The Fierce and Tender Sheikh

by Alexandra Sellers

  “Whose bridesmaid am I going to be?” Shakira asked when they showed her the fabulous designs for the bridesmaids’ costumes. As tradition dictated, each would wear a different outfit, from a choice of beautiful colours.

  “At the moment, we think we won’t have separate groups. It’ll just be a flock of gorgeous girls doing duty for both of us. But we can’t be certain yet. Maybe we’ll have to split them into two groups.”

  It was exciting, but of course not nearly so thrilling for Shakira as for the two brides. Especially not when she was desperate to see Sharif again.

  When they did meet, it was a snatched half hour in the private courtyard that evening, where they walked alone.

  He did not press her for an answer. She was so relieved by this that she scarcely noticed that whatever he said seemed to take for granted that they would be together forever.

  “Now that the issue of the island resettlement is resolved, the islanders become the Sultana’s concern, since refugees fall under her purview,” Sharif said. “I told Dana I’d like to involve myself with it. She has asked me to take charge of repatriation—not just of the islanders, but all refugees.”

  She gazed at him. “Oh! Will you—will you like that work?”

  He looked into her eyes. “It is very close to my heart. I want to prevent anyone spending one day more than absolutely necessary in the hell where I found you, my beloved.”

  Her heart thumped painfully. “Oh—!”

  “We both wondered if you would like to work with me on the project.”

  “Oh!” she said, in a different voice. “Oh, yes! Why didn’t I think of that? Will we be able to bring them all home?”

  “First on the agenda has to be finding temporary accommodation for them. Ash has been putting a new proposal to the tribal council—there’s no longer the necessity to ask for permanent resettlement of the islanders, but still we need space to house everyone while they are assessed and their homes are rebuilt. Of course no one wants another refugee camp, but it seems better to bring them home, even if we haven’t yet got permanent accommodation for them. Ash has a powerful ally on the tribal council, Tabasi’s son, who has a big impact for such a young man. His influence over his father is very strong, we hear, and where Tabasi goes, the council goes. We’ll probably reach an agreement tomorrow that will allow us to put up temporary accommodation for a certain number only. That still leaves a sizable number….”

  “Can’t we house some in Ghasib’s New Palace?” Shakira suggested. “It’s ugly, but not nearly as ugly as Burry Hill, and it’s huge, and it’s got plumbing! And at least it’s already built. It’s not doing anything at the moment, is it? Waiting to be turned into a tourist site or a hotel complex if Ash can find investors!” She snorted. “Why not do something useful with it?”

  Sharif threw back his head and laughed the laugh of a man who has suddenly been shown the answer that’s been staring everyone in the face.

  The next day was Friday, and the Sultan hosted a dinner at the palace for the tribal council. It was not a public occasion, only family and Cup Companions dining with the tribal leaders in the formal dining room off the Sultan’s Anteroom, where visiting monarchs and heads of state were entertained.

  They were a fierce-looking group, most wearing the flowing kaftans and hooded burnouses more common in the desert than the cities, some in the baggy trousers and vests of the mountain tribes. All men, for the tribes hadn’t yet admitted women into the council.

  Shakira had met such men in the camps, for the tribes had often been seen as a danger by Ghasib, and she instinctively felt comfortable with them. But she was slipping into her easy, man-to-man Hani ways, and since she was a beautiful and beautifully dressed woman, not all the men were so comfortable with her as she was with them.

  Sharif appeared in the doorway, his eyes searching the room. His gaze fell on her, and she was surprised to note a frown in his gaze before he saw that she had seen him, and changed it to a smile.

  He did not come to her, but as she watched made his way towards where the Sultan and Sultana were standing, under the great portrait of Hafzuddin. Shakira watched as he bowed and spoke, and then, to her surprise, the Sultana looked her way, the same frown of concern on her face, and started across the room towards her.

  At that moment her attention was caught by something at the door, and she turned to see that a man was standing in the doorway, his fierce black eyes combing the room.

