My grandfather and his cronies often told me I was among the United Arab Kingdom’s most fortunate scions. For my wife was not only well-connected royalty but exquisite to boot. And she’d been willing to marry an Indian with no title.
Fortunate...
I wonder what my grandfather and his friend would have to say about my good fortune if they could see my wife now. Sputtering over her lies, so obviously scrambling to come up with more.
“You failed to be discreet,” I tell her. “And now your friend has paid the price.”
Mahirah’s face blanches. But then she resets with a pout. “Why do you always take Aisha’s word over mine? She is lying! She will make up any story to keep your attention. She is an attention pig, and you are behaving as you always do. Failing to see the bad in your own daughter.”
“On the contrary, it is you who fails to see the good,” I answer, my voice thick with disgust. Throwing Aisha under the bus of her affair is low, even for her. “Where is our daughter now, by the way, while you are here, moaning over your banished lover?”
“She has you so wrapped around her finger,” Mahirah whines as if she didn’t hear my question.
“You will literally beat an innocent man and send him away for her!”
I am one of the richest men in Jahwar. My wife can be counted amongst the most beautiful women in the world.
“So let me get this straight, you were born oil-rich, you were smart enough to make yourself tech-rich, and now you’re marrying, like the supermodel of Arabian wifeys?” my old boarding school roommate, Keane, said after I showed him a picture of my future fiancée. “I guess some people are just born lucky.”
Lucky…So many people covet my life and my wife. The only thing I lack from the outside looking in is a son to carry on my family name.
Yet, at that moment, a wave of great weariness washes over me. The truth is, if not for my beloved daughter, there would be nothing appealing about my life. Nothing at all.
“I hate you!” my beautiful wife hisses at me. “I wish I had never agreed to marry you.”
I answer with the truth. “I do too.”
Mahirah’s eyes widen at my frank answer. Then she collapses into tears on the nearest couch. Whether she cries over her lost lover or over her loveless marriage, I’m not sure. And I can’t bring myself to care.
Aisha...
I want to find my beloved daughter, but I don’t bother to ask Mahirah about her whereabouts again. I know in her current mood she would withhold the information just to spite me.
So I return to the small ballroom, where the lavish second wedding of Holt Calson, the CEO of Cal-Mart is taking place. Some of the biggest names on both Africa’s and North America’s list of Fortune 500 billionaires are milling about the room. Yet instead of hobnobbing, I ignore them all to search the ballroom for Aisha.
I find the dance floor empty, save for two people. Holt Calson and his bride. According to Zahir, the American billionaire is truly very much in love with his Jamaican nanny. I believe his claim as I watch them sway together. Her head on his chest, his arms wrapped around her shoulders and waist in a way that puts me more in mind of a hug than two people dancing. Despite their different races and backgrounds, and his father’s now infamous disapproval, they dance together like two young people without a care in the world.
The sight of them makes something ache in my chest.
What would that be like? To care about someone so deeply that I would be willing to defy society’s expectations of me to marry her? To follow my heart as opposed to my grandfather’s dictates?
But that is a truly idiotic thing to wonder. I’m not American. Or free. Or even the kind of person who believes in true love.
I force myself to look away from the loving couple.
Aisha. My daughter. My only joy. I squash those dangerous thoughts and resume my search to find her.
3
MIKA
“Do you speak English?” I ask the little girl hopefully.
“Yes, I used to have a British nanny,” the girl answers with a too cute, melodic accent. “But mama fired her for letting me watch too many American reality shows. Did you see Princess from Her Majesty is here? She’s so cool. I asked her to dance with me, but she had to talk to Uncle Zahir first and he was really cross with her. I wanted to wait for them to get done, but then mama found me and brought me down here. She says behavior like this is why children are never allowed at UAK weddings.”
“Uncle Zahir? Are you related to the Sheikh?” I ask, trying to keep up. I’m beginning to understand why this handful of a girl got unceremoniously deposited with me.
