Secret of the Sands. Sara Sheridan

what happens to the other women the man desires?’ he says.

      ‘Exactly, my boy,’ Farida grins. ‘Now in these parts here you have what I would term a practicable system. I can see this working out very nicely indeed.’

      Over the years she has remained indescribably foreign for all her aptitudes and the whole-hearted fashion in which she has adopted her new, Arabian life. While his other brown-eyed beauties scent themselves interminably with exotic oils, coil their hair into glossy ringlets and dote on the nursery of children that they have produced, Farida or Fanny as she originally wished to be called, on her very first day demanded pen and ink to draw pictures of the plants in Mickey’s courtyard garden and write reams of descriptive prose and poetry. Within six months of her arrival, the Pearl, as he has come to call her, is speaking Arabic like a master at the university. She reads and memorises long portions of the Quran and fashions herself a set of silk garments from the harim’s stock of materials that prove to be deeply enticing to Mickey O’Mudar.

      ‘Never been without a bodice. Not going to feckin’ start now,’ she says.

      Mickey never can tell what she is going to do next, what she might read or what strange ideas she will voice. The thing he likes about her most, though, is the fact that she is clearly interested in pleasing herself as much as she pleases him – both in bed and out of it. This is an irresistible challenge after years of women bred to compliance. Farida is a matchless pearl indeed and, illuminated by the spark of independence that is so natural to her alongside her fierce intelligence, she stimulates him body and mind. It does not matter to him one jot that in all the years she has not borne him a child. In fact, it adds to her allure, her difference from his other wives. It is also probably the only reason why the other women in the harim accept the strange, pale-skinned foreigner. She is not – as far as they are concerned – competition, for she has no son to compete with their own. She is, they think, a mere dalliance to keep Mickey amused.

      ‘Do you mind?’ he asks her.

      ‘Well you can’t say we haven’t given it a good enough shot,’ she giggles.

      He loves her all the more for being so contented. Farida has the admirable ability of being able to adapt and he’d never be where he is today if it wasn’t for her. It was Farida after all who made the navy job possible. He might not have taken it had she not encouraged him.

      When he tells her of the opportunity that has presented itself, Farida makes no judgement on his lack of manliness in sharing his concerns – she takes it in her stride as easily as she has taken their habit of discussing literature and art (also, now he comes to think of it, unusual).

      ‘Well now,’ she sips a glass of rose-water and pomegranate juice and contemplates Mickey’s smooth, chestnut skin as he lies naked beside her on purple, satin sheets that she picked herself from the lavish stock of textiles available to all his women. ‘Into bed with the English is it, eh? Well, my advice, dear husband, is to take their money. They have acres of money, the English. Take their money and charge them plenty, treat them fair – true to yourself – but never trust them. Individually they are fine, I’m sure, but as a nation they’ll stab you in the back as soon as look at you. My father, God bless him, used to say there are four things you can never trust – a bull’s horn, a dog’s tooth, a horse’s hoof and an Englishman’s smile. And a man such as yourself, a fine man with brown skin, is worth even less to them than a penniless Catholic. Remember that, my darling, whatever happens, whatever friends you think you have made – you are a darkie to them and that’s all.’

      In what can only be described as ongoing training, his pale-skinned wife teaches Mickey a thing or two about matters European and briefs him in British manners and business customs as a matter of course, so that when he agrees to Allenby’s proposition and takes up the post of naval agent, the officers with whom he comes into contact feel instinctively that somehow he understands what the Navy needs. Quickly he is trusted and liked throughout the service.

      These days though well into her forties, and displaying with each passing year, were it possible, less interest in his household and domestic matters, it is still Farida who Mickey seeks out most regularly for company and advice. It is she he most desires when it comes time to retire. He has tried asking his other wives for their opinion but the conversations never go beyond what they think he wants them to say. Her delight these days, as always, is her frantic scribbling and reading any Arabic text that comes her way. She quotes poetry, whispering well-constructed if profane lines in her husband’s ear as she pulls him on top of her pale flesh. Most surprisingly of all for a woman, she has, as far as he can remember, never been wrong about anything.

      There is a clattering sound on the stairway to Mickey’s office as Rashid arrives from the warehouse. He has recently put henna in his hair but immediately decided against the resulting shock of colour, so he is wearing a long headdress to cover the luminous orange while it fades. The material sways behind him lending an unaccustomed elegance to his entrance.

      ‘Salaam aleikhum,’ the boy bows.

      He comes from a long line of Ibadi herdsmen and he learnt to read purely by chance, when he was taken ill and sent to Muscat to the house of a distant relative. Having discovered indispensable administrative skills, which have benefited Mickey’s business immeasurably, Rashid never returned to the shit-poor caravan where he spent the first ten years of his life. He is, however, a competent horseman and good with a camel. He knows how to survive on the sands.

      ‘I need you to come with me,’ Mickey says. ‘We will be gone for a few days. There are two Bedu I want to find on the jabel who can help me. Two white men are missing. We must find them. Though first some enquiries in town, I think.’

      Rashid hovers, hopping from foot to foot very lightly in a barely perceptible movement that Mickey completely understands.

      ‘Oh yes, Rashid. There will be bonuses if we find them. For you and for me. If they are still alive.’

       Chapter Fifteen

      Six weeks into their captivity and having moved camp twice, Jessop comes to understand that the curse of being a doctor is the knowledge what a man can survive and what he can’t. His is a profession that does not countenance much in the way of hope. He wonders if it is for this reason that Jones has survived more easily than he, for Jones has been able to believe that the treatment they have received in the camp will kill them, that it will end soon. Jessop, however, understands that the emir has a particular talent. He is extremely good at keeping men alive. Just. The heat has exacerbated their decline, and when he thinks of it logically he knows that it really hasn’t been that long. For heaven’s sake, the Palinurus will only recently have abandoned the rendezvous point at Aden. But every day of this has been hell – the heat and the terror of never knowing when they may be hauled from the tent and made to march for miles overnight or, worse, perhaps be beheaded. Jessop is sure he read somewhere that it is beheading that is most likely.

      The men have quickly become two ragged piles of skin and bones – the doctor is a good two stones down on what he considers his fighting weight of two hundred pounds, at which he left Bombay all those months before. He has little fight left now. For a while he hoped the abrasions caused by their initial struggle against the ropes might cause blood poisoning or that the sign that the emir had branded agonisingly on the white men’s buttocks might become infected to the same effect but neither of these possibilities has transpired to release either him or Jones from their captivity, and he has become resigned simply to waiting, endlessly, and hoping despite himself for food and water. If the meagre rations stopped, at least there would be an end to the whole damn business. In this weakened state, a couple of days of privation would certainly do it.

      However, when their stony-eyed jailer arrives and pours some warm, brackish liquid from a goatskin down Jessop’s face, he cannot help but lick at it in desperation. The survival instinct, he notes, is stronger than his logical response to the situation and thirst turns any man, even a scientific kind of chap, into a panic-stricken, babbling, begging