Helen allowed herself to be pushed upstairs. “What do you mean, betrothal?”
“No, for the ceremony, the friendship ceremony,” her mother said hurriedly. “Now here, put these robes on! Where have you been? They are all waiting.With the contract …”
Helen quickly got changed; her mother had got her a beautiful Jordanian robe, traditional and, she thought, antique. She admired her reflection as Aisha fastened a flowing headscarf of cream silk around her hair.
“Can I keep this? It’s beautiful.”
“Of course you can. Now run downstairs, Baba is waiting for you. Firyal and I will come down in a minute.”
“Mama—you know I’m not actually going to marry Ahmed.”
“Friendship will satisfy family honor, Helen. Just do this for your father,” Aisha said vaguely. “Hurry! His father, Rashid, is there waiting for you, too.”
Helen sighed and walked downstairs; her father was waiting with an ornate-looking document. Ahmed was there, looking as embarrassed as she was, in traditional Islamic trousers and hat; he didn’t meet her eyes as both their fathers embraced.
Baba put Helen’s hand into his. Feeling every sympathy for him, she gave him a surreptitious wink. Ahmed looked at her for the first time; his eyes widened, and he gave her a very small smile.
The things we do for our parents! Helen thought.
Baba was speaking in Arabic now. She didn’t follow what he was saying. He told her he would lead her, and she should repeat after him.
Helen willingly agreed. She wanted to please her father, to ease the tension for poor Ahmed, and to forget today’s troubles.
By the time Helen returned from Egypt and Jordan, Jane would have worked out what she wanted to do. Insh’Allah, she would be back at school, with Helen and Sally protecting her. Like always.
They were best friends and they would stick together. An unbreakable trio. An absence of a few days, a couple of weeks even, would not hurt that.
Her father was placing a golden pen in her hand.
“Sign here,” he said. “Darling. My little daughter.”
He kissed her on the forehead and Helen pressed her head against his. She adored her parents.They were always looking out for her. Poor Jane had lost her father, and Helen thanked God she still had hers.
That night there was a short meal—Ahmed said very little—and then the families packed into two cars. There was much shouting and chattering in Arabic; Helen didn’t follow any of it, didn’t much care. She had promised to be good, and she was. She had packed her suitcase as quickly as she could. Mama told her not to bother with much; Jasmine and she were taking only hand luggage, it was an adventure, they would buy clothes when they got into town.
Helen had never known her parents so carefree. They were clearly enjoying the company of their cousins. She liked the idea of an adventure, suddenly wanted to get out of town. Her father showed her the tickets: one for Ahmed, and one for each of her family. He said Rashid and Firyal had their own. Jasmine, starry-eyed, chattered about Amman, and about seeing the pyramids in Egypt.
“I don’t have to drive with Ahmed, do I?” Helen pleaded to her mother. Now that she’d gone through the ceremony, she wasn’t too keen on the actual friendship. He was sullen and quiet and hardly spoke any English.
“How about a compromise?” Her mother’s gaze scouted around busily as she made a great show of fetching her passport. “Ahmed will drive with his parents but you will sit together on the plane.”
Helen sighed. “There’s no point trying to play matchmaker, Mama. I’m sure he’s very nice, but …”
“Helen,” Aisha said warningly, “your father spent a lot of money to make this a wonderful trip. Show the family in a good light. If you are to say no to the marriage, you can at least fly with him! Don’t make Baba look foolish in front of our cousins.”
Helen surrendered. “Okay, Mama, okay. Where will the rest of you sit?”
“A little way behind you. We’re on the same plane so it is all quite proper.You will be chaperoned.”
“All right.” Helen shrugged. What did it matter, really, if she were bored on the flight? Once they got to Cairo, all this would be over, and her family would soon be heading to Jordan. “I will travel with him.”
At the airport there were crowds of people. It was chaotic; Helen followed her parents, blindly, as Ahmed and his family checked in right behind them. Hers and Ahmed’s were the only suitcases, so it didn’t take much time.They went through passport control and into the duty-free lounge; Baba made a big production of buying a silk tie, which she knew he’d never wear.
