by Ann Jacobs
No more a helpless pawn who must do her sexual bidding. But a man. A man who would bend her to his stronger will. A lover who would take her of his own volition as she had taken him, in a haze of sexual need.
Perhaps he did desire her. He could not have hated her, or he would have confined her in the bunker to face Dubaq's fury. Wouldn't he?
Foolish woman. Jamil may not hate you. He will keep his word, take care of you in the land to which we travel. But remember how you look, and accept that he will never care for you the way a man desires a woman.
Leila's hand went to her cheek, and she caressed the rough scarred flesh no man could want to touch.
Another shot rang out, its report lacking the hollow sound of metal passing through air. Then silence reigned again but for the squawk of another diving desert falcon and the labored breathing of the old Marsh Arab. When she looked his way, she saw his blood had soaked through the shaila the American had quickly bound around his wounded shoulder.
At the sound of footsteps, Leila dipped her head under the water.
And realized that when she came up for air, either Jamil, the American, or Dubaq and his remaining soldiers would see her shame.
"Zayed's still breathing, but he's lost a lot of blood."
Jamil glanced at Brian, who had knelt beside the old man and proceeded to tend his wound. Then he peered into the shallow pool. Insha'Allah, no bullet had found Leila.
Fear gripped him when he didn't see her immediately among the rushes where he had ordered her to hide. But then she surfaced, her expression anguished when she briefly met his gaze.
Her hands went to her ruined cheek as though to hide it, and she bowed her bare head. "Dubaq?"
"I gave him a more humane death than he accorded my countrymen."
Leila met his gaze, then quickly bowed her head as though she had suddenly remembered again that he could see her scars. "You shot him?"
"We both did. After his two remaining men fled, he charged us, though he already carried my bullet in his shoulder. Brian took him down with the old man's gun. I slit his throat."
"Did ending his life give you pleasure?"
"No. The revenge would have been sweeter had I left him there to die in his own time." Jamil wished she would look at him, because from her calm, uncharacteristically restrained tone he could read nothing of her reaction.
The temptation had been strong for him to abandon the evil commander to die slowly or be eaten alive by desert scavengers. But in the final moment, Jamil learned he had not the stomach for meting out the sort of torture Dubaq had inflicted with such glee. "I do not gain the sort of pleasure your brother-by-marriage apparently derived from inflicting pain on others."
"Then you will do me the courtesy of averting your eyes while I retrieve my veil."
Jamil held out his hand. "Come. We must move on, in case Dubaq sent for more soldiers once it became evident the ones he had with him would not succeed in killing us. Your scars do not repel me," he said softly. "I, too, have vulnerabilities, although most of mine aren't visible to the human eye. The old man, Zayed, has need of the garments you like to hide behind."
Though Leila took his hand and let him lift her from the pool, she did her best to cover the scarred side of her face and head from Jamil's gaze. The side he saw clearly made him realize she had once been an extraordinary beauty, with flawless olive skin and delicately hewn cheekbones. Short, glossy sable hair curved smoothly around the delicate shell of her ear.
It was not the disfiguring scars she tried to hide that attracted Jamil's eye, but the sleek curves covered but not concealed by her sopping wet tunic.
They had escaped from hell and fought the devil himself. And for the moment they all still lived. Something primitive within Jamil rose, urging him to celebrate life, to take this prideful woman under the desert sun and stake his claim.
"Jamil. I must tend the old man's wound. To move him now would kill him," Brian said quietly.
"We have no choice."
Brian looked at Zayed, his expression somber. "I will not leave him, and he is not fit to travel. If I can get the bleeding stopped-"
"We will rest for an hour. No more. We cannot if we are to reach the border by nightfall. Meanwhile we have more to concern ourselves with than the old man." When Jamil saw Brian start to remove his ghutra, he snatched off his own. "Here, take mine to use for bandaging. Keep yours on your head. Without it, even the most isolated of nomads would recognize you as a foreigner."
"Nomads?"
