The Pirate (2 page)

Automatically, Fouad answered. “Alaykum as-salaam.”

“I beg your help,” the rider said. “We have been lost in the storm for days and my wife is ill and near her time.”

Slowly, carefully, the rider began to dismount. It was than that Fouad saw that the rider’s blanket had been covering two people. He moved forward quickly. “Here,” he said softly. “Let me help you.”

In the darkness, Samir appeared, clothed in a heavy beige mishlah. “What is happening?” he asked.

Fouad turned, the woman lying like a feather in his arms. “Travelers who have been lost in the storm, master.”

The man stood leaning weakly against his donkey. “I don’t know how many days we have been out there.” He began to slip toward the ground.

Samir caught him and slipped an arm under the man’s shoulders. “Lean on me,” he said.

The man slumped against him gratefully. “My wife,” he whispered. “She is ill. Without water.”

“She will be all right,” Samir said reassuringly. He looked at the caravan master. “Bring her to my tent.”

“The donkeys,” the man said.

“They will be taken care of too,” Samir said. “You are welcome in my house.”

***

The man’s face was scraped and bleeding from the windblown sand and his lips swollen and blistered. The scarred hands completely hid the small teacup he clutched in them. He was tall, taller than Samir, almost six feet with a large nose and piercing blue eyes that were hidden behind puffed lips. He watched Samir as the doctor straightened up from the pallet on which the man’s wife lay.

Samir turned to him. He did not know what to say. The woman was dying. She was almost completely dehydrated, with a faint, erratic pulse and an alarmingly low blood pressure. “How many days were you in that storm?” he asked.

The man stared at him. He shook his head. “I don’t know. It seemed forever.”

“She is very low,” Samir said.

The man was silent for a moment. He stared into his teacup. His lips moved but Samir could hear no sound. The he looked at Samir. “You’re a doctor?”

Samir nodded.

“Will she live?”

“I do not know,” Samir said.

“My wife wanted our child to be born in the holy land,” the man said. “But the British would not give us visas. So we thought if we would cross the desert, we could enter from the rear and slip into the country.”

The shock showed in Samir’s voice. “With just two donkeys? You have still almost six hundred miles of desert to cross.”

“The storm came and we lost our supplies,” the man said. “It was a nightmare.”

Samir turned back to the woman. He clapped his hands and Aida, his wife’s serving woman, came into the room. “Prepare some sugared water,” he told her. As she left the room, he turned back to the man. “You must try to get her to swallow some,” he said.

The man nodded. For a moment he was silent, then he spoke. “You know, of course, that we’re Jews.”

“Yes.”

“And still you are willing to help us?”

“We are all travelers on the same sea,” Samir said. “Would you refuse me if our positions were reversed?”

The man shook his head. “No. How in the name of humanity could I?”

“Then it is so.” Samir smiled and held out his hand. “I am Samir Al Fay.”

The man took his hand. “Isaiah Ben Ezra.”

Aida came back into the room with a small dish and spoon. Samir took it from her. “Bring a small clean cloth,” he said.

He sat down beside the pallet with the cloth she gave him. He soaked the cloth in the warm sugar water and pressed it against the woman’s mouth. “Here, watch what I am doing,” he said to the man. “You must gently force her lips apart and let the drops trickle into her throat. It is the only substitute I can think of for glucose intravenous feeding. But very slowly, for she must not gag.”

“I understand,” Ben Ezra said.

Samir rose to his feet. “Now I must tend to my own wife.”

Ben Ezra looked up at him questioningly.

“We are on our way home from a pilgrimage to Mecca and the storm caught us here. Like you, we wanted our child to be born at home but now it is not likely to be. She has begun labor three weeks early.” Samir made an expressive gesture. “The ways of Allah are mysterious. Had we not gone to Mecca to ask Him for a son, had you not wanted to have a child born in the holy land, neither of us would have ever met.”

“I thank the Lord you are here,” Ben Ezra said. “May He grant you the son you pray for.”

“Thank you,” Samir replied. “And may Allah stand guard over your wife and child.”

He left the curtained chamber that separated the rooms, as Ben Ezra turned back to his wife and began pressing the moistened cloth to her lips.

