LITMIR.BIZ

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blinding her, Desi got up and banged out through the screen door into the star-filled night. The door banged a second time behind her, but she did not stop running.

      He caught up with her down by the water’s edge.

      ‘Desi!’

      ‘Why did you do that? Why did you humiliate me in front of everyone?’ she demanded.

      ‘If you are humiliated, it is not me. That picture, Desi—’

      ‘Oh, shut up! Shut up! There is nothing wrong with that picture! It’s a fashion shoot! I was so lucky to get that job, girls wait years for something like that! It’ll open so many doors for me!’

      That was her agent talking. The truth was that modelling, the teenage girl’s fantasy, had never really been Desi’s dream. Perhaps it was the impact of her parents’ ideals on her, her island upbringing, for what she had seen of the life so far she did not like. But, perversely human, when pressed, she defended what she did not believe in.

      ‘Desi, we are going to be married. You will be my wife. You can’t pose like this for other men.’

      ‘Men?’ she cried. ‘That’s not a men’s magazine! It’s fashion! It’s for women! I’m advertising a handbag!’

      ‘No,’ he said levelly. ‘You advertise sex.’

      He had the outsider’s clarity, but it was too much to expect that she could see what he saw, or that he would understand the intimate connection between sex and sales.

      ‘You don’t know what you’re talking about!’

      ‘Desi, one picture is not important. But this work you do—will it all be like that? Is this what a modelling career means?’

      ‘All like what, for heaven’s sake? I was fully dressed! Wait for it, Salah, next month I’ll be in an underwear catalogue! What is your problem?’

      ‘Desi, a Muslim woman cannot do such things. It is impossible.’

      She was silent, listening to the crickets. Then, ‘I’m not a Muslim woman,’ she said slowly.

      ‘Desi!’ he pleaded.

      She burst into tears. ‘And if that’s what it means—that my photograph is seen as disgusting, then…and if that’s what you think—if that’s what you see when you look at that picture of me…oh, God, you make me feel like a…like a…’

      They were too young to see that what had motivated his outburst was not religion, but jealousy. Sexual possessiveness.

      ‘And if you’re so high and holy, Salah, what about what we’ve been doing? How does that stack up with your principles?’

      ‘We love each other. We are going to be married!’ he said, but she thought she could see doubt in his eyes.

      She said accusingly, ‘You think what we’re doing is wrong, don’t you?’

      ‘No, Desi!’

      She cringed down to the bottom of her soul.

      ‘Oh, God! That is so sick!’

      If he felt guilty about their lovemaking, what did that mean about how he saw her? Shame swept through her. And the stupid fragile dream she’d been dreaming cracked and split open, and the real world was there, beyond the jagged edges, telling her she’d been a fool.

      Suddenly she was saying terrible things to him, accusing him of tricking her into sex, and then judging her for giving in. Horrible things that she did not believe, but was somehow driven to say.

      His face grew white as he listened, and then Salah erupted with things about the corrupt West which he did not believe and always argued against with friends at home.

      Corrupt. The word hung in the air between them as they stared at each other, bewildered, their hearts raw with hurt, and far too young to make sense of what was happening.

      ‘You mean me!’ she cried then. ‘Well, if I’m corrupt, you’re the corrupter! I hate you!’ She whirled and ran back into the house and up to her room.

      She locked her bedroom door, and buried her head under the duvet, trying to drown out the sound of pebbles hitting her window during the night, the whispered pleadings at her door.

      She did not come down again until after breakfast the next morning, just in time to say a cool goodbye to Salah, with all the others, before her father took him to the ferry. As he got into the car he looked at her with the reproach of a dying stag who cannot understand what has motivated his killer.

      Salah never came to the island again.

      Chapter Four

      THE palace clung to a rocky slope above the winding river and the city between, brooding over the scene like a dream of white, terra cotta and blue. From the plane, in all the glory of its dome and its arched terraces, the palace had looked like something out of a fairy tale, but approached from below it had the air of a fortress.

      It was some time before she understood that they were approaching it. They drove through the centre of the city, past the bustle of a market, through a small herd of reluctant goats driven by a grinning urchin, then along wide streets bordered on two sides with high white walls topped with greenery. So entranced was she with the unfamiliar sights that it was only after they left these walls behind that she realized there was only the palace ahead.

      ‘Where are we going?’ she asked, when the answer was already obvious.

      The car stopped at a gate and the chauffeur exchanged words through the window with an armed guard.

      Salah put the papers away, snapped the briefcase shut and set it aside. After a moment, as if at a thought, he reached out and spun the locks. She felt it like a slap.

      ‘You can never be too sure,’ she said sarcastically. ‘But really, the state secrets of little Barakat are safe from me.’

      He looked at her with a black gaze that revealed nothing.

      ‘What is this place, Salah?’

      ‘It is Prince Omar’s palace.’

      ‘Am I staying here?’

      ‘What else? Should I put you up in a hotel? Do you think I forget what I owe your family?’

      ‘Won’t I be meeting your family?’

      They moved up the incline, past an unmanned sentry post, then under a broad archway and into a courtyard where there were several parked vehicles.

      ‘Except for my father, who is at the dig, my family go to the mountains in summer. The heat is bad for my mother’s health. Only the poor remain in the city in summer, and they move down by the river.’

      His eyes were hard. She remembered the very different look in his eyes the last time they had met, on the morning that he left the island for the last time.

      Never got over her? On the contrary, the boy who had loved her had disappeared. He was changed out of all recognition. You had a lucky escape! she told herself.

      Her heart, contrarily, mourned a loss.

      ‘So why are you still in the city?’

      He lifted one corner of his mouth and looked at her as if she were being naive.

      ‘You stayed in the city to meet me? Why? What do you want?’

      ‘Not what I want, Desi. What you want.’

      He opened his door as two servants appeared through a doorway. The men seized her bags from the trunk and disappeared. The chauffeur opened her door. The heat slapped her again as she got out.

      ‘What has it got to do with me?’

      ‘I will be your guide to my father’s

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