"A band approaches from the south. From the dust cloud I see, I judge it's a small camel caravan. If we are lucky, they will seek the water in that larger pond and not notice our presence. If they confront us, do not speak. I will try to avert them."
While the camel drivers might guess Jamil wasn't a native Iraqi, they certainly would realize immediately if Brian spoke that he was not. And Jamil had no intention of exposing Leila if he could prevent it. Only Allah knew how long it might have been since the nomads had been with their women.
"Get back among the rushes," he told her.
Zayed moaned, and Leila hunkered back down into the shadows provided by the tall rushes on the shoreline.
Shading his eyes from the fierce sun with one hand, Jamil peered at the dust cloud, making out the shapes of three, no four camels, and then their riders as the caravan came closer.
Robed men. Four of them. Jamil cautioned the others that the strangers were nearing the oasis. "Be silent."
The sound of metal hitting metal reverberated when he filled a clip with the last of the ammunition he'd taken from the soldier he'd killed and inserted it into the Kalashnikov. A water bird squawked, then hit the water of the larger pond with a jarring splash.
"Jamil?" Leila rested her hand tentatively on Jamil's shoulder.
"Come. We will conceal ourselves amidst these rushes." The nomads obviously had spotted the Iraqi army truck and were steering clear of it.
Unfortunately that meant the band would pass dangerously close to their hiding place on their way to the oasis.
"Jamil. The men on those camels are loaded for bear," Brian said as he hunkered down low, as though to shield the old man from harm.
When Jamil glanced toward the approaching nomads, the glint of the noonday sun on four shiny automatic weapons nearly blinded him.
With just one weapon and a single clip of bullets, they'd be no match for the heavily armed band.
Insha'Allah, the nomads would hold no love for the fallen soldiers.
* * * * *
A water bird soared skyward from a pond in the oasis, apparently frightened by something from its search for food and water. Silence, ominous in the wake of what obviously had been a gun battle, weighed heavily on Jake's ears.
Wanting to disperse the unease that had settled over him, he scanned the desert topography seeking hints of where black gold might lie beneath glistening hot sand. "Over there," he told Bear when he spotted a brackish pond surrounded by scraggly rushes. "A thousand says we'd find oil if we drilled, say twenty feet north-northwest of that little pond."
"Since this piece of real estate is in Iraq, I doubt we'll be able to test your hunch. " Bear paused, squinting in the direction of the oasis. "See the GAZ?" he asked.
Using his hand to shade his eyes, Jake made out the basic shape of a canvas-topped vehicle on the other side of the pond. "Looks like some kind of truck. What the hell is a GAZ?"
"An army personnel carrier. Soviet era. The Iraqis still use them. Be prepared to shoot." Bear repeated the order in Arabic to their two companions.
Jake resisted the urge to gallop in as fast as the miserable beast he was riding could go. He had Kate now, and their baby on the way. He couldn't go headlong into danger any more. He had too much to live for.
Expecting to be welcomed with a barrage of bullets at any second, he found the continued silence anticlimactic. Then he saw the bodies.
"I count five," he told Bear. "Looks like they're wearing army
uniforms."
"Yeah. Careful. Some of them may still be alive." Bear shifted his weapon to his left hand and tugged at his camel's reins. "They must have come after Jamil."
Whatever Bear snarled in Arabic got his camel moving so fast that it drew away from Jake and the others.
Jake had to keep up, watch Bear's back to keep him from getting himself killed in the process of rescuing Jamil. When swearing in English didn't seem to have the desired effect on his own camel, he drew on his very limited Arabic vocabulary. "Go, you flea-bitten beast," he yelled, accompanying the command with a swift kick to the dromedary's sides.
Their robes and ghutras flapping in the wind, the four men charged toward the oasis, past the remains of five men in fatigues. Iraqi soldiers, Jake knew for sure as soon as he spotted the distinctive insignia on the sleeves of the jackets.
Another body lay a little closer to the oasis. This one apparently was an officer. And he sure as hell was dead. Blood stained the sand from a huge gash in his throat and what looked like gunshot wounds to his gut and right shoulder.
