"So the leaders of the tribes returned to their tents, but at the end of seven days came again and bowed before the sheik. `Highness,' one of them said, `we five tribes of the great desert have too many quarrels to allow us to embrace the others as brothers. But though we are enemies, we cannot let our people perish. Therefore we have agreed to embrace you as our leader and peacemaker. From this day forward all, past disputes will be put aside, and we will vow to follow the wisdom of your counsel when future quarrels arise, and the wisdom of the sons that come after you, so that no more blood will be spilled and our people will be spared.'
"So the master's grandfather agreed to keep the peace as Grand Sanusi and peacemaker, and in a few years, the tribes had become stronger, and fewer were hungry, and the Hussar were forced back to the mountains to plunder only the unwary who traveled there, and the bells of caravans were often heard as they came from the north and returned from the south.”
"The Grand Sanusi then produced a son to rule in his place, and this leader in turn produced a son who is our master, Hamid-Al-Sharif. And now you see, you must give him a son to rule when one day he, too, passes to the kingdom of Allah, so a leader will be left to rule not only these five tribes, but unite all the tribes of the desert into one nation. Many men of vision and wisdom pray it will - be so. But if the master dies without an heir, then once again the tribes will fall into their old quarrels and feuds and grow weak until the Hussar will become bold and sweep out of the mountains, ravaging the caravans and causing the people to starve again, and the French and English, who now come nearer and nearer, will be free to feed on, our weakness like vultures on dead camels."
Omar's cocoa hands patted her bronzed hair, thankful that the favorite was listening at last, as he finished by saying, "So it is that the birth of an heir is all important. You must give up all thoughts of escape and think only of the child that grows within you. And do not be afraid of the nights to come. Now that the master's seed lies in your womb, he will not risk disturbing it and will take his pleasure elsewhere."
So Anna had to be satisfied with that. What choice was there? At least she would not see the sheik again until after the child's birth. She must use all her strength to plan her escape. Surely with all the gold the sheik had given her she could find someone to help her. She must, somehow.
She must believe there was a chance or how could she continue to live, particularly when it would only mean someday returning again to the sheik's bed and having him use her as before. And how long could she fight the easy life of the harem? How easy it would be to accept, to even look forward to these luxuries-the rich food, the baths. She thought of the sheik and shuddered. Oh God, if she didn't escape soon what else might she come to accept . . . or even enjoy? The opportunity must come! She must make it. Surely the Lord wouldn't forsake her, she told herself. And then, months later, as if her prayers were finally heard, help came from a source she least expected.
"How proud you must be now that the mark of the master’s favor is upon you," Salsabil had exclaimed one morning, indicating Anna's rounding belly with a careless wave. "Surely now you are not as unhappy as you once were."
Anna, who had been sitting alone and serving herself tea, glanced up to find the girl standing several yards away, bare feet firm on the floor. During the past, Anna had always been too distraught to notice anything except her own suffering.
But now, assured she would no longer be called to the sheik's bed, she was in a better frame of mind to notice how unhappy Salsabil's lovely face had become-the darkening under her eyes, the fullness of her lower lip.
The beginnings of an idea stirred as Anna set her cup down with a small click against the tiny ivory inlaid table and said, "You hate me, don't you, Salsabil? Admit it to me and at least then we will be honest."
Salsabil started, surprise crossing her expression before a glint of hatred showed in her eyes. "Yes," she said lowering her voice to a harsh whisper, "I do hate you and all whites that destroy the water and the grass of my people and take what is not theirs." Coming closer Salsabil leaned over her like a large menacing bird. "When the master was mine it was my body he slept beside, he spoke gently to me and made me happy as never I was before. But then you with your pale skin and eyes came to the harem and now it is you he sees, you who carries his child. Yes, I do hate you!"
There was a warning note of hysteria in her desperate cry that softened Anna's voice as she asked, "Now what will become of you?"
Salsabil lowered her eyes, waving her hand toward a gray-robed woman bending in a shapeless lump to scrub the fountain tiles with meticulous care. "I will grow old as all women grow old," she said. "And I will work like that one. I will grow so old no man will desire me, and I will be without even the comfort of children. But what does it matter now? Without the master's favor, or a son, I am nothing. I have failed my father's desire, and I will be forgotten just as that old woman is forgotten. But why is what will happen to me any concern of yours? Why do you ask me these questions?"
Anna lifted a cup from a tray and poured a cup of the jasmine tea, a column of steaming fragrance billowing up between them. Anna measured her words as she spoke. "I ask you because I have a plan that can help both of us."
“A plan? What do you mean a plan? Why would you help me?"
"Because by helping you, I help myself."
"What do you mean?" The Arab girl had sidled closer.
"I mean, if you are so anxious to be rid of me, why don't you help me escape," she said easily. "If I were gone, wouldn't the master's favor return to you?"