“He is my father’s cousin,” she answers with a dismissive wave. “But who cares about him? Princess from His Majesty is right upstairs, and I’ve barely been allowed to talk with her!”
“Oh, that’s tough.” I try my best to maintain a sympathetic tone and suppress the laughter, threatening to bubble up. But I don’t quite know what to make of the cutely peeved girl who seems far more impressed with the American bride’s former reality star’s best friend than her older cousin--you know, the King of Jahwar.
Wes and Ender choose that moment to come bounding into the game room, like animals released from their holding pens.
“What are you doing playing pool?” Wes asks when he sees Albie standing at the table with a cue. “You’re not my dad.”
Wes should know. With his long, rangy body and light blond hair, cut and neatly gelled for the wedding, he looks like a young clone of his handsome billionaire father. Meanwhile his half-brother, Barron “Ender” Calson has creamy light brown skin and an always-ready smile that was clearly handed down from their mother.
But despite their differing outward appearances, both boys seem to be in agreement that Albie has no business playing a game as boring as pool.
“There’s, like, a million better games to play in here,” Ender points out, his Jamaican accent lilting over his now distinctly American phrasing.
Albie drops the pool cue like he’s been caught with drugs. “Mom made me,” he insists, throwing me right under the bus, although he’d been the one who’d kept asking me to teach him how to play whenever Wes’s and Ender’s backs were turned.
Et tu Albie. Et freaking tu.
Just for that, I call out, “Stop!” before the boys can run off to a more digital part of the game room.
“We have a guest,” I tell them with a sunny smile, indicating Aisha. “Please say hello and introduce yourselves.”
They all roll their eyes, and I can tell they want to whine. But my son and my charges know better. They’re well aware that my smile is just packaging for my steel. Sylvie hired me to be an even sunnier version of herself, but with a military background. So despite being American through and through, the Calson boys know I will insist and delay them until they, as their stern Jamaican mother likes to say, “Act right.”
After letting out an aggrieved sigh, Ender, the oldest Calson brother, introduces himself and the other boys, “Hey, I’m Barron Calson, but everybody calls me Ender. And this is my brother, Weston, but everybody calls him Wes. We’re Holt and Sylvie’s kids. And this is Alberto, but everybody calls him Albie. He’s Mika’s son.”
“Nice to meet you,” they mumble together, like reluctant seals being forced to perform.
“Nice to meet you,” Aisha says, with a darling little wave. “I’m Aisha Zaman, but everyone calls me Aisha. Is that okay?”
“Of course it is,” I answer.
“Zaman...like Mr. Zahir before he became a king?” Wes asks.
Aisha nods. “The Sheikh is my father’s cousin. And my father is called Rashid.”
Ender’s face instantly morphs from bored seal to totally interested. “Wait, is your father Rashid Zaman? The Rashid Zaman?”
“Yes,” the little girl answers with a confused knit of her brow. I’m assuming, that she, like me, probably doesn’t understand Ender’s huge reaction to her father’s name.
Albie looks at Aisha with a new curiosity. “Is he a king too?”
But Wes isn’t having any of it. “Who cares?” he grouses. “Can we get back to the games already? I want to see if I can beat Ender’s high score on the flight simulator.”
“How do I know him?” Ender answers my question as if he can’t hear his little brother complaining, and his Jamaican accent becomes a lot more pronounced as he says, “He is only the founder of Future Bionics.”
I shake my head, still not understanding.
“The company Go Rodriguez bought to form GoBionics?” His voice cracks with outrage that I don’t already know this. “You know, GoBionics the company that is revolutionizing the field of wearable technology like prosthetics and exoskeletons? I have only told you about wanting to get an internship there a thousand times!”
“Oh, is that the place out in Portland you’re always talking about?”
