by Неизвестный
today, with guide. Leaving 2morrow 4 site.
Who is guide? Sami wanted to know.
Today, Faraj. Tomorrow, Salah. TRIP TAKES 5 DAYS ACROSS DESERT!!! WHY DIDN’T YOU WARN
ME?
OMG! I had no idea. Vry sry but at least will give u lots of time to work your magic! Car will be air
conditioned, LOL.
It’s not the heat, it’s the COMPANY!
ROFLMAO. Good luck. U know I wish u every success…
That was, oddly enough, the first time it occurred to her that if, for reasons of his own, Salah really was
set on marrying Sami, he would not be very happy if she, Desi, managed to sabotage his plans. If she
succeeded in getting permission for Sami to marry Farid from Khaled al Khouri against Salah’s wishes,
five days in his company on the way to the site would be nothing compared to five days in his company
on the return….
She could only cross that bridge when she came to it.
She arrived back at the palace at the end of the day sunburnt, tired and hungry, and desperate to see
Salah again. Desperate to know that something had been awakened in him by their lovemaking.
“His Excellency not come. All meeting very hard all,” Fatima said. “He say tomorrow come up at fajr,
breakfast very quick. You live after fajr. In summer go early!”
“Get up at fajr?”
Fatima shook her head with her inability to translate the word. Thinking it must be a number, Desi held
up fingers. “Seven o’clock? Six? Eight?”
Fatima, too, began to use sign language. She looked up and moved her hands in a broad arc. “Sky night,
not sun. Sun—” she stretched one arm out to indicate the horizon and wiggled her fingers.
“Sunrise? Get up with the sun?”
Fatima shook her head vigorously. “Before sun! Fajr. Muezzin!”
Muezzin, she remembered, meant the call to prayer. The first call to prayer came when the world was
still dark. So they would set out before daybreak.
That entailed no particular hardship for Desi, who might not wake up for less than ten thousand dollars,
but who, when she did so, was often required in Makeup while the sky was still black.
But it was difficult to wait so long to see Salah. The more so as she suspected he was deliberately
avoiding her. She would like to know why. Because he feared his own reactions, feared to be tempted
again? Because he was feeling guilty about what had happened?
Or, worst—because once was enough, and now he would find it a burden to be with her?
Desi felt confused, at odds with herself. What did it mean, that she still wanted Salah, in spite of
everything? That the sexual bond was as powerful now—more powerful, perhaps, with maturity—after
ten years of thinking she hated him?
Why had she come here, and stirred up this hornet’s nest?
She ate alone, listening as the evening muezzin made his call, turned down Fatima’s invitation to watch
television, and went to bed early. She was still jetlagged, and dawn would come early.
She phoned Sami, and was relieved when she got her friend’s voicemail.
“It’s me. We’re leaving tomorrow at first light, and apparently there’s no coverage in the desert without
a satellite phone,” Desi said. “So I’ll be incommunicado for a few days. I know you wish me luck.”
She was restless. She read for a little, then knelt up on the bed, turned out the lamp, opened the wooden
jalousie, and rested her elbows on the window sill, gazing out on the silent courtyard and the stars.
If only she could get a sense of where she was headed! But the future was as black and impenetrable as
the sky. She felt nothing—no sense of impending doom anymore, no promise of release. Only an
intense, unbearable yearning for his presence. His arms, his mouth, his body. Please, please, let him
come to me…
After awhile she slipped down into bed. She didn’t notice when sleep came.
She woke suddenly. Through the open window above her bed she saw stars in a clear black sky. A
cooling breeze blew in over her, shaking the wooden jalousie, but that sound was not what had
awakened her.
She leaned up and put her hand out to the lamp. Before she could turn it on, he was there, kneeling
beside the bed.
“Desi.” His voice was hoarse with the struggle against longing. “Deezee.”
She reached for him, and in the next moment his body was hot against hers and she was drowning.
Ten
T he sun flamed up in the sky on the right, a perfect circle of burning fury that promised the greater
ferocity to come, and the grey line of the mountains’ shadow rushed towards them, chased by golden
sand.
“That’s quite a vista,” Desi murmured. It was a dizzying view all the way to white-topped Mount Shir,
brooding high above the foothills like the lion it was named for.
Salah glanced at her, and away again. She looked like what she was—a beautiful woman who had
known passion in the night. And he realized, from the change he saw in her, that it had been a long time
since she had experienced the kind of lovemaking he had given her. Her skin had a glow that had not
been there before; her eyes were soft with remembered pleasure, her mouth was swollen with the
memory of kisses.
His kisses.
He felt a burst of masculine satisfaction. That was the measure of a man, or one of them: to give his
woman true pleasure—so that afterwards she was sweet, like honey. His own body ached and sang with
the thought of her sweetness, and for him, too, it had been lovemaking like nothing he had known for ten
years.
