by Stacy Gregg
The mare and foal sniff each other all over and then there is a tense moment when the filly puts her head beneath the mare’s belly for the first time, searching for the udder. Haya worries that the mare might turn nasty again. But Latifah stands perfectly still as Bree latches on to feed. Her tail begins to whirl as the milk flows.
Santi looks at Haya and is surprised when he sees the tears rolling down her cheeks. “What’s wrong, Titch?”
Haya wipes the tears away roughly, shaking her head, not wanting to embarrass herself further.
“What is it?” Santi insists.
“She doesn’t need me any more. She has a new mother now.”
Santi laughs. “Haya, she has a nurse mare to give her milk, but she will need you more than ever as she grows up. Who else will teach her how to stand still and be groomed, or how to be loaded on to a horse trailer, eat from a feed bin or wear a saddle and bridle and carry a rider? This filly has much to learn and you must be the one to teach her.”
He smiles at the sight of the mare and the foal feeding. “You haven’t been replaced. You just have a little help, that is all.”
That night Latifah stays in the loose box with Bree and, for the first time in almost a week, Haya sleeps in her bed at Al Nadwa. The mattress feels so soft and her bedroom smells of sweet orange blossom and, despite the fact that Frances makes her do maths homework and practise the violin for a whole hour before dinner, she is glad to be home.
*
Now there are more new rules set by Frances. According to the governess, it is not appropriate for children to have the run of the house and suddenly, for no reason at all, Baba’s office is out of bounds.
“Your father needs privacy to work,” Frances says. “A King’s office is full of important papers, it is not a playground.”
But Frances cannot keep watch all the time and, in the mornings, when the governess is out of sight, Haya and Ali sneak inside and tiptoe across the bearskin rug. Underneath the desk, where Frances cannot see, there is a secret place where they leave notes for Baba. Sometimes he leaves notes back for them too. They are like secret agents passing messages and Frances is the enemy.
Today the secret note that has been written for Baba is scrawled in pink felt-tip and it says just three words: ‘Haya loves Baba.’
Haya carries the note tucked up her sleeve as she pads barefooted along the corridor. Outside her father’s office she stops and waits, listening for footsteps, then she casts a furtive glance towards the kitchen. There is no one coming. She reaches out and grasps the door handle and then steps inside the office and shuts the door behind her.
The office is gloomy and still. Dust motes can be seen floating in the shafts of morning light that penetrate the windows along the east wall.
Haya feels the bearskin prickling the bare soles of her feet as she moves silently across the office, heading for her Baba’s desk. She has put the note in the secret place and she is about to leave when she sees the statue. It is on a pedestal next to the window. It is a falcon, life-sized and cast from bronze. It is so sleek and powerful, the bronze feathers glinting in the sunlight, noble head held aloft with an imperious expression.
Haya walks towards the statue to take a closer look. She is just a few metres away when she reaches out a hand to touch it and then freezes. The statue just blinked at her.
The bird is alive! Cruel eyes, the colour of amber, are now trained on her as if she were prey.
Slowly Haya begins to back away. As she does this, the great bird fixes her with his gaze, cocks his head to one side, contemplating his next move. Haya can feel her heart pounding. Will he attack her if she tries to run? She steps backwards ever so slowly, and has almost reached the door when it swings open and her father enters the room.
“Baba!” She is so scared she forgets that she shouldn’t even be in her father’s office. “Your new statue is going to eat me!”
The King laughs. “I see you have met Akhbar,” he says. At the sound of his voice the falcon suddenly animates himself with a vigorous shake of his feathers and gives a shriek.
The King walks across the office towards the falcon, and crooks his elbow, like a man putting out his arm to ask a lady to waltz. “Akhbar!”
With a single, elegant flap, Akhbar gracefully dismounts his perch and leaps on to the King’s forearm. Haya watches her father stroke the bird, his fingers tracing a line between the bird’s fierce amber eyes.
“Akhbar will be coming with us today.”
