Three Daughters: A Novel (32 page)

Victor Madden was at least three inches taller than Samir. He smiled before he spoke and before Samir introduced himself. “Are you looking for me?” he asked politely.

“Yes, I’m Nadia’s cousin, Samir Saleh.” He held out his hand. “May I come in?”

“Of course.” He lifted one eyebrow and smiled ruefully. “I’m sure Nadia will be pulling out new relatives for years to come, but I must say you don’t resemble the rest. Your accent is different. Please sit down. Would you like a brandy or something? You must live abroad.”

Samir remained standing. Everything he had been prepared to say sounded pompous and overblown in the presence of this convivial, sophisticated man. Finally, while Madden fiddled with a bottle and glasses, he got it out. “I’m here to persuade you not to marry my cousin.”

To his surprise, Victor Madden neither turned around nor stopped what he was doing. “Here we are.” He set down a crystal decanter and two glasses. “Please sit down. Over there, that’s the most comfortable chair.”

“She’s not prepared to cope with your way of life. Not that she isn’t strong-minded and capable, but Nadia’s strength comes from rebellion. She needs to prove something.”

Victor took a long sip of his drink. “You think she’s marrying me to prove something?”

“Exactly. I don’t doubt that she’s infatuated, but deep down, it’s your total difference that really makes you so attractive to her.”

“Well, now, that doesn’t say much for me, does it? Or for her. It makes us out a couple of misguided fools.” His tone was more amused than bitter.

Samir was silent. After a moment he said softly, “I’ve no doubt that you love her but I’m not sure you’d love what she’d become if you took her away from here. She’d become dependent and insecure. She’s only a young girl. Deep inside she’s been shaped by our values. That peculiar English brittleness toward everything sentimental would confuse her. She would make the fatal mistake of loving you too well while you would love her superficially.”

This time Victor was silent and at a loss. “Touché,” he whispered. “Touché.”

She left the Hotel Fast fighting back tears and almost running to her office. Samir had thought she was a spineless idiot to be easily persuaded. With each step another more incriminating aspect of his behavior hit her, and by the time she reached her office, hot angry tears were streaming down her cheeks. She regretted having gone with him at all, but—and for this she had only herself to blame—she had been so happy to see him. She had been waiting to share her news with him and seek his special approval.

When he had appeared at her desk, her heart had leaped. He was such a magnificent sight and—this knowledge hurt most of all—she was not immune to the most powerful man of the clan. Now she felt like such a fool. He hadn’t come out of friendship or because he had missed her. He had come out of arrogance and conceit. He was going to single-handedly bring her to her senses. It was so humiliating. It implied her needs and desires were of no consequence. Only his will mattered. Only he had the power to decide her fate. Oh, God, she couldn’t stop crying. She would never change her mind. Never! Finally, her tears diminished and she turned back to the pages on her desk that needed to be transcribed. In two weeks this would all be over. She would be beyond Samir and his power to hurt her.

A few days later she told her mother she had changed her mind—she wanted the smallest wedding possible. There had been no proper betrothal because of the circumstances; Victor had simply asked Nadeem for her hand and when it was granted, he had opened a bottle of champagne and poured a glass for all present. It was civilized but simple, with none of the excess of feasting and elaborate sword dancing and suggestive songs. No troupe of triumphant relatives carried her trousseau up the Jerusalem Road. She and Victor had together picked out a few pieces of jewelry, including a wide gold band. Nadeem had written to his old friend M. Freneau for a trousseau and it had arrived through the mail. There was no showy red-striped Bethlehem wedding gown and gay jacket. A local seamstress made a dress from a design Nadia picked from a magazine. It was high-necked silk taffeta, buttoning down the back and ending in a bell skirt that came to her ankles. The headdress was a simple tiara with a short net veil. It was only at the last minute that her mother asked her for some small token of tradition.

“Please, Nadia,” she pleaded, after her daughter was dressed, “wear my veil. The tiara and net are so different from anything we’re used to. My face was covered entirely. No one saw me and I saw no one until after the ceremony. I haven’t asked much of you, but it won’t hurt to have this small bit of tradition.”

Nadia felt such a pang of conscience. She had not allowed her mother any of the usual satisfactions connected with a wedding. “Of course, Mama,” she said in a soft voice.

She asked Aunt Zareefa’s older girl, Rheema, who was happily married, to be her matron of honor, and Victor was bringing a colleague from the office. There was a moment that morning when she felt that all the details were getting away from her and she had felt peculiar, as if she didn’t quite believe that she and Victor would be together that very night.

At the last moment, her father brought Gala to take her to the church. The horse was so old that he walked slowly. “You don’t have to do it.” He shrugged and looked sheepish. Her dress was not meant for sitting atop a horse, but he had seen it done this way all his life.

“You’ll have to lift me up to him,” she said, smiling down at her father, “and lead him very slowly.”

So in the end, she began her marriage in the age-old tradition—atop a horse, a sword in her hand. When she entered the Roman Catholic Church of the Holy Family, the oldest church in the village, where once the donkeys had roamed at will during the ceremonies, she wore a heavily embroidered veil that covered her face entirely—as a favor to her mother.

At the entrance to the church, she felt her bridegroom take her by the elbow and lead her to the altar. From beneath the veil, the smells of jasmine and oleander drifted up, and she took a deep breath and relaxed. She fell a thrill of adventure and squeezed the hand that held hers and felt the reassuring pressure returned. She was so glad it would all end now and she could begin her life. She heard the priests entering the church and smelled the contents of the censer swung by the altar boy who preceded them. The ritual began.

