Desert Man

by Barbara Faith

  “Don’t shoot!” Ben Fatah screamed.

  His men stepped back.

  Kumar, Youssef and Saoud, holding Ben Fatah in front of him, elbowed their way past the armed men. Saoud hoisted Ben Fatah onto his horse, got on behind him, and held the other man’s dagger to his throat.

  Ben Fatah’s men backed away. The three men, with Youssef’s twenty men bringing up the rear, rode out of the camp. Half a mile later they stopped and Saoud let Ben Fatah slide down to the sand.

  “Go home,” Kumar said.

  Ben Fatah glared up at him and raised his fist. “I promise that you will regret this day.”

  Kumar stared down at the man who had tried to kill him. And knew that before this was over one of them would fall.

  Chapter 15

  During the five days that Kumar was away from the camp Josie learned to milk not a camel but a goat.

  The first time she tried, the other women whispered behind their hennaed hands. But when they saw that she was willing to learn, they offered advice and one or two of them came forward to help her.

  When the early morning milking was done the women went to work in the section of land where they grew barley and millet, wheat, lentils and broad beans. It was a surprise to Josie that here in the desert there was enough fresh water from the springs to irrigate the land. But there was, and food was no problem. In addition to what they raised, there were date palms and fig trees, as well as goats and camels for milk, and sheep for shish kebab.

  The Bedouins were a healthy, hearty people. Because the tribe was considered to be one large family, the women weren’t veiled. They were friendly and talkative, more open with each other than women from the city.

  In the evening before dinner they went in groups to different sections of the desert pools to bathe. There, hidden by the trees, they removed their undergarments from under their robes, and still wearing their robes, waded into the water.

  This was the time when the heat of the day had ebbed, the time to gossip and laugh, to speak about their families and their friends.

  Little by little they came to accept Josie, as she came to accept them. Although she would have preferred to bathe without the cumbersome robe, she did as they did. Her language skills had improved during this time in the desert and she was able to understand the jokes they made, the stories they told.

  They asked questions about where she had come from and why she was here in the desert with Sheikh Kumar.

  “Are you to marry?” Zaida asked one evening.

  Marry? That gave her pause. The word marriage had never been mentioned, perhaps, she thought now, because both she and Kumar knew that it was impossible. He was Muslim, she was Christian. The saying that East is East and West is West and never the twain shall meet was true. And though she loved him... She took a deep breath because even thinking about the L word frightened her.

  She wasn’t sure when she had fallen in love with Kumar, but she had. Perhaps it had happened that very first day when she had stepped off the plane and seen him there waiting for her, wearing his desert robe, looking up at her with his dark desert eyes.

  Perhaps it had been when they kissed in that small and intimate alcove at the residence he had provided for her.

  Or the day of the riot when he had covered her body with his.

  All that mattered was that she had fallen in love, and that she didn’t know what to do about it.

  “Will you have children?” another woman questioned.

  She looked at the woman, for a moment too stunned to speak. Had that even crossed her mind? During any of those nights she and Kumar had lain together had she even once given thought to the consequences?

  She was a nurse, a trained medical professional who spoke to women in third-world countries about birth control. Yet she had taken no precautions when she had come into the desert with Kumar.

  There hadn’t been any reason to buy birth-control pills when she’d first come to Abdu Resaba, because making love with Kumar Ben Ari had been the farthest thing from her mind. When she had decided to come into the desert with him there had been no time to do anything about it. For the past few days she’d been playing Russian roulette, she might already be pregnant.

  She wasn’t sure how she felt about that. If she were carrying his child...

  The women looked at her, curious, questioning.

  She lifted her shoulders in an I-don’t-know gesture, and they smiled.

  But under cover of the water she slipped her hand under her robe and rested it over her naked stomach. Was she pregnant? And if she was, how did she feel about it? Scared? Yes, a little. Pleased? Maybe. No, not maybe. Yes. Yes. For if it were true that she was pregnant with Kumar’s child, she would take a part of him with her when she left this place. It would be a part of him she would always have.

