Golden Chains (The Colorblind Trilogy Book 3)

by Rose B Mashal

  “I trust your judgment, my princess.”

  “I’ve missed you so much,” I admitted sincerely.

  “I’ve missed you, too. More than is tolerable,” he said. “I’m sorry for not calling earlier or not telling you what was going on. I gave the staff stern orders not to tell you what was happening.”

  “Why?” I asked quietly.

  “I wanted to be the one to tell you. I wanted you to see that I’m okay and right in front of you as you learn what was going on. I didn’t want you to think something had happened to me, or that they were lying to you about how safe I was. I was trying to protect you.”

  I raised my head up to look at him. “Mazen, you’re scaring me. What happened?”

  “There was an attempted terrorist attack in Al’ameria,” Mazen said, and I thought my heart stopped beating for a second.

  It was officially the worst day of my life as queen.

  Time froze as I looked into my husband’s eyes, trying to comprehend his words. The thought of terrorism happening in the Kingdom was the last thing that would ever have crossed my mind.

  “What? What are you saying?” I asked, thinking maybe – just maybe – I had heard it wrong. Rather hoping I did.

  “A suicide bomber was found in Al’ameria, Marie,” Mazen said quietly, his hand still stroking my arm as he tried to soothe me.

  “Oh, my God!” I whispered. I was still unable to believe what I was hearing. “Why would anyone do that? We’re not at war with anybody!”

  “Do terrorists ever need a reason, Marie? They have their agenda – thirst for power and control, nothing else.”

  “That’s just terrible! Dear God!” I said, feeling my heart thunder in my chest. “You say he was found? How?”

  “Two police officers were able to stop him after they saw him behaving suspiciously. He was just a couple minutes away from his destination.”

  “Thank God! What was his destination?”

  It looked like Mazen hesitated for a second, then he spoke, “To a hospital.”

  I got off his lap. “What? A hospital? Who the heck would do that?” My voice was uncontrollably loud. Bombing innocents was never okay, but to bomb a hospital full of sick people? Women and kids, even? I thought that was too low, even for a terrorist.

  “We don’t know who, yet. The forensics people tried their best, but the remains of the body were—you don’t need to know that.” He said, and I felt I was going to be sick. “The DNA tests will take some time, but we’re not even sure if we have any sample in the database to match it with.”

  “Remains? But I thought you were able to stop him!”

  “Unfortunately, he detonated himself the second he realized that he was caught, killing two officers and a passerby.”

  I shook my head, sorrow and pain filling my heart. “May they rest in peace,” I said. “I can’t believe you went there knowing it wasn’t safe!”

  “It was safe. I was safe,” he said. “What kind of a king would I be if I ran away when my people’s lives were concerned?”

  “A smart one?”

  “Marie, please! Let’s not argue about this.”

  I nodded, pursing my lips to the corner, then a question flashed in my head. “Wait, which hospital?”

  Mazen paused before replying. “Queen Marie’s.”

  My husband absolutely refused to consider that the Bedouins might be responsible for the terrorist attack. He refused even to think that they might be the slightest bit happy with the trouble that the horrible incident caused.

  His trust in them – in their loyalty – was unbelievable. I couldn’t understand this at all.

  Mazen’s exact words to me were, “Because they have a bad or ancient lifestyle doesn’t mean they want to harm other people or us. They just grew up knowing nothing but that life, as barbaric as many other people see it – it’s not like that to them. It doesn’t mean they’re terrorists.”

  He also told me that I might see things differently if I decided to think of them as something other than my enemies, that they weren’t.

  His words held truth. He was utterly convinced that they wouldn’t betray him, or break their word – not this way, anyway.

  “Terrorism is the cowards’ root; Bedouins are not cowards,” Mazen had said. I decided that I needed to trust his judgment, just as he always supported mine. I thought that maybe someday I would believe it for real.

  As Mazen got busy with the investigation into the attack, I was attending to Azza’s case. It was pretty challenging to determine the real cause of death since the body was almost non-existent. But the investigators eventually concluded that she had bled to death – the same thing that could happen to anyone eaten by wild animals.

  It was demoralizing to reach a dead end after digging up Azza’s grave and testing her remains. But I wasn’t going to stop seeking justice for her.

  With advice from a good lawyer friend, who happened to be my mother-in-law, we learned that the best way was to investigate and interview each and every one of her family members so we could get a lead without exposing Donia as the person who’d brought the matter up to me. It was for her protection.

  Amazingly, it worked.

  Azza’s sister, who was a year younger than she, told the police that Azza had been very sick after the party. She fell asleep and never woke up; that their mother had cried so hard as she called her name, but Azza never responded.

  It was the key that the police needed to discover all about the circumcision without having any trail leading to Donia or to me. The case was reopened.

  The Bedouins didn’t know about Donia’s secret visit to the palace since her husband had given her an alibi. However, they weren’t so stupid to not know that a member of their tribe ratted them out.

  Justice was served. Well, sort of.

  It was even more disturbing to learn that a parent could not be executed for murdering one of his children. Well, to be precise, a father. On the other hand, a mother would easily be sentenced to death or imprisoned for decades if she did the same.

