Desert Doctor, Secret Sheikh

‘This way.’

Telling Aisha where she’d be, she led Kam towards the food tent, squaring her shoulders and walking straighter as she recalled his upright posture and the slightly arrogant tilt of his head, wondering again about the blood of desert warriors…

The food tent was set up by a different volunteer aid organisation and stocked with tinned and dried foodstuffs. Most of the refugees collected food from the canteen but cooked and ate within their family groups, but those who had no families now ran the tent as a kind of cafeteria, providing hot water for tea and coffee and meals three times a day.

‘Smells good,’ Kam said as he entered.

‘Stew,’ Jenny explained. ‘Not made with goat but with canned corned beef and dried vegetables. It tastes much better than it sounds.’

‘Or you get very hungry out here in the desert and would eat anything,’ her companion said, and Jen suspected he was teasing her. But would he tease, this stranger with the profile that could have been used as a model for an artist to etch an emperor’s face on an ancient coin?

She had no idea and was slightly concerned that she’d even considered it because teasing, even gentle teasing, felt like personal attention…

The women tending the big kettles and stew pots handed them small glasses of tea and indicated they should sit while the bowls were filled with food.

Jenny lowered herself easily, used by now to this custom of sitting on one leg while the other was propped in front of her to use as an arm rest as she ate.

‘You adapt quickly to local customs?’ Kam said, half-teasing again as he nodded at the position she’d taken up.

‘These people have had thousands of years to work out the best way to sit while eating—why would I want to do otherwise?’

She sipped her strong, sweet tea—the sugar was added as the water boiled—and watched the shadow of a smile pass across his face, then he too sipped at the steaming liquid, raising his head to speak in another tongue to the woman who was putting food in front of him. Jenny knew they were words of thanks and praise because, rather than the guttural sounds of everyday talk, they had the soft, musical notes that, to Jen, always sounded more like spoken poetry than day-to-day language.

‘I may be able to sit properly,’ Jen told him, ‘but no matter how hard I try, I can’t get my “Thank you” to sound like you make it sound. I think it would take a lifetime to learn the Arabic language.’

‘And another lifetime, or two or three, to learn different tribal variations of it,’ Kam told her. ‘I can probably make myself understood to the people of the camp, but every tribe has words that are common only to it. Do you know that in Arabic there are eight hundred words for sword, three hundred for camel and two hundred for snake?’

‘Putting the sword—an instrument of death—at the top of the most useful word list?’

He studied her for a moment then smiled a real smile, one that lit up his rather stern face and revealed strong, even white teeth.

‘Definitely not. They have even more words for love.’

The huskiness was back in his voice, and Jen shivered as a strange sensation feathered down her spine.

She glanced at her companion, hoping her reaction hadn’t been obvious to him, and was pleased to see he’d turned his attention to the woman serving their meals, speaking again, perhaps telling her how good the food smelt.

Another of the women set a bowl of food in front of Jenny and handed her a thin round of bread.

‘Eat,’ she said, then smiled shyly, as if embarrassed by showing off the English word.

Jen returned the compliment by thanking her in Arabic, although she knew her pronunciation was hopeless—especially after hearing Kam’s fluid, rhythmic use of the same words.

They ate, Jen now adept at scooping up the food with her bread, holding it always in her right hand and using pieces of it as easily as she’d use cutlery at home. But as she ate uneasiness crept in, born of not knowing what to make of the stranger who already seemed so at home in the camp.

‘We shall check on our patient then sit outside for a while,’ he decreed, as if picking up on vibes she hadn’t realised she was giving out. ‘Today’s experience has probably made you think of other things that a proper medical clinic will need.’

‘I refuse to think about work while I’m eating,’ Jenny said, wiping the bread around her bowl to soak up the last bits of gravy. ‘Especially as we haven’t had dessert yet.’

As she spoke one of the women approached, a big metal dish of sheep’s milk yoghurt in her arms. She scooped some into Jenny’s bowl, handed her a spoon, then passed her a tin of golden syrup, a carton of which had somehow found its way into the camp’s supplies.

