The Sheikh and the Surrogate Mum

by Meredith Webber

  ‘You sound as if you know that from experience—but surely you grew up in the city.’

  He nodded, and although he was in casual clothes—jeans, even, and a polo shirt—she could see the strength of his breeding in his face and in the hands that held the wheel of the big vehicle with the same ease as a good horseman might hold the bridle of a mettlesome stallion.

  ‘I was, but my father felt all his boys should know their heritage, so for two years, from ten to twelve, we lived with relatives down here in the Endless Desert. We dressed like them, hunted with them, rode on mock attacks on other tribes. We mended our camel saddles and horse’s bridles, and learned to shoot while mounted. And, most fun of all, we began to train our falcons, the ones our father gifted us.’

  She thought of boys she knew, sons of friends and colleagues, who were ten, and wondered.

  ‘Did you enjoy it?’ she had to ask.

  He didn’t answer immediately, looking out across the waves of dunes—a dry red ocean.

  ‘In the end, I enjoyed it so much that I stayed another year. I still return to that tribe for time out whenever I can manage it. Others hated it, and seeing their discomfort I believed my father had been wrong to make it a blanket rule. My oldest brother, for instance, had his spirit broken here. He became a man who needed others to help him make decisions. Oh, he chose well with his advisors, and has been a great ruler for our country, but his heart was never in it. He felt rejected by the desert, so he rejected it.’

  ‘Which is why you’re so determined to do more for the people of the south,’ Liz said, and he glanced her way and smiled.

  ‘I’d never put that into words before, but now I have, I realise the truth of it. Yes, it is why I am so anxious to help the desert people, but to help them without pushing them into a life they may not wish to live.’

  Liz wanted to ask more about his childhood experiences but she sensed he’d said all he wanted to say about it—possibly more than he’d wanted to say. So she sat and thought about it—about a small boy sent to live with strangers.

  ‘I guess it’s not that much different to sending kids to boarding school,’ she decided, then realised she’d spoken out loud right when she’d decided not to talk more about it.

  But Khalifa turned to her and grinned.

  ‘Very much so,’ he said, ‘although totally different from the boarding school I eventually attended. But the family sends the child away to learn the ways of the tribe—even in Western civilisation this is the case.’

  ‘I hadn’t thought of it that way,’ Liz admitted. ‘I was just lucky we lived in a city with schools all around so boarding school wasn’t necessary. Where did you go? And did you enjoy it?’

  ‘England, and no,’ he said. ‘It was cold and wet and always grey—can you imagine that after living with this colour? But the people were kind, and I learned things I couldn’t have learned in the desert, things I needed to know to help my country move forward. I suppose you could say I learned the ways of other tribes.’

  ‘And things you needed to know if you wanted to practise medicine,’ Liz suggested, and again he grinned.

  ‘Of course. Actually, I soon realised I wasn’t very diplomatic, so decided my way to help my country would be through service of another kind. Medicine appealed to me.’

  ‘Yet now you must be diplomatic,’ Liz pointed out, wanting him to smile again.

  But he shook his head.

  ‘Not very. But, like my brother, I have people around me who can do the diplomatic niceties. The one good thing about the highness business is that people don’t expect too much of you. A bow of my head, a touch of my hand, perhaps a smile from time to time, that’s really all that’s required of me in public.’

  Not only was he not smiling but his voice had deepened, darkened at the edges by something like despair.

  Why?

  ‘Do you hate it so much?’ Liz asked the question quietly, disturbed by the tension that seemed to have built up in the car.

  He shook his head then glanced her way again.

  ‘I do not hate the job,’ he said, ‘but what it did to me.’

  Now he’d really stopped talking, Liz decided, and although she longed to know what he had meant, she stayed silent, looking out at the now fully lit landscape, marvelling at the colours all around her.

  And there, ahead, in the gold and red and orange of the desert, she spied a darker shadow. As they drew nearer, the darkness turned to green, the huge fronds of the date palms shining in the sunlight.

