The Solitary Sheikh

He lifted one hand and smiled. “Salimah also will arrange that. If you wish, she will show you around the palace. But first, perhaps, you would like a cup of tea or coffee or other refreshments. I leave you in good hands, Miss Stewart.”

With that, he bowed and was gone, his air an indescribable mixture of formality, humility, and arrogant nobility that left her breathless.

When the door closed behind him, Salimah smiled. “Shall I help you unpack?” she asked, leading a resistless Jana through a broad doorway into the bedroom, where a huge double four-poster bed was draped with beautiful greens and blues, and a magnificent wardrobe was covered in the tiniest mosaic work Jana had ever seen.

An hour later, having unpacked, showered and drunk a deliciously cool fruit drink, Jana told Salimah, “I would like to meet Masha and Kamala now.”

Salimah bowed. “Yes, Miss. I will take you to their nurse.”

She led Jana through such a series of halls and rooms that Jana thought she would never find her way unguided. She noticed the curious fact that, like the stately homes of so many of her parents’ friends, there were discoloured rectangles on the walls. Several of the glass-fronted cabinets that mostly held antiques and treasures were empty, too, or had empty spaces where something had once lain.

In Britain the cause was always the same—death duties that forced the sale of family heirlooms. She wondered what had put Prince Omar under financial pressure.

“But where are the princesses’. rooms?” she asked, as they turned yet another corner.

“They are beside their nurse’s room, of course.”

Beside the nurse’s, but a mile from the English teacher’s. Jana raised her eyebrows over the arrangement, but Salimah was not the person to argue the matter with.

Umm Hamzah, the old woman who, Salimah explained, had been the personal servant of the princesses’ mother and was now their “nurse,” was a short, stocky, dark-skinned woman with thick, grizzled grey hair hanging in a braid down her back, a wide unsmiling face, and dark suspicious eyes. She had about half her teeth remaining, and her wrinkled face had seen the burning sun of many, many summers.

She greeted Jana in Arabic, and then explained through Salimah why it was not possible just at this moment for her to meet the princesses. Later it would certainly be more convenient.

Jana nodded. “Where are the princesses now?”

“I think they are having a bath, Miss,” said Salimah uncomfortably.

Jana smiled at Umm Hamzah and asked exactly when she should return.

“Someone will bring the princesses to your room later, Miss,” Salimah translated.

But no one brought the princesses to her room later. Jana was served a delicious dinner in her apartment, watched the sun’s rays fade and the sky darken, watched the lights of the city come on, watched the fat, heavy moon rise and sparkle on the dark river, and went to bed with a book.

For two more days it was not “convenient” for Jana to meet the princesses. Salimah grew more abashed and embarrassed with each-explanation, and the old nurse less voluble, as if victory in this senseless battle made her less and less polite.

“The princesses are sick, Miss Stewart,” Salimah offered, her eyes on the beautiful glazed tile floor. “They are in bed.”

“That’s all right, take me to them in bed.”

“La, la!” shouted the old woman, waving both her twisted hands as Salimah made the suggestion, and shouted at Salimah.

“She says it is very...easy for someone else to get it,” Salimah translated.

“Contagious,” Jana supplied automatically. “That’s all right.” She had gotten the picture long ago, but she still wasn’t sure how to deal with this hostile old woman. “I never get bugs, I’m not worried. Take me to them.”

Again urgent shouts and waving hands greeted Salimah’s words “They are too sick to be seen by anyone, Miss.”

Jana felt her blood starting to boil. “Well, in that case,” she said carefully, taking a shot in the dark, “I must call Prince Omar immediately on his mobile phone and urge him to return to the palace instantly. He is on urgent business, but he would not like to be absent at such a dangerous time. I will call him now.”

If the old woman called this bluff, what could she do, Jana wondered? She didn’t even know if Prince Omar had a mobile phone, let alone the number. But she saw Umm Hamzah’s jaw clench and her eyes widen in alarm as she spoke, and knew she had won. Jana wondered how much impact this old woman had had on her queen’s decision not to go to the hospital when she was so ill, and how frightened she was of Omar’s displeasure.

Half an hour later the princesses, healthy, clean and neat, were brought to her apartment by a servant. The two pretty little faces gazed at her in fascinated alarm as the introductions were made, and as soon as they were alone, Jana asked, “What is it?”

“Are you the devil’s handmaid?” asked Masha, her eyes wide.

Four

Jana kept her calm. “No,” she said, “I’m not. Did someone tell you I was?”

Masha, her eyes dark, nodded speechlessly. She was the elder by only about eighteen months, Jana knew, and except for a little difference in height, the two perfect little faces could almost have been twins.

Jana was pretty sure she knew who the someone was. “She made a mistake,” she told them calmly. “Don’t you know what my name means? My full name is Jahn-eh Roshan,” she prompted, pronouncing it as Prince Omar had done.

They both frowned in thought “Soul of light!” shouted Masha, and Kamala repeated the words in childish excitement, as if she had discovered them herself.

“That’s right. So how could I be the devil’s handmaid?”

It wasn’t all that convincing, as logic goes, but it seemed to impress the princesses, who stood there nodding, relieved smiles on their faces. “But your name is Parvani,” Masha told her gravely after a moment. “Nana doesn’t speak Parvani, only Arabic.”

Nana was Umm Hamzah.

“Oh, well, that’s how she made the mistake, then,” Jana said pityingly. “Poor Umm Hamzah. She just didn’t know.”

They were satisfied with that, and Jana decided to leave it there. But she understood that Umm Hamzah had declared war, and she intended to keep her guard up.

Over the next few days, Jana spent time getting to know the princesses. Umm Hamzah went on making efforts to restrict Jana’s access to them, but with Salimah interpreting Jana simply said that it was Prince Omar’s command, and would allow no excuse to get in her way.

She soon became as determined to get the girls away from their grim nurse as the nurse was to keep them away from the foreign devil. Umm Hamzah was a superstitious, uneducated, illiterate woman, and some of the stories that Kamala and Masha relayed to Jana made the hair lift on her scalp. She was sure the old woman’s preoccupation with sin, death and the devil was not good for them, and she did her best, in a mild, unconfrontational way, to counteract Umm Hamzah’s influence.

Both the little princesses already spoke good basic English, and so, although she gave them formal lessons in reading, almost anything she did with them could be considered an English lesson. So they played games, and went for walks, and fed the sheikh’s horses apples, and watched the desert tribeswomen washing clothes in the river, and swam in the palace swimming pool.

“This water is not so...good the water at my father’s special place,” Kamala, searching for the words, said nostalgically the first time they swam. Jana was a good swimmer, and she was already devising water games that would teach them English and how to swim at the same time.

“Not as nice as the water at your father’s special place?” she repeated. “Where is that?”

Both girls sighed longingly. “In the mountains,” Masha told her. “The mountains of Noor,” she explained further. She pointed, and Jana turned to look at the mountains in the distance. She saw a stretch of desert, and then the tan-and-pink-coloured foothills, and above, those snow-capped, beautifully inhospitable peaks.

There must be a kind of country residence up there, and why not? Summer down here on the desert would have been close to unbearable on some days without the cooling system in the palace. Jana’s skin was already a warm shade of tan after only a few days in the sun.

“Do you go there every summer?”

Both princesses shook their solemn little heads at her. “No,” Masha said, sighing again. “Two times we go there. It is very beautiful, Jana. Very beautiful. We had such lovely time.”

“We saw our father every day. It was not like here at the palace. Here we do not see Baba.”

“He spoke to us and took us riding and showed us many things.”

“He did not go away and leave us during the whole time.”