The Fierce and Tender Sheikh (10 page)

S
omething that became a handy focus for her rage was the question of the Gulf Islands. Farida was still living in the palace, and growing more unhappy with every passing week. There was no news of her husband.

But though the Princess raged and stormed, there was going to be no quick solution. It was a complex problem, as she found out when an exasperated Sultan thrust a thick dossier at her.

“Read that, Cousin,” he ordered. “And then, and only then, will I listen to further argument on the subject!”

Shakira already knew much of what she read at first. About a decade before, Ghasib had leased an island to a company called Mystery Resorts, who subsequently built an expensive hotel—the Gulf Eden Resort—on it. This had been a successful venture, so successful that the company had wanted to expand to the other islands in the chain, planning to offer exclusive isolated holidays on the beautiful islands.

For that, they needed the islands empty. And two years ago, Ghasib had leased all the other islands in the chain to the com
pany, with the contractual right to evacuate the inhabitants. His government had even helped in the evacuation—as Shakira already knew. Farida had told her there were Bagestani soldiers with the Mystery security men when Solomon's Foot had been ruthlessly evacuated.

All the homes had been destroyed.

That had been about eighteen months ago, the time when Farida had come to the camp where she and Hani met. Later they had been moved to Burry Hill together.

So much she knew. The dossier went further. When the Sultan was restored to the throne, Shakira now learned, he immediately revoked the lease which Ghasib had granted for the islands, except for the land that housed the original Gulf Eden Resort. He had announced that the islanders would be brought home, and promised them help rebuilding their homes.

But as the first few families had returned, Mystery Resorts had challenged Ash's revocation of their lease. They argued that the contract had been signed by Ghasib effectively on behalf of the Bagestan nation, and the nation was required to fulfill it. The company had already applied for an injunction to prevent any resettlement by the islanders, and was now threatening the Sultan with a lawsuit.

“Though it's been carefully kept from public knowledge, Mystery Resorts is owned by the powerful multinational which also owns, among many others, the pharmaceutical giant Webson Attary,” she read in one briefing. “They may attempt to influence the decision of some of Bagestan's trading partners in the coming trade negotiations. This could have serious implications for the economy.”

On another front, the bid to convince the tribal council of mountain and desert tribes to allow the islanders to resettle on the mainland, temporarily or permanently, was running into fierce opposition.

And a new player had entered the game. A conservation group was now declaring that the habitat of the Aswad turtle,
a turtle unique to the Gulf Islands and on the endangered species list, was under serious threat. A research paper had criticized the islanders for their trade in turtle shells and other products and warned that the turtle was heading for extinction if the islanders were allowed to return. This group was agitating loudly in the Western media.

“If you have a solution, Shakira, I'll be glad to hear it,” the Sultan said, not unkindly, when she put the dossier back on his desk.

 

“I don't think you have anything to worry about. It's a good sign, isn't it? It's healthy,” Dana said.

Shakira stared. “Why do you say that? A good sign?”

“It means you're starting to feel more secure with us. Up till now you haven't felt able to express your feelings about what happened to you, and you must have an awful lot stored up inside. You could hardly go through what you've gone through without feeling pretty furious at the world. And I think it has to come out. Now that you feel safer, you can let it out.”

“I don't see that!” Shakira cried, annoyed by this assessment.

“And the more you trust us, the more it will feel safe to let it out.” Dana smiled. “You spent years of your childhood in mostly inhuman conditions, Shakira, at a time when other children were being loved and cherished. Of course you were angry at being treated like that. You're human, you had a right to be treated with respect and dignity, and something in you knew it. And now you are telling the world about it.”

“I did express it then!” Shakira cried, as if she had been accused of cowardice. “I was angry lots of times! People were afraid of me, you know!” She sounded as if it were something to be proud of, and in the camps it had been.

“I can see why,” the Sultana admitted. “You're pretty fierce when you're fierce. Well, then, perhaps it needs to be expressed again. You're also used to defending yourself against all comers. You were alone and defenceless and if you
hadn't learned that behaviour you wouldn't have survived. It's very stressful trying to learn new patterns of behaviour, I'm sure of that. And you won't do that overnight.”

“And I was not defenceless! I could look after myself very well.”

Dana just kept smiling, with that warm approving glow in her dark eyes that Shakira found totally unnerving when she was in this mood.

“Go easy on yourself, Shakira. You can't change completely overnight, you know. Inside—” she reached over and put a finger against the princess's heart “—inside there's still a lot of Hani, you know. You can't just toss him away. He needs to feel loved, too.”

Shakira snorted. “Nobody loves Hani.”

Dana laughed outright, but it was a gentle laugh. “Oh, yes. We all love Hani. We see him quite a lot, you know. Maybe more than you think. Ask anyone.”

“Love him?” she whispered.

“Everybody loves him. He's funny, and sharp, and he doesn't take anything from anybody. And he's good—painfully good—at pointing it out when the emperor isn't wearing any clothes.”

Shakira looked around, as if to make sure she was still in the same room. She swallowed, then straightened her shoulders. “Sharif doesn't love Hani!” she burst out.

“Oh, I think he does. In fact, just the other day he said—”

“What? What did he say?”

“Now, what was it—you were asking Bari and Noor about Solomon's Foot, weren't you? Farida's island, where they were castaway. And he said, ‘When she learns to harness all that energy she'll be formidable.' And he was smiling as if you'd been worth every second of the trouble he took to find you.”

Shakira was shaking, her anger lost in confusion. “I don't understand,” she whispered.