“Yes, the multinational technology company place that will help me develop my bioHelmet and bring it to market! That is all.” Ender throws me an utterly disgusted look before continuing on with, “The rumor is he was supposed to become the new chief technology officer of GoBionics when he decided to come back here to run his family’s company.”
“What? Your dad gave up exoskeletons to work in the desert?” Wes asks Aisha.
Aisha just looks back at him, her expression confused. I doubt she even knows what an exoskeleton is.
“Hey, can you get me your dad’s autograph?” Ender asks. “Or maybe you could introduce me to him?”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” I say to Ender, wrapping a protective arm around my hopelessly confused charge’s shoulders. “Aisha’s hanging out with us until the end of the wedding, so you boys go play your video games and stop bothering her.”
After shooing the boys and their questions about her father away, I lean down and ask Alisha, “So, what do you want to do? Please don’t say something boring like back-to-back video games.”
The little girl’s face goes from confused to curious. “I like to dance. Do you like to dance?” she asks me, her charmingly accented voice hopeful.
“No, I don’t like to dance,” I answer, grinning down at her. “I love to dance.”
RASHID
“Hey, Zaman, what’s what?” A voice with a thick Jersey accent interrupts my search for Aisha at the reception.
“Luca!” I greet Zahir’s other best friend, with a bro hug and a genuinely warm smile.
Zahir doesn’t broadcast his friendship with Luca nearly as loud as the one he shares with Holt. Holt is the CEO of one of the richest corporations in North America, after all, while Luca is the head of the Ferraro crime family. But I know his friendship with my cousin runs just as deep if not deeper.
Holt is the kind of man who will pretend he doesn’t see or know about any of your skeletons. But Luca is the kind of man who not only knows where all your skeletons are buried but also helped you put them in the ground. And his enforcer, Stone Ferraro, happens to be one of my closest friends.
“Why didn’t you make Stone come with you to Holt’s wedding?”
Luca laughs. “Ah you know, Stone ain’t flying nowhere that doesn’t allow booze. But he told me to give you a what’s what.”
“Too bad,” I say. “I would have liked to have seen him. It’s been too long.”
That’s not just small talk. It feels like eons since I’ve been able to see Keane and Stone, much less, hang out, as the Americans say. I’d claim I could count the friends of my own choosing and unsanctioned by my grandfather on my hand, but even that would be a stretch. I don’t have one, I realize, standing across from Zahir’s old boarding school roommate, not one thumb of an authentic personal connection here in Jahwar.
Not for the first time, I find myself not just missing the life I used to have, but regretting that I let go so easily. For all the luxuries I’m afforded as the current CTO of the Tourmaline Group, the desert has shown a harsh light on all of my relationships.
The friendships I enjoy here are based purely on business and connection. My loveless marriage was tolerable when I lived in Portland without palace guards, but here, it has somehow become even harder to pretend we like each other. And as for the work...
Though I’m officially the CTO of The Tourmaline Group, everyone knows my grandfather is grooming me to take over as CEO. I’ve barely touched a piece of technology in years, much less overseen any technological advances for TTG.
I glance around the party, at the treasure trove of connections I should be making and maintaining so that people can start to see me as a natural extension of my grandfather. But unlike with Future Bionics, I find networking as the CEO of The Tourmaline Group, tedious, bordering on exhausting.
I’d been required to truly hustle for Future Bionics to prove myself and my tech. But most of the Tourmaline contracts have been in place since before the turn of the century. My grandfather established resorts across the world during the 1900s and plans to serve as chairman until the day he dies. No one would dare to cross him or take their business elsewhere.
So the future CEOship of Tourmaline amounts to little more than shaking the right hands at the right parties. The same hands. Over and over again, for the rest of my life. Until I die too.
“You looking for someone?” Luca’s voice draws me out of my dark thoughts.
“My daughter,” I answer. I grab on to the thought of finding Aisha. The brightest point of light in my current reality.
“Oh yeah, I saw her earlier, talking to Prin,” Luca tells me.