When they approached the brackish pond, Jake spied two men in traditional Arab garb, one apparently tending the other's wounds.
And he saw Bear, urging his camel to its knees at the water's edge.
When his own mount knelt, Jake struggled out of the oddly shaped saddle and ran to his brother-in-law's side, leaving the injured man and his tender to the two burly oilfield workers.
If Bear hadn't been hugging the gaunt man with a recently shaved head, Jake doubted he would have recognized Jamil. He looked nothing like the jovial Kuwaiti student he remembered from years ago when they'd partied in Houston before Bear and Shana's wedding. No wonder, Jake told himself. After all, Jamil had spent the past eleven years in hell.
Despite his initial shock at Jamil's appearance, Jake couldn't help noticing the angry burn scars Jamil's female companion was apparently trying to hide by splaying her fingers across her ravaged cheek. The incredible beauty of the uninjured side of her face stood out in such stark contrast, it was all he could do to squelch an anguished cry.
What a desolate place this must be, for people to let injuries like hers go untreated. At home they'd pull out all the stops for her. No doubt his mother knew half a dozen cosmetic surgeons who'd…hell, Shana most likely had her own private youth-preserver in Kuwait City. Maybe even in Mina Su'ud.
Chapter Nine
The gazes of Jamil's cousin and his American brother-by-marriage seared Leila's skin like a fiery brand. Though she realized the effort was futile, she lowered her head, tugging the neckline of her tunic as high on her neck as it would go.
What she would have given at this moment for an all-encompassing abaya. She'd even have worn the sort of burqa that would have hidden all her features from the men's disbelieving stares-if only she had one.
Hard to believe she'd once pitied school friends whose families insisted they hold fast to the old tradition of hijab.
"They do not know your inner beauty as I do," Jamil whispered as they made their way toward Brian and the old Marsh Arab. "Or the pleasures I have discovered in your embrace."
"And they will not. The way your American kinsman looked at me, I thought he surely would bolt and run." Trying not to dwell on the fact that Jamil seemed to know what she was thinking when she hadn't voiced her discomfort, Leila reached up and ran her fingers through hair she'd kept short since she'd lost most of it in the fire so long ago. The sun beat down on skin she hadn't bared to it for eleven long years. "Are we in Kuwait now?"
"No. But we are close." Jamil gestured toward his kinsmen. "Brian, these are my cousin Dahoud and his wife's brother Jake, and the nomads with the guns trained on you are Dahoud's men. They mean you no harm," he called out when they approached, his English apparently as fluent as the Arabic he'd always spoken to her.
Then he wrapped his arm about her shoulders. More than his soothing words, the protective gesture brought home to Leila that Jamil understood her embarrassment and wished to put her at ease.
If only that were possible.
"Moving Zayed now would kill him," Brian protested when Jamil said they'd have to make haste lest more of Dubaq's men should come. "I will not leave him to face them alone."
"If more soldiers come, they will kill us all. The old man will have the help he needs as soon as we reach Abdali." The man who was Jamil's cousin had a deep, booming voice. It fit well with his great height and broad shoulders. Jamil's English was fluent, but Dahoud spoke it as easily if he used the language every day. Perhaps he did. After all, his wife must be an American since her brother Jake obviously was.
"Leave me. I will die free, here in the desert." Zayed's voice rang out strongly, considering how much of his blood had already soaked through the layers of makeshift bandages that Brian held firmly against his shoulder.
"No."
Jake knelt beside Brian and looked the old man over as though he was assessing Zayed's condition. Then he looked up at Jamil. "Will that army truck run?"
"As far as I know. We didn't have enough ammunition to waste by aiming for the petrol tank." Jamil paused. "Obviously we could not risk driving it along the road."
Dahoud glanced at the truck, then at one of his men. "Go get it. If it gets stuck here, where the sand is damp, then we will know we cannot take it all the way to the border. If not, we'll load Brian and the old man up and lead the way on the camels."
