Kidnapped by the Sheikh (5 page)

The sheikh strode off to his tent with what looked like a local newspaper. Sarah wondered what was in it—in particular, whether there was any news of her kidnapping. She prayed that Hussein, the driver, had explained everything to the embassy and that they hadn’t told the press. When she had sent Akbar to the capital, she had never thought about the fact that he might hear about her and find out who she really was.

Out in the desert, there was no connection with the wider world. Her mobile phone frequently stopped working when she was in the capital due to signal problems, so there was no chance of anyone getting any type of signal out in Sakara. However, once Akbar reached the city, there were a multitude of ways in which he might find out that Sarah wasn’t who she said she was.

Sarah waited with Akbar’s men while they watched the effects of the antibiotic on her. The men were uncomfortable about having her in one of their tents and they couldn’t go into a woman’s tent, so they all sat outside, shaded only by a rather forlorn palm tree. Sarah could feel the heat of the midday sun on her body. She was still wearing the clothes she put on the day before when she set out to the airport and now her trousers and shirt were creased and dirty. She also had a long blue scarf, which she draped over her head to try to keep the sun off. The men sat opposite her, squatting low in the sand, muttering amongst themselves. Finally the hour was over and the sheikh came out of his tent.

“How is she?” he asked his men.

“She looks hot,” one of them suggested.

“Of course she’s hot. You left her sitting out in the sun all this time. Did any of you offer her some water?”

The men looked at one another and then stared at the sand under their feet. One of them began to draw a design in it with the end of his rifle.

“Idiots,” the sheikh said, more to himself than to the others. He turned to Sarah. “Perhaps we’ve all been idiots?” he said. “Go and see to my mother and then come to me,” he ordered and walked back into his tent.

Sarah was confused by his comments about them all being idiots, but she was desperate to get into the shade and she knew that Fatima needed to start the antibiotics as soon as possible. Therefore, she went off to the sick woman’s bed to give her the medicine. Once she’d done so, and drunk several glasses of water to rehydrate, she went to find the sheikh to ask him what was going on. However, she had a feeling that it wasn’t going to be positive.

When she entered his tent, she was surprised to find him alone. He was pacing the length of the tent and didn’t ask her to sit when he saw her. In the corner was the local newspaper, lying open on a cushion.

“Will my mother get better now?” he asked. He didn’t look at her, but seemed preoccupied with the red and beige patterns on the rich carpet at his feet.

“Yes, though it will take a few days, at least, for the medicine to start working.”

“I see.” The sheikh continued to look at the ground.

Despite the considerable size of the tent, Sarah felt claustrophobic and panicky. She knew something was wrong, but she didn’t know whether it was better to confront it directly or remain silent. Finally, she asked him if he’d had a safe trip into the capital.

“Yes, we bought the correct medicine, didn’t we?”

Sarah agreed and thanked him for it.

After another long pause, the sheikh looked up, stared straight into her eyes and said, “You have made a fool of me in front of my men and my family.”

Sarah wondered whether he was referring to what had happened in the tent the day before when he kissed her. Maybe someone had seen them. However, it would be more of an embarrassment for her than for him, as she would be viewed as an adulteress, while he would be regarded as a man asserting his masculine prowess. This part of the world had more in common with the double standards of the Victorians than it did with twenty-first-century sexual equality. However, Sarah thought it was a better line of enquiry to pursue than the alternative, which was the fact that she wasn’t an important diplomat’s wife.

“I apologise for the kiss yesterday. I forgot myself,” she said, trying to sound as chaste as possible and omitting the fact the he had kissed her first.

He looked surprised, as if he had no idea what she was talking about. For a brief moment, Sarah wondered whether she had imagined it. Maybe she had mild heatstroke and had dreamt it all up. “I’m sorry, I…”

However, before she could finish, Sheikh Akbar interrupted her. “Are you sorry that you lied to me? Are you sorry that you are an imposter?”

