The Sheikh's Son (2 page)

“Mum, there’s a man at the door.”

“What does he want?” Sarah scraped off the worst of the burnt crust and began cutting each pizza into slices.

“I don’t know. You told me I shouldn’t open the door to strangers, but I looked through the letter box and he looks a bit like Hassan’s dad.”

Hassan was one of the kids that called Ali names. Many years ago, Hassan’s family had moved to England from Yazan, the same country where Sarah’s ex-husband was from. Sarah often wondered how much of the gossip about her in Yazan reached this distant corner of London. Back in Yazan, people had called her a slut because she slept with Akbar before they were married. At the time, she didn’t care what the other Bedouin women thought, but then when she married Akbar, she worked hard to earn people’s friendship, and hopefully, respect. However, there seemed to be little she could do to get other children to be friends with her son.

“Ali, was Hassan one of the boys who punched you?”

Ali was silent, which Sarah took for a yes.

“Maybe his dad’s come to apologise,” Sarah said hopefully, though somehow she doubted it. She knew that a Yazani man would never come to a woman’s house, especially a woman that lived on her own, unless, of course, she was a prostitute. A horrible thought crossed her mind: perhaps Hassan’s father or one of his uncles really thought she was on the game and had come to proposition her.

“Sit down and eat your pizza. I’ll go and sort this out.” Sarah put the burnt pizzas on the table on one of the few places that wasn’t covered in toys, newspapers, magazines, and unpaid bills. She tucked a loose strand of blonde hair behind her ear, smearing it with melted cheese as she did so.

“What do you want?” she yelled down the corridor towards the front door. “If you’ve come about your son being a bully, it’s about bloody time!”

Sarah opened the door. In front of her stood a man from Yazan. He was tall with broad, muscular shoulders and a neatly trimmed black beard, which was just beginning to show traces of grey. However, it wasn’t anyone from Hassan’s family; it was Sheikh Akbar Al-Zafir, Ali’s father and Sarah’s ex-husband.

“Ali, go upstairs to your room. Now,” Sarah called out.

“But I haven’t finished my pizza.”

“You don’t need to finish it. That’s the burnt bit,” Sarah said, pointing to the two charred pieces that lay on Ali’s plate. There was a chip on the side of his plate. Sarah wondered when that had happened, but couldn’t be bothered to ask. She had bigger things to worry about.

“But I like the burnt bits.” Ali stuffed another slice into his mouth.

“You can take them upstairs with you; just go up to your bedroom.”

“Who’s the bloke at the door? Is he still there?” Ali picked up his plate and headed towards the front door.

“Ali, ignore him and go to your room.”

Ali walked upstairs as slowly as he possibly could.

“Who are you telling to ignore me?” the man at the door asked in a thick Arabic accent.

“You’ve learnt English,” was all that Sarah said in response. The last time she’d seen him, his English was elementary at best.

“I had to learn it so I could find you, but now I’m here, is that all you can say to me?”

Sarah had thought through this moment hundreds, probably thousands, of times in her head and in her dreams, but she had always thought that she would meet Akbar again in Yazan, back in the hot, wild deserts where they’d once been together. She never imagined that she would one day see him standing on her doorstep in wet, cold England.

“Aren’t you going to invite me in?” he asked.

“Of course, please, come in.” Sarah stepped aside and let her husband enter her house. As he walked in, Sarah found herself standing right up against him in the narrow passageway. She could smell sweet mint tea on his breath and memories came flooding back of his lips pressed hard against hers, his body heavy on top of her, his arms wrapped tightly around her waist. She looked up. He was staring not at her but at the staircase behind.

“Who else is here?” he asked.

Sarah looked over her shoulder, half expecting to see Ali sitting on the steps, watching them, but for once he’d done as she’d asked and gone to his room. Sarah wondered whether Akbar knew about his son. She didn’t know she was pregnant when she left him and she hadn’t been in touch since.

“Let me get you some tea and some food,” Sarah said, knowing that basic Arabic etiquette meant that a guest was always offered something to eat and drink. She showed him into the living room and gestured for him to sit down on the small sofa.

The house she and Ali lived in was small. Upstairs, there were two bedrooms and a bathroom, while downstairs there were just two rooms. One was the kitchen and dining area while the other was the living room, or “front parlour” as it was called when the house was first built in the 1930s. The living room was a small, cold room that looked onto the street. The windows were so bad that all the traffic noise came in and all the heating went out. Therefore, Sarah and Ali rarely used the room, preferring instead the cosy atmosphere of the kitchen.

Akbar looked around the room. There wasn’t much to look at. A few paperback novels, an out-of-date TV—the good one was in the kitchen—and a couple of wilted potted plants.

“I’ll just go and get some refreshments.”

“Please, don’t go to any trouble.”

Sarah rushed into the kitchen and looked around for something to offer him. The fridge was empty except for milk, three half-empty containers of take-away Chinese food, and some butter. In the cupboard, there wasn’t much either, apart from some tins of food and an old packet of plain biscuits. She tried one of the biscuits. It was soggy. She threw the packet in the bin and switched on the kettle. She could only offer him instant coffee and regular black tea, neither of which would be acceptable. She knew that Akbar was used to drinking either fresh mint tea or, on the rare occasion, thick black coffee spiced with green cardamom pods. In the end, she poured out two glasses of water and put them on a plastic tray along with a plate of semi-cold pizza slices and returned to the living room.

Akbar thanked her for the water and looked disdainfully at the pizza.

“How did you find me?” Sarah asked.

“I just did what most people do nowadays when they’re trying to find something. I searched on the Internet.”

“You have the Internet?”

“Yes, we have the Internet. Yazan’s changed since you left. Things are very different now.”

“But how did you get my address?” She’d done her best to make sure that her address wasn’t publically listed anywhere.