*
They travel by jeep that morning, a motorcade of four military vehicles with roll bars, but no roofs, painted in army camouflage colours. In the first jeep three soldiers of the King’s Guard travel in military uniform. In the second jeep the King travels in the front seat beside his driver. Akhbar rides upfront too, perched on the King’s shoulder. The falcon’s legs are tethered by long leather straps and he wears a tiny leather hood over his head so that his eyes are hidden and only his razor-sharp beak remains poking out.
Haya sits in the back seat with Ali. He has wrapped his keffiyeh completely round his face just like the soldiers do, so that only his eyes peek out, squinting in the glare of the desert sun. Haya wishes that she had one to mask her face because the dust flies up in a cloud around them as they travel, coating everything in fine, gritty sand.
There is a fifth passenger in the car with them, a sleek saluki, a pure-bred hunting dog, built for speed, like a greyhound except bigger, with a silken coat of long silver hair. All the way on their long journey, the saluki sits there with his muzzle quivering as he sniffs at the air. Haya worries that the dog might try to bite Akhbar, but the saluki seems utterly disinterested in the falcon as he stares out at the desert horizon.
They are not driving on roads today, but following the rutted, worn tracks used by Bedouin nomads. At times, the sand turns soft beneath them, almost like quicksand, so deep that the wheels of the jeep sink and flounder. At other times, the terrain is so rutted and rocky Haya has to keep both hands holding tight to stop herself being flung into the air.
Deeper and deeper into the desert they travel, and then on the horizon Haya spies something big and black rising up out of the sand.
It is a Bedouin tent. As the jeeps get closer to the camp, Haya can see the wide-open tent mouth and the men of the Desert Patrol coming out to meet them. Their Chief Officer is a handsome man with high cheekbones and she recognises him as Major Jafar, the same man who brought the camels Lulabelle and Fluffy to the palace on her birthday.
“Your Majesty.” Major Jafar gives a reverential bow to the King. “I hope your journey has not been too unpleasant.” He gestures to the patrol’s camels tethered beside the tent, dressed in their colourful Bedouin saddles strung with tassels. “In the desert, the camel is best transport.”
While Major Jafar’s men make preparations for their onward journey, he welcomes the royal party inside where strong black tea is served, piping hot and still tasting of the embers of the fire, with lots of sugar to make it very sweet. Haya and Ali sit cross-legged on cushions sipping their tea while the King talks with Major Jafar. Haya notices how happy her Baba seems here with his men and she realises that, to her father, the desert is truly home.
One of the Bedouin, a desert soldier in uniform like the rest with a curved dagger at his hip and a gun slung across his back, has been watching as Haya and Ali finish their second cup of tea and now he approaches Haya.
“You want to see your camels?” he asks. His voice is gruff, but his eyes are very kind. She nods.
“Come with me.”
The camels are tethered on long ropes in a row in the sand. Their legs are hobbled with leather straps and they have saddles on their backs with the girths loosened off so that they can rest comfortably. They stare for a moment at Haya and Ali, then continue to munch at the chaff in the feedbags strapped to their faces.
Lulabelle is the fourth camel in the line. Fluffy is curled up alongside her and is now old enough to have a fee
dbag of his own too. On the baby camel, however, the feedbag almost swamps his entire face and all you can see of him is a pair of wide brown eyes and long fluttering lashes.
“They remember, eh, Haya?” the Bedouin says. “They know they belong to you.” He beckons her closer. “Here, you can stroke them. It is quite safe. No camel will bite if it has a feedbag.”
Haya notices how the Bedouin does not say “Your Royal Highness” when he speaks to her. He does not use her title like most people do, he says only her name. It is nice the way he says it, Haya, as if he were speaking to his own daughter, and it makes her feel at home, out here in the desert. And she is home. After all, she is a Bedouin too.
“Hello, Fluffy.” Haya strokes the camel’s soft caramel fur. How different the camel is to Bree, his face all velvet but lumpy-bumpy with stiff whiskery hair sprouting everywhere and those enormous brown eyes with long lashes, built to withstand the grit of a desert sandstorm.