Salsabil's face, which only a moment before had held a glimmer of interest, now turned to one of disgust as she snarled in a way that reminded Anna of the sheik's cheetah. "You are as round as an elephant and just as clumsy. Even if it could be arranged, you couldn't ride a horse. And if you couldn't ride, you could not hope to escape! You are a fool," she finished flatly.
She started to walk on then before Anna stopped her by saying, "But I don't propose escaping now, but after I am delivered of this child. Then I can ride a horse again. I could escape if someone could arrange it. And whoever did could have all the jewels and gold the sheik has given me," Anna finished, pouring a second cup of tea in a way to reflect cool finality.
"You are still a fool," Salsabil said waving her rouged palms to dismiss her. "If you have a son no one would dare help you and the heir of all El Abadan escape. And even if you did escape, the master would follow to the end of the world and would not stop until the heir was returned. Anyway, if the master did not catch you, the child would most certainly die in the desert."
"But this child may not be a boy and heir. It could be a girl. And either way, I would not ask to escape with it. I will leave the child here in El Abadan." Anna's voice displayed the emotionless fashion in which she had reached this decision.
Salsabil had come a step closer, disbelief in her voice as she asked, "You would abandon this child-the master's child, and the bones and blood of your own body?"
Now it was Anna who tossed her head and squared her jaw rebelliously as she took sugar from a tiny wooden bowl and stirred it round in her teacup before saying, "What is this child to me? It is a child of hate, not of love. Do you know that your master killed fifty of my people, murdered them before my eyes? Would you, Salsabil, as an Arab, ever forget that? Would you ever forgive?"
Salsabil's eyes tapered narrowly. Revenge was something she could understand. "I would never forgive! The whites too, have killed and never will I forgive them."
Anna nodded. "You see, we understand each other better than you think. I have not forgotten or forgiven. I want nothing of this child that is of his making."
Salsabil gave her rival a long considering look, really seeing for the first time that this girl, even younger than herself, looked much older. How strange that their common purpose might bridge this chasm between them. Then in a sudden rush, an idea occurred to her, and leaning closer she said, "Yes, perhaps it is possible fo
r you to escape if you are willing to give up the child. A cousin of mine works for a camel trader in El Abadan. He will know when the caravans are expected to come and to go, and I could send word to him. He is a fool who has always wanted me to run away and marry him." Salsabil wrinkled her nose. "As if I would become the wife of a camel driver. But I could tell him I was coming, and then you could go in my place. You would be on a caravan to the coast before he could discover the truth, and then you can wave the diamond that the master gave you beneath his large nose, and he will do as you say."
Anna felt herself smile, and sighed long and hard with pure relief, as if a weight laid on her shoulders was suddenly lightened. How easy Salsabil's plan sounded. Give her only a week or two after this child's birth, and she would be ready.
She would be gone from El Abadan before the sheik even realized it, leaving him his heir so he would have little reason to pursue her. Yes, if she could just endure her captivity a little longer and have this child, she would see France again; suddenly she was quite sure of it. And nodding to Salsabil, who came to kneel on the pillow across from her, Anna held out a cup of tea that she accepted, the two women sharing a smile across its rim.
Chapter 9
The months passed and winter came, cooling the desert's burning expanse, bringing sandstorms that halted all activity while it tossed the dunes into hard-driven pelting streams that left everything blanketed in a smooth layer of perfect white.
The rains followed, coming in a sudden torrent that made rivers of the streets, and poured through roof cracks and in windows, and turned the sand blanket to mud. It could last for an hour, or a day, but afterward the sun always came out and burned everything dry again, as if the water had never been.
Then spring came in a sweeping burst of color that covered the desert in a blaze of tiny flowers that pushed their blossoms just above the sand and bloomed and died as swift and ephemeral as a passing mirage. It was a time of year when Allah was said to touch the earth, a time of festivities in El Abadan, and as fate would have it, precisely the time when Anna's baby clamored for exit from the swollen womb.
"Escape, escape," Anna whispered over and over, thinking of the simple but masterful plan she had arranged and trying to renew her strength as the hours dragged by and she writhed with pain. She grimaced as another contraction bore down on her, and swimming within the pain, her mind drifted to the sheik and a few nights before, when he had taken his evening meal with her.
"You grow fat and lick your fingers like a greedy cat," he had said smiling as he watched her consuming portions of saffron rice and cakes and lamb. "It pleases me to see you eat so."
He looked down at her distended belly, and with complete possession, laid a hand just below her navel. Anna no longer bothered to pull away. What was the use? And in a moment when the baby kicked, as it had been doing since morning, his harsh face took on a gentle light before he smiled with pride and a little awe. Then retreating, he carefully selected an orange from a silver bowl, peeled the skin, and separated the slices before holding it toward her on a small plate.
Anna took it. To refuse was unthinkable, and popping a slice in her mouth, Anna glanced down at her roundness, wondering if ever she would regain her once slim figure.
He seemed to know her mind. His women, Anna had learned, had few secrets from him, and he said, "You are large now, but that is natural and good. But when the child is sprung from you, then once again you will be as graceful as a wild flower." He smiled then, taking a pinch of rice in his fingers Arab fashion and putting it in his mouth.
