The Sheikh's Son (5 page)

“I’m so sorry I left you here by yourself, but I’ve just met my old childhood friend, Yacoub,” he said, pointing to Hassan’s dad. “His family left Yazan when he was young and we haven’t seen each other for years! I’ve been telling him all about home and showing off my son. It’s wonderful to see him again, almost as wonderful as being with you. I’m so happy.” Then to the surprise of the family that sat next to Sarah, he bent down and gave Sarah a huge hug.

“I think Ali’s asleep now,” Sarah told Akbar.

They were sitting in the kitchen, drinking hot mint tea. On the way back from the restaurant, they’d stopped at a small shop to pick up some basic supplies. For Akbar, good tea and fresh mint were some of those basics.

“Thank you for what you’ve done today,” Sarah continued. “I haven’t seen Ali this happy for a long time.”

“I think we’re all very happy.” Akbar smiled at her. He still had perfect teeth.

Sarah thought about how he used to kiss her and how he would press his mouth hard against hers. She could feel the colour rising in her face.

“Are you okay?” he asked. “You look a little hot. Maybe I should open a window?”

“No, I’m fine, thank you. It must be the tea,” she lied.

“Can I take Ali out again tomorrow?”

“Of course. He’d love that. I’m sorry I overreacted earlier. I didn’t see the note.”

“Next time we’ll pin it to the door. I’ll take him horse riding and then to the park to play football. Why don’t you meet us there when you finish work?”

“Great. Thank you for helping Ali to be friends with those boys. I thought you were going to yell at them when they called Ali names, but that was amazing the way you got them all playing football together.”

“I believe in solving problems through peaceful means, not war. I thought you knew that about me.”

One of Akbar’s main aims as the ruler of the Al-Zafir tribe was to bring peace to the Sakara region of Yazan after many decades of warfare under the previous leader, his brother, Sheikh Omar.

“Have you brought peace?” Sarah asked.

“Mostly, yes, but sometimes it’s been necessary to remind people about who I am.”

“And how do you do that?”

“The guns we have aren’t just for decoration.”

Sarah remembered the huge collection of weapons that Akbar kept in the camp.

“You said that Ali’s been having problems at school.” Akbar picked up his cup and drank the last of his tea.

“I think that football game in the park really helped.”

“I spoke to my old friend at the restaurant today. Ali won’t be having any more problems.”

“What did you say? You haven’t threatened anyone, have you?”

“Threaten people?” Akbar laughed. “I don’t need to threaten people. Yacoub’s my friend and now he knows who Ali is, soon the whole of London will know that he’s my son and the future sheikh of the Al-Zafirs. That is enough.”

Akbar said in the restaurant that Ali was his heir. Sarah wasn’t sure she wanted her son ruling over a bunch of gun-wielding Bedouin. Also, there was the matter of Akbar’s second wife’s child and now was the time to ask.

“What about Rasha’s son? Won’t he be disappointed when you tell him he won’t be the next sheikh?”

Akbar picked up his empty cup to signal that he wanted more tea. Sarah ignored the hint.

“Rasha didn’t have a son. She had a girl.”

Sarah couldn’t help but feel a little surge of delight. Rasha might have got her husband, but Sarah, the woman that Rasha accused of being barren, had Akbar’s son, though of course there was always the possibly that Rasha had more than one pregnancy.

“How many children have you and Rasha got now?”

“None. Ali’s my only child.”

Sarah was confused. She knew that daughters were often disregarded and thought of as being less valuable than sons, and that technically Rasha’s daughter was the child of another man, but as Akbar’s wife, the child was effectively his.

“You said Rasha had a girl,” she prompted him.

“She did. The baby died after just a few hours.”

“I’m sorry.” Sarah guessed that Rasha had given birth out in the desert, like most Bedouin women, where medical facilities were almost non-existent. If the birth had been complicated, it probably explained why Rasha hadn’t conceived again. “Rasha must have been very upset.”