“Haya!”
Haya raises her head at the sound of Ali’s voice, but when she peers down the row of camels, she cannot see him anywhere.
“Ali?”
There is silence. No reply.
“Ali, where are you?”
Haya leaves Fluffy and Lulabelle and begins to walk along the camel row. Ali and his tricks! He must be hiding, nestled in beside one of the great beasts. She looks for him as she walks all the way down the row and back again, but there is no sign of her brother. Now she is becoming anxious.
“Ali?”
And then she hears a giggle. It sounds like it came from one of the camels.
Haya listens hard as she moves slowly from camel to camel. And then, when she is halfway along the row, she hears another giggle. The sound is muffled, but she can tell exactly where it is coming from.
Strapped to each saddle are two large bags made of brightly coloured canvas, each one big enough to hold all a Bedouin might need for months in the desert. If she looks closely, Haya can see that one of the bags is breathing in and out.
“Ali?” Haya gives the saddlebag a jab with her finger and the bag suddenly comes to life and begins to squirm. “Come out, I know you are in there.”
Haya pokes the bag again and a mop of dark hair and two eyes pop up from the top of it.
“Let’s play hide-and-seek,” Ali says.
They spend the morning playing among the camels. Then, when they get thirsty, they go back into the tent for more tea and listen to the men telling their battle stories. The desert can be a dangerous place, full of bandits, and those daggers and the guns that the Desert Patrol carry are not just for show. Haya and Ali sit wide-eyed and listen to the tales until finally their father and Major Jafar both rise and signal to the men. It is time to go.
The camels’ feedbags are gone and there are colourful bridles on their heads instead. One of the Bedouin is busy tightening Lulabelle’s girth.
“She is ready for you, Haya,” he says.
Haya steps up to the camel and the Bedouin takes his stick and taps the camel lightly behind the knee. “Cush, Lulabelle,” he commands. “Cush.”
Lulabelle brays her objection and refuses to drop, but the Bedouin is firm with her. “Cush!”
With a groan of resignation, Lulabelle drops to her knees and then lowers her hindquarters so that she is ready for Haya to climb aboard.
Haya has never ridden a camel before. The saddle is not like the ones that horses wear. It is made of hard wood with two very high pommels at the front and the back, and the seat is draped in a thick curly goat hide. When Haya is seated, she finds it surprisingly comfortable. She grabs the front pommel with one hand and the camel’s rope with the other, and then the officer gives Lulabelle a tap on her flank and the camel rises. Haya gives a squeak of surprise as she suddenly finds herself up very high indeed, two metres above the sand.
“Use the rope or the stick to guide her. Tap her there on the flanks to make her go,” Major Jafar says. And, with no more explanation, they are off, the King and Major Jafar leading the ride and Lulabelle falling to the rear of the camel train with Fluffy running loose at her heels as they set off across the desert.
The swaying motion of the camel feels like being on a boat cast adrift, rocking back and forth and side to side. It is so different to riding a horse; the camel’s wide strides are so ponderous as they lumber across the sand. They make good progress though and soon they are deep into the desert, climbing up rocky pathways that the jeeps cannot travel.
Coming downhill, the desert beneath them stretches to the kingdom’s border and the neighbouring dominion of Syria. Haya stares out across the parched, sun-bleached landscape and sees … nothing. Just sand and rocks and more desert, all the way to the horizon.
On the King’s shoulder, the falcon too seems to be scanning the horizon – although this is impossible since the bird still wears his hood.
Suddenly there is a movement in a tussock ahead. The King sees it and signals for the party to halt. Alone, with Akhbar on his shoulder and Anber the saluki at his heels, he rides forward.
When the King halts his camel, the dog drops obediently to a crouch beside him. The hound is motionless; he waits patiently while the King lifts Akhbar to his fist and removes the falcon’s hood so the bird can see.
Akhbar casts his eyes up at the blue sky, then scopes the desert terrain.
