Married to the Sheikh (3 page)

“You want to drive there every day in your Jeep? It will be hours and hours of driving. Won’t you be tired? Wouldn’t it be better to stay here instead?”

Sarah had wondered about the commute as it was several hours each way, but it wasn’t impossible. “I can manage. I know people who have worse commutes back home in England. If I have to work late one night, I can always stay in my flat in the capital.” Sarah had moved some of her things to the encampment, but she still had the apartment that she rented near the hospital.

“What kind of man do you think I am? Do you really think I’m going to write a letter that would allow my wife to travel about the country on her own and even live by herself in a big city where any strange man could come and take her? No! You’ll stay here where I can look after you.”

“But Akbar, you told me yourself that you’d never force me into anything I didn’t want to do, that I was free to do as I wish. I thought I was your desert rose.” He’d told her that she was as beautiful and as rare as a desert rose, and like a desert rose she should be free to grow and flourish where she pleased.

“You are my desert rose and your roots are here now with the Al-Zafir tribe. It’s you who wants to transplant yourself, not me. This is where you belong and where you’ll stay.”

Sarah couldn’t believe that he really thought that she should give up her job. “Akbar, please, just write the letter,” she asked again.

“I’ll never write a letter that means you won’t be here as my wife.”

Sarah looked into his large brown eyes and saw that he was serious. Trying desperately to hold back her tears, she walked out of his tent and off to her own.

That night, for the first time since they’d been married, they slept apart. Sarah lay in her tent and he remained in his. And so it went on for several days. After a week, Fatima asked whether she could come in and speak to her. Sarah liked her mother-in-law and was tired of her own company, so she accepted the request.

“You haven’t come out for a week now,” Fatima said, laying a brown, weather-beaten hand on Sarah’s shoulder. “Don’t worry. At first it can be difficult being a wife, but you’ll soon get used to your new life.”

Sarah took her mother-in-law’s callused hand in her own. She wondered whether her own soft, slender hands would soon be rough and callused like Fatima’s. “But this isn’t what I thought it would be like,” Sarah said. “Akbar is being so difficult.”

“Men make demands on their wives that women have to accept.” Fatima patted Sarah’s hand.

“But I can’t accept what he’s asking me to do, or rather not do.”

Fatima looked worried and took hold of both of Sarah’s hands. “Is my son asking you to do profane acts at night? Is he beating you? Many women have to suffer such things. Sometimes it’s better to be a widow.”

Fatima’s own husband had died many years ago and Sarah wondered what she might have suffered at his hands. At the Women’s Hospital, Sarah had seen women come in with horrific injuries that their husbands inflicted on them. However, under local law, the wife was officially the property of her husband and there was little that a woman could do to defend herself legally. Even in cases of murder, if the man could prove that he was safeguarding the family honour, he would almost always get away with it. However, Sarah knew that things would be different between her and Akbar, or at least she’d thought so until this morning.

“No, Fatima, Akbar isn’t that type of man. He doesn’t hurt me physically. I would never let him.” However, he was hurting her psychologically by refusing to let her work and there seemed to be very little that she could do about it.

Fatima let go of Sarah’s hands in relief. “I didn’t think my son was like that. So why are you upset? Why do you stay in here all alone?” Fatima asked. Then she sat bolt upright as if she’d had a flash of insight. “He’s thinking of taking another wife, isn’t he? Sometimes men get a taste for weddings. It’s Rasha, isn’t it? The slut! I knew she was up to something, the way she wiggles her hips every time she walks past Akbar’s tent. She thinks I don’t notice, but I know what she’s up to. She knows she could never be his first wife, but a second wife… Men are so weak! A flutter of eyelashes and a few sweet words, and then, bang!” Fatima clapped her hands together. “They are caught in a trap like a fly in a jar of honey.”

“I have no idea who Rasha is.” Sarah had never heard of the girl and it certainly hadn’t crossed her mind that she might have a rival.

“Rasha is my granddaughter, Minna’s cousin, but sometimes I am embarrassed to acknowledge her, the way she flirts and behaves in front of the men here. The sooner she is married off the better.”

Sarah now knew who her mother-in-law was referring to. Rasha was a tall, strikingly beautiful girl in her late teens with coal black eyes, which she outlined in dark smoky kohl. She wore a beautifully cut black abaya that highlighted rather than concealed her voluptuous curves and she sashayed about in it in such a way that the men in the camp couldn’t help but notice her.

Rasha had completely ignored Sarah ever since she’d first arrived in the camp, but Sarah presumed this was because Rasha was Minna’s cousin. Sarah and Minna were not exactly friends, as Sarah had opposed Minna’s wedding on the mistaken belief that she was marrying her blood cousin. It had never occurred to Sarah that Rasha ignored her because she was jealous.

“So Rasha wants to marry Akbar?” Sarah asked.

“Don’t worry. Even if she does, the first wife is always the most important. She’ll never have your status in the Al-Zafir tribe and who knows; maybe she’ll take some of the pressure off you to please your husbandat night?”

The thought of another woman sleeping with Akbar made Sarah feel sick. Images flooded into her mind of Akbar doing all the things that he did to her in bed, but with the sensuous Rasha instead. He’d never said anything about another wife or getting married again. She knew that under local law, men were allowed to take up to four wives, but few people did and she never thought that Akbar would. They had been married less than a month; surely he wasn’t thinking of marrying someone else? However, he hadn’t come to her tent for almost a week. She thought it was because he knew she was angry with him, and he was waiting for her to come to him, but maybe she misunderstood the situation. Maybe he wasn’t waiting for her at all. Maybe he wasn’t sleeping with her because he was with Rasha.

It was useless sitting in her tent, speculating. She had to speak to Akbar and find out what was going on.