  It was pretty messed up. It made me pull out my hair at how many laws in the Kingdom were cruel and unjust. If I started changing them, I might end up doing nothing else but that for the rest of my life.

  The monster – in the form of an old lady whose job was to mutilate females in that horrible way – who cut Azza, as well as her parents were punished with prison time of ten years. One of her parents would stay free to take care of the rest of the family, but under the police’s control, until the first was finished serving their time; then they swap. One more law that gave me ambivalent feelings.

  It wasn’t a sufficient punishment, but it had to do. At least, I had done something, right?

  Deep down, I thought that there were so many other things left to do. I might have saved Azza’s younger sister. It was hard to believe the mother may try to circumcise her after all that happened: losing her firstborn forever, her husband going to jail, and later she would also be imprisoned.

  But was it really enough? What about other families? What about Donia and the baby in her stomach? What kinds of injustice the baby would face if it turned out to be a girl? The questions kept running through my mind.

  I gave Donia a cell-phone with my private number on it and made her promise to call me if she felt that she was in any danger. But would that help?

  “You can’t save everyone,” Mazen had told me over and over again. Was it crazy to actually feel the need to save everyone? I wanted to. I knew I wouldn’t get any kind of rest – real rest – until I’d done everything in my power to give women in my Kingdom the rights that they craved and deserved but had never demanded.

  I wanted to give them dignity.

  “You have to accept the fact that everyone has a choice; we do our best, but it’s their own choices that get them to the point where they’re standing right now, whatever that is,” Mazen had said. “Marie, we’re a king and a queen. Rulers, not gods! If you can’t accept th
at, know that guilt will eat your soul slowly.”

  Guilt was already eating at my soul.

  Maybe he had a point, perhaps I really couldn’t save everyone or force them to make the right choices. But I would, at least, try.

  Two weeks passed since my last friendly encounter with Rosanna. I’d seen her many times since my freak-out, but the meetings were always short. She would deliver a report that needed to be handed directly to me, or explain a point that needed further clarification, and that would be it.

  She did her job as a member of the royal family and an important minister, but it was her position as my best friend that I missed like crazy.

  Every time I saw her, I attempted to apologize, but she never gave me the chance. She was smart about choosing the times when she knew I would have an office full of people. I wanted to go to her but was too afraid of being unwelcome. I wanted to invite her over but thought that would be rude considering what I needed her for: to apologize again and explain things.

  My life in the Kingdom was bitter and lonely without her; it wasn’t a surprise to realize that she made living in the palace sweet and tolerable, aside from my loving husband.

  I couldn’t believe that two full weeks went by without either of us bugging the other with banter that we were too old for. I was sure Rosanna missed me like I missed her. I refused to believe that this might be the norm from now on, that my life could go on without her friendship.

  We loved each other more than to let a mistake separate us. Or could it be that my insult was beyond her ability to bear and forgive? It was what scared me the most.

  I didn’t tell Mazen what happened between his cousin and me. It was actually too embarrassing to admit that, for a mere second, I thought Rosanna would ever want to hurt my baby or me.

  Every night, I prayed that I’d get my best friend back.

  Friday noon was boring to me sometimes. Every Friday, after having breakfast with me and being all lazy in bed, Mazen would leave for Friday prayer and stay to listen to the weekly lecture. He might only be gone for an hour or two, but to me, it always felt like centuries.

  In the Middle East, weekends were celebrated on Friday and Saturday, not Saturday and Sunday like I’d always known all of my life. The change confused me at first, but I’d gotten used to it. As King and Queen, we only got Friday off. I believed that if Friday wasn’t a holy day for Muslims, we might have not gotten even that break.

  Once Mazen left, I decided to watch a movie or something until he got back. I found Sameera and Soha – another maid that only came a few hours a day to help with cleaning – in the living area, dusting.

  Soha apologized once she noticed me and said they would leave until I was finished, so as not to disturb me. Sameera, meanwhile, only stood back and got busy with fielding with something stuck in the vacuum cleaner.

  I told them to pretend I wasn’t there and go on with what they had to do. Soha said they would be as fast as possible, which I replied to with a nod and a smile.

  Sighing, I grabbed the remote and started flipping channels.

  The two maids were arguing about something. Soha was trying her best to speak quietly. I couldn’t make it out at first, but as their argument continued, I started to get a good idea of what was going on.

  Apparently, Sameera had a hard time working the vacuum, or even turning it on. It was different from the ones she used in the past, and she insisted they were better than this ‘useless’ one.

  “Okay. I’ll turn it on, don’t start crying!” Soha whisper-yelled in Arabic, but I was still able to hear her, and Sameera did start crying.

  Sometimes I really felt bad for the girl. She was so naïve. However, that made her more innocent in my eyes and was precisely why Rosanna had chosen her to be my maid. She trusted that Sameera would never betray me; she just wouldn’t know how to do it.

  Thinking about Rosanna made me resume fretting about her and our friendship, but just before I let the sadness I felt consume me, Sameera’s voice grabbed my attention again.

  “No, don’t turn it on and leave! I will need to turn it on again, and I won’t know what to do,” Sameera wailed. “Teach me how to turn it on.”