Akbar nodded.

“How is she?” Sarah asked, feeling almost sorry for her rival.

“Who?” Akbar looked confused. It was getting late; he was probably tired and must have misheard her.

“Rasha. How is she?” Sarah repeated.

“Rasha? She’s dead. She died giving birth to her baby.”

Sarah couldn’t believe it. For the last decade, she’d been living under the impression that her husband was with another woman while all this time that woman was dead. No matter how much Sarah hated Rasha, she didn’t deserve to die, especially in a way that could have been prevented.

“Maybe, if I’d been there to help…” Sarah said. She was a doctor and it was her job to prevent such terrible things taking place.

Akbar took her Sarah’s hand and squeezed it. “No, there was nothing you could’ve done. When it was Rasha’s time, I drove her to the capital to the hospital. She gave birth there. And died there, too. It was the Women’s Hospital, where you used to work.”

Where she used to work until Akbar refused to give his written consent for her to continue. She snatched her hand away from his.

“Who did you marry after Rasha died?” Sarah asked.

“No one. I’ve been alone, looking for you all these years.” He tried to reach out for her hand again, but Sarah got up and began clearing away the empty cups.

“It’s late,” she said. She turned on the tap to wash up the mugs. “Where are you staying in London?”

“Here, of course.”

The mug in Sarah’s hand dropped into the sink, breaking the handle. She turned around. “But where are your things?”

“I collected them before I went to get Ali from school and together we brought them back here. My bags are in room at the front.”

“You can’t possibly stay here. Where will you sleep?”

“With you, of course! You’re my wife and this is my family.”

Sarah lay awake in bed. She could hardly believe that after all this time, Akbar was with her again and had finally met his son. Ali obviously adored his father who’d suddenly walked into his life like a fairytale prince out of the desert, but then it was difficult not to adore Akbar. From the moment Sarah first met him, all those years ago, she’d been deeply attracted to him; he had a charm that was almost impossible to resist.

However, she wasn’t going to leap back into his arms the second he walked through her door. She’d spent the last ten years putting her life back together in London, working hard and raising Ali. She couldn’t just drop it all and go back to living in a Bedouin camp in the desert. She wondered whether Akbar could adjust to living in London. Other men had done it, including his best friend from childhood, Yacoub. Perhaps his friend could find him a job, but then how would they get around the visa problems? They had no paperwork to prove that they were married and the UK immigration officials didn’t accept applicants on the basis of hearsay. Also, what kind of work could Akbar do? A man who was one of the greatest warlords in his country could hardly be expected to work in a shop or an office. Maybe he could do something with horses, but that type of work was difficult to come by and didn’t pay well.

Sarah rolled over and stretched out her arm into the empty space next to her. She’d told Akbar that he couldn’t sleep in her bedroom, wife or not, and had sent him to sleep on the sofa in the front room, which she’d turned into a makeshift bed. However, Sarah was beginning to regret her decision to turn him away. She hadn’t had sex since she’d left Akbar and although she tried not to think about it most of the time, she did miss it. A few years after she arrived back in London, she’d gone on a blind date that a friend set up for her. It was a disaster. The man spent the entire evening staring at her chest before throwing himself on her outside the toilets in the bar where she met him. She ended up waiting in the rain for over half an hour for a taxi and then, when she got home, the babysitter demanded double the cash because it was after midnight. She hadn’t been on any dates since.

She ran her hands over her body. It was still trim and firm in all the right places, even if her breasts were a little heavier and her waist was a tiny bit thicker. However, for a woman her age, she knew she was in very good shape. Rushing around as a single mum had kept her fit and she worked out at a local gym during most of her lunch breaks. She thought about Akbar’s body. Years of horse riding had kept him strong and muscular, and she knew that under his clothes his body would still be physically powerful.