So he knew. Sarah felt dizzy and for a moment, she thought she was going to be sick. She placed her hand on one of the wooden tent poles to steady herself. She wondered what he would do to her now. Maybe he would kill her. She didn’t want to die a lonely death out in a place where her body might never be found. She couldn’t believe she’d been stupid enough to act as if the whole thing was some sort of game, like some kind of elaborate fancy dress party. Up until this point, she’d been more worried about Minna’s wedding and Fatima’s leg than she’d been about her own safety.

“How did you find out?” she asked. Her throat was dry and her voice came out as a coarse whisper.

“The British ambassador left Yazan yesterday morning with his wife, Lady Amanda Bolton. They’re going to Egypt for a conference.” The sheikh picked up the newspaper and showed Sarah an article on the second page. Above it was a picture of an elderly, grey-haired couple, climbing onto a plane. Next to the picture was a caption that clearly stated who they were.

Sarah looked at it and wondered whether she could bluff her way out of the situation by saying that the picture was a fake that the embassy had put in the newspaper to prevent panic spreading amongst other expatriates living in the country. However, on the opposite page there was another, smaller article with the heading, “British Doctor Taken By Warlords.” Sarah couldn’t help but be cross that her abduction was deemed less newsworthy than some diplomat’s travel plans.

“So, when were you planning to tell me that your name is really Dr. Sarah Greenwich?” asked the sheikh, pointing to the smaller article, in which her name was printed in bold, black type, though he had mispronounced it as “Green Witch.” Sarah considered correcting him, but then decided against it. The situation was tense enough as it was without her quibbling about her name.

“Are you a witch? Are you a jinn that has come here to cause trouble?” he asked.

Sarah decided that maybe she should correct him after all. “My name’s not ‘Green Witch,’ it’s ‘Greenwich,’ as in the place in London. And I’m not a witch, I’m a doctor and it isn’t my fault that you kidnapped me.”

She remembered being teased about her name at school; a group of girls had taunted her about being a witch because she knew how to speak Arabic. Ironically, she was now talking in Arabic to a man who was accusing her of being a witch.

The sheikh eyed her suspiciously. “What were you doing in the ambassador’s car? Are you his mistress?”

“Of course not!” Sarah laughed to herself at the absurdity of the idea. “Look, it’s a long story. Do you mind if I sit down?” she asked. The sheikh gestured to her to take a seat and he then sat next to her, though not nearly as closely as he’d done the previous afternoon.

Sarah then told him about how she’d been travelling to the airport to collect a visiting consultant from New York, Dr. Roberts, when her car broke down. While she was standing on the side of the road trying to work out what to do, the ambassador’s car drove past in the other direction. Thinking about it, it was probably on its way back from dropping off the ambassador and his wife at the airport for their trip to Egypt. Sarah didn’t know the ambassador, but she did know their driver, Hussein, as his brother worked as an assistant at the hospital. When Hussein saw her standing by the road, he turned around and offered to take her to the airport. Grateful for a lift, Sarah accepted and abandoned her car, but less than five minutes later, Sheikh Akbar and his men had stopped them.

“You thought I was the ambassador’s wife, so I played along,” Sarah explained. “I thought it’d be safer to pretend to be someone important than to tell you I was just a doctor.”

“That would explain your lack of diplomacy and your interest in my mother’s health, for which I thank you with all my heart,” he replied with a broad smile.

Sarah noticed that the sheikh had moved considerably nearer to her while she’d been talking and she was pleased that he was noticeably less hostile towards her. “Now that she has the correct medicine, she should be better soon, though she must keep that wound clean.”

“Yes, yes, of course.” The sheikh no longer seemed to be interested in his mother’s health. “So, Dr. Green Witch, who is your husband, if it isn’t the British ambassador?”

“I’m not married,” she said. She’d told enough lies already and didn’t want to add to them.