  He was a man much younger than most of the others, but he carried himself with the same authority as the greybeards. Shakira felt a glimmer of recognition. Perhaps she had met him in one of the camps? He was in tribal dress, wearing a voluminous white burnous open over his shoulders like a cape, a dark waistcoat, the traditional flowing shalwar kamees, and a navy turban with the ends falling over his shoulder.

  “Who is that man?” she asked Jalia’s fiancé, who was standing near with Jalia. Latif Abd al Razzaq lifted his head.

  “That’s old Tabasi’s son. He’s been Ash’s strong supporter on the council, and we’re assuming it’s his influence over the old man that has convinced them at last.”

  The man was sternly handsome, his skin darkly bronzed by the sun, and he looked strong, proud, and every inch a tribal sheikh. His eyes raked the gathering with an eagle’s ferocity.

  Suddenly his gaze lighted on her. Something like recognition buzzed in her, and Shakira shivered as the man, his burnous billowing around him, started across the room towards her.

  “Wow, that’s some hunk!” Noor whispered in her ear. “And it looks as though he might be going to give Sharif a run for his money! Sharif isn’t happy about it, either, by what I see!”

  Sharif was crossing the room towards the man at an angle to cut him off, and Shakira had never seen him move so fast, practically pushing people out of his way.

  He reached Tabasi’s son a few yards away from where Shakira stood, and she heard an urgent, low-voiced murmur. But the tribal leader flung up a haughty hand and pushed past the Cup Companion. In another moment he was face-to-face with her.

  “Shakira,” Dana’s voice spoke behind her. “Prepare yourself for—”

  The man stood gazing at her for an electric moment, an expression in his eyes that almost frightened her. She heard a rushing sound in her ears, and the light went dark for a moment, as though she had made some discovery that hadn’t yet reached consciousness.

  Then Sharif said, “Shakira, this is Sheikh Mazin ibn Tabasi al Johari.” She had never seen him look so anxious, as if he did not know how to handle the situation. “The Sheikh believes—you must understand we have no proof yet, but—”

  But Sheikh Mazin ibn Tabasi al Johari was impatient of this preparation. His hands reached out to grip her shoulders, and she gasped at the urgency of his grasp.

  “Sister,” he said simply. “My sister Shakira. It is a great happiness to find you.”

  The word ricocheted around the room as once the sound of her name had done, wildly, crazily, like a trapped bird seeking escape, and her heart fluttered in time with its wings.

  Sister. A dozen whispers behind her in the room repeated the astonishing, amazing word.

  “Sister?” Her own voice croaked as she pronounced it, the wonderful, marvellous word she had waited to hear for fifteen long, hungry years. “Are you my brother? Oh, are you my brother? Are you really…Mazin?”

  “Shakira, we need evidence before—” she heard someone, the Sultana perhaps, begin, but she was gazing up into that dark face, hungrily searching for the brother she knew.

  His eyes glittered with unshed tears as he gazed down at her, and his mouth split in a smile, revealing strong white teeth. One eyetooth stood proud of the others, a little twisted over its neighbour.

  “Mazin!” she cried, with a voice that shivered down the spine of everyone present and caused the precious piece of glass on a nearby table to ring. “Mazin! It is you! Oh, it is you, my brother!”

  She flung herself into his arms
, and he held her as tightly as she had always dreamed, and his tears fell and mingled with hers.

  They walked and talked in the garden for hours, searching for mutual landmarks in their fifteen years of unshared history.

  “Oh, when you were doing that, I was there or there,” she would say, and he would say, “Ah, when we heard that news I never thought—”

  There was so much to say, so much to hear. She was hungry for every detail of her brother’s life, and he for hers.

  “Gulab gave me a pack and told me to go into the mountains the night after you were taken. He said I was no longer safe in the house. I am sure he was right. There were some in the village…”

  “Oh, weren’t you terrified? Going into the mountains in the dark, alone…”

  Mazin only shook his head, a powerful warrior unwilling to recall a time when he was vulnerable and afraid.