Then they called the flight. The family went to the gate, but among the crowd of people, Baba and Mama held back, grabbing on to Jasmine’s shoulders.
“You go ahead.” Baba gestured at Ahmed, who was kissing his father on the cheek near the gate. “You two will board first.You are sitting together, remember? Be nice to him now, Helen; you promised.”
“I will,” she said dutifully, distracted. She wondered where Jane was at this moment, prayed someone was looking after her. “See you guys later.” And she walked over to join Ahmed.
As Helen approached, his parents gave him a significant look, then smiled at Helen and melted away. Oh, man, she thought, everyone wants to play Cupid.
But she could put up with it for one flight.
“I guess we’re sitting together for this one, huh?” she asked him, in English.
Ahmed smiled blankly at her.
Gonna be a long flight.
“Do you like it? We’ll sit here.”
Ahmed nodded at her—his English as halting as her Arabic was rusty.
“They’re great seats.” Helen thawed a little; she loved flying first class. She wasn’t Sally Lassiter—it took a chunk of her parents’ money to send her to Miss Milton’s. For her this was a real kick.The air hostesses were hovering, so she hurried to take her seat. Baba and Mama must be settling in somewhere behind her. Helen looked around, but the cabin was full of people, sliding into their seats, buckling up. Hostesses walked up and down the aisles, efficiently tucking away bags, and she gave up trying to find them.
“Ladies and gentlemen, we are about to depart. Please ensure your seat belt is securely fastened around your waist, and that your seat-back and tray table are in the upright position. Cabin crew to cross-check, please, cabin crew to cross-check.”
The stewards fastened the doors.
Helen spun around in her seat again, craning her neck in the first-class cabin. She couldn’t see her parents or Jasmine anywhere. Where were they? And Ahmed’s father and mother? This was a family trip—were the rest of them sitting in coach?
She shifted uneasily on her seat. Manners was one thing, but she did not want her mother in economy while she flew up here.
The plane groaned, shuddered, and started to accelerate as the pilot eased it onto the runway.
“Ahmed,” Helen said urgently, summoning her Arabic as best she could,“where are Mama and Baba? Where are your parents … are they all sitting by themselves back there?”
“I do not understand,” he said heavily, dark eyes fixed on her. “What are you asking me?”
Helen tried again. “Where are our parents?”
He blinked. “In America. The airport, they said good-bye. Why are you asking me this?”
The plane heaved again and then pushed up into the sky, the retraction of the wheels shaking the undercarriage.
She felt sick. “Ahmed … I don’t understand. Are my parents on this plane? Where are your parents? Isn’t this a family trip to Cairo?”
“Of course,” he said, and for a second her stomach unknotted. “It is a family trip—a honeymoon trip.Yours and mine.”
Helen repeated dully “Honeymoon?”
Ahmed showed the first signs of impatience. “We are married, are we not? You and I. Married. Mash’Allah,” he added, but, Helen felt, with a sense of duty.Thanks be to God.
“Married?” she repea
ted, almost hysterical. “Who told you that? Who said we were married?”
Ahmed stared at her anxiously. Helen could almost see him wondering about her mental health. Reflexively, she gripped the armrests of her seat.
“Helen,” he said slowly and, she noticed, gently, as one addressing a frightened child. “What of this afternoon? You and I signed the nikkah, did we not? We are married now, in the sight of the Most Compassionate.” He offered her a tentative smile. “We have done our duty, you and I, to our parents—as is pleasing to Him—and we will make the best of it.You also believe that, do you not?”
Stunned, she was silent.
“I promise you, I am a gentle man.” He reached across her seat and took her hand, and stroked it.“I did not want this, either. But if we surrender our selfish desires, we will find true peace, insh’Allah.You also believe this, I think?”
The puzzle pieces fell into place, with slow, terrible clarity for Helen.
That “friendship ceremony” had been no such thing. It was her nikkah. The binding engagement ceremony between Muslims—in the eyes of God, she was already married.