Whatever was moving out there before, Haya cannot see it. But the eyes of a girl are not those of a falcon. Akhbar has spied his prey: a desert hare, moving a hundred metres away.
Once, Haya had a conversation with her father about how much she disliked hunting. “It is cruel,” she told him. “The poor hare gets killed.”
“This is how the Bedouin, our ancestors, hunted for centuries,” the King said. “It is not a sport for us, Haya, it is tradition, our way of life.”
“But there are supermarkets now,” Haya pointed out. “We could get a hare from there instead.”
“And how did the hare in the supermarket get there?” her father asks.
The King holds Akhbar aloft and releases him. In two powerful beats of his great wings, the falcon lifts up and is gone. Haya shields her eyes and watches him soaring above the desert, his wings outstretched.
The falcon begins to circle, getting lower and lower. But he has lost sight of the hare. It has gone to ground and knows better than to move now. It will lie and wait. The falcon cannot flush it out from his vantage point in the sky.
But the hare did not reckon on Anber.
The King whistles a command and the saluki, who has been resting patiently at the feet of his camel, springs forward, swift as a deer, running on velvet paws. It doesn’t take him more than a few seconds to cover the ground to the tussock and once he catches the scent he hones in on the hare, chasing it out so that the prey is running in the open once more. Akhbar stoops and dives, his quarry in his sights.
Sensing the danger above, the hare springs forward, strong haunches powering it in rapid strides. Anber is giving chase, but the hare is even quicker. It darts ahead, always maddeningly out of reach of the saluki. The hare does not run in a straight line, but flits this way and that, hoping to confuse the hound so it can go to ground again.
If the saluki were hunting alone, then the hare’s dramatic twists and turns would be enough to put him off the trail. But up above, Akhbar the falcon is following the hare too. Each time the hare changes direction, Akhbar swoops down directly above the prey, giving the dog a marker to follow.
The hare ducks and weaves, but it is beginning to flag. It is accustomed to outrunning its foe with cleverness and very short bursts of speed. It should have been able to go to ground by now, but with the falcon circling above and the saluki below working in tandem, the hare is tiring fast.
Anber is gaining and as the hare tries to change course the hound puts on a burst of speed and outstrips his prey stride for stride. In a moment, the saluki is upon him. In a single swift move, he takes the hare in his mighty jaws and shakes it with an
instinctive flick of his head, instantly snapping the neck.
With a shrill whistle, the King calls the hound back to him and Haya watches as the saluki drops the hare and obediently turns to go back to his master.
From the sky above, Akhbar plummets with his talons extended in front of him. Without touching the ground, the falcon swoops low enough to grasp the limp body of the hare in his claws. Then, with three massive beats of his powerful wings, he lifts up into the sky with the hare dangling beneath him.
The hare must weigh almost as much as Akhbar and he has to pound his wings to remain in the air. Anber races below him, but the falcon is swift. The hound has only just reached the King when there is a cry from above as the falcon comes back down to earth, dropping the hare neatly at the feet of his master.
That night, back at the palace, Baba, Haya and Ali have wild hare stew for supper.
anti has explained how the filly must be weaned and at eight months old he tells Haya it is time.
They do it first thing one morning. While Santi loads Latifah into the horse float, Haya does her best to distract Bree. It is all going smoothly until the float begins to leave the yard and Latifah cries out.
“It’s OK, Bree, I am here, shhh.” Haya tries to comfort her startled filly, but it is no good. Bree slams up against the stable door with her chest, trying to force her way free, desperate to be reunited with the grey mare. Her frantic whinnies fill the air as she cries out. Haya stands by helplessly, realising that nothing she can do will ease the pain.
When Santi returns to the yard, he finds Bree in a lather, her distraught cries still echoing round the yard and the young Princess slumped against the door of the loose box in a flood of tears.
“Dry your eyes, Titch,” Santi tells her firmly. “You are in charge, remember? Sometimes we must do what is best for our horses, even though it hurts.”
“It is too cruel,” Haya says. “Look at her!”