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“Yep. So you’ll understand the factors leading up to the incident and the nature of the players in it.”
“Can I retract my request?” She pretended glibness.
“Nope. Dokhool el hammam mesh zay toloo’oh.”
Entering a bathroom isn’t like exiting it. What was said in Zohayd to signify that what was done couldn’t be undone.
And she was beginning to realize what that really meant.
Living life knowing a man like him existed had been fine with her as long as he’d been just a general concept—not a reality that could cross hers, let alone invade it.
But now that she was experiencing him up close, she feared it would irrevocably change things inside her.
And the peace she’d once known would be no more.
Six
Pretending to eat what seemed to have turned to ashes, Kanza watched Aram as he poured her tea and began sharing his life story with her.
“Before I came to Zohayd at sixteen, my father used to whisk me, Johara and Mother away every year or so to yet another exotic locale as he built his reputation as an internationally rising jeweler. When I told my peers that I’d trade what they thought an enchanted existence in the glittering milieus of the rich and famous for a steady, boring life in a small town, dweeb and weirdo were only two of the names they called me. I learned to keep my mouth shut, but I couldn’t learn to stop hating that feeling of homelessness. My defense was to go to any new place as if I was leaving the next day, and I remained in self-imposed isolation until we left.”
She gulped scalding tea to swallow the lump in her throat. So his isolation had deeper roots than Johara even realized. And she’d bet she was the first one he’d told this to.
He went on. “I had a plan, though. That the moment I hit eighteen, I’d stay put in one place, work in one job forever, marry the first girl who wanted me and have a brood of kids. That blueprint for my future was what kept me going as the flitting around the world continued.”
She gulped another mouthful, the heaviness in her chest increasing. His plans for stability had never come to pass. He was forty and as far as she knew, apart from the fiasco with Maysoon, he’d never had any kind of relationship.
So how had the one guy who’d planned a family life so early on, who’d craved roots when all others his age dreamed of freedom, ended up so adrift and alone?
He served them sandwiches and continued. “Then my father’s mentor, the royal jeweler of Zohayd, retired and his job became open. He recommended Father to King Atef….”
Feeling as if a commercial had burst in during a critical moment, she raised a hand. “Hey, I’m from Zohayd and I know all the stories. How your father became the one entrusted with the Pride of Zohayd treasure is a folktale by now. Fast forward. Tell me something I don’t know. I hate recaps.”
His eyes crinkled at her impatience—he was clearly delighted she was so riveted by his story. “So there I was, jetting off to what Father said was one of the most magnificent desert kingdoms on earth, feeling resigned we’d stay for the prerequisite year before Father uprooted us again. Then we landed there. I can still remember, in brutal vividness, how I felt as soon as my feet touched the ground in Zohayd. That feeling of…belonging.”
God. The emotions that suddenly blazed from him… Any moment now she was going to reach for that box of tissues.
“That feeling became one of elation, of certainty, that I’d found a home—that I was home—when I met Shaheen.” His massive chest heaved as he released an unsteady breath. “Did Johara tell you how he saved her from certain death that day?”
She shook her head, her eyes beginning to burn.
“She was a hyperactive six-year-old who made me age running after her. Then I take my eyes off her for a minute and she’s dangling from the palace’s balcony. I was too far away, and Father failed to reach her, and she was slipping. But then at the last second, Shaheen swooped in to snatch her out of the air like the hawk he’s named after.
“I was there the next second, beside myself with fright and gratitude, and that kindred feeling struck me. And from that day forward, he became my first and only friend. As he became Johara’s first and only love.”
She let out a ragged breath. “Wow.”
“Yeah.” He leaned back in his chair. “It was indescribable, having the friendship of someone of Shaheen’s caliber—a caliber that had nothing to do with his status. But though he felt just as closely bonded to me, considered me an equal, I knew the huge gap between us would always be unbridgeable. I grew more uncomfortable by the day when Johara started to blossom, and I became certain that her emotions for Shaheen weren’t those of a friend but those of a budding woman in love.
“By the time she was fourteen, worry poisoned every minute I spent with Shaheen, which by then almost always included Johara. Though the three of us were magnificent together, I thought Shaheen’s all-out indulgence of Johara would lead to catastrophe, for Johara, for my whole family. Then my anxiety reached critical mass…”
“Go on,” she rasped when he paused, unable to wait to hear the rest.
He raked a hand through his dark, satin hair. “We were having a squash match, and I started to trounce a bewildered Shaheen. The more Johara cheered him to fight back, the more vicious I became. Afterward in the changing room, I tore into Shaheen with all my pent-up resentment. I called him a spoiled prince who made a game of manipulating people’s emotions. I accused him of encouraging her crush on him—which he knew was beyond hopeless—just for fun. I demanded he stop leading her on or I’d tell his father King Atef…so he’d order him never to come near Johara again.
“Shaheen was flabbergasted. He said Johara was the little sister he’d never had. I only sneered that his affections went far beyond an older brother’s, as I should know as her real one. He countered that while he didn’t know what having a sister was like, Johara was his ‘girl’—the one who ‘got’ him like no one else, even me, and he did love her…in every way but that way.
“But I was way beyond reason, said that his proclamations meant nothing to me—I cared only about Johara—and that he was emotionally exploiting her, and I wouldn’t stand idly by waiting for him to damage her irrevocably.”