  * * *

  Kumar’s wound, though not serious, had weakened him. And though he protested, the others stopped often to let him rest.

  “We should press on,” he insisted each time they did. “What if Ben Fatah’s men come after us? We’re only twenty-three against hundreds. We have to keep moving.”

  “If we do you will bleed to death,” Saoud said.

  “Saoud is right.” Youssef looked out at the desert dunes that rose and fell in a heat so intense it took their breaths. “Ben Fatah won’t attack during the day,” he said. “He is like the jackal that sneaks around in the dark. If he attacks it will be at night.”

  And though Kumar insisted that they push on, they made their way slowly, resting from the sun at midday, traveling until it was too dark to see. So it was that three days passed before they reached the crest of the dune that looked down on Youssef’s camp.

  It was dusk when a shout rang out that they had been seen. By the time they made their way down the dune, the men who had been left behind hurried out to greet them. As did the women returning from their evening bath.

  “Your man is back,” Zaida called out to Josie.

  “Kumar?” She dropped what she was doing and ran toward the advancing men.

  Kumar saw her. He lifted his arm in a salute. Then his body drooped and as if in slow motion he leaned forward and slipped from the saddle.

  Two men caught him before he fell and eased him down to the sand.

  “What is it?” Frantic with fear, Josie pushed her way through the crowd of men. “Let me through!” she cried.

  Saoud, who had jumped from his saddle before his camel had time to kneel, ran to Kumar. “It’s a knife wound,” he said to Josie. “It happened four days ago. He’s lost a lot of blood.

  Fear gripped her and for a moment she was almost too terrified to move. Kumar was unconscious. His face was pale. The bandage on his arm was soaked with blood. Kumar! Dear God, if anything happened to him...

  She knelt on the sand and felt for his pulse. It was irregular. His skin was heated. From the sun or a fever? She wasn’t sure.

  “Take him to our tent,” she said to the men gathered around.

  Two of them stepped forward, but before they could lift him Saoud pushed them aside, and bending down gathered Kumar in his arms.

  “Bring boiling water,” Josie told Zaida. “Alcohol, a clean white cloth for a bandage. Hurry!”

  When they reached the tent, Josie and Saoud took off Kumar’s dusty robe and she removed the bandage from his arm. The cut was deep and jagged, but it had closed. And though it was crusted with dried blood there seemed to be no sign of infection.

  “I made a poultice from a yucca plant,” Saoud said. “I hope it helped.”

  “It did.” They eased him back on the bed. “What happened?” Josie asked.

  “We were in the camp of Ben Fatah. There was an argument. The son of a serpent did it before I could get to him. If Kumar hadn’t reacted as quickly as he did, the knife would have reached his chest.” He bowed his head. “It’s my fault he was wounded. If I had been quicker—”

  “No, Saoud. You brought him back, that’s what matters. He’s here
and he’s alive. Now it’s up to me to make him well again.” Josie put a hand on his arm. “And I will, Saoud. I promise you, I will.”

  Zaida and another woman came in with the things Josie had asked for. She wet a piece of cloth with the alcohol and held it under Kumar’s nose. He coughed and she said, “Kumar? It’s Josie. You’re here now, Kumar. You’re safe.”

  “Josie?”

  “Yes, darling.” She smoothed the hair back off his forehead. “I’m going to clean the wound, Kumar. I’m afraid it will hurt, but it has to be done. I’m sorry.”

  He nodded. “Go ahead.”

  She bathed his arm with soap and water, then with alcohol. He winced and closed his eyes.

  “Just the bandage now,” she said, and taking the clean strips of cloth from Zaida, she bandaged the wound.

  He opened his eyes. “Shukran,” he murmured. Then, “Tired. Need to sleep.”

  “In a few minutes, Kumar. I need to bathe you.”

