The Fierce and Tender Sheikh

“What is that?” she asked Sharif, pointing.

He glanced at her, half smiling at her wondering indignation. “That is the New Palace compound. Ghasib hired foreign architects. It took years to complete—it may not have been finished when you left Bagestan.”

“It looks like the sugar cubes from a relief plane at one of the camps,” she observed. “A huge box broke and the sugar spilled everywhere in the mud, in piles. We stood around, watching it dissolve into the earth, wondering who had sent us sugar cubes. Men shouted, ‘But where is the mint tea to go with it?’ The little children were so hungry, they couldn’t be stopped from eating it, and the mud, too. It was filthy. Many got dysentery as a result. Some died.”

Sharif listened, knowing that there were many such stories behind the tragic eyes, which now fixed him with urgent demand. “Why did they do that? We needed flour for bread, we needed food. Why did they send us sugar cubes? Men said it was a deliberate insult, to show us that the world did not care.”

“Bureaucracy creates many such stupidities,” he said, shaking his head in despair, for how was that an explanation?

She gazed out the window again as the New Palace disappeared behind them.

“Why didn’t he make something beautiful?”

Sharif laughed aloud, for the New Palace, when it was built, had been hailed as the architect’s “creative modernist blending of the influences of East and West.” But as with the emperor’s clothes, the child was right. It was a solidly ugly fortress, white marble notwithstanding.

“Ghasib was a modernist. He admired the architecture of the West. It would not look so grotesque in the capitals of Europe, perhaps.”

“No, because everything is grotesque there!” Shakira agreed emphatically. “What do they know of living? There they keep fresh water in their toilets! Did you know that? You pee into a big bowl of water! What waste! In the camps when I was thirsty and there was no water, I used to tell myself, well, today you are not drinking the water that you wasted in the toilet in England on May the sixteenth. And tomorrow there will be no water again, and then you will not drink what you wasted on May the seventeenth.”

She spoke as one who has returned to a place of sanity after years in the asylum, and he grieved a little, for those who expect perfection, even of a newly reborn country striving for the best, are doomed to disappointment. Sharif knew for a fact that there were flush toilets in the Jawad Palace. He wondered how Ash and the rest of the family would react to this little firebrand coming among them, with her uncompromising vision and straight talk.

Farida and Jamila sat down beside them. They were coming in to land, and it was not necessary for him to give her an answer. The stewardess began helping Farida fasten her belt, and Sharif did the same for Jamila. Shakira disdained help. Asking for help would be to show weakness.

“And now you will live in a palace and be a princess!” Farida said, to fill the empty waiting time before landing. Her voice held no trace of envy. “To think that my son was a princess all the time!”

She laughed loudly. “My husband will not believe it when I tell him. Oh, Excellency, how wonderful it will be to go home! Will my husband be there? Perhaps he is already building the house again. He is a very good provider. We pick and dry medicinal herbs to sell on the mainland. What a good husband he is! Are you married, Excellency?”