Meredith Webber - Sheikh, Children's Doctor...Husband

‘I’ve heard of it, of course, but I don’t think I’ve ever smelt it,’ Alex said, and Hafa smiled.

‘It is special to us,’ she replied, but didn’t explain any more than that, simply leading Alex out of the suite of rooms and along new corridors.

What seemed like a hundred women were gathered in a huge room, most of them seated on carpets on the floor, a great swathe of material spread across the floor in front of them, the material loaded with silver and brass platters piled high with fruit and nuts.

Hafa led Alex to where Samarah sat at what would be the head if there were a table. Samarah waved her to sit down beside her, greeting Alex with a light touch of her hands, clasping both of Alex’s hands together.

‘Tomorrow we will bury my son, my Bahir,’ Samarah told her, her voice still hoarse with the tears she must have shed in private. ‘You would feel out of place in the traditional ceremony so Hafa will look after you, but tonight we celebrate his existence—his life—and for this you must join us.’

‘I am honoured,’ Alex told her, and she meant it, for although she’d only known Samarah a short time, she’d heard many tales about this beloved son.

Serving women brought in more silver plates, placing one in front of each of the seated women, then huge steaming bowls of rice, vegetables and meat appeared, so many dishes Alex could only shake her head. Samarah served her a little from each dish, urging her to eat, using bread instead of cutlery.

‘We do eat Western style with knives and forks as you do,’ she explained, ‘but tonight is about tradition.’

And as the meal progressed and the women began to talk, their words translated quietly by a young woman on Alex’s other side, she realised how good such a custom was, for Bahir was remembered with laughter and joy, silly pranks he’d played as a boy, mistakes he’d made as a teenager, kindnesses he’d done to many people.

It was as if they talked to imprint the memories of him more firmly in their heads, so he wouldn’t ever be really lost to them, Alex decided as she wandered through the rose garden when the meal had finished.

She’d eaten too much to go straight to bed, and the garden with its perfumed beauty had called to her. Now, as she walked among the roses she thought of Rob, and the bitterness she’d felt towards him since he’d taken his own life drained away. At the time she’d felt guilt as well as anger about his desperate act. She’d known he was convinced that finding out the extent of his indebtedness had hastened their mother’s death from cancer, but Alex had been too shocked by the extent of the debt and too devastated by David’s desertion to do more to support her brother.

Forget David—subsequent knowledge had proved he wasn’t worth being heartsick over—but now, among the roses, she found she could think of Rob, remembering rather than regretting. Here, in this peaceful, beautiful place, she began to reconstruct her brother in her mind, remembering their childhood, the tears and laughter they had shared. Here, among the roses, she remembered Rob’s ability to make their mother laugh, even when the burden of bringing up two children on her own had become almost too heavy for her to bear.

‘Oh, Rob,’ she whispered to the roses, and suddenly it didn’t matter that she’d had to ask the prince for money. She was doing it for Rob, and for the wife and daughter he’d so loved—doing it for the boy who’d shared her childhood, and had made their mother laugh …

THE last person Azzam expected to find in the rose garden was the stranger, but there she was, tonight a dark shadow in the moonlight, for her fair hair was hidden by a scarf. He watched her touching rose petals with her fingertips, brushing the backs of her hands against the blooms, apparently talking to herself for he could see her lips moving.

He stepped backwards, not wanting her to see him—not wanting to have to talk to anyone—but fate decreed he missed the path, his sandal crunching on the gravel so the woman straightened and whipped round, seeming to shrink back as she caught sight of him.

‘I’m sorry, maybe I shouldn’t be here,’ she said, and her voice sounded muted—tear filled?

‘There is no reason why you shouldn’t be here,’ he told her, and although he’d been certain he didn’t want to talk to anyone when he’d sought the solitude of the courtyard, he found himself drawn towards her.

‘You like the roses?’ he asked as he came closer.

‘They are unbelievable,’ she said, voice firmer now. ‘The perfume overwhelms me. At home it’s hard to find a rose with perfume. The new ones seem to have had it bred out of them. Not that we can grow roses where I live—not good ones—the humidity gives them black spot.’

Azzam found himself smiling. How disconcerting was that? Was it simply relief that all the details of the funeral were completed that he found a conversation about perfume and black spot on roses a reason to smile?

‘The same humidity that triggered my mother’s asthma?’ he said, coming closer, smelling the perfume of the roses for himself, breathing in the scented air, releasing it slowly, relaxing, but only slightly, made wary by this unexpected shift in his mood …

She returned his smile as she said, ‘That’s it,’ and made to move away.

He was about to put out his hand to stop her—though why he couldn’t say—when she paused, turned back towards him.

‘I had dinner with your mother and her women friends a little earlier,’ she said quietly. ‘I found it very moving that they all offered her their memories of Bahir, as if giving her gifts to help her grief. He must have been a very special person.’

Azzam knew the women gathered at this time, but offering gifts of memories? He hadn’t thought of their behaviour in quite that way. He studied the woman in front of him, surprised by her perception, and caught, again, in his own memories of his twin.

‘Bahir, the dazzling, the brilliant.’

The words slipped almost silently from his lips, while pain gripped his heart.

‘The dazzling, the brilliant?’

The woman echoed the words and Azzam hauled his mind back into gear. He should have walked away, but perhaps talking to a stranger might ease his pain, whereas talking to his family forced him to carry theirs as well.

‘It is what his name means in our language,’ he told her, and saw her shake her head as if in wonder, then she looked up at him, her eyes a shining silver in the moonlight.

‘And your name?’ she asked. ‘Azzam?’

‘My name is less lofty, Azzam means determined, resolute.’

Her lips curled into a smile, and it was his imagination that the ground seemed to move beneath his feet.

‘I am sure you are that,’ she said. ‘When your mother spoke of you, she made it sound as if you were the one who got things done—as if your brother might have had the vision, but you were the practical one who could make things happen. She spoke of a hospital you were building—a hospital for children.’

She was beguiling him—though it couldn’t be deliberate, for how could she have known he’d seek refuge in the rose garden?

He set his suspicions aside as his disappointment about the hospital flooded his being and forced words from his lips.

‘It was to be a special hospital for children, built to accommodate the families so they do not have to be separated from their sick child. It must be a frightening place, for a child, a large, impersonal hospital, although I know these days all hospitals try to make the children’s wards bright and special. In my mind it needed to be more—low set for a start, maybe two or three levels, not a towering, impersonal, corridor-littered monolith.’