  ‘An oasis?’

  ‘Our first stopping place,’ Khalifa told her. ‘This is a small village, too small to have a clinic, but the old midwife here has been handling minor accidents and illnesses for nearly fifty years. She is the power in the village, for all there is a chief who thinks he is.’

  Liz smiled, thinking of the many women she knew who were the powers behind various thrones, from the personal assistants of big businessmen to the wives of politicians.

  Although…

  ‘If she’s been running things her way for fifty years, will she be willing to listen to what I have to say?’

  Khalifa turned towards her, and now he smiled, something she wished he wouldn’t do, as her body was already excited about being in the car with him and her toes could only take so much curling.

  ‘She has already visited the hospital to see what we have there and has probably set herself up with enough medicines to cure the entire population of the Endless Desert so, yes, she will listen. Not only will she listen but she will be happy to pass on what she learns to others.’

  Looking around, Liz had to wonder if it was the desert that made the little oasis seem so isolated. They’d driven less than three hours from Najme, yet as the cluster of mud brick houses became obvious, it seemed to Liz that they were in the middle of nowhere.

  ‘Ha! News of our visit has spread!’ Khalifa said, pointing to a row of dust-covered vehicles drawn up at the edge of the village. ‘Those belong to one of the remaining nomad tribes. They must be camped somewhere nearby at the moment.’

  ‘And they’ve come to listen to me talk about preemie babies?’ Liz queried, as Khalifa stopped the car and she saw that most of the visitors were men. ‘It seems highly unlikely.’

  Khalifa smiled again.

  ‘It is highly unlikely. It’s far more probable that they’re here to ask a favour of me, or to tell me how badly a neighbouring tribe is behaving, or to offer me a daughter or sister as a new wife.’

  His smile widened.

  ‘Perhaps having a very pregnant companion will be a good thing after all.’

  ‘I don’t know about the “after all” part of that sentence,’ Liz told him, ‘but feel free to use my presence as a marriage deterrent, should you feel you need it.’

  It had been a light-hearted moment, so she was surprised when he touched her fleetingly on the arm and said, ‘Would that I could.’

  His comment, as far as Liz was concerned, made no sense at all, but as a very elderly woman had emerged from one of the houses and was waving and smiling brightly at the new arrivals, Liz set the puzzle aside and concentrated on her job.

  Khalifa greeted the woman with a kiss on both cheeks then, to Liz’s surprise, he lifted the woman in the air and swung her around as he had with the children at the guest house.

  She flapped and slapped at his arms but the smile on her face told Liz he was a welcome and much-loved visitor.

  ‘This is Jazillah,’ he said to Liz. ‘Jazillah, this is Dr Elizabeth Jones.’

  ‘Just call me Liz,’ Liz responded, then turned to Khalifa as she realised they were both speaking English.

  ‘I learned English from a friend,’ Jazillah explained, taking Liz’s hand in hers and turning it over as if to examine the lines on it.

  The older woman held it, studying it, while Liz took in the dark colouring henna had left on Jazillah’s hand.

  ‘You are well, but troubled,’ Jazillah finally declared, giving Liz
back her hand. ‘I know your machines can tell if there is cancer in someone’s bones but are there machines yet that can probe the problems of the heart and mind?’

  ‘Not yet, and probably not ever,’ Liz told her, while Khalifa lifted the crib and other equipment they’d brought with them out of the back of the vehicle.

  He carried it to the front porch of the house from which Jazillah had appeared, and set it down, and to Liz’s surprise other women emerged from the tiny dwelling—surely too many to have been waiting inside.

  Some, she saw, were pregnant, while others were probably grandmothers by now. A few were young, teenagers maybe, all cloaked in black, their hair covered, although their faces were visible.

  ‘Serves me right for being suspicious,’ Khalifa whispered from behind her. ‘The men have not come begging favours but have brought their women in. That is good.’

  Then, in a louder voice, he greeted the women in their own language, before telling Liz that Jazillah would translate and he would spend some time with the men.

