ALEXANDRA SELLERS - Beloved Sheikh

Some had even suggested that the classical writers were confused, or inaccurate . . . but Gordon had never doubted them. Gordon had researched Iskandiyar throughout his career, and one day had stumbled on a much later reference to the fact that, “in her lifetime Queen Halimah of Barakat built bridges and tunnels and many public buildings. She changed the course of rivers, even the mighty River Sa’adat, when it suited her...”

That was the clue he needed. If the course of the river had been changed eighteen hundred years after the city had been built, then it followed that the city’s ruins would no longer be on the banks of the river.

By good luck and good timing, Zara was taking Gordon’s classes during the time that he found a possible site in the desert south of the river, and by even better chance she had graduated by the time his funding was in place. And best of all, he had offered her a place on the team.

Until they had uncovered the massive marble lion from the sands of time, there could be certainty only in their hearts. But the classical authors had described Iskandiyar’s “Lion Gates,” and now it was proven almost beyond doubt. This was a city founded by Alexander the Great on his victorious Eastern march more than two thousand, three hundred years ago. Not long after his conquest here, he would weep because there were no more worlds to conquer.

And now here she was, finding history and making it at the same time Zara gazed out at the white pillars that shone so harshly in the fierce sun. She wondered sometimes about Alexander’s tears on that occasion. Had there been a hollow inside him that he could ignore as long as he kept on the move, kept fighting, kept conquering all he met and saw? Was it a lack in his own life rather than the lack of new worlds that had made him weep?

Zara wasn’t thirty-three, the age by which Alexander had conquered the then known world, and although to be associated with such exciting success was a wonderful piece of luck for someone so young, she still had plenty of worlds left to conquer. But sometimes she had the urge to weep, because in unguarded moments her life seemed empty. She didn’t understand why. It was as if she had a voice inside telling her she had missed something, had left something out, as though there was something else she should have done or be doing.

She loved her work. She had always loved history, right from the moment she had understood what history was. She enjoyed the mental exercise of trying to understand old ways, the things that had motivated cultures long disappeared. As a child she had been taken on a class field trip to a new archaeological dig on a site in downtown Toronto, and she could still remember her thrilled amazement when she realized that history could be touched, smelt, dug up out of the ground. From that moment she had known what she wanted to do with her life.

Nothing at all stood in her way. She got the marks, she was accepted at the University of Toronto, and Gordon had recognized her commitment and taken her under his wing, as he had several promising students before her, who now had reputations of their own in the field. She couldn’t have asked for a better start to her professional career than to work under a man of Gordon’s calibre on a find of such importance.

Her personal life was comfortable. She had had an easy, fairly happy childhood, and had come through the teenage years with only a couple of years of tears and slamming doors and impossible parents before things had righted themselves. Zara dated only casually, and kept things light. Of course one day she hoped to fall in love, but she was in no hurry.

And yet . . . like Alexander, she wanted to weep.

Why? What was missing from her life? What did she want?

For no reason at all, she was suddenly remembering the piercing eyes of the bandit chief as he stared at her on that morning a few days before. There had been another world in his eyes, a world far from her own neat, comfortable existence. That dark, hungry gaze had promised her a passion, a way of living she had never even dreamed of... till now.

For a moment she thought of what it would have meant if he had come after her... swung her up on his horse and ridden away with her. They said he might try to take a hostage, but he had not looked at her like a man who sees a potential hostage. Zara shivered at the memory of how he had looked at her.

She had run harder, faster than she had ever run in her life to escape him. Her heart had never beaten so hard. She closed her eyes, shutting out the glare of the sun on the desert, but the bandit’s eyes were still with her.

Two

The preparations at the sheikh’s tent went on all afternoon. Helicopters flew in, disgorging lines of people carrying food and supplies, and took them away again; men came and went in Jeeps and on horseback. Except for a moment when it seemed as if the half-erected tent would blow away in a sudden breeze, no shouting was heard, there was no running. Everything was done with an orderly calm and neatness that, as Lena said, made the archaeological team feel “sort of like a low-budget film.”

One thing the women were all agreed upon, and that was the necessity of dressing in their best for the feast. By common consent everyone downed tools early to take time to prepare. One of the volunteers produced an iron and asked if she could plug it into the generator lead. The other women fell on this with cries of delight.

“How wonderful! Whatever made you think of it, Jess?”

“I didn’t. My mom packed for me. I told her I’d never use it, but she insisted.”

“I kiss your mother. Please thank her from all of us in your next letter!”

“I don’t have an ironing board, though.”

“A towel! All we need is a towel on one of the tables...”

The men went away scratching their heads.

There were lineups for the shower and for the iron, and a lot of excited repartee as people dashed to and fro. Fortunately nearly everyone had something suitable to wear, since everyone had expected to be sampling the city nightlife of the Barakat Emirates some time or other during their stay. But some—the lucky ones—had what Gordon called “the full monty.” Including Gordon himself, who stunned everyone when he appeared just before time in white tie and tails and polished shoes.

“Can’t let the side down,” he said by way of explanation when the others fell back in amazement at this vision of British Establishment eccentricity.

“Gee, Gordon,” Lena said in stunned tones, “it’s just like one of those films—you wearing all that in the desert and all.”

Blonde Lena herself got the prize for feminine magnificence in a low-cut, blush pink dress under a matching gauzy pink georgette coat embroidered in the Eastern fashion with lots of silver thread.

But it was Zara who really stopped them in their tracks. Small and slender, wearing a beautifully simple, high-necked, long-sleeved white dress in heavy raw silk that hung straight and smooth to her bare brown feet in delicate gold sandals, her curling cloak of hair spilling over her shoulders and down her back, one gold bangle at her wrist, she was a vision. Lena eyed her with mock dismay.

“I dunno, you kinda make me feel overdone,” she observed plaintively. But a chorus of voices assured her that many men preferred the obvious, and large numbers of those who did were Oriental potentates.

“And me,” said one male voice. Greg moved to her side and mock-ferociously put an arm around her, leering down into her cleavage. “Any Oriental potentate is going to have to get past me first.”

“That’ll take about a minute,” another man observed.

Lena giggled and rolled her eyes. “Oh, Greg, as if I’d look at you if the prince wanted me!”