A few minutes later, Jamil lifted Leila into the saddle of Jake's camel and mounted behind her. If the situation had not been so tense, she would have laughed at the speed with which Jake had volunteered to drive the truck while the American prisoner tended Zayed's wounds in the back. Apparently he was unimpressed with camels as a means of transportation.
"Will we pass by Dubaq's body?" she asked once the camel was on its feet and moving slowly in the direction of Kuwait.
"No. I am sorry I had to deprive your sister of her husband. But he left me with no choice unless I wanted to be the one to die."
For a moment Leila grieved for Mernoosh's loss. Then she recalled how Saqr's sister had married Dubaq eleven years ago within days of her first husband's death on the battlefield. She would soon find another soldier to warm her bed.
"Dubaq was an evil man who caused many to die. He deserved his fate. My sister-by-marriage will survive. She always does."
* * * * *
By sunset, they had crossed the border into Kuwait, and in another hour Jamil found himself taking the first hot shower he'd enjoyed for more than eleven years. Abdali was busier than he remembered, a bustling town hosting not only a division of the Kuwaiti army but also a huge contingent of American soldiers. Apparently they were engaged in mock desert war games in the shadow of the Iraqi border.
Brian had stayed at the army base infirmary with Zayed, saying he would join them at the hotel once the old man was reunited with his grandson. After dropping Jamil and Leila off here, Dahoud and Jake had gone with Dahoud's men to prepare for their return to Mina Su'ud on the morrow.
Dahoud had apologized for accommodations that seemed grand now but which Jamil realized he'd have scoffed at before his imprisonment. Now, though, the modest hotel provided everything he required: hot water, soap, razor, toothbrush, a comfortable bed-and Leila in the adjoining room.
Jamil had come too near to death not to want to celebrate life. And who better to celebrate it with than the woman who had helped him escape from hell? The one he had promised to care for in this land full of people she'd been conditioned since childhood to hate.
Insha'Allah, she would want to cast her lot with him. His cock reared up against his belly when he thought of turning the tables, fucking her so long and so well she could have no doubt about his desire.
Or his gratitude, for without her help he never would have escaped from hell.
If nothing else, his proposal of marriage should convince Leila he was sincere.
He stepped out of the shower and dried himself before using
the towel to wipe the steam off the first mirror he'd seen in more than eleven years. When he glanced in it to wield the disposable razor he'd found on a plastic soap dish, a gaunt stranger with three days' growth of beard and the remnants of a recently shaved head stared him in the face. He bore no resemblance to the dark-haired, smiling young pilot he'd been before his capture.
Staring at himself while he scraped off the stubble from his chin, Jamil realized the changes inside him outweighed the outward signs of his ordeal. Before, he would have laughed at any suggestion that he might find a scarred Iraqi woman attractive. Of course he'd also have scoffed at the idea of succumbing to such a woman's forced seduction.
Now he could barely wait to cross that hotel room, open the adjoining door, and take his fill of Leila-his way this time. Stopping first to slip a clean dishdasha over his head, he rapped on the door between their rooms.
The woman who answered the door was traditionally garbed for out-of-doors, including a burqa that completely obscured her features.
"Leila?"
"It is I."
"Welcome to Kuwait. Whatever you may have heard, we do not require hijab of our women. Only our neighbors to the south insist upon it, and even they do not go so far as to require burqas like that one. Besides, I have no plan for us to leave the privacy of our rooms this night."
"I have no desire to venture outside. But I wish to shield my scars from pitying stares."
"By doing so, houri, you also obscure your beauty from my eyes." Jamil slid his hands under the burqa and rested them on Leila's trembling shoulders. "Take it off or I will do it for you. Note that I am no longer chained, no longer your prisoner. I would prove to you what I said when I was shackled and helpless. Your scars do not repel me."
Slowly Leila lifted her arms, grasped the coarse material of the burqa, and lifted it over her bowed head. When Jamil lifted her chin and looked into her deep brown eyes, he saw stubborn pride-and fear.