‘Best dessert in the world,’ Jen told Kam, scooping golden syrup onto her yoghurt. ‘Sweet and sour and very yummy. The women here think I’m mad!’

He watched her eat, shaking his head when the woman offered him yoghurt and Jenny urged the golden syrup on him, but she’d only taken a couple of mouthfuls when Rosana appeared, crawling across the floor of the tent and settling herself into Jenny’s lap. Now Jenny shared, spooning most of the treat into Rosana’s mouth, cuddling the little girl and talking to her all the time, although she knew Rosana didn’t understand a word she said.

‘She has no family?’ Kam asked as they left the tent, Rosana once again perched on Jenny’s hip.

‘Not that we can find. In fact, I think she might belong to one of the warring tribes or clans across the border.’

She paused, stopping beneath a spindly juniper tree, knowing questions could be considered rude but intrigued enough to ask anyway.

‘Having lived here, grown up here, do you know enough about these countries to understand the war that is going on over there?’

CHAPTER THREE

‘SUCH a simple question,’ Kam replied, ‘but it’s like asking me to tell you the history of the Bedouin in a couple of sentences. You know they are the nomadic tribes that roamed the deserts of the Arabian peninsula and north Africa, although in Africa there were Tuareg as well.’

His listener nodded, but it was the intensity in her eyes—her genuine interest and what seemed like a need to know—that spurred him on.

‘Originally people think there were three main tribes, but over the years these divided into many clans. Clans and tribes were headed by sheikhs, who were appointed by the elders of the tribe, although members of the one family were usually the ones chosen so in a way leadership was hereditary.’

‘And have they always fought or is it only recently that wars like the one over the border have been going on?’

Kam smiled at the ingenuousness of the question.

‘They’ve always fought,’ he admitted. ‘Often against invaders, especially infidels, but also against each other, one tribe sending hundreds of men on camels and on foot to raid another tribe’s camels. But the fighting had strict rules. You never attacked at night because Bedouin believe a man’s soul leaves his body at night and to attack then would be to attack a dead man. So they would attack early in the morning, which gave the men who’d lost the camels all day to give chase and maybe recapture their own stock.’

‘Giving them a sporting chance? It sounds more like a game than serious warfare,’ Jenny said, smiling at him.

To encourage him to keep talking?

Or because she was relaxed and happy in his company?

He gave a long inward sigh that he should even think such a thing. The problem was, he’d been too long without a woman, not wanting, since he’d returned to practice in Zaheer, to have the complications of a love affair while establishing himself at the hospital. Then there’d been his father’s illness and the suspicion that all was not well throughout the land, although until their father’s death, he and Arun had been unable to do anything about it.

Now they could, but first they had to know what needed to be done, hence his decision to visit the more remote areas. Once they had a clear picture of what was happening, they could plan for the future, and do what they could to right past wrongs and bring better conditions to the whole country, not just the city.

Another smothered sigh, because thinking of Arun had reminded Kam that between them they had to work out the succession. It would probably have to be him, he knew this in his heart. As well as being the elder, he doubted Arun would ever marry again, and children were important to their people and to the succession.

Very important!

Arun’s first wife, the gentle and beautiful Hussa, had died from complications of a burst appendix. Arun had been in the city, and his bride had been too shy and ill at ease in her new home in the family compound in the country to mention to anyone that she felt ill.

Arun had been devastated, but once over the loss had become a playboy, courting and escorting beautiful women of every nationality, determined to enjoy life his way but equally determined to remain unmarried, no matter how the women he bedded used their wiles.

But he, Kam, was talking warfare, not women, although thinking of Arun and Hussa and the succession had reminded him of another matter he had to sort out—that of finding a wife. As Zaheer’s ruler it was his duty to marry, and though he’d once dreamed of marrying for love, love had never found him, so now his mother was actively pursuing a wife search on his behalf…

Definitely better to think of history and camels and raiding parties than wives and marriage—besides which, Jenny was looking at him as if puzzled by the lengthy pause in his explanation.