The Fierce and Tender Sheikh. Alexandra Sellers

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СКАЧАТЬ the floor, palm up, the fingers moving invitingly. Hani and Farida gazed at him, willing themselves not to glance at the yogurt pot.

      “Give.”

      A step outside the door broke the tension.

      “Farida, where are you? Have you heard? The Sultan’s envoy has arrived at last! A Cup Companion himself! They say he is searching for someone!” a voice cried from the doorway. “He is visiting every room. Come out and see!”

      Her eyes liquid with terror, Farida stared at Hani. But it was impossible to get rid of the wallet now.

      “Good morning, Rashid, morning Mrs. Rashid,” the camp director said cheerfully. “What’s the story here, Alison?”

      His assistant wiped her damp forehead, replaced her hat and consulted the sheaf of documents on her clipboard. “Rashid al Hamza Muntazer, his wife, seven children. Joharis. We don’t have their exact ages, but the nurse has estimated them as all under twelve.”

      Sharif Azad al Dauleh, Cup Companion to the Sultan of Bagestan, touched his fist to his heart in respectful greeting to the family. The brief conversation that followed differed little from thousands of others he had heard over the past weeks. Please tell them the children should be in school, that my wife is very depressed. I am a construction engineer. I want to work. Please ask them how long we will be kept here.

      The group moved on, the anguish ringing in his ears. As at every camp, it was the same tale of nightmare and waste, endlessly repeated. Each one a variation of hell on earth.

      They had covered over half of the detention centre now, and Sharif had almost despaired of finding the boy. His instinct told him that a child as wily as that would have some hiding place, and having stolen Sharif’s wallet—a fact which Sharif had discovered without surprise when he returned to the car—he had every reason to hide to avoid a meeting.

      But it was imperative that he find the boy again.

      At the next door, a Bagestani woman held a baby, another child clutching her skirt.

      “This is Mrs. Sabzi,” the assistant read aloud. “She has three children—a son, Hani, a daughter, Jamila, and the baby.”

      Sharif brought a fist to his breast and bowed.

      “Excellency.” Farida returned the salute, then stood rocking the baby and looking anxiously at him. Her eyes wide with fascination, the baby reached one hand to the Cup Companion, letting go of her teething ring.

      The blue rubber teething ring that he had last seen under his own foot on the highway.

      Sharif smiled. Got you! he told the boy mentally, putting out a finger to the baby, who clutched it and fixed him with a heart-rending look.

      “You have a son, Mrs. Sabzi?” he asked.

      Alarm darkened her eyes, and she licked her lips. “I—yes, my son, Hani.”

      Sharif smiled. “May I meet him?”

      “Excellency, you are very kind! It is good of you, but you are an important man and my son…” She shrugged to show how unimportant her son was.

      Sharif inclined his head. “If he is here, I would like to meet him.”

      “Alas, he is not well, Excellency! I have told him to stay in bed, though he was very eager to meet you. We are Sabzi people, Excellency, from the islands,” she said brightly, in an obvious effort to turn the conversation.

      “Is your son here now?”

      “Yes—no!” the woman began, and then her eyes moved, and her small gasp made Sharif look towards the door of her room. There was the boy, gazing straight at him with an accuse-and-be-damned look. He limped towards his mother and she put an arm around his shoulder, drawing him against her.

      “Here is Hani, Excellency!” she said, her voice going up an octave, though she tried to appear calm. “You see he is not so ill that he will stay in bed when a Cup Companion of the Sultan visits!”

      She looked anxiously between Sharif and the boy as if expecting him to denounce the boy, and almost wept in relief when instead he said, “You say you are from the Gulf Islands?”

      “Yes, Excellency. Our home was the island of Solomon’s Foot. They destroyed our house and drove us out of the island. My husband was arrested. Fifteen months, Excellency, and I have heard no news of him!”

      “The Sultan’s people are working to reunite all political prisoners with their families. I hope you will soon hear news of your husband, Mrs. Sabzi.”

      “But here we are so far away! Many, many thousand miles, they say. How will my husband find us? Please tell the Sultan that we want to come home.”

      Unless she was a miracle of preservation, she was not old enough to be the boy’s mother. Sharif’s gaze raked her face for a resemblance to the boy. Family connections were often constructs in the camps, partly because of Western ignorance of the importance of certain relationships in other cultures, partly because distant relationships increased in importance when many family members had been lost. So great-uncles became fathers, and second cousins became brothers and sisters, to satisfy the requirements of an alien authority.

      But he could see no trace of family resemblance at all.

      “Your husband, Mrs. Sabzi…” he began.

      “I think you have dropped something, Excellency,” the boy interrupted.

      The mother choked with alarm.

      Sharif glanced down to see his wallet lying against his foot. The boy bent to retrieve it, straightened and, with a level, challenging look, offered it to him.

      The director blinked. “Is that your wallet?” he cried in English. “How did it get there?”

      “It must have fallen from my pocket,” Sharif replied.

      “I doubt it very much,” said the director dryly. “You’d better check to see what’s missing.”

      “Shokran,” Sharif said to the boy. Thank you. He took the wallet, his fingers brushing the boy’s with a jolting awareness of his painful thinness. Why didn’t this woman who called herself his mother take better care of her adopted son? And what were the camp authorities about, to allow a child to starve like this?

      Sharif flipped the wallet open. The cash was gone. He understood the boy’s deliberate, self-destructive challenge, but instead of anger he felt a deep sorrow.

      “Everything accounted for,” he said quietly, pocketing the wallet.

      “Excellency, you are a good man!” the mother exploded in a rush of relief, lifted her arm from the boy’s shoulders, seized his hand and kissed it. “We are simple people, and life is so empty here. Our house must be rebuilt, but we are ready for hard work. Only tell us that we may go home!” The boy, meanwhile, looked stunned. His eyes were black with confusion and mistrust as he gazed at Sharif. Kindness completely unsettled him, and that, too, flooded Sharif’s heart with sadness.

      Three

      Hani СКАЧАТЬ