Sheikh's Castaway

by Alexandra Sellers

  Bari watched his bride impassively, her chin trembling as she struggled against emotion. She sat with head bent, her hands hiding her face, tears trickling down her cheeks. He let her cry for a few minutes. It was probably no more than the shock of the crash being released, and he was angry enough to remain unmoved. But when the choked sobs began to become a wail, it was time to call a halt.

  “That’s enough,” he ordered without apology, tossing another packet at her. It landed on the rustling gold blanket. “You can’t afford to waste any more energy.”

  Noor’s breathing shifted into a series of panting gasps, like a child, as she struggled to stifle her tears. She wiped her face and blew her nose on her beautiful dress, picked up the little plastic box and gazed at it stupidly.

  “What is it?”

  “First aid kit,” he said.

  Why had she asked for the kit? The mixture of shame and misery kept her head bent, and she found relief in wrestling with the plastic seal. She reached for the flashlight and shone it briefly on the contents. The first thing her eyes fell on was a vial of seasickness pills.

  As if there were a direct causal link, Noor’s stomach heaved. With a strangled cry she tossed the kit and the flashlight aside and dived for the entrance, her gold foil cloak rustling wildly. She ripped the flap down and, thrusting her head out into the storm, clutched the side of the raft, leaned over, and heaved up the shock and grief and shame and the million other undefined things she was feeling, until there seemed to be nothing left, either in her stomach or in her heart.

  When it was over at last, she reached her hand down into the sea and scooped up handfuls of water to wash her face and rinse her mouth. The salt stung her eyes and tasted on her lips, but the coolness of the water seemed to bring her back to herself.

  When she was through she felt purged, cleansed. She drew her head back inside and sealed the flap again. Bari ignored her.

  Well, she wasn’t asking for his sympathy. She wasn’t asking for anything from him. She had learned something about herself in the past half hour, and it had been a very painful lesson. Some fundamental shift seemed to have happened in her, and for the second time in a few months she had the sensation of not knowing who she was.

  But there was no way she was going to try to tell Bari that. He would probably think she was making it up.

  “The storm is passing,” she said, wrapping herself securely in the rustling golden foil again. “I think I saw land.”

  He nodded without looking up. He was still working the air pump, and the floor was slowly inflating.

  “May I have a drink of water?”

  He tossed her the little plastic cup he had been bailing with. “Catch some rainwater in that.”

  Noor bit back an indignant response. She supposed his caution was appropriate, even praiseworthy—if they were going to be lost for any length of time the water conservation started now, even if that was land she had seen.

  But he could have been less rude about it.

  “I see we aren’t going to be bound by any silly code of polite conduct while we’re stuck here,” she rashly remarked.

  Leaving herself wide open, of course, and she realized it as soon as it was too late to call the comment back. Bari lifted an eyebrow, and though his face was in shadow, she could guess the expression in his eyes.

  “You are speaking, of course, as someone who isn’t bound by any code of conduct at any time.”

  There was no winning that one. Noor lifted the cup up to the sleeve as she had seen him do, but he had pushed it inside out. She fiddled with it for a moment, without discovering the trick. She glanced over at Bari, but he was working the air pump, his head bent.

  Fine! She wasn’t nearly as helpless or stupid as he obviously believed, and she’d be damned if she would ask for his help!

  After a few moments she was rewarded with the sound of water dripping into the cup. Nyaaa, she told him in her head, but not by so much as the tip of her tongue did she let him see her triumph.

  The rain funnelled down more slowly than before, and she suddenly realized how the rain had slackened, and how far away the thunder was. She filled the cup three times and drank the curiously tasteless liquid, then glanced at Bari.

  “Do you want a drink?”

  He looked up, surprised. “Yes, thanks.”

  Noor bit back a resentful remark—did he really think she was incapable of putting herself out for someone else even in a situation like this?—and passed the filled cup to him without comment. He tossed off the water in one gulp and gave it back to her with a murmur of thanks. She filled it again, and he drank again.

  The transaction felt strange and awkward to her, because she felt uncomfortable with him now. No doubt Bari would say it was because she was so unused to doing even the simplest things for other people. But what did he know about her?

  “I suppose it has never occurred to you,” she remarked to the cup as she filled it for him for the third time, “that you have seen me in a very limited set of circumstances—namely, when I was (a) effectively on holiday, (b) had just learned, among other things, that my family owned a palace and (c) was suddenly being treated as a princess by everyone around me? How many people you know would have kept their heads in a situation like mine?”

  Her eyes met his as she passed him the cup again. “You think a person should not be judged by their behaviour when life is going well for them?”

  “Welcome to The Kangaroo Courtroom of the Waves,” Noor announced bitterly. “Forget I spoke.”

  Bari drank and handed her the empty cup, signalling that he didn’t want any more. Noor filled the cup one last time and then picked up the pack of seasickness pills and pressed one out into her palm.

  Her broken fingernail caught as she did so, and after swallowing the pill she reached for the first aid kit again, located the scissors, and cut the three torn nails off short, as neatly as she could. She spread out her hands. If her nails were going to keep on breaking at the current rate it would be smarter to cut them all down now. On the other hand, if rescue were near…

  Something made her lift her eyes, and she found Bari watching her, a cynical gleam in his gaze.

