City of Jasmine (19 page)

In spite of his injuries, Gabriel returned his embrace. “Thank Allah you’re here, Hamid,” he said.

His friend kissed him once on each cheek in the Bedouin custom and said something in Arabic. The only word I recognised was
akh
. Brother. The salukis, trained to a trice, had stood, quivering at their master’s heel until he snapped his fingers. They sprang forward to Gabriel, rolling about in ecstasy as he gave them each a quick pat.

Gabriel and the Bedouin leader exchanged quick remarks, their expressions grim, but it was obvious they were very glad to see one another. Gabriel turned to me, almost as an afterthought.

“Sheikh Hamid ibn Hussein, this is Evangeline Starke. My wife. Evie, say hello to Hamid.”

Stupefied, I inclined my head, but the fellow bowed deeply and made a gesture of welcome or blessing. “You are the wife of my brother, Djibril. You are welcome as my little sister.” He turned and shouted a series of instructions to his men.

I flicked a glance at Gabriel. “Djibril?”

“It’s the Arabic form of Gabriel,” he told me. He grinned. “Relax, pet. Hamid is a sort of prince of his tribe. We’re in good hands now.”

“Then what was all that palaver with the lances?” I demanded.

“It’s called a
ghazou,
” he explained. “It’s a test of courage. He wanted to see what you were made of. Now he knows. Don’t scowl so, my dear. He’s responsible for the safety of his entire tribe. He has to be cautious. Besides, I think he was amusing himself a little.”

“He’s rather dashing,” I said faintly.

Gabriel gave me a cool glance. “And lucky for you he only has three wives. Play your cards right and you could be number four.”

“Not unless I have him kill you first,” I returned sweetly. “We are still married.”

If Sheikh Hamid noticed anything amiss in our exchange, he had the good manners not to show it. He and Gabriel had a swift discussion of our situation—at least I thought that was what they said since the conversation was entirely in Arabic—and before I knew it, one of the men was walking towards us leading a camel. He gave it to Hamid, who led his own white camel to us. Hamid tapped it lightly with a crop and it gave a great gusty sigh as it knelt down.

“My friends, I offer you my own mount, Zahar.” He crooned a moment to the camel then handed the reins to Gabriel and went to his new mount, a shaggier gold camel that stood looking bored as Hamid vaulted lightly into the saddle. Gabriel mounted gingerly but with an astonishing amount of expertise. He gestured impatiently to me.

“Hurry up, then.”

I stood my ground. “Must I?”

Gabriel leaned over as far as he could without falling from the saddle, his face inches from mine. When he spoke, his words were low enough for my ears only and clipped off with barely smothered rage.

“Get. On. The. Goddamned. Camel.”

“Why can’t I ride with the sheikh or one of the others?”

“Because a Bedouin man doesn’t touch a woman he isn’t related to if he can help it,” he explained swiftly.

“Daoud did.”

“Daoud was kidnapping us, you imbecile. Now stop making an ass of yourself and get on the camel or, so help me God—”

I moved forward. “You needn’t blaspheme, Gabriel. Heavens, you look mad enough to burst a vein. Now, how do I do this?”

“Put your boot on the ledge of the saddle and swing your leg forward over its head in one quick motion. There, just like that. Now grip the saddle with your knees and lean back,” he instructed. I did, acutely aware of Gabriel just behind me, his chest firm against my back.

He made a clucking sound to the camel and it surged forward as it lifted itself onto its front knees. “Now lean forward,”Gabriel said, shoving me against the saddle horn. We rocked back and forth again as the animal straightened its back legs and then the front.

“Oh, my,” I breathed.

Sheikh Hamid grinned. “You will like my Zahar. It is our word for flower and it suits her. Like all desert flowers, she is hardy and beautiful.”

She didn’t seem particularly beautiful—a camel is a distinctly unlovely creature to begin with—but I could see from the other animals that this one had a particularly fine head and a dainty way about her. She could move like the wind, and when Gabriel touched her lightly with the crop, she was off, nosing her way home. Gabriel kept her at a steady trot, and for such an ungainly animal she managed an even, almost silky ride with that gait. To my astonishment, I found myself relaxing, even humming a little tune under my breath as the miles rolled away.

