by Неизвестный
“No,” she said, flinging up a hand, her voice cracking with emotion. “Please. There’s nothing to say.”
“There is everything to say,” Salah said. “Do you think we can leave it where it is?”
She couldn’t take any more. Not tonight. Not ever. “I’ll say good night, Salah.”
But his hand closed on her arm, heat burning through her skin to war with the coldness in her heart.
“Walk with me,” he said. “Deezee!”
Even now, even after what she had learned, his voice roughing up her name had power over her, like a
cat’s tongue on a sensitive spot. The knowledge filled her with distant fury. That nickname in his mouth
was like blasphemy now. Bitter hurt welled up in her, choking her so that she could not speak to resist.
“Come with me.”
And she turned and went with him out beyond the cluster of caravans and trailers, into the empty desert.
A full moon was climbing up the sky. The giant rocks threw heavy black shadows onto the sand, making
a landscape unlike anything she had ever seen before, strange and otherworldly.
“Desi, I was blind. Blind and a fool.”
She closed her eyes as a sense of waste and devastation flooded her. She shook her head.
“Too late,” she choked. “Too little, too late.”
“Don’t say it!” he commanded. “It can’t be too late, Desi. I won’t let it be too late! We are still young,
we have so much life in front of us.”
“Are you young? I’m old. I feel a hundred years old. I’m tired and life has passed me by. And I don’t
want to talk about this. Is that all you wanted to say?”
He stopped and turned to face her. Moonlight carved his face like rock.
“What are you saying? Do you think we can just walk away from this? You loved me once. Love is still
possible. That I know. When we make love, you tell me so in everything but words. Desi, I—”
She felt exhausted, bruised. “I think our watches must be out of sync, Salah.” She glanced down at her
wrist in the milky gloom. “Yeah, by, let’s see—about ten years.”
“A mistake destroyed those ten years,” he insisted. “A stupid, ignorant mistake. And if we don’t mend it
now, it will destroy the rest of our lives. We have to find our way through this.”
“The only mistake that would destroy the rest of my life would be to listen to you.”
“You know it is not true. You would not be so hurt now if you did not… Please. Let us not go on in this
terrible error. Look into your heart, Desi, and hear me.”
Like a wounded animal goaded beyond its endurance, she rounded on him.
“Look! You wanted closure, am I right? That’s what you wanted! Now you’ve had closure. You’re
going to get married, I think you said. Well, off you go, and good luck to you!”
“Do you think I can marry Sami now?” he almost shouted.
“But it doesn’t matter who you marry, does it?” she reminded him harshly. “What happened to ‘the best
love comes after marriage’?”
“How can I marry another woman now in the hopes of learning to love her?”
“I have no idea. But then I never understood the principle in the first place.”
“Desi, I made a mistake. That mistake has ruined our lives for ten years.”
“You’re a powerful Cup Companion who lives in a palace. I don’t wake up for less than ten thousand
dollars. I don’t think we can call this ruination.”
“You speak of the world. I speak of the heart.”
“Do you?” Desi gave vent to a snort of bitter laughter. “That’s a good one!”
“Desi, you have to forgive me! Forgive me and let’s leave this in the past, where it belongs. Stay with
me tonight, Desi. Let me love you again. Love me. Let us find our hearts’ truth together.”
Panic choked her. Her heart was kicking like a drum, and there were too many words in her throat.
“Love you? Love the man who only yesterday believed I was conspiring to destroy his country’s history
and culture? The man who for ten years judged me by a piece of trash magazine gossip and never
bothered to find out the truth? Gosh, I wonder what I should say to this? Will a simple no do, or should I
point out that I wouldn’t touch you again if you were the last man standing after Armageddon?”
“Desi—”
“And that if you so much as touch me, I will blast you down so hard Armageddon will look like a tea
party. Please, I can’t take any more of this! If you’ve said what you had to say, I want to go back.”
He gazed down into her anguished face in the moonlight, lifted his head for a moment, breathed deeply,
then turned their steps. Their moonshadow moved ahead of them now, disguising the path, making it
harder to find their footing. Desi felt seasick, as if she’d had too much sun.
“Can you understand that I was suspicious of your motives because I didn’t trust my own?” Salah asked
quietly.
“What the hell’s that supposed to mean?”
“You know what I mean. You said it yourself. When I said I only wanted closure I was lying to myself.
When I accused you of lying I was looking in a mirror.”
“I’m thrilled for you if you see it, however belatedly.”
“Desi,” he commanded.
She turned her head to look at him, her jaw tight. His shadowed eyes glinted moonlight at her.
“I told you once that we were already married, in our hearts. That we would be married forever. Do you
remember?”
“I never forgot.”
“Once I forgot it, Desi. I am sorry. Please don’t—”
“You forgot it a lot more than once.”