Scripture was read, partly in Latin and partly in Arabic. And finally there came that moment when rings that had been touched to the head and lips of the groom and slipped momentarily beneath Nadia’s veil were placed on their hands and then changed about. Flower wreaths were placed on their heads. The Bible was brought down between them, dividing their joined fingers. Then priests led the bridal party in a march around the church with all the guests following. There was nothing left but for the priest to make the final pronouncement: “You are wedded until death do you part in the yes of God and this Church and man. Those whom God has joined together let no man pull asunder. Go and may God be with you.”

A gun was fired outside the church and Nadia, startled at this unexpected report, threw back her veil in alarm. The church was totally still. The first face she saw was that of the man in whose fingers her hand was entwined. It was Samir. She cried out, “You! Where’s Victor?” She ran toward the door, stopping before her mother and father. “What have you done with Victor? Oh, no. No, no, no!” She finally understood and began to shake. “Mama, you did this to me? Where is Victor? Mama!”

Miriam looked away and spoke in a leaden voice. “He sailed yesterday for England.”

“For England? What did you tell him? What did you do? Mama”—she shrieked and the sound echoed back into the stone church—“it’s not true.” She was gagging with pent-up sobs. “Baba, is it true?” Nadeem nodded, looking so grieved she almost embraced him. Instead she took the veil that she still had in her hand and threw it to the floor in front of her mother. “Here is your veil!” She stomped on it with her foot. “I don’t want to see you. Any of you!” She picked up her skirts and ran out, mounted Gala, and rode toward home. No one followed her. What was there to say? There was a little valise that Nadia had packed to bring with her to the hotel, and she picked it up and remounted. It was strange, but through it all she knew precisely where she would go. There was only one place to go.

She would go to the stone cottage at the orchards. No one would be there, for the harvest was still a month away. She would be able to think there. She would be able to ride and think and plan her escape. Not for a moment did she stop to remember that the place of refuge she so eagerly sought belonged to her new husband.

My dear,

The pain of what you see as a callous rejection will blind your understanding of what I’m about to say. I’ve really acted in your best interest. My darling girl, I wouldn’t have brought you happiness.

By nature I’m a man who walks easiest without attachments. This dashing, cheerful fellow, when held down by another’s needs, turns moody, sarcastic, cold, and ultimately mean-spirited. I deluded myself into thinking that you were young enough to be independent and resourceful. We would each go our own way and come together when it suited us. But in my heart, I know this would prove untrue. I was using you as insurance to outwit the loneliness that hits us dashing fellows of a certain age. That was callous. You deserve a full life with children and an adoring husband who will be devoted to your happiness. You deserve your family and friends and culture to give you strength and support. In time, after our return to England you would have felt cheated and displaced. It would have been a lonely household, for although we never discussed it, I doubt that I could reconcile myself to beginning another family.

You are a woman of depth and passion and dignity. Please find it in your heart to forgive your devoted friend,

Victor

She tore the letter into tiny pieces and rode out beyond the scrub to the barren desert. There, still atop her horse, she picked out each bit of paper out of her pocket until all of the hateful letter was scattered to the wind. She had given herself to a man who had thought of her as no more than a convenience.

Once rid of the letter, she lifted her shoulders. “No more tears for Victor Madden,” she said aloud. On her way back to the cottage, she stopped at the small paddock where several foals, no more than six months old, were cavorting. “They’re so young,” she said to the trainer.

“Yes, madam. Some are still babies, but still, they’ve got work to do. In the paddock they develop their shoulder muscles. My name is Farid.”

“Hello. What happens when they’re no longer babies?”

“The older ones go into the rectangular paddock twice a day to try and outrace the gazelles. They learn what competition is all about. They build up their quarters and hocks.”

“Do they all make it?”

“Oh, yes. Out of this stock, yes. Some are stronger than others, but by eighteen months they’re ready to be saddled.”

“Could I help you? Could I work with them?”

“Of course, madam,” he said respectfully. She was puzzled by his deference. No one had ever called her madam. “Mary Thomas alerted me that you might be coming here and we were prepared.” It wasn’t until she was tucked in bed that night that it hit her. She was the madam. She was Madam Saleh, mistress of everything. All these splendid animals belonged to her.

Farid patiently answered all her questions, frankly surprised and gratified that a woman took an interest in his work. Nadia spent all of the mornings and most of the afternoons grooming and exercising the horses. She stroked them and talked to them and cheered when they outran the gazelles. The rest of the time she rode all around the property, past the orchards and olive groves, eastward. There was a transition area where the cultivated land merged with the land of the Bedouin farmers who were the bridge between the town and the desert. The sheik had not been ashamed of cooperating with his neighbors and was in partnership with them in the horse-breeding business.

The Salehs had large herds that they grazed farther and farther afield as the grass grew scarce. Occasionally while riding Nadia would come upon a lone shepherd—and once, a shepherdess, who seemed so young that she offered to take her home, but the girl smiled with embarrassment. “No, madam, I must stay with the herd.”

“But where do you sleep? How do you eat?”

“In the tent.” She pointed to a piece of canvas draped over four poles. “There are dates in my pack and hard cheese. I have a goat for milk and bake bread here every day.” She dragged out of piece of sheet metal and placed it over some rocks sitting in a pile of ashes. She was proud of her resourcefulness; no one had ever been interested in how she managed.

“Suppose a wild animal comes?” Nadia wasn’t convinced of the girl’s safety. How could she sleep at night, knowing this waif was out here in the wilderness at the mercy of wolves and foxes? It was totally desolate.

“My dogs warn me.”

“Wolves can rip the dogs apart.”