Kidnapped by the Sheikh (3 page)

Sarah was getting a little tired of hearing about the dead Sheikh Omar. She looked at the living sheikh who was sitting next to her. Unlike the other men in the camp, he didn’t have a wild, unkempt look about him. Instead of a long, shaggy beard, he had a short and carefully trimmed one and his thick, black hair was combed away from his face, so that she could clearly see his strong features. In fact, Sarah couldn’t help but admit to herself that the sheikh was an extremely attractive man. Before she knew what she was doing, she found herself staring into his large, dark eyes. She turned away, embarrassed by her thoughts.

“Perhaps a glass of water would be good,” she said, trying to pull herself together. The heat had obviously made her light-headed and she had to keep focused.

The sheikh poured her a glass of water from a pitcher that was on a small table next to him. He offered it to her with both hands, as if it were an item of great value. She took the glass and drank back its contents. The water was refreshingly cool. She wondered how they managed to get it so cold out here in the middle of the desert. However, she wasn’t in the sheikh’s tent to discuss such issues.

“I am very concerned about Minna’s wedding. Any marriage between cousins carries with it the threat of numerous medical complication

ns for the resultant offspring of any such union.” Sarah thought about all the babies and children she saw in the hospital in Yazan who suffered from terrible deformities and life-threatening complaints, many of which were the result of the common practise of marriage within families.

“You sound more like a doctor than an ambassador’s wife, Lady Bolton.”

Sarah immediately recognised her mistake and rephrased what she’d said. “It just isn’t safe. You can’t let them get married. Find someone else.”

“Someone else? Maybe we should come to a party at the embassy and you can introduce her to a suitable match.”

Sarah knew that he was mocking her, but she chose to ignore it. “Surely Yazan is not so short of young men that you can’t find another husband for her. A man with your status and authority must be able to secure someone who isn’t her cousin.”

“As you say, I am an important man, so it’s only right that my niece marries someone who isn’t below her. She couldn’t possibly marry a mere soldier, a camel herder, or a guard.”

“But there must be other sheikhs with sons and nephews.”

“So you think I should send her into a hostile family.” The sheikh looked alarmed by the idea. “You think I should leave her with a man I’ve never met, or with a man who’s my enemy, who will treat her little better than a slave, or worse, a whore!”

“No, of course not!” Sarah wouldn’t dream of suggesting such a thing. “What about one of the sheikhs that you’re friends with?”

Sheikh Akbar laughed. “Friends? A man might be your friend one day, but then the next, when he sees that you have more camels, or more soldiers, he becomes your enemy. Lady Bolton, this isn’t the United Nations. There are no diplomatic agreements out here in the desert. Minna will marry Saeed and be safe here with the Al-Zafirs. Saeed is a good man and if he is not, I will be here to deal with him.”

Sarah could see that she wasn’t getting very far with trying to persuade the sheikh to call off the wedding. Maybe a different approach would work.

“Sheikh Akbar, did you do the same? Did you marry your cousin?” she asked.

“I’m not married.”

“Really? A powerful man like you could have not just one, but several wives.”

“A man like me needs a powerful woman by his side. You, as the wife of an important man, must know that.”

“But I’m not…” Sarah was about to say that she wasn’t married, when she stopped herself in time.

“But you are, Lady Bolton. You are powerful and strong, too. You are stopped on the road by a group of men you’ve never met before, you’re taken away by them and driven off into the desert, and what do you do? Do you weep and wail? Do you plead for help? Do you try to fight? No! You don’t even sit quietly in the other tent with the women. Instead, you come marching in here demanding that I call off a wedding. You appear to be more concerned about the fate of others than your own, including a girl that until a few hours ago, you probably didn’t even know existed.”

Sarah had spent her whole life fighting for others. It was why she became a doctor and why she had accepted a contract in the most remote part of the Arabian Peninsula, so that she could help the women that lived there.