  “Look on the bright side—they may have time to regrow before you have to face your admiring public again,” he said.

  Gritting her teeth, Noor picked up the scissors again and one by one cut the rest of her nails short.

  “I hope you aren’t making a mistake. Nails like that might have come in handy. Who knows how many fish we may need to scale, for example?”

  Noor gave him back look for look. “No worries. I’m sure your ceremonial sword will do the job. It’ll be a comfort to you to know all that family history is useful for something.”

  And so the battle lines were drawn.

  Seven

  Noor cast a half-despairing look around as they approached land. The faint shape she had seen earlier had proved to be a small, isolated island, probably somewhere on the outer fringes of the Gulf Island group.

  The clouds had given way to blazing sunshine, which quickly turned the life raft into a sauna. But the sun’s heat was fading now as it neared the horizon, and Noor was wondering whether it was safe to emerge.

  Bari was sitting out on the edge of the raft using one of the paddles as a makeshift rudder, keeping the raft on a heading towards the island. He was also trailing a fishing line.

  He had stripped off the purple silk jacket and was wearing it on his head, the sleeves twisted into rope and tied around his forehead, to form a makeshift keffiyeh. Anyone else, Noor reflected bitterly, would have looked like a complete idiot. Bari looked like a genie in a fairy tale, skin bronzed, chest and arm muscles rippling, white silk shalwar enfolding his legs, bare feet. He seemed perfectly at home.

  Noor, on the other hand, had been forced by the fierce sun to stay inside the stifling confines of the raft through the worst heat of the day, painstakingly cutting a sarong and a scarf from the wet skirt of her wedding
dress with scissors that weren’t up to the job. Without such protection she couldn’t hope to face the sun. Her predicament hadn’t been helped by Bari’s insistence that they had had plenty of water to get them through the first twenty-four hours.

  They were communicating in monosyllables.

  The island itself was a relatively attractive prospect, with a small curving bay protected by a rocky outcrop at one end, and clustered palm trees that promised water. But Noor had stopped hoping some time ago that it might also hold the Gulf Eden Resort.

  Deciding that the sun had lost its danger, she carefully slipped up through the canopy entrance with the wet scarf in her hand, and as she did so, she was struck by a sudden, unconnected thought.

  “Wait a minute!” she exclaimed, breaking the hostile silence unthinkingly. “Isn’t a radio beacon part of the emergency equipment of this raft? An EPIRB?”

  Bari looked at her.

  She urged excitedly, “I’m sure my friends all have it as part of their yacht emergency kit.”

  “It isn’t a part of the standard raft emergency kit. There was one aboard the plane….” He pressed his lips together in mute resignation.

  Noor moaned her despair. “Oh, God, you forgot it?”

  As if to comfort her, Bari said, “We have flares. When it is dark we will set one off.”

  “Why don’t we do it now? Flares are visible in daylight, aren’t they?”

  “Is it worth wasting a flare merely to ease the present tedium?”

  Noor wasn’t used to the feeling that someone was secretly laughing at her, and she didn’t like it. She held up the damp silk, and felt cooler just watching it flap in the breeze.

  “It would be nice to see some action around here, and you don’t seem to be having much luck with the fish,” she said waspishly. “Why do you talk of wasting them? How many are there?”

  “Two.”

  “Is that all? What if no one sees them? Oh, my God, and it’s such a small island, too! Don’t you think it might be better to stay in the raft in the hopes of reaching an island where there’s more chance of finding people?”

  Bari looked up, and his breath caught on a hiss which she did not hear. Standing in the entrance opening opposite him, Noor was leaning lightly back on the canopy, one foot propped on the edge of the raft, the square of silk forgotten in her hand. Her head tilted back while she turned her face this way and that under the luxurious caress of the wind.

  Just so had she moved under the stroking of his lips.

  Her body was barely covered by the delicate garment she wore, which did nothing to hide that creamy skin, warm with a light tan everywhere except her breasts and abdomen, the paler-textured places he knew as well as his own hand, even after only one interlude of lovemaking.

  Her hair was damp with sweat at her temples, as if he had just made love to her. Her breasts swelled with the movement of her arms, pressing against the soft, expensive lace that cupped them.

  The top of her thighs, with the thin damp silk revealing the nest of hair, was right in his line of vision. All he had to do was bend forward to bury his mouth where his eyes were. Heavy sensual memory tugged at his limbs, asking to be repeated. The hard tension of his body urged him.

  “Wouldn’t it be better?” Noor’s impatient voice brought him back to the question. More hope of finding other people, was that what she wanted? Bari’s jaw tightened in a grim smile.

  “Does the thought of being without your entourage so terrify you?”

  “My entourage?”

  “You are afraid that you can’t live without the army of doting servants and friends and Jalia and your brothers—or at least someone who might be willing to replace them? You would prefer to remain in the raft, with whatever dangers that entails, than face the possibility that you will now have to fend for yourself?”

