The Weeping Desert Read online

  “There’s the Gate of the Dead.”

  “They won’t go through that!” Khadija explained. “They believe that only the dead go through it. Is-if is different, because she thinks that she is already partly dead because of her affliction.”

  “They soon will be dead if they don’t move,” said John urgently. “Tell them that part of the wall is down and they can climb over.”

  “I will tell them.”

  Khadija hurried back to the terrified women and told them in Arabic of the new way to get out. She made them join hands so that the young ones could help the older women wade through the slippery water. She led the group through the courtyards, encouraging them to keep on and not to stop and wail.

  John admired the way she was keeping a cool head.

  But she had been prepared to stay, sheltering with them, comforting them; it was a horrifying thought.

  He went first over the broken gap in the wall, and between them they pushed and pulled, urging the sobbing women to climb over and jump down. Some were heavy, mountainous old women and difficult to help in their voluminous wet clothing. Outside, too, they were not sheltered from the force of the shammal, and John suddenly felt extraordinarily weary. It seemed unbelievable that this was still the same day; so much had happened. He was coming to the end of his stamina. He was so weary, even his bones ached.

  Khadija, in her flapping trousers, could cope with the climb down on her own, but nevertheless held out her arms for his help. John groaned as Khadija’s small, sweet body pressed wetly against him. She was like a small, bedraggled animal.

  “I don’t care whose baby you’re having,” he whispered. “I just want to look after you and care for you.”

  Khadija stirred in his arms. “What baby?” she asked, surprised. “What are you saying?”

  “No more games, no more tricks, please,” he pleaded wearily. “I know you’re going to have a baby. I know I’m not the father, and I don’t care who is. I’m going to marry you just the same, and look after you and the baby.”

  Khadija looked up at him, her eyes full of sympathy. “Oh, my poor darling: Is that why you were so angry at the hospital? You thought I was going to have a baby?”

  “Sheila told me.”

  Khadija kept looking at John steadfastly. “Then this nurse Sheila should not jump so quickly to conclusions. The anguish of her heart has clouded the good judgement of her training.”

  “What do you mean?” He shouted against the wind. He could hardly hear what Khadija was saying.

  “Years ago when it was customary for a sheikh to have many wives and many concubines, it was the great fear of all the women that their master might tire of them, and they might be cast out or sent to work in the kitchens. If they suspected that he was becoming bored with their charms, they would secretly drink a brew of herbs and spices and then for a few months it would appear as if they were with child. The sheikh would be delighted because it proved again his virility, and the court physician was always old and easy to fool.”

  “Do you mean”—John was astounded—“do you mean you took some dreadful concoction to make yourself appear pregnant?” Khadija nodded, her hair streaming across her face. “But why?”

  “Is-if brought it to me. She knew where to obtain the recipe. It was a last resort to save me from marriage with Ahmed Karim. We knew that he would not marry me if he thought I was with child from you.”

  “You might have poisoned yourself! You foolish girl. Oh, Khadija, to think I left you; I nearly lost you.”

  John’s relief and joy were unbounded. He crushed the slight figure close to him.

  “But you did not leave me,” said Khadija softly. “You came back for me, even though you believed I was with another man’s child. This is more precious to me than any poet’s words of love.”

  There was a gasp from the crowd, and Khadija and John turned to look together. A crack had appeared in the wall of the northern face of the tower. The shammal, which had begun to blow itself out, found one last furious gust to hurl against the weakened masonry. High above the swirling dust and sand, the tower appeared to sway.

  The ornate cupola at the apex of the roof hung for an instant almost unsupported, its gold-leaf faded and weathered. Richly painted tiles loosened from it and fell, clattering. Suddenly, it toppled. The cupola plunged to the ground, followed by huge blocks of stone as the whole tower collapsed amid clouds of dust. Gilded fretwork flew into the air like matchsticks, and the marble pillars in the courtyard tumbled under the great weight of debris, rumbling and groaning in anguish.