“I told you once that you would like it,” he said, but he was not talking about Mount Shir.
Then he heard his own thoughts—his woman. But she was not his woman, not now, not ever again. And
he was a fool if he let sex cloud his thinking about her. She had betrayed him once, when he needed her
most. She was almost certainly betraying him now, betraying his country, perhaps—for although he had
no proof of what she really wanted here, he could be very sure at least that she was lying to him.
Sex made fools of men. He knew that, he had seen it happen to others. He would not be of their number.
He would keep a clear head. He had four or five days to get the truth from her. Desire must not blind
him to the need to do it. Sex must not be allowed to interfere with his plans. He reached out and pressed
the radio into life, to puncture the mood in the truck’s cabin.
He had been ten times a fool to think he could undertake this task without risk.
Desi smiled and stretched in her seat, letting the incomprehensible chatter from the radio blend into the
background like music. Every muscle in her body simultaneously protested and relayed a honeyed
memory of the lovemaking just past.
Salah had been wild with need in the night, seeking the solace of her body over and over, as if to make
up for ten lost years in a single night. When they arose at daybreak Desi had no idea whether she’d slept.
The mix of languor and energy in her body was like nothing she’d ever experienced before.
The memory of their lovemaking was in the vehicle with them now, heavy in the air, liquid in her cells.
She was sensitive even to the pressure of the air against her skin; any movement was slow dancing in
honey.
A few more minutes of driving in shade, and then, with a little explosion of light, they were in full
su
nshine.
There was a smile in her being, and it played with her eyes and the corners of her mouth. Desi leaned
lazily back and watched the landscape. Silence fell for minutes, during which she savoured shimmering
crystal sharp air, blinding light, purple-grey shadows under distant foothills.
Watching the shadows retreat across the desert as the sun climbed higher could almost be a life’s
occupation, she reflected. And again she had that strange feeling of belonging, as if the desert had been
waiting for her and would now claim her.
He had not mentioned the letter, but she thought he would soon. He had to. Could he explain, would he
apologize? Surely now they could discuss what had happened so long ago with some detachment?
She shifted nervously. Everything was too overwhelming, happening too fast. If he did bring it up,
where would that lead them? Was she ready for that?
Would she end up telling him about Sami, she wondered suddenly? No real explanation was possible
between them without that, but…how would he react? She had promised Sami she would not tell Salah.
If she risked betraying that…she had no idea where the discussion would go.
“So much traffic!” she said. “Does everybody start early, or have they been driving all night?”
“This is the main road to the oil fields. In summer everyone avoids driving in the middle of the day.”
In his voice she thought she heard a reflection of her own nervous reluctance to start on something
where they could not be sure of the end. Well, there was time. Five days they would be alone. Five days
to try to sort her thoughts. No hurry.
They drove in silence. Now and then Salah pointed out an ancient ruin in the desert, or a distant nomad
encampment. Desi laughed aloud when they came up behind a pickup truck carrying a young camel
which was hunkered down with its legs folded beneath it, complacently regarding them over the tailgate,
chewing its cud.
“And my camera’s packed in my case!”
“You have a camera?”
“Of course! I want to—”
“You will not be able to take photographs at the dig,” Salah said.
“Oh! Is—” But she was afraid to ask why for fear of exposing her ignorance. “Have you been to the dig
before?” she asked instead.
“A few times,” Salah said. “When it was first discovered.”
“What can you tell me about it? I couldn’t find any information. Sami said it might be contemporary
with Sumer. It sounds really exciting.”
It was barely three weeks since Desi had first heard of Sumer, the ancient civilisation that thrived
between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers five thousand years ago, but she wasn’t faking her interest.
There was something about five thousand years of history that sparked her imagination now as much as
when she was eleven.
She had crammed a lot of study into the short time she had to prepare. But although she could bone up
on the Sumer period and archaeology in general, she had found absolutely nothing about the site Salah’s
father was working, so far from where ancient Sumer had prospered. Some mysterious outpost, some far
city?
“My father is maintaining very close secrecy until he can publish,” he said. “You he could not refuse,
but no other outsider has been allowed to visit. No media. A hand-picked team. You understand.”
“I see,” Desi said lamely, who didn’t know what it meant to “publish” a site, couldn’t imagine why an
ancient site would be kept secret, and was dismayed to learn she was on the receiving end of such a
massive favour. “I didn’t realize what I was asking for. I mean…”
“Are you sure?”
“Sure?”
“Sure you didn’t realize what you were asking for.”
His voice was hard suddenly. In anyone else she would have called it suspicious, but what could he be
suspicious of as far as the dig went?