“If you must go to an Arab country, at least go to a rich one,” her friends had said. But what was the point in travelling overseas to help a group of oil-rich millionaires, who could get on board one of their private jets and go to any hospital they wanted in the world? Instead, she chose to travel to a part of the Arab world where she could use her Arabic and help people who everyone else ignored. She knew it was dangerous, but then living in London, with its current crime rate, was hardly safe.

“I see you don’t disagree with me,” the sheikh continued. “Maybe this is a case of the famous British ‘stiff upper lip’ that you are showing.” The sheikh laughed. “However, there is one thing that puzzles me; for an ambassador’s wife, you don’t seem to be very diplomatic. Do you often intrude on people with your demands?”

“It is something that the ambassador has talked to me about,” Sarah replied vaguely. The conversation had taken an unpleasant turn. If the sheikh found out that she was just a doctor, and not the ambassador’s wife, she was sure that he would stop being so amiable.

“It’s often necessary for a man to speak to his wife and keep her in check, especially when the wife is as wilful as you.”

 “How dare you talk to me like that!” The sheikh had gone from being complimentary and respectful to being downright insulting. She stood to leave.

“Must you go? We were just getting to know each other.” He smiled at her and seemed amused by her response. “Perhaps we can resume our little chat later. In the meantime, I’m afraid you’ll have to change tents. I’m not sure it’s good for a young bride-to-be to witness such wilfulness, and Minna can be very susceptible. She’s not as strong as you. If she were like you, I might have married her myself!”

Was the sheikh flirting with her? “You forget that I’m the British ambassador’s wife.”

“I certainly haven’t forgotten. In fact, I was just thinking that the British ambassador is a very, very lucky man.” He looked at her. The pupils of his eyes had dilated. He leaned forward. For one brief moment, Sarah wondered what it would be like to lie down on top of him. It had been a very long time since she’d kissed anyone or had an extremely attractive man flirting with her.

What was she thinking? This man had kidnapped her and taken her away into the desert; she couldn’t possibly let herself be attracted to him.

“I must go,” she said, trying to keep her voice steady.

“As you wish, though you’ll now stay with my mother. Please, let me personally escort you to her tent.”

The tent of Sheikh Akbar’s mother was directly behind Minna’s, but it was larger and even more elaborately decorated. However, the first thing that struck Sarah when she entered was the pungent smell of incense. In every corner of the tent, there were dishes of smouldering charcoal with small mounds of incense burning on top. Nevertheless, there was another smell lingering under the scent of the Oriental perfume; it was the smell of something rotting and as Sarah approached the sheikh’s mother, the smell increased. It didn’t take a doctor to diagnose that the woman was sick and the incense was there to mask the stench.

Sarah offered the woman a salaam and introduced herself as Lady Amanda Bolton, the ambassador’s wife.

The old woman stared at her. She was reclining on a bank of cushions that were raised several feet off the carpeted floor. A long black dress, like an abaya, covered most of her body, but Sarah could see her dark brown hands. Her fingernails and the ends of all her fingers were a brunt orange colour where they’d been stained with henna. Then, as soon as Sheikh Akbar left the tent, she removed the veil that covered her entire face. Through the heavy lines that criss-crossed her features, Sarah could see a series of small blue circles and marks, the traditional tattoos of a Bedouin woman of status. However, it was impossible to determine her age. The heat and illness had taken their toll on her. She could have been anywhere between forty and seventy.

Sarah stood in front of her, waiting to be asked to sit. She wondered what was wrong with the woman and whether it was anything she could help her with. However, whatever it was, without any equipment or medicines, Sarah doubted that there was much she could do to alleviate her situation.

Finally the woman said, “I am Fatima, the mother of Sheikh Omar Al-Zafir.”

Him again! Sarah thought that it was about time she found out who this man was, so she asked.

“You don’t know?” The woman was obviously offended. “He was my first-born son and the greatest sheikh the lands of Sakara have ever seen.”