  “I spent three days walking before I met a hunter. He took me to the fortress, where his sheikh was. It was Tabasi. He was already an old man, and his sons had all died in a terrible epidemic that had swept the tribe—some said deliberately sent by Ghasib. Tabasi adopted me. I was not with strangers. My grandmother was a Johari herself, and the tribe knew my father’s name and had a bond of kinship with us. I never suffered as you suffered, Sister. If I went hungry, we all went hungry. In the drought we lost many.”

  She told him of her life—the Bahramis; England; the bombing; the camps; and he listened closely, as if to know her by what she had suffered. He listened in silence, nodding, turning his head from time to time to look down at his sister in the moonlight.

  And then, because he was her brother, she had the courage to tell it all.

  “Now you have told me,” she heard at the end. “I am your brother, your guardian. These memories will not trouble you anymore,” Mazin said, with his uncomplicated mountain wisdom.

  “And now, there is my friend Sharif Azad al Dauleh,” said Mazin.

  She breathed a silent gasp.

  It was late, they didn’t know how late, but the moon had climbed high, and the sky behind had changed from purple-black to midnight.

  “I have met him much during our negotiations. And I have seen how he looks at you, heard his voice pronounce your name. He wants to make all right for you, is that not so?”

  “Yes,” whispered Shakira.

  “He asks you to be his wife.”

  She nodded. “But I—I don’t—I’m not—”

  He looked at her closely. “He is a noble man, Sister. He has been honoured by the Sultan, and he is of a good family, whose tribe has always been on good terms with al Johari. You have my permission to marry Sharif Azad al Dauleh.”

  “Mazin, he—I—do you think he really loves me enough for that? Won’t he—if he knew—?”

  Mazin frowned. “He is a man, Sister.” Her brother invested the word with a deeper meaning than she had ever heard it given. “Does a man want a woman only for her beauty, or for everything she is and has been?”

  And somehow, just like that, she could see her way.

  Eighteen

  “Did you know who he was all along?”

  “It never crossed my mind. He doesn’t seem to have the al Jawadi look,” Sharif assured her, “and for once I wasn’t looking for it.”

  “A little,” she said. “When he is laughing hard.”

  “I am glad you laughed with your brother, Shakira,” he commented softly. “There wasn’t much laughing going on in our meetings. No, it was almost chance that I asked him, and not some other member of the council, whether he had ever heard of a boy found wandering the mountains. As we spoke he got more and more agitated, and finally he asked your father’s name. When he heard it, nothing could stop him.”

  They were wandering in the garden at night, always her favourite time in the garden, when the scent of roses seemed sweetest on the night air.

  She rested her head where it belonged, against his heart, and they walked in silence while the moon climbed the night sky.

  “In the way of the tribes, your brother has agreed to our marriage, Shakira,” he said softly.

  “I have to tell you something, Sharif,” she interrupted hurriedly. “If you—if you still want to marry me when I’ve said it, then…then I will.”

  He went still for a moment. “There is nothing you can tell me that will make me change my mind about wanting you for my wife.”

  “I have to tell you.”

  Seeing the intensity in her face, he nodded once, and fell silent.

  “There was—it was in the first camp, in Parvan. There was a man there—everyone knew he was a Kaljuk, because of the way he pronounced certain words, but he didn’t seem to realize that. He was married to a Parvani woman and had been living in Parvan for years, and he seemed to think no one knew.

  “He was a bad man. And he always picked on the weakest people. He stole food from pregnant women.”

  Sharif muttered something.

  “Everyone knew or suspected he was attacking women, but he chose women—girls—who were alone, with no husbands or brothers to avenge them, and so nothing ever got done. And afterwards the women would always keep quiet out of shame.”

  Sharif closed his eyes and breathed deep. “You were alone,” he said. “With no one to avenge you.”

