that other desert a world away.

      “That’s Burry Hill over there.” He nodded towards the cruel, uncompromising rows of curling razor wire just visible in the distance across the bleak scrubland, ignoring the boy silently struggling in his ruthless hold. “It’s not as secure as the others. People say they can get out, but there’s nowhere to go, so they have to go back. I’ve heard of this trick—they throw some kind of firework under your wheels and when you stop they jump off and are out over the desert before you can catch them.

      “But not this time, eh?” He jerked at the boy’s wrist and showed his teeth. “Not this time.”

      “Let me go, you stinking camel-stuffer!” shrieked the boy, suddenly abandoning English to revert to a patois that seemed to be a mixture of languages, of which Bagestani Arabic and Parvani formed the chief part. A stream of insult followed.

      Sharif flicked the gold lighter alive, a smile twitching his lips for the rich fluency of the invective as the boy informed the trucker that he was a man who didn’t know one end of a goat from the other, but wasn’t particular about it anyway. He briefly bent to the flame. When he lifted his head again his eyes fell on the boy’s contorted face, and for a moment he went perfectly still.

      “Come here, you little—” The trucker was trying to deliver a kick, but even with his hurt foot, the boy was proving too agile. Beside the well-fed driver, he looked like a stick insect.

      “Eater of the vomit of dogs!”

      The lighter closed with an expensive click and Sharif Azad al Dauleh lifted his head and took the cigar out of his mouth.

      “Let him go.”

      At the sound of the cold command, the trucker’s eyes popped in disbelief. “What?” he demanded.

      “You’re bigger than he is. And you can remember your last meal.”

      “What’s that got to do with it? He could have killed us both! He’s a thief, too! Look at all this stuff—nicked, for sure!” cried the driver, indicating the litter of items on the ground.

      “Let him go.”

      “You’re out…”

      Looking up into the taller man’s eyes, the driver hesitated. Arms crossed over his chest, eyes narrowed against the smoke, Sharif smiled. The boy, taking advantage of a slackened grip, broke free and limped past Sharif to shelter, panting, behind the open car door.

      “I think you’re mistaken. You ran over a plastic bottle,” Sharif said.

      There was a long moment of challenge. The trucker looked from the dark-eyed sheikh to the dark-eyed boy, and sneered.

      “I get it. One of your own, is he?”

      “Yes,” said Sharif softly. “One of my own.”

      Something in his face made the other man step back. “Well, I don’t have time for this,” he blustered. “I’ve got a timetable!” He spat violently down at the boy’s strewn possessions, then turned and strode back towards his own vehicle.

      A moment later the truck was roaring down the road again, as though trying to escape the smoke of its own exhaust.

      Sharif Azad al Dauleh remained where he was for a moment, gazing out over the desert towards the barbed wire and the painful glitter of the metal roofs, trying to make sense of what he thought he’d seen. Maybe he’d had too much sun.

      “Come out!” he ordered, without raising his voice.

      He turned his head as the slim figure straightened from behind the door.

      The boy looked starved. The bare arms under the baggy T-shirt sleeves were painfully thin, and the long neck and hollow cheeks only intensified the impression that he needed a square meal. But there was no mistaking the resemblance, once he had seen it.

      “What’s your name?” Sharif asked softly, in Bagestani Arabic.

      The boy looked at him, breathing hard, a wounded animal only waiting for the return of his strength to flee. At the question, his eyes went blank.

      “I have a reason for asking,” Sharif prodded in an urgent voice.

      In the same pithy language he had used with the trucker, the boy advised him on the precise placement of his reason and his question. The advice was colourful and inventive.

      “Tell me your father’s name.”

      For one unguarded moment, the boy’s face became a mask of grief. Then his eyes went blank again, and he shrugged in a to hell with you kind of way and limped painfully to pick up an orange. Sharif lifted his foot to free whatever the toy was, and for a moment the boy gave off a deep animal wariness, as if this might be a prelude to violence. He didn’t rank Sharif an inch higher than he did the trucker.

      One eyebrow raised in dry comment on the boy’s suspicions, Sharif bent and picked up the object. The boy stowed the rest of the things in his pockets under the loose T-shirt, then stood a few feet from Sharif.

      “It’s mine. Give it to me.”

      Sharif took the cigar from his mouth. “Didn’t you steal it?”

      “What do you care? I stole it, you didn’t. It’s mine. If you keep it, you’re a thief, too, no better than me. Give it to me.”

      The boy was favouring his foot so carefully Sharif guessed the dance with the trucker had broken a bone. The important thing was to get him to a doctor. He would worry about the other later.

      He tossed the object to the boy and jerked his head. “Get in the car.”

      But the boy snatched it from the air, whirled and, not limping nearly so heavily now, made for the embankment.

      “Don’t be a fool!” Sharif snapped. “You’re hurt! Let me take you to a doctor!”

      His mouth stretched in a mocking smile, the boy flicked a backward glance. And with sunlight and shadow just so, his cheekbones and eyes again revealed that shape the Cup Companion knew so well.

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