***

It was in the hour just before dawn that the storm reached its zenith. Outside the tent the wind roared like the echo of distant cannon and the sand beat against the tent like hailstones flung from an angry sky. It was at that moment that Nabila screamed in pain and fear, “The child within me is dead. I can no longer feel its life and movement.”

“Hush,” Samir said gently. “All is well.”

Nabila reached for his arm. There was a note of desperation in her voice. “Samir, please. Remember your promise. Let me die.”

He looked at her, the tears beginning to blur his vision. “I love you, Nabila. You will live to give me a son.” He was swift, so swift that she never felt the hypodermic needle find her vein, only the sweet surcease of the pain as the morphine took her.

He straightened up wearily. For more than two hours now he had not been able to find the child’s heartbeat with his stethoscope. All the while, Nabila’s pains had been increasing but there had been little dilation.

“Aida,” he said to the old serving woman. “Call the caravan master. I will need his help to take the child. But have him wash thoroughly before he enters the tent.”

She nodded and fearfully ran from the chamber. Quickly, Samir began to lay out the instruments on the clean white cloth next to the bed.

Suddenly Nabila shuddered and blood began pouring from her. Something was seriously wrong—Nabila was hemorrhaging. Her heaving body seemed to be trying to push the child out. But Samir could not feel the baby’s head. He knew now what the trouble was. The afterbirth was blocking the outlet of the womb.

The stain on the sheets was growing rapidly and Samir worked madly against a quickening fear. With his hand he went into Nabila and dilated her cervix so that he could pull out the afterbirth. When he’d removed the bloody tissue, he broke the waterbag and guided the baby down and out of her body. Swiftly he cut the umbilical cord and turned back to Nabila. He held his breath for a moment, then let go a sigh of relief as the bleeding stopped. Now, for the first time, he looked at the child.

The baby was a girl and she was dead. He knew that even without touching her. The tears rushed to his eyes as he turned and looked down at Nabila. Now she could never bear him a son. Nor any child. He would see to it that she would never become pregnant—the threat to her life would be too great. He felt a flood of despair. Perhaps she had been right. Death might have been preferable.

“Doctor!” Ben Ezra stood at the curtained door.

He stared at the Jew; his eyes blurred. He couldn’t speak.

“My wife, doctor.” Ben Ezra’s voice was frightened. “She stopped breathing!”

By reflex, Samir picked up his medical bag. He looked again at Nabila. The morphine had done its work well. She was sleeping comfortably. He went quickly into the other chamber.

He knelt over the silent woman, searching for her heartbeat with his stethoscope. There was no sound. Quickly, he prepared an injection of adrenaline and shot it directly into the woman’s heart. He forced open her mouth and tried to breathe some air into her lungs but it was of no use. Finally, he turned to the man. “I’m sorry,” he said.

Ben Ezra stared at him. “She can’t be dead,” he said. “I see her stomach moving.”

Samir looked down at the woman. Ben Ezra was right. The woman’s stomach seemed to be heaving. “The child!” Samir exclaimed. He reached into his bag and took out a scalpel.

“What are you doing?” Ben Ezra demanded.

“The child,” Samir explained. “It’s not too late to save the child.”

Samir had no time to open the woman’s clothing. He cut it away swiftly. Now the woman’s belly was exposed, blue-tinged and swollen. “Now, close your eyes—do not look,” Samir said.

Ben Ezra did as he was told. Swiftly, Samir made an incision. The thin skin cracked with an almost popping sound. Samir opened the abdomen and a moment later he had the child in his hands. Quickly, he cut the cord and tied it off. Two sharp slaps on the child’s bottom and the healthy wail of the baby filled the tent.

He looked at the father. “You have a son,” he said.

Ben Ezra stared back at him with a strange expression. He didn’t speak.

“You have a son,” Samir repeated.

Ben Ezra’s eyes filled with tears. “What will I do with a son?” he asked. “With no woman and six hundred miles of desert still to cross. The child will die.”

“We will give you supplies,” Samir said.

The Jew shook his head. “It won’t work. I am already hiding from the police. There is nothing I have to offer the child.”

Samir was silent, still holding the child in his arms.

Ben Ezra looked at him. “Your child?” he asked.

“Dead,” Samir answered simply. “I guess Allah in His wisdom saw fit not to answer our prayers.”

“Was it a son?” the Jew asked.