Dana looked into her eyes. “Shakira, Hani is the person who kept you alive all those years, till we found you. Of course we love him—and whatever he had to do and be to fight the good fight, we respect that. And thank him. And if he wants to rage around and tell the world what he thinks of the way you were treated all those years—well, he's got that right, don't you think?”

 

Was it as simple as that? Shakira wondered later, walking in the beautiful courtyard where her soul, however disturbed, always found some peace. After two weeks of storms, the anger died. The day after her conversation with the Sultana, she woke up knowing it had passed.

She still had a temper, of course, she was still her volatile self, but the overwhelming rages were gone, as suddenly as they had come.

 

Shakira stood on her balcony watching the dawn. It was a beautiful time for the garden, when the pool was completely smooth and still, perfectly reflecting the cascading squinches of the dome.

Across the garden, Sharif's light told her that he was awake. Just like those first days after her arrival at the palace, when she had stood here waiting for him to appear.

As she watched, the sun climbed up behind the dome to kiss the treetops with gold. The
bulbul
sang to the still-unawakened rose, and suddenly her own heart clenched with yearning—but for what she hardly knew.

As if in answer to her question, Sharif appeared on his balcony, lighting a thin black cigar. He stood for a moment gazing across at her and, in the moment before he lifted his hand in greeting, some knowledge trembled on the border of consciousness—a terrible knowledge it must have been, for her heart was suddenly beating hard.

Feeling surged up in her, and she knew suddenly that Sharif
could explain the confusion she felt when she thought of him. If she was ever brave enough to ask.

 

There was something else she could ask him, though, and her questions were long overdue.

“What is it you want to know?” Sharif asked.

“You said—you said, ‘Your cousin has enemies. Be careful you don't offer them ammunition.'”

He blew a cloud of smoke and looked down at her.

“Tell me,” Shakira said urgently.

The sun gleamed from her dark, thick lashes, and worry shaded her eyes, and he realized suddenly that there was nothing she could ask that he would not give her. And that he should have known it long ago.

But that was not the question she had asked.

“How much do you know about the Gulf Islands, Princess?” he began softly.

She stared. “The Gulf Islands! What have the…” She took a deep breath and calmed down. “I read a dossier Ash gave me.”

He nodded. “Then I suppose you got most of it. Did you learn about the environmental group?”

She snorted, because it was scarcely believable. “Turtles! It's ridiculous that people should be made homeless because of that, isn't it?” she cried. “What do
they
know about being driven from your home in the middle of the night and then not being allowed to go back?”

He was silent, and she looked up to find him gazing down at her, with a smile lurking behind his eyes.

“Nothing,” he said softly.

Her heart kicked a little, and she looked away to where the sunrise was turning the sky pink behind the shadowed dome.

“The campaign is nevertheless serving to whip up a certain amount of world opinion against the resettlement of the island tribes,” Sharif went on, calmly. “And world opinion is something we can't afford to lose on this issue. Especially now.”

She was quick to pick up on his tone.

“What's happened?”

“We have inside information that Mystery Resorts is about to launch their lawsuit. They intend to sue the Sultan and people of Bagestan for twenty-five billion dollars.”

“Camel stuffers!” she cried, outraged, and then, incredulously, “Twenty-five
billion?
”

He ground out his cigar in the earth under a potted plant. “That's bigger than the entire gross national product of Bagestan.”

“But I don't understand it—they can't build the resort now, can they? That would damage the ecosystem as much as…it doesn't make sense!”

Approval of her quickness glinted in the Cup Companion's eyes.

“You would think so. But it may be that they feel they can buy off the environmentalists by promising habitat protection for the turtles, or by big funding for some environmental issue elsewhere. So we imagine. Or it's possible the group was deliberately funded to mount the turtle campaign by the company itself, in order to bring more pressure to bear on Ash.”

A silence fell, punctuated by the
bulbul
's singing, while Shakira absorbed it. Ash seemed to be trapped as surely as if he were surrounded by barbed wire fences in the middle of a desert.

“There must be
something
we can do!” she cried desperately.

“It is crucially important to prevent them from launching the suit, because once that's in motion, the whole issue will be tied up in the courts for years. We are going to mount a public relations campaign, Princess, in the hopes that public opinion will make Mystery Resorts think twice about the lawsuit.”

Shakira watched as the sun's fingers at last reached the water of the pool, stroking the still surface without raising a ripple.

“And is that everything?” she asked thoughtfully.

He was silent, and she looked up.

“What connection does this have with Hani, Sharif? Ammunition, you said. Give Ash's enemies ammunition.”

“Not exactly ammunition. But the palace has worked very hard to keep the media away from you till you are stronger, with the result that everyone is frothing at the mouth for a story. I'm sure you've seen the paparazzi hanging around the palace gates. After all our work on the campaign it would be a tragedy, wouldn't it, if the story gripping the world's media about Bagestan wasn't the plight of the Gulf Island exiles, but how Princess Shakira secretly dresses as her former self and hangs around the bazaar begging for sweets and causing mischief.”

I
n the dream she strapped on a sword, mounted a white horse, took a banner in her hand, and rode into battle to free her people from oppression. There were bright lights on the battlefield, blazing down on her, blinding her so that she could hardly see the enemy.

People came to watch the battle. They sat by the battlefield, in rows and rows, hundreds and thousands of strangers. They cheered and applauded when they saw her arrive. They called her name, and urged her on.

The battle was strange and confusing, in the dream, for many times she could not see the enemy at all, but only shouted and called to him in a swirling fog, as her horse plunged nervously, and her people cried out for deliverance. Tiny red eyes followed her everywhere in the gloom, as if the Invisible itself watched her struggle.

Then, suddenly, a messenger brought her a letter. It was a message announcing victory.

All around her, the battlefield broke out in cheering.