“Easy. I found out where you’re registered as a doctor and then I simply followed you home, though I must admit that once I saw where you lived, I went back to a cafe on the main road for a cup of tea.”

Sarah knew the place he was referring to. The small cafe was very popular with the Arab men who lived in the neighbourhood.

“This is a very cold country. I needed something to warm me up,” he continued.

Sarah wasn’t sure whether he was referring to the fact that she’d given him water instead of hot tea or to the fact that the room they were sitting in was freezing cold.

“It’s unusually cold for the time of year, but then England always is a bit cold and wet.”

“Sarah, I haven’t come here to discuss the weather. I’ve come here to be with you.” He got up and walked to where Sarah sat in an armchair on the other side of the room. He knelt on the floor in front of her and put his hands on her knees.

“Please come back to me,” he begged. “This isn’t where you belong. You belong in the desert. You’re my desert rose.”

Sarah looked at him. Even after ten years, he was still a strikingly handsome man. However, it would take more than a few sweet words to make her pack up and go back to him. “I’m sorry, Akbar, but I can’t.”

He got up and paced around the tiny room. “You have another man, don’t you?”

“No, it’s not that.” Life was difficult enough without adding the complexity of dating. “I don’t have a boyfriend.”

“But I heard you talking to someone when I came in. Who was it?”

So Akbar didn’t know about Ali. However, now that he was here, he would find out sooner or later. “It was my son. I have a son.”

“A son? Whose son? By God, I’ll kill the man who did it!”

For a moment it looked like Akbar wanted to hit her, but then the living room door opened.

“What’s going on, Mum?” Ali asked from the doorway.

Akbar looked at the boy and froze. From Ali’s dark features and large brown eyes, it was unmistakable who the child’s father was.

“I have a son,” Akbar said in a voice that was little more than a whisper.

Akbar hugged Ali so tightly that Sarah thought he would squeeze the boy to death.

“Mum, what’s going on?” Ali pulled himself away.

“Ali, this is your father.”

Ali stared at the man in front of him.

“Praise God, I have a son!” Akbar repeated in Arabic and went to hug the boy again, but Ali stepped away.

“Why did you send my Mum away? Why didn’t you come looking for me?” Ali asked.

“I didn’t send her away. She left me and I’ve spent the last ten years looking for her!” Akbar replied in a mixture of English and Arabic.

“You’re lying! I hate you!” Tears welled up in the child’s eyes. He wiped them away with his hand and winced as he touched the cut on his eyebrow. He walked out of the room and charged up the stairs. A few moments later, they heard him slam his bedroom door.

“I’m sorry about his behaviour. It’s probably best if we leave him for a moment to let this sink in.” Sarah sat back down in the armchair. She knew that there was no point talking to Ali now. She would let him have a cry first and then, once he’d calmed down a bit, she would speak to him and try to explain the situation. However, she wasn’t really sure she knew what was going on.

“It’s a bit of a shock for him seeing you here,” she said. It was a shock for both her and Ali. The last thing she expected that day when she came home from work was to see her husband, Sheikh Akbar, standing in her doorway. She’d thought about him every day since she had left Yazan and there were many times when she’d been on the brink of booking flight tickets.

A couple of years ago, when she was on leave from work and Ali was on his school holidays, she even made it as far as the airport to see whether there were a couple of standby tickets that she could buy. All the way there on the London Underground, she told Ali stories about the desert, the camels, the Bedouin camps, and the labyrinth of street markets where you could buy everything from spices to horses. However, when they got to the ticket counter at Heathrow, the woman behind the desk told them that all the flights that day were full because it was a major public holiday. If they returned on Monday, she’d probably be able to get them a pair of tickets. On the way back home, Sarah took Ali out for a hamburger and an ice-cream, and told him that they’d visit his father another time. By Monday morning, Sarah had changed her mind. What good would it do to go back to Yazan and search for something that she no longer wanted or needed? And now, here he was, sitting in her dismal living room in a London suburb on a rainy afternoon.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Akbar asked.

“About Ali?”

Akbar nodded.

“I didn’t know I was pregnant when I left and then, when I found out, I didn’t know how to contact you.”

“You could’ve come back.”

Sarah didn’t want to tell him about the times that she almost had. Instead, she said, “I called him Ali Akbar, after you.”

“It’s a fine name and he’s a fine boy.”

 “I’m sorry about what he said just now. He’s not normally like that. He’s had a difficult day.” However, what happened to Ali at school was nothing compared with the surprise of meeting his father for the first time when he got home.

“I can see that you have a firm hand with him. Children need discipline, but there are many ways of doing it.”

“What do you mean?” Sarah didn’t like the implication that she was bringing up Ali the wrong way. What did Akbar know? He’d only just turned up.

“The bruise on his face and the cut above his eye.”

Sarah couldn’t believe what Akbar was suggesting. “I would never hit Ali! What a terrible thing to suggest.”

“But if you didn’t, who did? Is there another man who thinks he can take my place as his father?”

“No, I’ve told you already, there isn’t anyone else. Ali got into a fight at school with some other boys.”

Akbar smiled. “So my son is a fighter. Excellent! Does he always win?”

“It’s nothing to be proud of. Ali shouldn’t be fighting, but some kids have been teasing him.”

“Teasing him? How dare anyone pick on my son! No one does that to an Al-Zafir. I need to speak to the boy.” Akbar got up and went to find his son.

Sarah tried to get to Ali before Akbar, but he was already on the stairs and his broad frame took up the entire space of the narrow staircase, making it impossible to pass him. He threw open Ali’s door and demanded to know who’d hit him. Over Akbar’s shoulder, Sarah could see Ali lying in a ball on his bed, half covered in his red Manchester United bedspread.