Alexandra Sellers - The Fierce and Tender Sheikh

“Eater of the vomit of dogs!”

The lighter closed with an expensive click and Sharif Azad al Dauleh lifted his head and took the cigar out of his mouth.

“Let him go.”

At the sound of the cold command, the trucker’s eyes popped in disbelief. “What?” he demanded.

“You’re bigger than he is. And you can remember your last meal.”

“What’s that got to do with it? He could have killed us both! He’s a thief, too! Look at all this stuff—nicked, for sure!” cried the driver, indicating the litter of items on the ground.

“Let him go.”

“You’re out…”

Looking up into the taller man’s eyes, the driver hesitated. Arms crossed over his chest, eyes narrowed against the smoke, Sharif smiled. The boy, taking advantage of a slackened grip, broke free and limped past Sharif to shelter, panting, behind the open car door.

“I think you’re mistaken. You ran over a plastic bottle,” Sharif said.

There was a long moment of challenge. The trucker looked from the dark-eyed sheikh to the dark-eyed boy, and sneered.

“I get it. One of your own, is he?”

“Yes,” said Sharif softly. “One of my own.”

Something in his face made the other man step back. “Well, I don’t have time for this,” he blustered. “I’ve got a timetable!” He spat violently down at the boy’s strewn possessions, then turned and strode back towards his own vehicle.

A moment later the truck was roaring down the road again, as though trying to escape the smoke of its own exhaust.

Sharif Azad al Dauleh remained where he was for a moment, gazing out over the desert towards the barbed wire and the painful glitter of the metal roofs, trying to make sense of what he thought he’d seen. Maybe he’d had too much sun.

“Come out!” he ordered, without raising his voice.

He turned his head as the slim figure straightened from behind the door.

The boy looked starved. The bare arms under the baggy T-shirt sleeves were painfully thin, and the long neck and hollow cheeks only intensified the impression that he needed a square meal. But there was no mistaking the resemblance, once he had seen it.

“What’s your name?” Sharif asked softly, in Bagestani Arabic.

The boy looked at him, breathing hard, a wounded animal only waiting for the return of his strength to flee. At the question, his eyes went blank.

“I have a reason for asking,” Sharif prodded in an urgent voice.

In the same pithy language he had used with the trucker, the boy advised him on the precise placement of his reason and his question. The advice was colourful and inventive.

“Tell me your father’s name.”

For one unguarded moment, the boy’s face became a mask of grief. Then his eyes went blank again, and he shrugged in a to hell with you kind of way and limped painfully to pick up an orange. Sharif lifted his foot to free whatever the toy was, and for a moment the boy gave off a deep animal wariness, as if this might be a prelude to violence. He didn’t rank Sharif an inch higher than he did the trucker.

One eyebrow raised in dry comment on the boy’s suspicions, Sharif bent and picked up the object. The boy stowed the rest of the things in his pockets under the loose T-shirt, then stood a few feet from Sharif.

“It’s mine. Give it to me.”

Sharif took the cigar from his mouth. “Didn’t you steal it?”

“What do you care? I stole it, you didn’t. It’s mine. If you keep it, you’re a thief, too, no better than me. Give it to me.”

The boy was favouring his foot so carefully Sharif guessed the dance with the trucker had broken a bone. The important thing was to get him to a doctor. He would worry about the other later.

He tossed the object to the boy and jerked his head. “Get in the car.”

But the boy snatched it from the air, whirled and, not limping nearly so heavily now, made for the embankment.

“Don’t be a fool!” Sharif snapped. “You’re hurt! Let me take you to a doctor!”

His mouth stretched in a mocking smile, the boy flicked a backward glance. And with sunlight and shadow just so, his cheekbones and eyes again revealed that shape the Cup Companion knew so well.

“What’s your name? Who is your family?”

But the boy slithered down the slope and was running almost before he landed on the desert floor. A moment later, deft as an Aboriginal hunter, he had disappeared into the landscape.

“Is it you, my son? Did God bring you luck?”

Farida lay on the bed beside her baby, her sweat-damped dark hair loosely knotted in a scarf, trying to comfort the whimpering infant with a sugar-soaked knot of cloth. As Hani entered, the young mother looked up, wiping a hand over her wet face with a sigh. The room was at cooking temperature, though the only natural light came from a small barred window that was too high to see out.

The boy approached and began to draw things out from under his T-shirt. Chocolate bars, a bracelet, a child’s teething ring, oranges appeared in quick succession on the bed in front of Farida. The tired young mother smiled and reached out to turn the items over, one by one.

“How do you do it?” she asked, shaking her head in admiration.

The boy only shrugged and set down a few more items—some useful in themselves, some that would be traded. It was a foolish question: Hani managed things no one else dreamed of.

He was a born forager. Perhaps it was the elfin quickness, or simply long experience and luck, but Hani kept his family supplied while others went without. It had been a happy day for Farida when the boy had attached himself to her, for although he was young and slight, he had spent years in the camps, and he was tough, with the intelligence of a much older man. His speed and cunning often protected them where a grown man would have used brawn.

Probably he used his fluent English to fool the people in the shops. No one in the camp knew of his talent—and how useful that was! Hani always knew what was going on in the camp, simply by eavesdropping around the administrative office. It was he who had first heard the news of the Sultan’s emissary.

The boy brought one last item out of a pocket and dropped it on the bed. A black leather wallet.

Farida’s mouth formed an O as she saw it: Hani didn’t often pick pockets. The wallet was obviously expensive, made of fine, soft leather. Farida reached for it, and her fingers found the cash inside with a little sigh. Quickly she counted it, and smiled. Oh, how easy such an amount would make their lives, for days, weeks!

She passed the money to Hani, who reached for the plastic yogurt container, stuffed with a rusty pot scratcher, a bar of green soap and a sponge, that sat on the little stand between a dishwashing bowl and a bucket of water. He lifted out the inner pot and tucked the money inside the larger pot, then carefully restored the inner container and set the pot down again. Their bank.

“Barakullah! What is this?” Farida hissed. She stared down at the gold seal and the delicate calligraphy of the business card she had found in the wallet. “‘His Excellency Sharif Azad al Dauleh…’” As she understood, her mouth fell open in an almost comical expression of mingled astonishment and dismay. “You have robbed a Bagestani diplomat?” she cried in a hoarse whisper, for the walls were not thick. “How? Where was he? How did you get close to him?”

Hani scooped a dipperful of water from the bucket to rinse the blue teething ring over the bowl, then splashed his face and neck with small, bony hands. He handed the rubber ring to the baby.

“On the road. His car was behind the truck I hitched a ride on. He might have killed me, but his reflexes were very fast.”