“A man may not live up to the truth, but the truth is no less true.”
“Whatever that means.”
“We are married in our hearts. We always were.”
“Didn’t we get a divorce?” she asked brightly. “I think I remember that.”
“We can fix that mistake now. Think how many more years there are ahead of us. What if we live to
eighty? Ten years of misunderstanding will be nothing.”
They had reached her trailer now. Desi went up the step, then turned and faced him, her hand on the
latch.
“The last ten years will never be nothing to me,” she said stonily. “But you will, Salah. You are. Nothing
to me. Good night.”
She went in and closed the door.
Sleep would not come. She lay like one fatally wounded, reexamining her life and her ten lost years. The
shame she’d carried for so long after reading Salah’s letter. That miserable year-long affair with a man
almost as old as her father. And afterwards, feeling so permanently degraded it was as if all sexual life in
her died. Until Salah himself had brought her to life again.
Leo could never have succeeded, of course, had she not felt so despised. She remembered her stunned
shock at the gross betrayal of trust after three years of acting like a father to her. There was no one she’d
trusted more.
“Oh, come off it!” he’d said impatiently. “Don’t try and tell me you haven’t been expecting this! Why
do you think I’ve invested so much time and money in you, Desi? Building a career you would never
have had without me. You’re not quite as fabulous as we’ve got them saying, you know! Without me
you’d still be posing in cheap anoraks for catalogues in the backwoods.”
She’d accepted it, too stunned to resist either the judgement or his advances. She accepted his marriage
proposal, too. That ten
months of being Leo Patrick’s fiancée had been three hundred days of
humiliation, until she had found the courage to break with him completely, find her feet and a new agent.
Salah’s judgement of her had become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
If Salah had trusted her, that awful year could not have taken place. Her life would now be something
else entirely. The possibility of happiness would not seem so distant.
Was it only yesterday she had realized she had never stopped loving him? Where was that feeling now?
He had betrayed the past, and it ran like a seam all through her life.
And now he wanted her again, he said. Not just physically, this time: no, now he wanted her love.
But he’d killed that. A love that had survived, buried but intact, for ten long desperate years, had finally
been put out of its misery. You killed it with your own hand, Desi told Salah silently. And all things
considered, I should be grateful. One day I will be. When I’ve recovered, I’ll be glad.
Then she turned to bury her tears in her pillow.
Seventeen
“W e knew there was a VIP coming,” the girl gushed happily. “We thought it would be the French
Culture Minister or somebody like that. I mean, who would have thought it would be Desi?”
The noon sun painted the world a painful, bright white outside the open-fronted mess tent, where she
was sitting with Salah and his father and a couple of the dig supervisors over lunch. She had awoken
with a headache and stayed in the trailer to miss breakfast. Then she had done the rounds with Salah’s
father again, keeping all possibility of conversation with Salah at bay.
But she had to face Salah sometime, so when Khaled had mentioned lunch, Desi hadn’t protested. She
and Salah still had not spoken, but in the bustle no one seemed to notice.
She glanced at him once, and that once was enough to tell her she’d had no need for evasive tactics: the
window of opportunity was closed. Salah was back in control. The anguish of last night was gone, his
face today was shuttered stone. He was the Salah she had met at the airport once more—harsh,
forbidding, a man who was nobody’s fool.
That was good, of course. She was glad. Now all she wanted to do was get away from him as soon as
possible.
Desi smiled and signed her autograph in the thick, grubby notebook labelled FIELD NOTES for the
young volunteer, who had finally summoned the courage to approach the table and speak to her. Others
were watching from a distance and it was clear they would join their friend in another minute.
“So are you going to be having pictures taken here? Is it, like, a modelling shoot?” the girl asked.
Suddenly there was the sound of a vehicle engine approaching, and everyone sat up with ears pricked as
it came to a stop outside the tent.
“Are we expecting someone?” Dr. al Khouri asked. Everyone at the table shook their head. “I hope the
guards were awake,” the archaeologist said grimly.
A car door slammed, and a moment later a woman’s figure appeared in the tent opening, features
indistinguishable against the light. She paused briefly in the entrance, swept a look around the tables,
then headed firmly towards the table where they were sitting. Desi saw an elegant woman with an
aristocratic face and alert black eyes.
“Mother?” exploded Salah in disapproving amazement. “What are you doing here in such heat?”
“I came to meet Desi, of course,” said Arwa al Khouri.
“This is my husband’s home on site,” Salah’s mother said a little later, as they entered a cool, if rather
cramped and untidy trailer. “I am not often here, because the heat is bad for my health.
“So. You will call me Arwa, yes?” she said, shifting a pile of papers from the sofa to the floor so that
they could sit down. “I feel that I have known you a very long time already! It is only bad luck, after all,
that we have not met long ago.”