"And will that please you?" Anna asked with a hint of sarcasm.
He chewed the rice and swallowed before commenting factually, "You pleased me before when you were slender. But with a son in your belly, you please me even more."
Another delicacy arrived in the long succession of dishes that formed the royal dinner, and inspecting the concoction of glazed and baked fowl, the sheik selected the choicest portions and served them to her.
"And what if it is not a son but a daughter instead?" Anna asked.
The sheik seemed unmoved by this possibility as he ate a drumstick held between the fingers. "But it will be a son; the wise men have already assured me."
"But what if it is not? What if it is a girl?" Anna continued. "Are the wise men always correct about such things?"
The sheik frowned and set the drumstick down. He seemed even larger than usual as he leaned toward her. "She-devil!" he spat. "You should not carry such thoughts in your heart. Would you have a girl-child just to taunt me?"
Anna shrugged against his reaction, though inwardly she was pleased at his displeasure and for the time being, at least, she knew he would not punish her for impertinence. "I don't care what I have," she said popping another orange slice into her mouth. "A boy, a girl, it makes no difference."
The sheik was on his feet, a scowl ridging his wide forehead and his face darkening as he pointed a lean finger at her. "It would be best that it is a boy, Ann-Ah," he said ominously, pronouncing her name with his characteristic emphasis on the end. "And understand, woman, if you do not give me a son this time you will not cheat me. I will have the son I want and I will have him from your body!" He leveled a finger at her in the way he did to his subjects when his words were to be carried out perfectly, a gesture that frightened everyone and one he had never used with her.
"If this child is a girl," he continued, "then again you will lie beneath me until you are round with child. And if that child is also a girl, then you will have another, and another. . . . And it will continue until you give me a Soul"
Anna cringed, now recalling those words. Then reminding herself once again of her escape plan, she thought of France and silently began to pray for strength. But now, thrashing in her bed, Anna felt weaker than ever. Since dawn her pains had worsened, though the baby seemed lodged like a stone.
Opening her eyes to narrow slits, Anna noticed the faces of her attendants had lost their earlier excitement and had grown round-eyed with anxiety as nervously they fluttered in and out of her view in a flapping of robes.
Twisting in her misery, Anna tried once again to picture her husband. "Brandon-Brandon," she whispered aloud, trying to bring that beloved face into focus. But strangely, the passing months had faded his image and it seemed Brandon, like everything of her life before was disappearing, lost somewhere beyond the endless stretch of sand that marooned her here.
"Escape, escape," she whispered trying to rally herself, though even these words had lost their meaning. Perhaps it was better to die as surely she soon would. After this, she would never feel really free again. The sheik had taken her, had marked her his, and now she could hardly remember the face of the man she loved. Then as another pain came she moaned, "Brandon, Brandon, I'm coming to you.”
Out of the blackening waves of semi consciousness, a voice spoke "Ann-Ah."
Narrowly opening her eyes, she found the sheik's brown face blurring above her as a servant helped him off with a travel-stained burnoose. Vaguely Anna realized he must have returned from the tribal council at Galia. Had he returned because of her? She wondered, feeling oddly revived by his presence and the coolness of his hand on her forehead.
How gentle he can be, she thought as he spoke to her softly in Arabic. "Strength, my beauty, my treasure," he said in a deep resonating voice. "Come, show me the tigress again." Then his arm had slipped behind her, and she felt herself lifted to a half-sitting position, and he was holding a cup to her lips.
The liquid had a sharp taste as it slipped down her throat, but she drank, his firm arm reassuring. Yes, he would save her. He wouldn't let her die like this. When the cup was empty he gently gathered her tighter in his arms and, lifting her, placed her on an oblong stool while still supporting her from behind so she was half sitting.
"Breathe," he commanded. And she obeyed, breathing deeply, filling her lungs, though she felt too weak even for this, and when another cup of the bitter liquid was put to h
er lips, she drank again.
Somehow her energy felt renewed, her vision sharpened, though the pain was potent as ever and she began twisting against his hold as another spasm gripped her. What a weakling he must think her. No doubt his Arab women were more efficient when it came to natural functions.
And looking up at the sheik, she saw in his face an expression of pity that sparked what remained of her pride. Did he think she was going to die from this child he had so easily planted within her? No! She wouldn't let this kill her. And writhing again, she moaned before straining with renewed grit. She would show him what she could do! And this time she felt the baby move.
Again pain faded the hurrying figures that moved in and out of her vision while during the last few semiconscious moments, Anna was aware of the sheik carefully wiping her face with a soft cloth as he spoke in a mixture of his language and hers.
The vise came again, violently crushing her in its jaws, harder, harder. A fiery, searing pain was cutting between her thighs, tearing her apart. Oh God, if only she could diet and then in a mad burst of agony that brought a scream from the pit of her stomach, it was over.
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