  Khadija hid her face against John.

  “My mother’s room,” she wept.

  John let her cry for the memory of the loyal Frenchwoman who had spent so many lonely hours in that room watching a sea that never changed.

  He touched her dark hair gently. “Your mother’s prison,” he said.

  He turned her away from the old palace and from her wailing women, their henna’d hands fluttering to Allah. They walked in the shadow of the pale terracotta walls, a flight of sea birds wheeling out of the rain-washed sky to chase the tail of the shammal as it raced madly across the empty desert to nowhere.

  John cleared off the grinning urchins who were scrambling all over his jeep. They ran away, laughing and splashing each other. Then he cleared the mud off the windscreen and the front seat, and helped Khadija up. Their fingers locked, the pressure firm and real.

  “Home, now,” said John.

  “Home,” said Khadija.

  To a new life, a new world for Khadija. She had gained what she had fought for: freedom—the freedom to live and love the man of her choice.

  As he drove towards Walhid el Said, John noticed a bulky file tucked into the shelf beside the dashboard. It was the file of legal formalities for annulment and divorce which his mother had painstakingly obtained from her solicitor. He heaved the file out of the window; he would not be needing it after all.

  The file fell open as it hit the swirling water, and an errant breeze scattered the foolscap sheets across the road. A speckly black and white goat stepped daintily over the stones, bleating, nodding its little pointed beard. It began to nibble at a closely typed sheet.

  Well, it made a change from paper bags.

  About the Author

  Alexandra Thomas always knew that she wanted to write. She left school at sixteen and became a cub reporter on a south London newspaper. She got all the worst jobs but her chief reporter, Victor Davies, taught her how to write. She worked her way up and eventually became chief reporter, the first woman chief reporter, the youngest and the only one who was pregnant.

  After two years spent in Doha, Qatar, with her growing family, writing about deserts and sheikhs, she returned to Surrey, England, winning a prestigious national woman’s magazine competition.

  She is currently writing two books, one set in Venice and the other set in Bali, both places which she loves.

  Her home is full of books and photos of cats as she has been rescuing homeless cats for years. She has just become president of the local operatic society.

  Look for these titles by Alexandra Thomas

  Now Available:

  The Takamaka Tree

  The Weeping Desert

  Coming Soon:

  Moon City

  The island paradise would be perfect, if only she could remember her name…

  The Takamaka Tree

  © 2012 Alexandra Thomas

  A mysterious woman…

  Washing ashore on a tropical beach, she awakes to find herself with no memory of how she came to be there. Helpless and hurting, she is grateful that she is not alone.

  A curious man…

  Daniel, a scientist studying local bird migrations, discovers the mystery woman, and suspects that she may have been a passenger on a recently missing yacht. Now if he can only figure out who she is…

  An island paradise…

  Among the sand, sun, and verdant Takamaka trees, they both wo
rk to unravel the mystery of her arrival on the island…all while falling in love.

  Enjoy the following excerpt for The Takamaka Tree:

  Her mouth was full of sand. Her first conscious thought was the unpleasant sensation of fine grit caking her tongue and teeth.

  She became aware that she was wet, and that warm water was lapping around her, washing over her legs rhythmically and gently. It was soothing and held no menace. She wished she could reach the water to rinse the sand out of her mouth, but the effort seemed too much.

  The sun was rising in the sky and its warmth lulled her into sleep, an uneasy sleep in which she longed for unknown things to happen. There was a constricting band across her diaphragm which prevented movement, and each time she stirred a stabbing pain froze her into stillness.

  She did not know how long she lay there, sun and sea warming and wetting her. A tiny crab scuttled away beneath her hand. A pair of sooty terns pattered curiously around her still figure, weaving a trail of arrowed footprints. Overhead the lush foliage of the leaning palms swept the sands with long green fingers. The scent of wild vanilla mingled with a confusion of oleander, hibiscus, frangipani.