And her parents had tricked her into getting on this plane. Even to the point of buying useless tickets.When she and Ahmed had filed down the walkway into the aircraft, Baba and Mama had just gone home. Explaining things to a wailing Jasmine, no doubt. No wonder they’d only had hand luggage. No suitcases—the plane could depart without them.
Helen’s head spun as she ran through the afternoon. Yes, Mama had said it—“betrothal dress.” Helen just had not pushed it.Was she being willfully deaf? When Baba read from the sacred Qur’an. God forgive her, she had not been paying attention. But she had happily gone through with it. Ahmed had no idea she was not consenting to be his wife.
“Our parents thought it would be best,” he said artlessly. “In truth, I had already lost my one true love. I could have lived forever by myself. But they decided otherwise. And you and I can be friends, I think? Is it not so?”
Helen understood, in a second. She had underestimated her father, her mother, too. And even though she was furious, she understood.They just didn’t see things as she did. Her father and mother had schemed a little, and arranged a marriage for her after the old ways. And she, a believing Muslim, had to admit she had gone through the nikkah of her own free will, after being advised what it was….
An imam would likely tell her it was invalid. But Helen looked at Ahmed, older than her, his own face drawn from duty to his parents and, indeed, to God.
He was, she knew instinctively, a good man. She could not find it within herself to humiliate him. None of this was his doing. And Helen was mature enough to believe that what her parents had done had been from sheer love of her. As she knew, they were in an arranged marriage themselves—and as she knew, they had been extremely happy.
This young man had his hand in hers.
Maybe there would be a divorce, but, Helen knew, she had no wish to disgrace or humiliate him. After all, her American passport was in her pocket. Whatever her parents’ well-intentioned schemes, she was a free woman.
But she would not hurt this man. Or her parents.There could be a divorce—after a decent interval, of course.
“Of course.We can be very good friends,” she agreed, with a generous smile.
“That is well.” He beamed at her.
“And friends should be honest,” Helen plowed on. “So tell me—why didn’t you want to go through with the nikkah?”
Ahmed blew out his cheeks and sighed.
“I don’t want to offend you.”
“You won’t.”
“Her name was Badiya,” he said eventually. “I thought … well. I thought we were destined for each other. She was not from a good family, but I saw her, in the mosque, each day. I found her outside one time and started to talk to her. She was an exceptional woman. She had a job working for the Department of Antiquities. Badiya was beautiful, modest, and brilliant,” he said with fervor.
Helen was strangely moved. There had been nobody in her life—nobody she had loved like that.
“But your parents disapproved?”
“I would not have cared for that,” Ahmed said firmly.“I loved her.” He looked across at Helen. “She died,” he added simply. “A car accident. Cairo traffic. So mundane.”
“And you did not want to marry again?”
“I was never betrothed to her.” He fell silent, and stared out of the tiny window at the cloudless sky below them.
“I’m sorry … ,” she murmured, unheard.
And you’re not really betrothed to me. Helen picked up her headphones and plugged them into the jack. She would stay in Ahmed’s house for only a short time, then, once the divorce was concluded, come home. Her father meant well, but this was not for her. She would arrange her own marriage—to a man who actually wanted to be her husband.
Two days later, back in L.A., Sally’s phone rang.
“Sally. It’s Jane.”
Sally gripped the receiver. “How are you? Where are you?”
“At LAX,” Jane said. Her voice sounded tense and miserable, and Sally’s heart sank hearing it. “Can you come and pick me up?”
“On my way. Hang tight.”
Sally bounded down the stairs. Jonathan, one of their butlers, was examining a statue in the hallway.
“Any of the cars ready?”
“The Aston Martin is around, Miss Lassiter. It’s Jake’s day off, but Mike could drive you… .”
“That’s just fine, thank you. I’ll do it myself. After all, I got my license yesterday!”
She snatched the keys from the rail, checked she had the right set—Daddy had so many cars—and made to rush out the door. Paulie waddled out of his study and almost crashed into her.