I smile upon hearing Princess Jones’s nickname. So Aisha’s wish came true. She got to meet her reality princess.
“There you are! I have been looking all over for you.”
I turn in the direction of my grandfather’s booming voice, speaking Urdu. His hair has gone even more white since the beginning of his Kingdom Mall project, but he’s still lean and muscular, and he rushes toward me with the vitality of a man half his age.
“Hey, what’s what, Zaman Sr.?” Luca says, thrusting out a hand.
My grandfather doesn’t give the man he refers to as “that criminal just waiting to drag your cousin down” so much as a nod of greeting before drawing me away.
“Come, come, I’ve gathered a group of the Kingdom Mall associates in the East Parlor. We are discussing how best to approach your stubborn cousin about letting us resume construction.”
I slow, pulling back from his lead. “I don’t see why you need me there. The Kingdom Mall project doesn’t have anything to do with the Tourmaline Group,” I remind him. Not for the first time.
Technically, the Kingdom Mall project was a joint venture between my grandfather and Zahir’s father, the departed king. A legacy enterprise, in the style of past greats like Carnegie and Rockefeller—except with many more profits. The Kingdom Mall’s much-lauded model included a wide-range of luxury stores, a full ski resort for any Jahwar tourists who might be missing colder climes, and a grand opera house that put the iconic one in Sydney to shame.
However, Zahir had abruptly closed down the project shortly after his ascension to the throne, due to “construction partner problems” and the even more vaguely worded “needed revisions.”
“Yes, yes, Zahir has put the building on pause, but your cousin adores you. With your help, perhaps we can come up with a plan to convince him to let the project resume without these silly revisions he is insisting upon.”
I frown. “With respect, Dada ji, I’ve never known Zahir to be silly. Do you have any intel about why he brought construction to a halt in the project’s second to last stage?”
Grandfather makes a scoffing sound. “Something about not liking the steel company on the project. You must talk to him and explain that his fears are unfounded.”
I raise an eyebrow, not missing that my grandfather’s request for a weigh-in with his Kingdom Mall partners has suddenly morphed into me convincing his g
randson king to let his project resume.
Just like my visit home for Zahir’s ascension ceremony turned into me taking my cousin’s place as the future CEO of the Tourmaline Group, I think, the memory coursing through me like battery acid.
He reaches out a hand to cup my cheek. “You will do this for your grandfather, yes?”
And just like that, I flip from resentful to guilty.
He cupped my cheek in the same manner when he came to collect me from the home I shared with my parents in the city, after the death of his only son and my mother in a car accident. “You are grieving right now, but you are strong and you are a Zaman. So you will come to live with me on the palace grounds, and you will not cry when we leave this house. You will do this for your grandfather, yes?”
“Yes.” I agree now as I did back then. “I will talk to him.”
My grandfather’s entire face lights up with approval. “Thank you, my boy. You are always so good to me. Perhaps you could seek him out now, while he is in a good mood because of his American friend’s wedding.”
Which is how I come to find myself looking for Zahir as opposed to my daughter a few minutes later.
Perhaps, Zahir is as ill-fitted to his role as king as I am to my own as the future CEO of a stodgy and nearly century-old company, I think to myself when I spot him through the ballroom’s French doors. He’s also not hobnobbing. Instead, he’s out on the balcony, having what looks like a private discussion with none other than my daughter’s hero, Princess Jones. Well, not exactly private. This particular balcony faces the city, right above one of our most popular street markets. So not only can everyone in the ballroom observe them through the balcony’s mostly glass arched French doors, but also anyone down below who cares to look up.
And it’s not exactly a discussion either. I see that after stepping out onto the balcony to stand directly behind one of Zahir’s two personal guards. More like an argument.
“Da fuck!?!” she’s yelling, “You spoiled-ass motherfucker! Who the hell do you think you are?!”
RASHID: HER RUTHLESS BOSS: 50 Loving States, Hawaii Page 2