Samir shook his head. “A girl.”

Ben Ezra looked at him. “Maybe Allah is wiser than both of us and that is why He brought us together in the desert.”

“I don’t understand,” Samir said.

“If it were not for you, the child would have died with the mother. You are more his father than I.”

“You’re mad,” Samir said.

“No.” Ben Ezra’s voice seemed to gain strength. “With me, he will die. And the burden of taking him could lead to my death also. But Allah has answered your prayer for a son. With you, he will grow safe and strong.”

Samir looked into the Jew’s eyes. “But he will be Muslim, not a Jew.”

Ben Ezra stared back at him. “Does it really matter?” he asked. “Did you not tell me that we are all travelers on the same sea?”

Samir looked down at the tiny boy-child in his arms. Suddenly he was filled with a love such as he had never felt before. Truly Allah had in His own way answered their prayers. “We must be quick,” he said. “Follow me. Take the other child.”

Ben Ezra picked up the stillborn baby and went back through the curtain. Samir placed his son on the table and wrapped him in a clean white sheet. He had just finished when Aida and Fouad came in.

He looked at the woman. “Clean and wash my son,” he commanded.

The woman stared into his eyes for a moment, then her lips moved. “Allah be praised.”

“There will be time for that at morning prayers,” he snapped. He looked up at the caravan master. “You come with me,” he said, leading the way through the curtain.

***

As suddenly as it had come upon them, the storm had gone. The day dawned bright and clear. The two men stood at the side of the new graves at the edge of the oasis. Beside Ben Ezra were his two donkeys, one loaded down with water and supplies, the other with the old worn leather saddle. Ben Ezra and Samir looked at each other awkwardly. Neither knew what to say.

Isaiah Ben Ezra held out his hand.

Silently, Samir took it. There was a warmth and bond between them. After a moment they let go and the Jew swung up into the saddle. “Khatrak,” he said.

Samir looked up at him. With his right hand, he made the traditional gesture. He touched his forehead, his lips and finally his heart. “As-salaam alaykum. Go with peace.”

Ben Ezra was silent for a moment. He looked at the graves, then at Samir. The eyes of both men were filled the tears. “Aleichem sholem,” he said and turned the donkey away.

For a moment, Samir stood looking after him, then slowly walked back into his tent. Aida was waiting at the entrance for him, an excitement in her voice. “The mistress is awakening!”

“Did you tell her?” he asked.

The serving woman shook her head.

He went through the curtain and picked up the child. He was standing next to his wife when she opened her eyes. Smiling, he looked down at her.

“Samir,” she whispered. “I’m sorry.”

“There’s nothing to be sorry about,” he said softly, placing the child in her arms. “Allah has answered our prayers. We have a son.”

For a long moment she looked down at the baby, then she turned her face up to him. Her eyes began to fill with tears. “I had the most terrible dream,” she half-whispered. “I dreamed that the baby had died.”

“It was a dream, Nabila,” he said. “Just a dream.”

Nabila looked down at the child, her fingers moving the white sheet away from the infant’s face. “He’s beautiful,” she said. Then a startled expression came into her face. She looked at up him. “Samir,” she exclaimed. “Our son has blue eyes!”

He laughed aloud. “Woman, woman,” he said. “Will you never learn? All newborn children have blue eyes.”

But Allah had really performed a miracle. For Baydr Samir Al Fay grew up with dark, almost violet, blue eyes, the color of the sky over the desert at night.

BOOK ONE

The End of Spring
1973

CHAPTER 1

The needlepoint spray of the shower on his scalp drowned out the sound of the four big jet engines. Steam began to fog the walls of the narrow shower stall. Quickly, he rubbed the rich soap into a perfumed lather over his body, then rinsed and cut the water from hot to ice cold. Instantly, fatigue left him and he was wide awake. He turned off the water and stepped from the shower stall.

As usual, Jabir was waiting, the heavy terry-cloth robe and thick towels over his arm. He draped the towels over his master’s body. “Good evening, master,” he said softly in Arabic.

“Good evening, friend,” Baydr said, rubbing himself vigorously. “What time is it?”

Jabir glanced at the heavy stainless steel Seiko chronograph that his master had given him. “It is nineteen hours, fifteen minutes, French time,” he said proudly. “Did the master spend a restful time?”