“Do you mind?” Gabriel asked, his voice arctic. He pointedly brushed my hair out of his face and pushed me forward.

“What’s the trouble?”

“Your hair is in my eyes and that tune is particularly annoying.”

“It’s ‘Salut d’Amour,’” I said, my eyes fixed firmly on the track ahead of us.

“I recognised it,” he returned. “It’s still an appalling piece of treacle.”

“You liked it well enough at our wedding,” I reminded him.

“I had very poor taste in those days.”

I laughed and he poked pointedly at my back. “You’ve gone dead weight again, and if you will forgive the observation, you seem to have put on a few pounds since the last time I saw you.”

I jerked forward in the saddle. “I most certainly have
not.
If anything I weigh less now. A pilot has to be extremely conscious of such things. And of all the obnoxious and inappropriately personal remarks—” I carried on in that vein for the rest of the journey, but Gabriel didn’t bother to reply. He simply directed the camel with a faintly supercilious smile on his face, and I realised he wasn’t even listening. I finally huffed out a sigh and settled down, clutching at the saddle horn since I would have sooner walked the entire Badiyat ash-Sham on foot than touched Gabriel at that point.

But almost as soon as I’d stopped talking, the track veered off the straight course we’d been following and led us to a narrow gap between two steep walls of rock. The salukis ran ahead, tails held aloft like banners, and with a quick whistle, Sheikh Hamid set the falcon to flight. It disappeared ahead of us between the rock walls. The path was so tight we had to ride single file, and the flat rocky ground of the desert proper gave way to scrubby hills, and as we twisted and turned, the vast blankness of the desert fell away quickly. A stony outcropping stretched overhead where two of the hills clung together, and just beyond these, the path widened into a small fertile valley. The hillsides were green—nothing like England in the spring, but they had a lushness all their own after the barren wasteland we had just passed through. The ground was carpeted with low green bushes starred with little white flowers. At the lowest edge of the valley stood a circle of trees and what passed for a small meadow in these parts. Ranged around this pretty pasture were a series of low black goats’-hair tents, the tents of the Bedouin. Surrounding them were herds of horses and camels, and beyond these restless groups of sheep and goats dotted the hillsides as they cropped for the small shoots of spring grasses. Between the tents, cooking fires were tended by veiled women while children scampered about underfoot, stopping as soon as they saw us to carry the news that visitors were coming.

Gabriel tugged the reins to halt Zahar and Sheikh Hamid rode up next to us. “This is our spring pasturage. My people welcome you to this place.” He turned to Gabriel, affection warming his dark eyes. “Welcome home, my brother.”

I started to turn in the saddle, but Gabriel abruptly made a sharp clicking noise at Zahar and we were rocked back and forth as she settled onto her belly like a great ship coming to berth. “Get off the same way you got on,” he told me.

I did, jumping free of the camel as Gabriel swung himself slowly off. He patted its neck and murmured something in Arabic while she made grunting noises and fluttered her eyelashes.

“You appear to have made a conquest,” I told Gabriel.

The returning men were greeted rapturously by their children and their veiled women as we stood by and watched. Sheikh Hamid gave me a wide grin. “We have been gone a few weeks. They will want news and goods,” he explained. A slender figure in a long black robe had come near to him. She waited patiently, and although her face was veiled, I could see a pair of bright eyes shining over the edge.

“My wife, Sheikha Aysha,” he told me. “She will take you to your tent so you may wash and when you have finished, you will join us for a good meal.” He turned and gave instructions in rapid Arabic and she nodded. He leaned close to her and said something else and she gave a light laugh as he smiled down at her.

“Newlyweds,” Gabriel told me sourly.

“Should I explain to her now or later about female emancipation?” I asked him with my sweetest smile.

His face was thunderous. “These are my friends and you will not disrespect them by attempting to change them in any way, is that clear?”

His eyes were ice-cold and I stepped sharply away. “You know perfectly well I would never do anything as rude as that. Hell’s bells, you’re in a rotten mood.”

“You would be, too, if someone had sliced open your back and the best nursing around was yours,” he said, his tone aggrieved.

I felt a rush of sympathy then in spite of myself. “I’m sorry, Gabriel. It was a beastly thing to have happen, and I’m sure it hurts like the very devil.”