  “I was about twelve. It was just before my stepmother was killed. I’d been a girl again ever since England, you know, but I was still—I hadn’t gone through puberty, so I didn’t really think—I wasn’t afraid of him, the way some were. But one day…”

  He let her pause, struggling with the anger that rose in him, the murderous rage and outrage that would have ripped the villain apart if he had faced him.

  A cloud obscured the moon, hiding his face from her.

  “I told you the Kaljuk planes used to bomb and strafe the camp sometimes as if it were a game to them. They would chase someone with strafing, and sometimes kill them and sometimes not. When we heard the Kaljuk planes, we used to all run to the kitchen building.”

  “Yes,” he said, for she had told him this part of the story before.

  Shakira took a deep breath. “One day I was in the school tent. We only had a few textbooks, and they were always kept at the school. And that day I was there by myself, studying, and I didn’t hear the planes. I got up to sharpen my pencil with the knife from the supplies box, and that’s when I realized the planes were coming. I ran to the door. Almost everyone was already inside the kitchen hut, and the planes were close, and I didn’t know whether to run or not. I was—” Even now the fear was almost overwhelming, and he put his arm around her to remind her of where she was. “I was so scared.”

  Her eyes were dark. “Someone came around the corner of the school tent as I stood there, and it was him. The Kaljuk. He glanced over at me, and I saw his face change…he turned and came towards me. And then…I would have run then, though the first planes were almost on us, but he grabbed me and shoved me back inside the school before I—before I…”

  She sobbed once, but her eyes were dry as she stared into the past.

  “Shakira, I love you,” Sharif said.

  “I’d been sharpening the pencil, and I—he dragged me towards the teacher’s table and started pushing me down and I…I…” She took a deep, shuddering breath and looked straight into his eyes.

  “I still had the knife in my hand,” she said baldly.

  It was the first moment he allowed himself to breathe.

  She wiped her eyes convulsively.

  “I stabbed him. I don’t know where it hit, I just remember lifting my arm and—I hated him, and I hit him as hard as I could.”

  Her eyes left his and sought the past again. “There was blood…suddenly it gushed out everywhere. He grunted and I shoved him, and he went down on the ground. I ran outside. The blood was on my hands, and the planes were screaming right overhead, very low. I was sure they were going to strafe me.” Her eyes were black and bleak.

  “I can never forget that
—running to the kitchens with that man’s blood on my hands, and the planes…and then the bombs started falling.”

  He was weeping with relief, with anger, with emotions stronger than anything he had ever felt in his life.

  “His body was found, and no one ever questioned what killed him. I think some of the men—just the way they looked at each other when his body was found made me think they knew that it wasn’t the bombs. One man said, It is God’s justice. And there were so many casualties that day that the body was never examined.”

  She looked up then, for his judgement.

  “Do you tell me you felt one moment’s guilt over this man’s death?” Sharif demanded.

  “No,” she whispered. “I can’t feel guilty, even—even if I did kill him. That’s why I had to tell you, Sharif. I wasn’t sorry—I’m not sorry!—for what I did. And maybe that—makes me as bad as he was. He was bad, an evil man. Women cheered and spat on his body when it was found. And I was glad I had done it, because he couldn’t hurt anybody else.”

  “I am glad too, Beloved,” he said softly.

  He drew her against his side, and she sighed from the depths of her being, and they walked a little.

  “And was it then that you became Hani again?”

  She gave a half laugh, though she knew she should never be surprised by his understanding. “Yes. A week later the kitchen was bombed and my stepmother died. The camp was—we were moved after that, and it was easy to say I was a boy.”

  “And later, your protection extended to other women and girls—like Farida and Jamila. That is why you adopted them.”

  She blinked. “I—I suppose so.”

  “My brave and courageous Hani. And what did you fear from me, Beloved? Did you think that I could judge differently in such a case? Could you imagine that I would say what you did was wrong?”