  She washed him with soap and cool water. His skin was still hot when she finished, so she poured some of the alcohol into a bowl and bathed him with that.

  “Feels good,” he mumbled. “Cool.”

  “Yes, Kumar. You’ll feel better now.”

  Zaida brought soup. Saoud raised Kumar’s shoulders and Josie spooned the hot broth into his mouth. He finished half of it before he shook his head and said, “No more.”

  Saoud eased him back down on the bed. “I will be just outside the tent,” he told Josie. “If you need anything you have but to call.”

  When they were alone, Kumar took her hand. “Come lie with me,” he said.

  Josie took off her sandals and came in beside him. He put his good arm around her. “Don’t leave me,” he whispered.

  “I won’t.”

  He closed his eyes. His breathing evened and he slept.

  She looked at him. There were dark smudges caused by pain and fatigue under his eyes, and lines around his mouth that hadn’t been there before. But he was safe and he was here.

  Tears stung her eyes and she made no effort to hold them back. If anything had happened to him... The thought, like a knife as sharp as the one that had wounded him, sliced through her. She wept silently, with relief that the wound had not been more serious, and because she loved him.

  He moaned in his sleep. “I’m here,” she whispered and kissed his shoulder. “I’m here, Kumar, for as long as you want me to be.”

  * * *

  Three days later he was strong enough to walk around the camp. He ate well and slept each night with Josie beside him.

  Near the end of the week a rider came with word from Amin Elmusa.

  “My men will ride with you,” the note Amin had sent read. “You tell us when. We are ready. We will fight beside you.”

  The following day Abdur Khan rode in with ten of his men. “I have thought carefully of what you told me,” he said to Kumar when they met in Youssef’s tent. “I believe it’s to my best interests to be with you and your father. When the trouble comes I will be at your side.”

  The trouble was surely coming. Word arrived from his father that troops were gathering at the border between Azrou Jadida and Abdu Resaba.

  “We know they will strike,” his father wrote. “The army and the air force are on the alert, but we need the Bedouins. What news do you have? Will they be with us? Can we count on them?”

  Kumar wrote back:

  Elmusa and Khan are with us. With them and with Youssef we will have more than four thousand men. I can promise you a strong fighting force that I will lead to Bir Chagga.

  He began to train Youssef’s men. They were all good riflemen, of course, and needed only to be better organized to fight as one strong and united group. Kumar spent the major part of the day with them, but the rest of the time he spent with Josie.

  She had changed during her time in the desert. She looked tanned and fit as she strode through the camp in her robe and sandals, her hair in a braid down her back, greeting both men and women as though they were old friends.

  The first morning she moved out of his arms and said, “I have to get up, I have milking to do,” he looked at her as though she’d lost her mind.

  “Milking?” he asked, dumbstruck.

  “Goats.” She grinned. “Actually, I’m quite good at it.”

  He let her go and later he walked down to where the women were and saw her milking. Dressed in her robe, kneeling on the sand beside the goat, with her head against his belly, she looked no different than the other women who knelt to do their milking.

  Where had the woman who had been Josie McCall gone? he wondered. What had happened to that smartly dressed woman who wore her hair pulled back off her face in an elegant chignon, who dressed in a silk suit and high heels? What had become of her?

  He thought of his father then, and wondered if this was how Rashid had felt when he’d come to this same camp so many years ago and seen the woman who was to be his wife.

  Had he felt this same surge of tenderness? This same heart-stopping desire? This love.

  But love was something Kumar didn’t want to think about.

  This was the here and the now, this time in the desert with Josie. It was enough. It was everything. He would not think beyond this.

  Each evening when he returned to their tent he started a fire in the brazier, so that she could cook their evening meal.

  She wasn’t a good cook. She made a mess of the wheat cakes. She burned the shish kebab, and her hummus—the chickpeas cooked with lemon juice and garlic—looked like leftover cat food.