“Hey, hey, princess.Where’s my princess going?”
“I got to pick Jane up at the airport. She’s back early, Dad.You don’t mind, right? Helen’s on vacation.”
“No, honey, you go ahead. It’s good she came back from Washington. Good. Poor kid.”
Sally stopped for a second; her dad was all red-faced.
“You should go easy on that bacon at breakfast, Dad,” she said.
“You’re as bad as your mom. I drink OJ, I’ll live for a thousand years.” Paulie patted his rotund stomach. “You’ll never get rid of me.”
Sally flung her arms round him and gave him a hug; poor, poor Jane, not to have a dad. Especially one like hers.
“I might not be back till late. I’m gonna drive to pick up Jane, then we might spend some time together.”
“That’s fine.” Her dad looked distracted, a little anxious. “Something came up at the office. I’ll be late, too.”
“Mom’ll be stuck with Jeopardy! and a TV dinner,” Sally joked. She knew she ought to have asked Daddy what the matter was, but she was more worried about Jane right now. Didn’t want to keep her waiting. “See you later, Pop.” She kissed him lightly on the cheek and ran out the door.
“See you later,” Paulie said to her departing back.
Jane was standing with her suitcases, right on the curb, and Sally felt a stab of anxiety upon seeing her. Her friend was still beautiful, but all that new self-confidence had evaporated. She cut a bedraggled, forlorn little figure on the sidewalk, shoulders slumped, the picture of misery.
Sally screeched to a halt, then jumped out and crushed Jane in a big bear hug.
“Helen’s not here because she went on vacation, with the family.They planned a surprise trip for her. She wanted to cancel it for you. I told her to go, but I thought you’d be in Washington a while longer, I guess.” She looked guilty. “She said it’d only be a week… .”
“Hey, it’s fine. I’m glad she went,” Jane said. “I can look after myself.”
Sally put Jane’s bags in the car and they climbed in. “Tell me everything,” she said.
“Nothing to tell.” Jane laid her head back against the headrest as Sally pulled smoothly out into traff
ic. “We read the will and they told me what my options were.”
“So … it wasn’t good?”
Jane shook her head. “ ’Fraid not.”
Sally glanced across at her.
“He left you nothing, hon?”
“Some personal effects. I can’t bear to keep them, so I asked they be donated to charity.” Jane’s voice had a clear, cold determination to it that tore at Sally’s heart; she had seen her friend throw up walls like this before, a crab scuttling back under her shell. “He was in debt up to the eyeballs, but the embassy got a lawyer who made sure they won’t attach to me, as I’m a minor.”
“Which means they have to look after you… .”
“They refuse to pay for Miss Milton’s.”
There it was. Sally’s worst nightmare. Split from Jane forever. Their threesome broken up.
“That’s bull,” she exclaimed. “If they won’t pay for you, we will. Daddy will, I promise you that.”
Jane reached over and squeezed her hand.
“Sally, I love you for that.” Tears started to prickle in both girls’ eyes. “But I can’t go back there, don’t you see? There’s no money coming in. Without Daddy’s salary, how am I going to pay for college? I can’t go to Oxford or Cambridge—I’d need money to support myself. And once I hit eighteen, they wash their hands of me.”
“Oh, Jane.”
“They offered me a small place in Washington in a not-great area and the last year at a local private school. I said no way. Murder capital of America.”
“So what are you going to do?”
“Stay right where I am. Consuela will be with me till her wages run out. And then, I guess I’ll go get a job. And an apartment.”
“But you’re not a legal adult. And without a degree what kind of job can you get?”
“I’ll work something out.”
Jane sounded definite about that. But Sally could hear the tears lurking just under the bravado.
“Y’all can come and live with us,” Sally suggested.“The maid and you.We’ll pay her wages … you can have a guest bungalow. It’s what they’re there for. Daddy won’t mind… .”
“Thanks, honey.” Jane smiled at her gratefully. “But I want to see if I can figure something out for myself. I want to rely on myself. Does that make sense?”
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