“A beautiful, clever woman like you without a husband? I find that very hard to believe, but I am very pleased that it is so.” He placed a hand on the nape of her neck. Sarah shuddered slightly, but when she didn’t pull away, he began easing his fingers deeper into her thick, blonde hair.

Sarah lay hot and exhausted on the floor of the sheikh’s tent. She knew that what she’d done was insane: letting herself be taken by a man she barely knew, a man who’d kidnapped her and was effectively holding her hostage in the middle of the desert. However, there was something about the mixture of fear and tension combined with the dry heat of the desert that had heightened her sexual awareness to such an extent that when she was confronted with an extremely handsome man trying to remove her clothes, she found it impossible to resist him. However, it wasn’t something she’d been forced into; far from it. It was something that she’d wanted and enjoyed as much as he had. In fact, he was quite unlike anything she’d ever experienced before. He had taken her to depths of pleasure that she hadn’t known existed until that afternoon. With her heart still racing from the exhilaration of it all, she moved closer towards him so that her body was pressed tightly against his.

“What will happen to me now?” she asked and kissed him softly on his ear.

“What would you like to happen?” he murmured into her hair.

“I’d like you to repeat everything you just did.”

“And when I’ve finished? What would you like to happen then?”

Sarah wasn’t sure. She rolled onto her back and stared up at the tent hangings above her while Akbar softly stroked her hair. Just a few hours ago, she wanted nothing more than to escape and go back to the city. However, she wasn’t so sure now, though she had no idea what the alternative was. She couldn’t possibly stay here in a tent in the middle of the desert, living with the Bedouin, but then a voice inside her head said, “Why not?” Why shouldn’t she live here with the sheikh? She could teach the women to read and write. She could help them with their illnesses and when they gave birth. Maternal mortality rates amongst the Bedouin women were still horrendously high and many of the women in the desert gave birth using practices that were practically medieval. Sarah could educate them and stop some of these women dying needlessly every year. She might even be able to put a halt to them marrying their cousins, which would reduce many of the terrible paediatric problems that she witnessed in the country.

Sarah’s grand schemes were interrupted by Akbar saying, “You’re a very strong and beautiful woman. I have a plan for your escape.”

“My escape?” Sarah was no longer sure that she wanted to.

“You can’t possibly stay here. As soon as my men discover that you’re not who you say you are, they’ll be angry and want to kill you.”

Sarah edged away and looked around for her blouse. “But they won’t kill me unless you tell them to, will they?”

“They might. You’ve dishonoured the Al-Zafir tribe.”

“What? By sleeping with you?”

“No. You’ve given me the greatest honour and pleasure it’s possible to give a man.” He reached over and placed his hand on her still naked stomach. “However, they think you’re the wife of a very important man. They’re expecting wealth as a result, but more importantly, they want to boast of their achievement to neighbouring tribes.”

“Just as you’ll boast of your achievement with me?” Sarah asked, pushing his hand away and buttoning up her blouse.

“Of course not! Do you think I’m some sort of dog? What passes between us is completely private. However, I’m now in a predicament. It won’t be long before word gets out that it’s a doctor and not a diplomat who’s been kidnapped and my men don’t like to be duped.”

“Are you angry that I tricked you?”

“I’m happy that you’re not married. From the first moment I first saw you, I wanted you. When I kissed you yesterday, I was consumed with guilt at the fact that I’d taken another man’s wife, but now that I know you’re not married…” He leaned forward and kissed her again, hard on the mouth.

Sarah began to give in to his muscular body pushing against hers, but she resisted and backed off. “So what will happen to me? Will you let your men kill me?”

He let go of her. “No, of course not, which is why I’m going to help you to escape. Do you know how to ride a horse?”

“More or less, but I haven’t ridden a horse in ages. It’s too expensive to keep one in London. The last time I was on a horse was quite a few years ago, when I went on a pony trekking holiday in the south of France.”