  He didn’t complain. He ate whatever she prepared and tried to fill up on flat bread. So he’d lose a few pounds, fade away like Amin Elmusa to skin and bones. It didn’t matter. He didn’t care that she was the worst cook in the world. She was here and she was his; he didn’t need food.

  After dinner they sat side by side in front of their tent, talking quietly of the day’s events, listening to the sounds of children’s voices, a mother’s lullaby, the blare of music from a portable radio, the barking of a camp dog.

  They talked of the day’s events, of the men he trained, of the women who were becoming her friends. She asked him questions about the coming war.

  “War is not the concern of women,” he said.

  That made her angry, but she didn’t give up. She liked to talk about affairs of state, things that he considered a man’s domain. She asked about Azrou Jadida and the coming battle. She even made suggestions on how best to defend his country.

  He was outraged; he was intrigued. He’d never known a woman like her.

  She was a constant delight, a constant surprise, stubborn, enchanting, determined. She had a will of her own that at times had him muttering ancient Bedouin curses.

  There were times when she made love with the shy reticence of a virginal bride. And other times when she shocked him with her passion.

  One evening when he came in later than usual from training Youssef’s men she was behind the curtain where they kept the tin tub. He started to draw it back, but she said, “No, don’t!”

  He stepped back a pace, surprised.

  “Sit down,” she said. “I’ll be out in a minute.”

  He stretched out on some of the pillows, wondering what in the world had gotten into her.

  Fifteen minutes went by. Twenty. Dammit all, he was hungry. What in the hell was going on? He heard music coming from behind the curtain. A hand appeared. Then a bare foot. And Josie.

  A veil covered her face, revealing only her eyes. Her hair fell in soft waves down her back. She wore gold loop earrings, bracelets on her wrists and bangles around her ankles.

  Her breasts were barely covered with a swath of sequined chiffon. She wore a thin strip of bikini panties under a skirt of a material so sheer he could see every curve of her pale, spectacular legs.

  Her stomach was bare.

  Eyes lowered she began to dance to the music of the radio. Arabic music. Arms raised above her head she m
oved slowly toward him, her body swaying to the music. When she raised her head he saw that her eyes, the only part of her face that showed above the veil, were made up with kohl. She looked different, mysterious, exotic.

  For a moment he couldn’t get his breath. He felt his temperature rise. Excitement flared his nostrils.

  Her hips moved to the music as she swayed toward him, then away. The music quickened and so did her movements. Her hips rotated, slowly, seductively. She bent her head and swirled her hair over her breasts, her shoulders and her back. She came toward him and he felt the soft curtain of her hair against his face. He reached out for her, but before he could catch her she had retreated.

  The rhythm of the music increased. So did the rhythm of her hips. His mouth went dry; his body hardened. He’d never been so excited.

  Her body moved so sensuously it was all he could do not to throw her down on the sand and mount her. The beat of the music filled his ears. She fell to her knees, back arched, arms raised, her sweat-slick body still undulating to the frantic rhythm.

  She came toward him on her knees, her body swaying, breasts moving. The music reached a crescendo and she fell forward into his arms, gasping for breath.

  “My God!” he whispered. “My God!”

  He gripped her shoulders and brought her up to him. He kissed her mouth, and when he felt her almost naked breasts pushing against his chest, he eased her down onto the pillows. He ripped off the skirt and the small strip of panties.

  Panting with the effort to breathe, she said, “Did you like it? Did you...”

  He yanked his robe over his head. “I’ll show you how much I like it,” he said between clenched teeth. “I’ll show you what you do to me.”

  He grasped her sweat-slick hips and before she could say anything, he thrust hard into her.

  Half mad with the passion she had roused, he tore off the swatch of material that covered her breasts, and when they were bare he took a nipple between his teeth to bite and suck and lap with his tongue.

  She lifted her body to his, giving, receiving. And clutched at his shoulders to bring him closer.