“I’m new at this,” she pointed out mildly.
“And just by chance you happen upon the most tightly kept secret of archaeology of the last thirty years
and discover an interest.”
It was suspicion. She couldn’t imagine what he suspected her of, but after last night, how could he speak
to her in such a voice?
“I didn’t go looking for this, you know,” she pointed out calmly. “Sami is my best friend. Why shouldn’t
she tell me about her uncle’s work when I told her what I was planning? I’m sure she has no idea how
secret it is. She’d have said something.”
“Sami should not know about it herself.”
“She knows because it’s the reason marriage negotiations aren’t taking place yet. Till your father gets
back from the dig. But by all means let’s not discuss the dig if you’d rather not!” Desi said. “Let’s talk
about something else. We’ve made love two nights running. Have you got the closure you wanted?”
Immediately she wished the words unsaid.
Salah turned his head and looked at her with a look so smouldering she felt physical heat. Memory
roared up, making her weak.
“Have you?” he countered.
“I wasn’t the one looking for closure. Why won’t you give me a straight answer?”
“You were looking for something. Have you got it yet?”
“I was looking to go to your father’s dig,” she snapped. How much hurt he could still inflict! “Are we
there yet? No? Well, then, not.”
He flicked a glance into her eyes.
“So you didn’t come here to see me?”
“Salah, how many times do you need that question answered?”
“Truthfully, only once.”
“By which you mean, you won’t accept any answer till you hear what you want to hear. I’m happy to
oblige. What answer would you like? Let’s get it out of the way.”
“Desi.” His voice was almost pleading, and her eyes jerked involuntarily to his face. “I know that you
are not here for the reason you say. I know you. You can’t tell me a lie and I don’t know it.”
“You don’t know anything about me,” she said, as bitterness welled up in her throat. “You don’t know
me now, you didn’t know me then. You couldn’t have written that letter if you’d known the first thing
about me.”
He shook his head at the attempt to derail him. “Tell me why you have come.”
“Not from any motive you are contemplating.”
“Is that an admission? What motive, then?”
“Oh, leave it alone!”
The honeyed languour was gone from her body. Sunlight was beating into the car with such ferocity she
was getting a headache. Heat and sun rarely bothered her, she blossomed in the heat, but this was
different. A strip of chrome on the wing mirror was reflecting the sun straight into her eyes. She realized
she hadn’t put on her sunglasses, opened her bag and pulled them out.
“Hiding your eyes won’t help.”
“On the contrary, it may prevent a headache,” she said sharply. A herd of camels grazed on nothing in
front of a settlement of half a dozen mudbrick houses. Tourists pressed cameras against the windows of
a bus, snapping pictures as they passed. The highway curved around to the west; Mount Shir was behind
them now. Ahead was an endless stretch of sand, shimmering in the heat, the highway a silver-grey
ribbon laid across the vastness.
The road to nowhere, she thought.
After lunch in a small vi
llage restaurant, where they waited out the midday heat for another hour, Salah
turned the four wheel drive vehicle off-road and struck out across the dunes.
Now they were completely alone. Within a few minutes they had left all signs of civilisation behind, and
were surrounded by the rich emptiness of the desert. Heat shimmered over the dunes; the sun was a
white blast furnace against a blue of startling intensity; the pale sand, broken by rocky outcrops now and
then, stretched to infinity. Only when she turned to look back at Mount Shir was there any relief for her
eyes.
After several hours, the sun began to set ahead of them, the sky turning fiery red and orange and the sun
getting fatter and heavier as it approached the horizon. As she watched, the sky shaded to purple, and
now the sun was a massive orange ball, larger than she recalled ever seeing it before. When it began to
sink behind the horizon, the sky above turned midnight blue.
The sun disappeared in a blaze; the sky went black very quickly. And still they drove.
Salah did not put on the headlights. The world was shadows. There was no human light visible
anywhere, just stars and a moon almost at the full, bathing the dunes in ghostly purple. Desi was seized
with a sudden, atavistic dread.
She shifted nervously. “When do we stop for the night?”
“Soon,” he said. “An hour or so. Are you tired?”
She shrugged and took a sip of water from the bottle ever present between them.
“A little. Aren’t you going to put the headlights on?”
“What for?”
“Can you drive in the dark?”
“Why not?”
“But how do you know where you’re going?”
Salah laughed. “There is only one way to navigate in the desert, Desi—by the sky. In daylight, by the
sun. At night, by the stars. My forebears have done it for many thousands of years. Don’t worry—if my
ancestors had not been good navigators, I would not be here.”
She laughed, and the strange dread lifted. They spoke little, but a feeling of peace and companionship
settled over her as they drove on into the night. She almost forgot the harsh accusations of the morning