  Someone was turning her onto her side and she moaned because it hurt. She felt faintly annoyed, because the person ought to know that it hurt her to move. Her feeble resistance went unnoticed. She resented this interference. She only wanted to be allowed to sleep. The breeze murmuring through the leaves was her lullaby.

  Her parched lips were being parted and a damp piece of fabric was probing gently, wiping out the grains of sand which clung to the inside of her mouth. She moved her tongue.

  “In a minute,” said a voice, understanding. “Let’s get the sand out first, then you can have a drink.”

  She trusted the voice. She lay still, letting the exploration go on, and with returning consciousness came other points of discomfort. Her eyelids and nostrils were encrusted with sand and she wanted to tell the damp fabric that it had more work to do.

  She was becoming aware of an ache in her shoulders, up the back of her neck and spreading into her head. Her head felt as if it was swollen, as if the pressure would make her brain spill out of her ears.

  She moaned again, wanting the promised water, but waiting with a new patience that came from the simple relief of knowing that someone was there.

  Something light and damp was put over her shoulders and head, shutting off the now burning sun. A small round disc lay against her cheek. A button, she thought, with absolute clarity.

  “We can’t have you getting sunstroke on top of this lot,” said the voice. “Won’t be long now, it’s nearly all gone.”

  An arm was behind her head, lifting her only slightly, but the pain seared across her chest. She cried out, but at the same instant water dribbled into her mouth and she swallowed it greedily, choking on the uneven flow, the drink momentarily washing away the agony of the forward lift.

  “Steady now, slowly does it.”

  But she did not hear. The water dribbled down her chin and she lost consciousness again.

  Much later, she emerged from the darkness and this time she opened her eyes. They opened freely, and for a while she lay staring at the patch of light from the window. It was still daylight but she had a feeling that evening was coming and the heat was sliding away.

  She was lying on a narrow bed in a corner of a strange room, covered with a rough cotton sheet. The sand had gone and she was dry, but her neck was stiff and the pounding pain continued in her head.

  She moved tentatively and found to her surprise that a wide bandage had been wrapped around her diaphragm and secured with two safety pins. Curiously, the support it gave was not unpleasant. Her middle area felt sore, and she automatically began to breathe with a shallow intake to ease the discomfort.

  She grew more aware of the room. It was built of wood and furnished very simply with a chest of drawers, a table, some wooden chairs, a row of books on a crude shelf, and by the window someone had stuck a handful of wild flowers in a pot. A little green lizard ran across the ceiling. Where was she? Suppose she was alone? What had happened to her?

  Dimly she thought she must have been in some accident, or had been ill, for she was very weak. She fought through the wool that clouded her mind, but nothing came. She could remember nothing, nothing at all. But the thought of water tormented her. Suddenly she was terribly frightened, and weak tears began to trickle down her cheeks.

  Somewhere a door opened and a man came into the room. Vaguely she saw him through her mist of tears. He was a lean giant towering over the bed, dark-skinned, dark-haired, dark eyes beneath unruly brows. He dragged a chair over beside the bed and set a tin mug down on it. Gently he put an arm under her head and lifted her.

  “Open your mouth,” he said with some authority. He put two pills on her tongue. “Now swallow these pills.”

  She would have swallowed anything for the sake of the water. It was cool, fresh and sparkling, and she drank and drank. He let her drink it all to the last drop. She had never felt so thirsty.

  “More,” she said.

  “Good,” he said. “You’re English. That’s going to make life a lot easier. Still thirsty, are you? I’ll be back in a moment with something much nicer.”

  English. She turned the word over in her mind. She was English.

  What happens in Nassau, stays in Nassau. Not.

  Remember the Night

  © 2012 Sally Falcon

  When Joanna Trent abandoned her practical life to indulge in a vacation fling, she never expected that the handsome stranger she left behind in the Bahamas would turn out to be a new and important business client, Nathan Hartford.