She looked at her alarm clock. It felt as if she’d been lying awake for hours, but it wasn’t even midnight yet. Perhaps Akbar was still awake. Maybe he was cold and needed an extra blanket. Sarah got out of bed. She was wearing a shapeless, old T-shirt. She pulled it off over her head and searched around in her underwear drawer for something better to put on. However, she hadn’t bought any sexy underwear for years and the best she could find was a pair of black cotton knickers and a plain black bra. She put them on and then threw on her dressing gown. Made of grey towelling, it wasn’t very attractive, but she adjusted it so that it was slightly open at the front, revealing her bra underneath. She looked at herself in the mirror and ruffled up her blonde hair before pulling down an old woollen blanket from the top shelf of her wardrobe. She opened her bedroom door and stepped out.

The house was dark. She put her head around Ali’s door. He was snoring quietly in his bed. She crept downstairs. She was halfway down when one of the steps gave a loud creak. She stopped and held her breath. Nothing. She stepped down again. Another creak and then another. Sarah stopped and waited again. Still nothing. She suddenly wondered why she was creeping around her own house. With a much heavier tread, she went down the last two steps and knocked on the door of the room where Akbar was sleeping. No reply. She knocked again and waited. Slowly she turned the handle, opened the door and peered inside.

The curtains were closed, but they were thin and didn’t block the light from the streetlamps outside. On the sofa, she could see Akbar lying asleep. Over him were the bed sheets she’d given him and on top of those he’d put his heavy black overcoat. Sarah stepped forward and unfolded the blanket she was carrying. Carefully, she draped it over Akbar. When she finished, she stood and looked at him. She could see his broad chest rising and falling in a steady rhythm. He was obviously fast asleep. She had half expected him to wake up, take her in his arms and after a little bit of resistance, she would lead him upstairs and into her bed. However, he hadn’t woken up, so she wasn’t sure what to do. Finally, she gave him one last look and then went back upstairs, on her own.

The next morning, she woke up to the smell of mint, only to find a cup of hot tea next to her bed. Akbar must have come in and brought it to her. She drank it as she got dressed and when she was ready, she went to wake up Ali. However, he was already up and chatting away to his dad, who was in the kitchen, frying eggs. Ali was sitting at the table, drinking orange juice. As well as juice, there was toast, honey, cold cuts of meat, feta cheese, olives, and plain yogurt on the table. There was no sign of the papers and clutter that usually covered it.

“Where did all this come from?” she asked.

“Dad and I’ve been out to the shops. Dad says I need to eat a big breakfast everyday. He says that in Yazan they eat like this all the time.”

“Things are very different in Yazan,” Sarah replied.

“They certainly are. Good morning, my love. Please sit down and eat.” Akbar put a large plate of fried eggs on the table.

Sarah sat and helped herself to some food. It tasted delicious and reminded her of the meals she used to eat out in the desert. “I never knew you could cook, Akbar.”

“To survive out in the desert, a man has to know how to feed himself.” He poured out more tea for everyone.

She looked at her watch. “Thank you, but I don’t really have time for any more. I have to get to work.”

“How’s Ali going to get to school?” Akbar asked.

“I’m fine, Dad. I take the number twenty bus. It stops just down the road. I don’t need to go for another thirty minutes. Mum, can I have yours?” Ali reached out for Sarah’s mug.

Akbar looked confused, but just shrugged his shoulders.

Sarah picked up her bag and gave Ali a kiss on the head. “Have a good day at school, love.” She turned to Akbar. “I’ll see if I can get a few days off work later in the week, but I have to go in today. Will you be okay while I’m out?”

Akbar laughed. “I’ll be fine. I’ll go and see my friend Yacoub, and later I’ll take Ali horse riding and then we’ll play some football. Why don’t you meet us in the park? And if there’s a change of plan, we’ll make sure we leave a large note on the door!”

“Thank you. I’ll see you both later.” Sarah walked out of the kitchen and unlocked the front door. She was just about to leave, when she felt Akbar putting his arms around her waist.