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She felt her stomach flip and fall and she grabbed at the tent, held on. She wanted to rush out, confront Tair, ask what was happening but didn’t dare, not after the day they’d just had.
Instead she stood in the shadows and watched as Tair, leading twenty-some men, set off on their horses at a full speed gallop.
Tally had taken a bath, dressed in the simple black robe that Tair’s elderly servant supplied, and with candles lit in her tent, tried to pass the time until Tair returned but he was gone a long time and the hours passed slowly.
Her stomach growled late in the night and finally the elderly Berber brought her food and even though she was hungry, Tally refused. “I’m waiting for Tair,” she said to the old man.
“Ash?”he asked. What?
“I’m waiting for Tair.”
The old man stared at her uncomprehendingly.
“Tair,”Tally repeated and this time she stood on her toes, lifted her hand high above her head to indicate Tair’s immense height.“Tair.”
The elderly man only looked more puzzled and Tally wanted to pull her hair out in mad chunks. This was a nightmare. A nightmare. How could Tair think she could possibly stay here, the only woman—and a Western woman at that—in this camp? He was out of his mind.
“Tair,”Tally said more loudly.
The old man just looked at her with absolute incomprehension.
“He doesn’t have a clue as to what you’re saying,” an amused voice said behind her and Tally spun around.
“How long have you been standing there?” she demanded, exhaling a huffy puff even as she pushed her long hair back from her face.
“Long enough to enjoy your pantomime.”
“Very funny.” But it was, she knew and she smiled reluctantly. “So you’re back. Did you get the bad guys?”
His lips curved but the smile didn’t touch his eyes. “Most of them.”
She felt his mood then and it was somber, heavy, and Tally wondered just what had taken place out there in the desert tonight. “Hungry?” she asked more gently.
He nodded. “Let me just wash. I’ll be right back.” He returned shortly, jaw clean shaven, his hair wet, combed back from his face, the thick shoulder-length strands a glossy black in the soft yellow candlelight.
“You look…nice,” Tally said awkwardly, shyly.
Tair laughed. “You sound so surprised.”
“No, I…um, no.” Blushing she moved to the table laden with trays and bowls, more food than Tally had seen in a long time. “No,” she repeated and knelt on one side of the table.
“Let’s eat.”
Over dinner she asked him why the older man didn’t understand her when she asked for him.
“No one here knows me as Tair,” he answered, dipping a hunk of the bread in the stew.
“Then what do they call you?”
“Sheikh Zein el-Tayer. Or Soussi al-Kebir.”
Chief of the Soussi Desert.Tally bit her lip, thinking how odd it was that his name which had been so strange was now so familiar. “How does Tair come from Tayer?”
He grimaced. “Good question. It’s pronounced like the English word for tire, and it shouldn’t be hard to say but when I attended boarding school in England, the headmaster could never say my name quite right and pretty soon all the boys were calling me Tair.”
“An English boarding school? That explains some things. So, did it bother you they couldn’t get your name right?”
“No. A name’s a name. There are other things more pressing.”
“Like?”
“Politics. Survival.” He hesitated and when Tally said nothing he continued. “You don’t know our history, or our culture so I can’t expect you to understand the turmoil in this region, but politics have given us a violent legacy. We’ve fought to maintain our independence but it’s not been without great personal cost.”
She didn’t know if it was his expression, or his tone, but she knew somehow, sensed it maybe, that he’d suffered. Personally suffered. It wasn’t just his people’s conflict but his own. “Those scars,” she said hesitantly, indicating his torso where his robe covered the thickened tissue crisscrossing his chest, “are they a result of this violent legacy?”
“Yes.”
She looked at him closely, really looked at him and she saw lines in his face, creases at his eyes, grooves near his mouth and the hollows beneath his high cheekbones. “You’ve been to war?”
