‘Women do not serve strangers,’ Salah said. ‘In the morning probably some will come and show you their craft work.’
‘Lovely! What sort of things do they make?’
‘Dolls, pottery, maybe. You will have to wait and see.’
Very soon food was laid before them.
‘Is it the desert air, or is this food totally delicious?’ Desi demanded, falling on it with a reckless abandon that she would have to pay for by eating starvation rations soon.
‘We haven’t eaten since lunch,’ Salah pointed out mildly.
‘Yes, but I’m so used to going without food, it shouldn’t get to me like this,’ Desi said. ‘I’ve been eating far too much since I got here; at this rate I’ll have to fast completely for a week!’
‘Not on this trip, please. The desert is dangerous enough without that.’
Desi nodded, taking his point, and consciously slowed her eating.
‘They use so much oil!’ she protested. ‘In the palace, too. Is that what makes it so flavourful? How on earth does everybody in this country not turn into an elephant?’
Salah laughed aloud. ‘Olive oil,’ he corrected her, as if he were talking about gold. ‘Olive oil is very healthy, as well as giving its delicious flavour to food. We grow our own species of olive. Barakati olive oil is rare but very prized in the world, and very little is exported. Its flavour is excellent.’
When the last of the food had been presented, they were politely left with only each other and the stars. Above them a shooting star rushed along a golden pathway to oblivion.
Suddenly the night air was heavy around them, weighted with awareness. And now that there was nothing to cloak it, their hungry need rose up like heat from the sand to cloud the space between them.
‘They are preparing our tent,’ Salah said, his voice low and hoarse. ‘Will you sleep with me, tonight, Desi? I want you.’
Chapter Eleven
HER heart leapt with yearning, her body melted into instant need. But she looked at him for a moment, resisting, remembering his harsh words earlier in the day.
‘Tell me what it means to you, that you want me,’ she said quietly.
‘It means you are a beautiful, sensual woman.’
‘Not good enough. Next answer.’
‘What do you want to hear?’
‘You’ve thought yourself too good to talk to me for something like ten years. Now you’re sleeping with me. Have you looked at that fact?’
‘Is this why you came? To prove something to me?’ he asked.
‘My interest in proving anything to you runs in the minus figures, Salah. I find that when a person makes an accusation, he’s usually talking to a mirror. Are you trying to prove something to me?’
‘You forget that I did not go to your country. You came to mine.’
‘You forget that I did not go to your bed. You came to mine.’
‘Why did you come out to me? You came to me. You knew I was waiting.’
‘I think we’ve agreed the old sexual fire still has live coals amongst the ashes,’ Desi said. ‘Still, I don’t call stepping out of my room to get some air “coming to you”, exactly.’
‘You called my name. You knew I was there.’
‘I didn’t, actually. Why were you there?’
‘You know it,’ he said.
‘Closure, you say. What do you need closure on, exactly, Salah? Because you look as though you’ve had closure on everything in life. You look as if you’ve shut down everything except the food intake. What’s left?’
He put out one hand to catch her chin and turned her head. For one tremulous moment his eyes met hers.
‘You know what is left.’
Honeyed sweetness flooded up her body, making her neck weak.
‘You stirred up what was frozen, Desi. Until you came, I had forgotten how much I once loved you.’
‘Salah!’ she whispered.
‘And how little you loved me.’
‘You think?’ she said bitterly.
‘You did not love me at all. You said so, and you were right.’
‘I was sixteen!’
‘Yes. You were young. I also was young, too young for such powerful feelings. I could not control what I felt. You said I was like the Kaljuks, and my only thought, Desi, was to prove to you that I could never be like them.’
‘Is that why you joined Prince Omar?’ she breathed, horrified.
He shrugged. ‘I was running across a rocky ledge, looking for a way down to a Kaljuk gun emplacement that had been shelling a mountain town for a week.’ Unconsciously he stroked the scar that ran across his cheekbone to above his ear. ‘There was an explosion of light in my head, that’s all I remember. I woke up in the hospital.
‘You were there with me day and night, Desi. You were my solace and my torment, in one. I dreamed of you, sleeping and waking. I wanted you more than anything in the world. I begged you to come to me. You did not come.’
‘I tried, but Leo…’ Immediately she wished she hadn’t pronounced the name.
‘Yes, Leo,’ he said in a different tone. ‘Sami sent me a letter with pictures of you in your new life with this old man. Then I understood. You did not love me, you could never be mine. I wrote you the letter to tell you I knew it.
‘But I could not defend myself against the knowing. It went straight into my heart. The pain was like the end of the world, Desi. I did not recover, not even after I told myself I did. When you love someone the way I loved you…Every day and every night I yearned for you. In the bed of other women, I dreamed of you.’
Suddenly she had to choke back tears.
‘Why did you never tell me? Never try to get in touch?’ she demanded. ‘It was up to you, wasn’t it? After that letter did you expect me to try to contact you again?’
‘No,’ he said. ‘I expected nothing. You were with Leo. My love died, a terrible, painful death that I thought had killed my heart.
‘One day, I awoke from the pain. But still I was not free of you. Then it was the memory of love itself that haunted me. Fool that I was, I wanted to find this feeling again, with another woman. I thought you could be wiped from my memory forever and I would feel alive again.
‘But that is impossible, I learned that. I can never feel such an impact again. I don’t know why it is so, but it is. I was ten times a fool to wish it. Such love is weakness. An addiction.’
He paused, but she had no words.
‘I thought it was dead, Desi. Before you came I thought there was nothing left, not even ashes. When my father told me he would let you come, I was angry, that was all. I thought, it is over. What business does she have, to come to me now?
‘Then you came, and it was not what I expected. Anger was only the first of many feelings. I understood things I did not understand before.
‘Our love and its death has affected every decision of my life from that moment, every breath I took, every woman I rejected as a wife. I understand it now.’
‘God,’ she whispered. Her heart was choking her.
‘I want to free myself, Desi. My parents urge me to get married—for