  His tone suggested that another minute on the raft with her would drive him to suicide. His teeth flashed in the mocking smile that her lacerated spirit suddenly found too familiar. Had the smiles that had melted her bones always secretly mocked her?

  Noor gritted her teeth.

  “I would prefer to take the rational course of action, regardless of my more immediate feelings,” she said, her jaw tight. “But I see that in a fifty-fifty disagreement between brains and brawn, brawn is always going to get its way!”

  His smile didn’t falter, though his eyes flashed a message that raised nervous goose bumps on her arms. “Alas, it is the story of your sex,” he mocked. “Always right, and always powerless.”

  It was a relief to be speaking in whole sentences again, whatever the sentiments being expressed. Feeling had to come out somehow, Noor felt, or eat her alive.

  “Not always powerless,” she snapped. “The patriarchy has had a brief reign, really—a mere two or three thousand years. A hiccup of deviance in the natural order.”

  “And are you expecting the return of the all-wise matriarchy any time soon?”

  “Well, it’ll be either that or the complete destruction of the species, won’t it?” Noor snapped.

  “You think men are certain to lead the world to destruction?”

  “I think men who fear and hate women and don’t allow us a voice or listen to our wisdom have brought us to the brink of it already. Tell me I’m wrong!”

  “And you include me in their numbers,” Bari said flatly. “How typical of a woman who has heard criticism of herself, to expand that into a generalized misogyny in the soul of the speaker!”

  She bent over, bringing her face on a level with his.

  “I don’t give a damn about your criticism or dislike of me!” she lied fiercely, feeling that his black eyes burned her more harshly than the sun. “What I do care about is your assumption that my query over whether we should land on this particular island should be mocked, rather than taken into rational consideration, because it disagrees with your all-seeing, all-knowing decision on the matter! What makes you such a bloody expert on shipwreck? Ever done it before? Neither have I! That makes us equals in this situation, I think. Except that I need your agreement to go on sailing, and you don’t need mine to land. Or should I push you overboard and steer the thing myself?”

  “By all means, if you think you can.”

  “So here we are back at brains and brawn again. See?” Noor held up her hands and smiled, as if a slow pupil had finally been led to the light. Her smile was bright and mocking, and she could see it got under his skin in spite of his intentions.

  She tried not to feel that she was lighting a fuse on an unknown quantity of explosive.

  “Don’t be so quick to assign yourself all the brains. I’ve told you before that these islands are now uninhabited. Except for the Gulf Eden Resort. Even a woman, I think, should have doubts about her ability to find one particular island when she doesn’t know its position or her own.”

  Noor gritted her teeth. “No wonder men are turning the world into such a hell!” she said feebly. It was the only riposte she could think of.

  “And when women ruled the world, everyone lived in paradise?”

  “You don’t find any city walls in the ancient matriarchal societies, do you?” Noor pointed out. “Sumer—”

  “I suppose you learned this nonsense in Feminist Perspectives on History for Beginners!” Bari interrupted with harsh irony. “You don’t find any city walls around Persepolis, either. The capital of the Persian Empire, which was ruled by the Achaemenid kings. It spread to become the greatest empire in antiquity. Are you suggesting it was not militaristic?”

  “Tell me, is it nonsense because it’s feminist, or because the ideas expressed are not your own?” Noor asked sweetly.

  But the mocking tone didn’t disguise her real feelings from herself. She glared down into his face, and noted helplessly how the sinking sun melted in his dark eyes, glowed on the black curls that clustered over his head.

  The sea, too, was glittering with its rich golden light. The sapphire and amethyst of the deeper sea had
given way now to turquoise and emerald, with flashes of white gold. It was as if some celestial painter had brushed diamonds on the crest of every ripple of the sea, as on each coal-black curl, underlining Bari’s vital connection with the rest of creation, and reminding her of that other time they had drifted on the waves as the sun set. Then his hand had never been far from her skin, stroking her in tender possession in the aftermath of their lovemaking—her breast, her arm, her flank.

  Her heart beat hard. So he was handsome, so what? So he had made the kind of love to her you read about in books! How could she be so weak as to find him attractive now that she knew what she knew?

  And he was perfectly right: she didn’t love him, and never had.

  Meanwhile, Bari damped down his anger, though it cost him a struggle. He knew it would be dangerous to allow anger—or any emotion—to overwhelm him in these circumstances.

  “It is because such ideas are based on nothing,” he replied levelly. “We can scarcely hope to understand our neighbours today. How do we dream that we know anything of how societies operated thousands of years ago?”

  Under the water now a floor of white sand appeared, across which their shadow rose and fell with the waves. Noor watched a school of delicate, sinuous, silver-and-turquoise fish flee from the threatening shape as the raft approached.

  Suddenly Bari’s fishing line jerked tight, and their conversation, such as it was, dissolved. Bari picked up the bailer and thrust it at Noor with a brief “Hold that and try to get it under him!” Then his strong hands began to pull the line with slow careful pressure, drawing the struggling fish closer and closer, playing it a little, and then inexorably drawing it in again.

  Their differences were forgotten as they worked together on the urgent task of bringing in tonight’s dinner, and when the fish had been captured, they smiled at each other involuntarily, forgetting their conflict for the moment.