  Soha blew out a long breath. “It’s so easy, just do this, and this–” she said as she clicked some buttons, “And then pull this–…”

  “No, not this way!” Sameera interrupted. “Let me do it myself. Watch me as I do it, tell me where I go wrong, and wait until I perfect it.”

  Whoa!

  Something in my mind clicked, and I actually forgot all about the TV and sat there, watching them. I watched as Sameera did everything as Soha instructed. It took only two tries, and Sameera knew exactly what to do to turn the vacuum on.

  Only five minutes later, Sameera was celebrating her small victory as if she’d just graduated college. I was smiling widely as I watched the joy in her eyes.

  Not only that, she even asked Soha to show her how to change the mode and gadgets that needed to be used on different floors, and Soha taught her that as well.

  Sameera’s happiness with her accomplishment was so honest, and she felt so confident that she actually told Soha to leave. Sameera’s happiness doubled when she completed the job all by herself without needing her colleague again.

  Standing up, I joined her at the end of the room as she tried to collect the vacuum after finishing the whole chore.

  “Do you need something, Your Majesty?”

  “No. I just wanted to ask, what just happened there.”

  “Like what? I didn’t do anything wrong!” she said. “Did I?”

  I chuckled. “No, you didn’t. You worked the vacuum all by yourself!”

  Her eyes brightened, and a smile decorated her face. “Oh! Did you see that? I did it all by myself!”

  “Way to go, girl,” I cheered.

  “It’s been four or five months here, or something, right?” she asked, not needing an answer, but more like telling me. “Soha turned on the vacuum for me every. Single. Time. But today, I did it all by myself.” she said proudly, stressing her last words.

  “I saw that.”

  “Once she taught me, I didn’t need her help anymore. I finally knew how to do it right,” she grinned. “Some education was all I needed.”

  My eyebrows shot up, and my lips parted, not believing my ears; Sameera had just solved one of the biggest difficulties I was facing without even knowing it.

  “Girl, you had just said one of the smartest things I’ve ever heard.” I smiled brightly at her.

  “I did?” she asked, looking confused.

  “You did,” I chuckled.

  “Okay.” She just shrugged her shoulders and told me she had to go clean another room.

  I shook my head and laughed; I guess she would never change.

  Hurrying back to my bedroom, I arrived the same second that Mazen got back from the mosque. I half-ran to him and hugged him tightly. My husband was taken by surprise.

  “Whoa! Easy there, tiger princess, you’ll get yourself dizzy.”

  “You won’t believe what just happened!”

  “What?” I could hear the smile in his voice as he rubbed my back.

  “I figured it out, Mazen. I figured it all out!” I screamed excitedly as I took a step back, throwing my arms in the air.

  “Wow! That’s amazing!” he grinned. “Now, what is it that you’ve figured out?”

  I punched his chest playfully, causing him to chuckle. “Sameera just gave me the smartest idea!”

  “Sameera?” he asked, and I nodded with a grin.

  “Our Sameera?”

  I nodded again.

  “Smartest and Sameera?” he asked again, and I had to laugh, then nodded one more time. “Wow!”

  “It’s brilliant!”

  “Okay, crazy princess. Are you going to tell me what’s going on, or will you just keep jumping around?” he asked, then looked at my baby bump, “I mean, attempt to jump?”

  “You’re such a jerk!
” I laughed. “I’m not going to tell you anything.”

  “You won’t?”

  “I won’t.”

  “Are you sure?” he tightened his eyes playfully.

  I gave him a challenging look. “Make me,” I said, and ran away. Well, attempted to run.

  Three Fridays later, I was sitting on our bed, with Mazen supporting my back with his body as I leaned back on his chest. My lower lip was trapped between my teeth as I bit down on it. My whole body was warming up to my husband’s warm touches.

  “Oh, Mazen! So good!” My eyes rolled to the back of my head as I felt his breath on the back of my neck right before he placed a soft kiss right behind my ear.

  “You’re making the sweetest noises,” he told me.

  “And you’re making the sweetest touches. So relaxing.”

  “You deserve it, you had the longest week.”

  “It was one of the best weeks of my life. I finally feel like I accomplished something,” I said in a low voice as Mazen’s touches continued.

  “You’ve already accomplished many things, love. You’re such a blessing to this country.” He kissed behind my ear again.

  “I’m happy that I finally found the right path: education was what they need. Information will help them make the right choices.”

  Ever since that day with Sameera, I started planning campaigns that focused on educating women and men about women’s right, and about their religion.

  Yes, religion. I was shocked to learn that they didn’t know that Islam forbids any act such as Common Deflowering to be practiced and that Female Circumcision, if it wasn’t medically needed, shouldn’t be practiced. They didn’t know that Islam considers both acts as the great sin that they were.

  Their black key was right there in front of me – and them – all this time, but they didn’t know how to reach it.

  I fervently hoped that my campaigns would work in educating them – especially the Bedouin community – about their rights, and the errors and consequences of their practices. It actually worked.

  Day after day, I started receiving report after report about women attending the meetings in large numbers, which increased each new meeting.