  As he departed, Liz watched the women folding themselves neatly and effortlessly down to sit on the ground. They were all attractive women, some of the young ones beautiful with huge doe-like eyes and clear olive skin.

  Prospective brides for the ruler?

  Liz smiled to herself and let the women settle, then introduced herself and explained what she did, thankful she had the excuse of showing the crib to avoid having to sit on the ground.

  Though the sitting was relatively easy compared to the getting up.

  ‘Sometimes babies are born too early, or are born with problems that mean they need special care in order to survive. I am the kind of doctor who can give them that care. I look after new babies, especially ones with problems.’

  She paused while Jazillah translated and the women chattered among themselves, Jazillah explaining that they were talking of babies they knew who had died and remembering things that had gone wrong.

  ‘Some of the things that can go wrong can be picked up during pregnancy through a scan,’ Liz continued. ‘Khalifa tells me that there are facilities for pregnant women to have a scan at the clinics in the larger villages. Sometimes it is possible to make things right for the baby even before it is born.’

  She paused again, and again listened to the chatter.

  As the group quietened, she showed them the crib and explained how everything attached to it worked, adding, ‘For a baby born too early, we try to give it everything it would have received if it had still been in the womb.’

  Now the questions began, and as she answered them, always with the lag for the translation, she began to wonder just how many villages they would manage to visit, and to wish someone had produced a chair, and to hope that soon they’d have a break so she could make a bathroom visit.

  She was rescued by Jazillah, who apparently had the gift of reading minds as well as palms.

  ‘We will break for coffee and you will drink mint tea,’ the older woman decreed. ‘But first you might like the bathroom. Come!’

  She led Liz through the tiny house to the back, where a sparkling new bathroom had been added.

  ‘It is good Khalifa spent time in the desert as a child, for he understands our needs,’ Jazillah told Liz, then she slipped away.

  By the time Liz returned, a chair had materialised beside the crib, and a small table beside it held a cup of mint tea and a selection of biscuits and fruit.

  The women continued to talk while they sipped coffee from their tiny cups and ate dates and biscuits, so every now and then Jazillah turned to Liz to translate a question. Eventually they got on to the hospital, and all the services offered there, including the setting-up of the new unit.

  ‘Will we be able to stay with our baby?’ was the first question, and Liz assured the women they would be welcome there, then went on to explain about the verandas where family could also come and go so the woman had the support she needed.

  ‘And men, they can visit?’ Jazillah asked, and when she translated Liz’s reply that the father could spend time in the unit with the baby, it raised a great deal of merriment among the women.

  ‘They are telling me which of their husbands might do such a thing and which of them would be too scared of showing their emotion if their baby needed help,’ Jazillah said.

  Liz had to laugh.

  ‘It’s the same everywhere. It hurts fathers to see their baby in trouble, but often they don’t want others to see their tears.’

  More chatter and more questions, then finally Liz felt she’d covered as much as she could. She also had the sense that the women were accepting of the things she had told them and would be less reluctant to use the services Khalifa was providing.

  But she was exhausted.

  Had the language barrier made a fairly simple task more difficult, or were the effects of a busy first week in this strange land finally making themselves felt?

  ‘You must rest now,’ Jazillah decreed, perhaps not reading Liz’s mind but seeing fatigue in her bearing.

  ‘But we have other villages to visit, other people to see,’ Liz protested.

  ‘After you have rested.’ Jazillah was firm. ‘I have prepared a bed for you. Come!’

  And suddenly Liz was happy to be led, to be bossed around and told to rest. In fact, she felt almost weepy that someone was taking care of her, as if her mother had returned from the dead and taken over just when she was needed.

  Jazillah showed her a thick mattress on a floor just inside the door. It was covered by a bright, woven cloth and looked so inviting Liz forgot about the problems of getting up again from ground level, and sank down on it, turning on her side to get comfortable and falling asleep almost immediately.

  Khalifa realised she was missing when he saw the empty chair, but the other women were still chatting on the porch so he assumed Liz had taken a short break. Jazillah soon put him right.