He opened his mouth, most likely to bark at me again, but he closed it suddenly and shook his head. “Forget it. Bedouins are excellent healers. I’m in good hands with them. Hamid has an old fellow, name of Faiz. He will fix me right up. Go on then. Aysha’s waiting.”

I turned to find those patient dark eyes resting on me, and she beckoned to me with a slender hand. I noticed her wrists were heavily laden with gold bracelets, and as she walked she jingled as much as the camels had.

She drew me into one of the dark woolen tents, where a gaggle of women waited, all chattering. As we entered, they fell silent and stared over the edges of their veils. They scrutinised me intently, pointing to my trousers and my undraped face, and for a moment, the mood wasn’t entirely friendly. I gave them as respectful an inclination of the head as I could manage, and said slowly,
“Asalaam aleikum.”

No doubt I mangled the pronunciation, but the attempt was appreciated and instantly the mood changed. Smiles broke out with more chattering, and they threw back their veils. Sheikha
Aysha turned to me, holding her veil in her fingertips. She was older than I expected, almost of an age with her husband, but beautiful and dignified. She had plump lips and those magnificent eyes, and I wasn’t at all surprised she had ended up married to the sheikh. Beauty must be as much of a commodity among the Bedouin as anywhere else.

She reached out her hand to me and I took it in mine. Before I could shake it, she leaned forward and touched her nose to mine three times. I blinked at her in astonishment, but from her smile I could tell it was a gesture of warmth. Several of the other women repeated the gesture, and soon a line formed of women waiting to touch noses with me. I touched them all, murmuring the same greeting over and over.
“Asalaam aleikum.”

When I’d finished, they pulled me to the center of a circle of women and started tugging at my clothes, exclaiming over each garment as they pulled it free. Under other circumstances I might have been at least halfway embarrassed, but their hands were gentle and kind and to my horror, I felt tears prickling the back of my eyes. My throat tightened, and as I clamped my lips shut,
Sheikha Aysha leaned close into my face.

She shook her head and said something in low tones to the other women. Then she put out her hand and petted my filthy hair, crooning. The others did the same, one patting my hand, another putting a tender hand to my shoulder and I started to weep. I felt a perfect fool sobbing on them, but there was something so very kind about their manner, and before I knew what was happening, I was bawling my eyes out. I don’t know if it was the gentle eyes or the nurturing hands or the fact that not one of them spoke English, but I told them everything, from the first time I met Gabriel to our whirlwind courtship to the disastrous trip to China that ended with me asking for a divorce I wasn’t even sure I wanted. I told them about my flying escapades and Aunt Dove and Arthur Wellesley—I think the flapping may have confused them a bit since I used a wing gesture for both the
Jolly Roger
and Arthur Wellesley. For all I knew, they might have thought I was flying a parrot across the seven seas. But I kept talking. I told them about coming to Damascus and about shooting Gabriel and about him being lashed by Daoud. The only thing I left out was the Cross. There was no point in telling anyone about that, whether they understood me or not.

While I talked and cried, they kept up their gentle ministrations. They brought water in a deep copper can, a tremendous luxury in the desert, then washed me thoroughly and scrubbed every speck of filth from my skin. They washed my hair and rinsed it in rosewater, drying it with bits of silk until the curls were polished to a high sheen. They wrapped me in a fine black robe lavishly embroidered in blue silk. It felt heavenly after days in my trousers and boots, and they even gave me a pair of the soft little leather slippers they wore. They carried my own clothes away and mimed washing, so I let them go with barely a protest. By that time I was finished with my story and was hiccupping a little. They bathed my eyes and gave me a hot drink of tea infused with cardamom and sweetened with honey to soothe my throat. They lined my eyes with kohl, miming the sun overhead, and I understood after a fashion that the purpose of the black stuff was to protect the eyes from the burning rays. Then they washed my hands a final time in rosewater so that when they stepped back and admired their handiwork, I was a clean, dry, perfumed and infinitely calmer woman than I had been an hour before.

Sheikha Aysha nodded to the other women, who were smiling. She thanked them with a phrase I recognised from my guidebook and they left us, pulling their veils firmly into place as they went. She turned to me and gave me a look of gentle approbation. “I think you are happy now, yes?”