  Now, Joanna must try to separate business from pleasure, even as Nathan persists in rekindling their affair. But there are consequences to rash actions, and Joanna needs to decide what she is going to do about them before she plunges even deeper with the darkly handsome Nathan.

  Enjoy the following excerpt for Remember the Night

  “Oh, sweet heaven, it can’t be him.” Joanna Trent squeezed her eyes shut and opened them again. He was still there. Ruthlessly she closed the back of her throat, trapping the hysterical scream that was forming before it could escape. This can’t be happening to me, not today. Forgetting the petite silver-blond at her side—and everyone else in the crowded ballroom—Joanna watched with horrified fascination as the dark-haired man walked away from the door to join a cluster of people nearby.

  “Jo, what is it? Do you feel all right?” Diane Barringer looked at her friend and business partner in confusion. A strangling noise sounded directly in her ear, and it came from Joanna, who suddenly seemed frozen in place, her green eyes fixed on a point across the room. There was a look of abject fear on her usually poised face. “What did Dr. Jessop say about your check-up today?”

  “The man in the brown suit standing next to Evan Hartford, who is he?” Joanna asked abruptly. She forced the words between clenched teeth, so they came out in a whispered hiss instead of her usual husky tone. There wasn’t time to worry about her health right now.

  Diane turned her head, then gave a short laugh. It was easy to locate the commanding gray-haired figure of the president of Hartford Consolidated—and host of the reception that Trent-Barringer had organized. A tall, dark-haired man in his early thirties stood next to him. “Relax, it’s his nephew. I met him while you were out with the flu, just before you went to Nassau.”

  Nassau. The word sent a shiver of emotion skating up Joanna’s spine. Ruthlessly suppressing the bone-melting image it brought to mind, she grasped her friend’s arm, unconsciously exerting pressure with her tapered fingernails. “His name, what’s his name?”

  “Hey, take it easy. That’s Nathan Hartford. Don’t worry though, he’s harmless. Tanned, gorgeous, and with the sexiest mustache I’ve ever seen, but harmless to our public relations business,” Diane replied with another slight laugh, but she gave Joanna a curious look when she made another strange noise.


  “That’s what you think,” Joanna replied, taking pride in her normal sounding voice. She’d managed to keep the scream at bay, but she wasn’t sure for how long. “Diane, I’ll be right back. I’m going to the ladies.”

  She turned and walked briskly away before Diane could ask any awkward questions, or her nervous stomach could embarrass her in front of a room full of strangers. As she skirted the side of the ballroom, she kept a wary eye on both the Hartford men. Nathan hadn’t seen her, yet. She had to do some fast thinking before he did. He was smiling that heart stopping, slanted grin; she wondered what would happen to that grin if she told him about the phone call this afternoon.

  Would he be as devastated as she had been? No, that was undoubtedly wishful thinking. She was nothing more than a pleasant holiday diversion to him, not someone who had haunted his dreams for the past two months. It was possible that he didn’t remember her at all.

  Potent danger. Joanna recalled the words that blazed across her mind the moment she’d first laid eyes on Nathan two months ago. She’d been napping on the float in the middle of the cove and opened her eyes to discover—

  Shaking her head, she dismissed the tantalizing memory of his smoky gray eyes watching her with amused speculation.

  She slapped her hand harder than necessary against the swinging door of the restroom. The lounge area was deserted. Her nausea had passed for now, and she sank gratefully onto the nearest mauve brocade vanity bench. Burying her face in her hands, she muttered dark invectives at herself, Nathan, the entire world. The day began a slow descent toward disaster with an innocent phone call, and now was close to rock bottom at Nathan’s sudden appearance.

  How many times have I wondered about his last name in the past two months? She answered the question with another groan. Looking into the wall length mirror, she knew her carefully arranged French plait should be stark white instead of brunette with reddish-blond highlights. Shock was supposed to do that. She’d classify the whole day as a shocker of the horror variety, Friday the Thirteenth, parts one through one hundred and ninety-nine.