Fatima told Sarah to sit and then went into a long description of the various battles and conquests that her son had made against other tribes and sheikhs, who, according to Fatima, were little better than fleas on dogs.

Sarah found it hard to follow, especially as the woman spoke a tribal form of Arabic that she wasn’t familiar with, but when Fatima seemed to have reached the end of her eulogy, Sarah asked what had happened to the sheikh.

“Jinn,” the old woman replied and spat into a brass bowl on the carpet.

Jinn
were evil spirits that the local people believed in. The word was sometimes translated as
genie
, but it was no wish-granting, lamp-dwelling spirit that Fatima was referring to. Rather, she was talking about an invisible evil spirit, which she believed had killed her son. Sarah had heard of such things before at the hospital where jinn were thought to cause miscarriages, still births, heart attacks, cancer, and many other forms of illness that people couldn’t understand.

“How do you know it was a jinn?” Sarah asked.

“Sheikh Omar was sitting in his tent, eating with his men. Suddenly, an unseen spirit, sent by his enemies, stabbed him in the chest. The dagger was invisible but its magic was so great that even though there was no blood, it killed him before his men could scare it away.”

“Sounds like a heart attack,” Sarah mumbled.

“Exactly! The jinn attacked his heart. His enemies were too scared to attack him themselves. They found a jinn to do it for them.”

Sarah had tried to talk people out of such beliefs before and knew that it was useless, so she didn’t bother to contradict Fatima. She’d had enough of trying to reason with people for one day.

“And now your other son, Sheikh Akbar, is in charge?”

“He’s still young and has a lot to prove, but he’s already shown himself to be a true Al-Zafir.” Fatima raised herself up on her cushions, but winced as she did so. Sarah suspected the medical problem was with one of her legs. “Sheikh Omar has only been dead for three weeks,” Fatima continued, “but Akbar has already shown his enemies that he’s a man to be reckoned with. He’s thwarted two attacks on our camp and taken more than twenty camels from his enemies. And now he has you!”

“Me?” Sarah wasn’t quite sure what Fatima meant.

“Yes, an ambassador’s wife. Very fine, though, of course, the ambassador himself would’ve been better.”

“Minna said that you’ll use my ransom money to pay for her wedding.”

Fatima spat into the bowl again. “Who cares about the money? The money will go to Saeed, the groom, but he’s my grandson, so it will stay with the Al-Zafirs and we have enough money, camels, and goats to have a very fine wedding. Minna is a girl and thinks her value lies in her bride prince.” Fatima laughed. Sarah noticed that she’d lost her two front teeth and some of the lower ones as well, which partly explained why Sarah had problems understanding her. It also explained why the woman looked so much older than she probably was, as the missing teeth made her cheeks sag.

“So if Sheikh Akbar doesn’t need the money, why did he kidnap me?”

“To show his enemies how strong he is. How many of his enemies would dare to take the wife of the British ambassador?”

Sarah had heard of trophy wives, but a trophy hostage? It certainly made her situation worse, much worse. If they merely wanted her for the ransom money, it wouldn’t really matter who sent it, or who for. As long as the kidnappers got their dollars, who cared if it was for a diplomat, or for a doctor? However, if they weren’t interested in the money, but only her imagined status, how much worse would her fate be when they found out that she wasn’t a senior diplomat’s wife?

It would be publically embarrassing for the sheikh, especially as this was some kind of attempt to show off his newly bestowed status in his community. A man like Sheikh Akbar would hate to be publically humiliated in front of his friends—and worse, his enemies—when they found out that he’d kidnapped the wrong woman. Sarah could feel the food that she’d eaten earlier churning in her stomach.

“You look ill,” Fatima said. “Maybe it’s the heat. You foreign women probably aren’t used to the desert. Let me get you some tea.” However, Fatima didn’t stir. Instead, she yelled for refreshments. A few seconds later, Onnab, the servant that had been in Minna’s tent, appeared carrying a tray of sweet mint tea. Sarah thought that she would need a lot more than tea to make her feel better.