  ‘You are not looking after that woman.’ Her reprimand was sternly delivered, her face serious. ‘You must make her rest and treat her well or her baby will be needing one of those special cribs you are carrying around.’

  ‘Where is she?’ he demanded, seriously disturbed by Jazillah’s words.

  ‘She is resting and she will stay resting until I say she can continue in the car,’ Jazillah told her. ‘And don’t tell me you have to do a doctor check of her. I have checked and all is well, but she is very tired. And she is unhappy. Is that your doing?’

  Here I am, leader of the country—and I’m being told off by an ancient medicine woman! Khalifa thought, but he was troubled by Jazillah’s reading of the situation.

  ‘She has reason to be unhappy,’ he said quietly, ‘and, no, not because of me.’

  Unfortunately, his head added, although he knew full well he’d never willingly do anything to make Liz unhappy.

  ‘Then you must take extra care of her,’ Jazillah decreed. ‘Unhappiness is bad for the baby, and is just as likely to cause problems as a medical condition.’

  He frowned at that. Did she mean it? Had she proof?

  Uncertain what to do next, he packed the crib and other paraphernalia back into the car. Though he longed to enter the house, if only to look at Liz, he remained outside, walking instead to the oasis, speaking to men who were there, fixing one of old pumps that fed water into the irrigation channels that ran between the date palms.

  They talked of the prospects of the season’s crop of dates, of the likelihood of sandstorms over summer, and of village politics. A new headman was making his mark, but not everyone liked him—would Khalifa keep an eye out for trouble?

  The typical village talk soothed him, although the little niggle of anxiety he felt over Liz’s health refused to go away.

  ‘Exhausted? What nonsense,’ she told him only minutes later when he returned to the house to find her not only rested but ready to move on again. ‘All I needed was a nap. I don’t sleep well at night, but a nap now and then makes up for it. Where next?’
>
  The blue eyes challenged him to argue and he glanced towards Jazillah and shrugged.

  ‘Just make her rest,’ the older woman said, then, to Khalifa’s surprise, she took both of Liz’s hands in hers and said, ‘I will see you again soon. Soon and often.’

  ‘I hope that doesn’t mean I’m about to go into labour and you’ll have to rush me back here for her to deliver the baby,’ Liz joked as they drove away from the village.

  ‘Don’t joke about it,’ Khalifa told her, more disturbed than Liz would realise by Jazillah’s pronouncement. ‘And, unlikely as it might seem to that woman, I am a doctor and I can deliver babies!’

  ‘I’m sure you can,’ Liz responded soothingly, ‘but let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.’

  He hoped it wouldn’t as well, but there was no denying that his conversation with Jazillah had unsettled him and he was more than half-inclined to turn the vehicle around and head back to Najme.

  ‘Don’t even think about it.’

  Liz’s words made him realise he’d actually taken his foot off the accelerator as he considered this move.

  ‘Are you reading my mind?’ he demanded.

  ‘Only the obvious bits,’ Liz told him, then she reached out and touched his forearm. ‘I’m not stupid, Khalifa. I know I have to look after myself. Yes, I was more tired than I realised this morning, but I’ll take that as a warning and rest whenever I can. Let’s do the next place then see how I feel, okay?’

  Her touch had burned his skin—burned it as surely as a brand would have. How could that happen? How could it be that a foreign, pregnant woman could have sneaked beneath his emotional guard and be firing his body with need and his mind with any number of erotic fantasies?

  And worse, he had yet to spend the promised night in the desert with her! In the desert where he was most alive, beneath the stars he knew like the skin on his own body, and with djinns around making mischief and no sand sprite to undo their spells…

  Liz was glad the conversation about her health seemed to have finished, and was equally pleased to be travelling in silence. It meant she would think. And she needed to think. She needed to work out if her fatigue was simply physical or if the added complication of her attraction to Khalifa was contributing to it. Certainly, it took a lot of effort to pretend the attraction didn’t exist.