Sheikh Akbar laughed so hard that tears rolled down his face. “You think that I’ve been spending time with Rasha!” Akbar wiped the tears from his eyes with the edge of his sleeve. “You’re already a true Bedouin woman after less than one month of marriage! You’ve spent the last few days in the company of the other women in the camp and now you are full of accusations and local gossip.”

Sarah stood in front of him wondering whether she’d been mistaken, or whether Akbar was a very good actor. “Rasha is very attractive.”

“Attractive like a weed when there are no other plants. But now I have a desert rose, so why would I pay any attention to the weeds?”

“So you did find her attractive before you met me?”

Akbar got up from a pile of dark red cushions and came towards Sarah. He placed his hands firmly on her shoulders and looked directly at her. “And before you met me, my desert rose, did you ever once find another man attractive?”

Sarah didn’t know what to say. Akbar had never asked her about her previous boyfriends. Although she hadn’t been in a relationship for several years before she met him, she could hardly say that she’d never had one. There was a cute boy at school that she went out with for a couple of years until it fizzled out when she went away to college. At medical school, most of her time was taken up with studying, but she still found time to date several guys, including one, James, who she lived with for several months until they had a huge row about politics and decided to part ways. However, she didn’t feel that she could tell Akbar any of this, especially as Bedouin women were expected to be chaste virgins on their wedding day.

Akbar tightened his grip on her shoulders. “You refuse to answer me, so I’ll assume that this isn’t something that would be appropriate for me to know about. I’ll respect your privacy on this matter and consider the discussion closed.” He let go of her and walked away. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I have some business with my men to attend to.” He sat back down on his cushions.

Sarah couldn’t see anything that looked like work, though in the sheikh’s case, work probably meant talking to the other men about such things as camels, guns, and the other tribes. However, Sarah wasn’t going to let Akbar dismiss her so easily. She knew that he’d put her on the spot asking her about past boyfriends to stop her asking him anymore questions about Rasha. However, that didn’t mean that he could just ignore her now; there was still the much more important issue about her going to work.

“Akbar, are you going to write that letter?”

“Letter? What letter?”

How could he not know what she was referring to? “The letter about my job. The letter saying that I can work at the Women’s Hospital.”

“I’ve already told you, I won’t write any such letter. Why do you want to work there? There’s plenty for you to do here as my wife and soon as the mother of my sons.” He winked at her and patted the cushion next to him, implying that she should lie down next to him.

Sarah wasn’t going to let herself be distracted and stood her ground. “I’m a doctor and I want to continue practising as one. Why won’t you let me?”

“I never said I wouldn’t let you be a doctor. You’re a very good doctor and I think it’s important that you continue to work as one.”

“Yes, but you only want me to work here in the camp.”

“There is plenty for you to do here, but you are free to come and go as you please. You still have your own Jeep, don’t you? All I’m saying is that I’m not going to write that letter.”

“Okay, I’ll go and get another job. I’m sure that there are lots of clinics that would be grateful to have a fully trained female doctor on their staff.”

“Be careful. Remember this is a dangerous country and people have been known to get kidnapped.”

Sarah wasn’t sure if he was being serious, or if he was just teasing her about how they first met.

“It might take me a few days, so I’ll stay at my flat in the capital. Would you like to come with me?” Sarah asked in an attempt to be conciliatory.

“What would I do in the city? Listen to the beeping of cars and trucks? Fight my way through the crowds in the marketplace? Haggle with some thief over the price of a few mangy camels? No, thank you, I’d much rather stay here in the peace and beauty of the desert.”

“I’ll be back soon.” However, instead of leaving the tent, Sarah stepped towards him. He still wouldn’t write the letter, but she was grateful that at least he wasn’t going to stop her from working altogether. Maybe she would find a better job with a nicer boss and she hated the thought of leaving him on bad terms. She looked at him and was again amazed at how sexy he was. She bent down to offer him a kiss. As she did so, he put his arms around her waist and eased her down onto the cushions. It wasn’t long before they were doing more than just kissing. However, it would take a lot more than a couple of hours of passion to stop Sarah from driving out of the camp and off to the capital in search of work.

“You have a very impressive CV, Dr. Greenwich. What made you leave the Women’s Hospital?” the woman behind the desk asked. The desk was covered in files and papers. There were no signs of any computers and Sarah presumed that the clinic couldn’t afford them, forcing the staff to keep all the records, including patient details, on paper.

“I left for personal reasons,” Sarah replied. She knew it sounded lame, but she didn’t want to lie. However, she was reluctant to tell the truth.

“I see,” the interviewer replied. She was an older, local woman who looked tired and overworked. Her name was Alaa Al-Mashid and she wore a gauzy black scarf over her hair that she kept on adjusting. No matter how much she folded, tucked, and tied it, it refused to stay on and kept slipping back, revealing wispy dark hair with a large amount of grey in it.

“I’m surprised that a doctor of your background and ability would be willing to work in a clinic like this. You won’t have the facilities that you had at the Women’s Hospital. In fact, we have very few facilities at all. It’s all I can do sometimes to ensure that we have a basic supply of medicines, bandages, and syringes.” Alaa looked around her office. It desperately needed a new coat of paint, but Sarah guessed that repainting was very low on the clinic’s list of priorities.

“I am willing to take on a challenge and would appreciate to chance to work here.”

“It’s not everyday that a Western-trained female doctor who can speak Arabic walks through my door, so I’d be foolish to turn you away, but I’ll need to put you on probation for the first three months and the salary will be less than what you’re probably used to.”

“Thank you so much!” She guessed that the probation was because of the suspicious way in which she left her last job and she guessed that the clinic would make enquiries. However, she knew that the Women’s Hospital would give her good references. “When can I start?” she asked.