“You speak such good English!” Desi said brightly, nervously steering the conversational boat towards
the shallows.
Arwa was an elegant, aristocratic woman whose black hair had been cut probably, Desi guessed, in
Paris, where she doubtless also bought her clothes. Her skin was firm and clear without any sign of
surgical or chemical assistance, and Desi thought she must be about fifteen years younger than her
husband. Wearing a smart pink linen tunic and trousers, she made Desi feel grubby and underdressed in
her khaki shorts, t-shirt and the loose khaki shirt.
“Not so good. But I am glad that you and I can talk without an interpreter. I am so glad to meet you at
last, Desi! Because I go every year to Paris for the shows, I have seen you several times on the catwalk.
And I so wanted to meet you! Each time I thought, if I just send a note…but always I lacked courage.”
Desi had heard this kind of thing many times, but from a woman like Arwa al Khouri it surprised her.
“Why did you want to meet me?”
“Because you were the woman who had my son’s heart, and there was trouble between you,” Arwa said
simply. “I am so glad to meet you at last, Desi.” She reached out to pat Desi’s arm. “So glad you have
finally come.”
Desi stared, discovered that her mouth was hanging open, closed it, felt it open again of its own volition.
“What—what are you talking about?” she asked stupidly.
“Now, you won’t worry that I am his mother,” said Arwa. “You will tell me everything, yes? Because I
look into your eyes, Desi, and I think I see that you do love my son. As of course he loves you.”
Desi shook her head, because suddenly she couldn’t trust herself to speak. She thought of the stony face
that had greeted her at lunch today. Whatever he had briefly imagined yesterday, she knew Salah was
impervious to love. For one treacherous moment Desi regretted last night’s outburst. If she had let him
speak when he wanted to…
No. She’d been right before. She’d had a lucky escape ten years ago.
“Tell me,” Arwa invited.
A moment ago she had imagined she was in control of herself. Now, suddenly, Desi was horrified to
find herself close to tears. She gulped and shook her head, but it was all too recent, she couldn’t contain
her grief. She had never told anyone the whole story, not even Sami knew. But now the words began to
spill out, as if with a will of their own, until she had unloaded everything. The letter that had destroyed
her ten years ago, the discovery of why he had written it. His baseless accusations about her motive for
the visit.
“Never once did he take me on trust! Never once in ten years! I don’t call that love!” Desi finished at
last.
Salah’s mother did not speak till Desi had stopped talking. Then she sat shaking her head.
“And in this way he has nearly destroyed himself, and you, too,” she said. “Men can be such fools when
they love too much. But I think I understand my son. I see how it happened.”
“So do I,” Desi said, hiccuping. “It’s no mystery, is it?”
“He was very young and our two cultures are so different. Ten years ago such advertising pictures of
women were rare here in Barakat, Desi. Even now they do not appear often. So to see you in such a way
was a shock for Salah. Of course he did not react well, but he regretted it almost immediately, you say.
He did beg forgiveness. And then you, from your own cultural distance, m
istrusted Salah in return.”
“I mistrusted him?”
Arwa smiled. “But what else was it, when you feared—on the evidence of one jealous outburst!—that he
was like those Kaljuk fools who punish women for their own inadequacies? He believed you were being
sexually exploited, but you feared he could be a madman.”
Desi went still as it sank in. She had blamed Salah for not trusting her, but she had never recognized her
own fears as mistrust of him. On what evidence had she judged him? One argument, and he was sharing
a mindset with the lowest of the low.
“When he returned from his visit with your family that year, I knew he was very unhappy,” his mother
recalled softly. “But he would not talk to us. And the next thing we knew, instead of going to university
as he should, he enlisted in Prince Omar’s troop of Cup Companions and went off to fight the Kaljuk
War.
“And a few months later, he was wounded. The bullet missed killing him by a centimetre and he fell
down the side of the mountain and suffered more injuries. The first time I saw him….”
She put her hand up and massaged between her eyes as if the memory still haunted her. After a moment
she went on.
“And you tell me it was at this time—just when he was at his weakest, when he was in terrible pain and
fear and had only his own determination to tell him he would recover—that he read something that told
him you had gone to another man. And he believed it.”
Arwa paused, but Desi’s throat was too dry for speech.
“He should have questioned it, of course. But in the Barakat Emirates, again, we do not have such
magazines as these. How could he know that they publish rumour as fact?”
Desi felt as though all her certainties were so many logs in the rapids and she could no longer keep her
balance on them.
“Did he tell you about this? Is that how you know?” she asked.
“No,” Arwa said firmly. “How I wish he had! We did not know at all what had happened, except that he
loved you and you had broken his heart.”
“If he didn’t tell you, how could you know I broke his heart?”
Arwa smiled sadly.
“Desi, ten years ago, I sat beside my son’s bed when we did not know if he would live or die. Every day