The Fierce and Tender Sheikh

“No, of course we can’t do that. Do whatever your judgement suggests, Sharif.”

When he hung up, the Cup Companion remained where he was, staring out over the desert. Smoke trailed up from the thin cigar in his hand, its shape twisting and scudding before his absent eyes.

Sharif Azad al Dauleh was variously said to be cold, cynical, selfish, too intelligent for his own good, but none of those accusations hit the mark. Sharif was highly intelligent, and proud of a noble lineage. He was also courageous and impatient of weakness or cowardice. Weaker men—and women—might well resent such a combination. But if his compassion was rarely roused, it was perhaps because he first had none for himself.

He had seen a great deal of human suffering during the weeks of his fruitless search. And only now did he feel the weight of helplessness that he had been unconsciously carrying with him.

Was it because the boy was so obviously an al Jawadi and Sharif’s loyalty was bred in the bone? Was it something in Hani himself? Or was this child—with his haunted eyes and his cynical understanding that he was destined to be one of the world’s dispossessed, a child who’d had nothing for so long he didn’t remember what something was—simply the last straw of weight Sharif’s spirit could bear?

Was it that he was finally doing something, however small? He would save one soul, pluck one suffering child from the nightmare of wasted, desolate life he saw.

Sharif suddenly felt how much of a toll the weeks of bearing witness to so much suffering had taken on his inner reserves.

He was glad to be going home. He needed a breather.

“Home?” Hani whispered. “Take me home?”

The vision of the fountain trembled before his mind’s eye, and his heart thudded with hope.

Sharif realized his mistake. This was the most difficult interview he had ever conducted, and he hoped he would never have another like it.

“Home to Bagestan.”

But the child was lost in a dream. “Is my mother there? My father?”

Sharif swallowed. Allah, what had made him think he could handle this himself? “I don’t think so, Hani.”

“They died,” Hani agreed, hollowly. For a long moment the boy gazed at him, with an expression almost of worship in the dark, hungry eyes. “Are you my brother?” he whispered.

The question shook him.

“No,” he said gently. “I am not your brother.”

Hani bit his lip to hold back the sudden, urgent tears.

“Who am I? Do you know who I am?”

“I’m sorry, Hani. All I have are questions, like you. If there is anything you can tell me, it may help to find out who you are. Do you remember any names?”

He hadn’t meant to start like this. His plan had been to say the minimum possible—only what was necessary to get the boy aboard the plane. But in the face of such a deep and urgent need to know, his resolve failed.

The eyes were liquid with sadness as Hani shook his head. “I had to forget all the names, when I was very small. I don’t remember any, not even my brothers’ and sisters’. They said someone would kill me if I spoke the names. A bad man.”

Sharif struggled to keep what he felt from showing on his face. Although there had been many victims, only one group of people in Bagestan had been in danger from Ghasib on the strength of name alone—members of the royal family.

“Who said it?”

“My—she said she was my mother, but I knew she wasn’t. I always thought of her, in my heart, as my stepmother. But I wasn’t allowed to say so.”

A strange, powerful silence surrounded them. Outside the director’s office the usual sounds of the camp were dimmed, as though the air had become too thin to carry them.

“What was your stepfamily’s name?”

Hani was holding his breath. The world seemed to still its own breath with his. Somehow, even before he spoke the name, he sensed that this one word had the power to change everything.

“Bahrami,” he breathed.

The name fell into the silence like a cut diamond into a still pond.

This time Sharif could not stifle his reaction, because every atom of body and soul was electrified. He could only stare at the boy.

“Bahrami.” He repeated the word softly. “Arif al Vafa Bahrami.”

“Yes!”

Suddenly all the torment of his missing past boiled up in him.

“Tell me! Tell me who they were! A man and a woman, and other children, and a house with a fountain. Roses and…so many roses. Who were they?”

Sharif swallowed hard. Pity, he found, tore at the heart with eagle’s claws.

“Hani, I think—please understand that we can’t be sure—that your father might have been Mahlouf Jawad al Nadim. Does the—”

His heart kicked so hard his body jerked. Shivers ran over his skin. “My father? Is that my father’s name? Is he—is he alive, then? Did he send you to find me?”

“I’m sorry, Hani, no. He died many years ago. Does the name sound familiar?”

He shook his head, half blinded by tears. Was that his name, his father’s name, words he didn’t know at all? “Why don’t I know it, if it was my father’s name? My own name,” he added softly, and then repeated it, as if to test the flavour. “Mahlouf Jawad al Nadim. My father.”

“You must have been very young when they died,” he suggested consolingly. “Maybe you never knew it.”

Sharif turned to his briefcase and drew out the Princess Shakira file. Watched by Hani with huge dark eyes, he opened it. “I want to show you a photograph,” he said quietly. “It may be that she was also living with the Bahramis. Do you remember this face?”

He drew out the photograph and set it in front of Hani on the low table, watching the boy’s face closely, noting the terrible differences that hunger, horror and deprivation had created in two faces with such a strong family resemblance.

The child was silent a long time, staring at the picture. Then one tiny jewel teardrop fell, and landed on Princess Shakira’s cheek. It lay on the photograph quivering and sparkling in a ray of sun. Hani looked up into Sharif’s face, swallowed, and wiped his cheek with one thin hand.

“What was her name?” the boy whispered. “What was her name?”

Sharif saw it then, finally. Not a strong family resemblance, no. Much more than that. Now that he saw it, it only amazed him that it had taken so long.

He spoke very, very softly, as if the air itself might break.

“Shakira,” he said. “Your name is—Shakira.”

Four

“Shakira.”