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Phoebe’s eyes followed a young child, a girl, with spiked black hair and eyes that were so dark in her face they were like pools of oil. She was slim. So slim Phoebe knew she mustn’t have eaten a proper meal for days.
“Stop, please,” she spoke to her driver. When he didn’t obey, she leaned forward and said, in her most authoritative voice, “I said stop. This instant.”
To her surprise, with a low whistle of annoyance, he did. She threw him a thin smile then opened her door. She had changed some of her money into Mehran dollars, and she reached for them now, holding them out to the young girl. Her eyes lit up and she said something in Mehranese. Before Phoebe knew it, there was a swarm of poor children with sad eyes staring up at her, holding their hands out, touching her, begging for money.
Terrified, she looked around, to see that her driver was watching with an ‘I told you so’ expression clear on his chubby features.
Phoebe calmed instantly. She would not give him the satisfaction of thinking she couldn’t control the situation. “Children!” She spoke loudly and clearly, and clapped her hands above her head to gain their attention. There were not so many of them after all, she realized, as the adrenalin subsided a little. “Stand back.”
They didn’t move, but at least they’d stopped reaching out to her.
She pointed towards a wall, waving her hand from left to right. The first child, the girl, walked to the wall and stood against it. One by one, the others followed suit.
Phoebe had the pleasure of seeing surprise in her driver’s face. To her chagrin, her fingers were shaking slightly. She clutched the strap of her handbag to disguise it while she walked behind them. Slowly, she took her purse from her bag and, keeping her eyes on the children, she removed ten crisp notes. One by one, she handed them to each child.
The girl, who had first caught her attention, smiled up at her, and it was a smile of such gratitude that Phoebe felt emotion catch in her throat. “Go,” she said, waving her hands in the direction of the alley many had emerged from. They scattered instantly, perhaps terrified that the beautiful western woman in the Sheikh’s car might change her mind and demand their loot back.
The driver stood, holding her door for her. “You should not encourage them to beg,” he criticized, as she slid into the luxurious vehicle.
Phoebe ignored him. Men like him were the problem with the world. Or, one of the problems. Men who saw and did nothing. Men who had blinkered vision and could easily drive past such suffering and poverty.
Several streets further, the signs of comfort increased, and bit by bit, the slums were left behind them. The highways were wide here, with several lanes apiece. The sun was high in the sky, and it made the thick, lush grass in the median strip appear to shimmer and shine in the haze created by its heat.
Bright flowers, Gaillardia perhaps, ran the length of the highway, on both sides. In the distance, enormous sand-covered mountains rose, as if out of nowhere, and kissed the sky. They glowed with the warmth of the day, some red, some brown, some gold like her hair. A country of contrasts, she thought, for its desert stretched for miles in one direction, and in the other, there was a water-logged community that thrived on the canals that had been created many centuries earlier, for the purpose of trade with the West.
Etienne had spoken often of the wonders of Mehran.
She shivered as she thought of her step-father. A man who she had tried her hardest to cut from her mind, he had been reappearing more often of late. Since she had agreed to the Sheikh’s request to visit Mehran, memories of Etienne had begun to reassert themselves. It was as if the acceptance of the Sheikh’s invitation had opened the floodgates to emotions she had left buried in the distant past.
It had not always been dreadful, with Etienne, though. When her mother had first married him, Phoebe had been seven. She had still held the vestiges of a magical childhood, and she saw the world through eyes all too willing to sparkle with wonderment.
In those days, his stories of the faraway Mehran, had entranced her immediately. He’d told her tale after tale of spice-trading pirates; and the mines to the west that were rich with gemstones, pocked by rivers of gold; and the oil that ran as veins beneath the surface skin of the sandy desert; and the Bedouin who lived in keeping with their heritage, travelling from area to area, with nothing but camels and their brightly colored canvas tents to support them. She had loved the country then, just as she’d loved everything that came out of Etienne’s mouth.
How quickly it had all changed.
She shook her head, pushing the thoughts away with a conscious effort.
He was gone. Long gone. And though she knew Sheikh Hakim Al Meshuda thought her step-father had been a saint, that mattered little to Phoebe Douglas. She did not need Hakim to know the truth. She didn’t even need him to like her. She simply needed to fulfill his last requirement so that she could grab her fortune with both hands. She had big plans for her money, and they all involved making Etienne roll over in his long-ago-dug grave.
A sad smile touched her lips as the car continued its stately progress along the highways. Several minutes later, she saw it. Surely, it had to be the palace, for it was a building more grand than she had ever seen in her life. In fact, it was a building more grand than she had known could possibly exist.
Phoebe gasped audibly as she took in the details of the royal residence of the Sheikh of Mehran. Strangely, there was no security fence, but spaced evenly along the wall, there were security guards with guns almost as long as their legs. She gulped. She abhorred violence, and was particularly opposed to guns.
The structure appeared to be made purely from marble, but surely that was not possible? She thought of the Taj Mahal, and realized that here, in Mehran, was a palace to rival it in terms of beauty and grandeur. A stately line of palm trees ran along the road to the palace, and the domed top seemed to loom larger and larger as they approached it.
Almost at the front of the palace, the driver took a sharp left, and nudged the car down a steep ramp, into what she saw was a secure underground parking facility.
“The Sheikh’s cars?” She asked, unable to keep the note of condemnation from her voice.
The driver did not answer.
Phoebe struggled to reconcile the image of a benevolent, caring King with the idea of a man who would have a palace sitting on millions of pounds worth of luxury vehicles, while beyond the palace, children struggled for food.
He cut the engine and moved, as swiftly as his portly figure would allow, to her door. “Come.” His tone was a command. She did not appreciate it, but she knew to refuse would be pure churlishness. Besides, she was simply transferring her dislike of Sheikh Hakim Al Meshuda onto his hapless servant; that was not fair.
A wave of tiredness hit Phoebe as she fell into step behind the man. She had been travelling for over twelve hours, so it was little wonder that she was beginning to show the signs of weariness. Even the luxury of the Sheikh’s private jet hadn’t eased her weariness, for hers was a tiredness of the mind. Since agreeing to journey to Mehran, she’d been filled with anxiety. It was an inexplicable, free-floating anxiety, almost impossible to pinpoint a reason for.
As they moved through the palace, Phoebe noticed several things. The incredible grandeur of her surroundings made her gasp in awe. Marble, highly polished, on the floors, walls with enormous hanging carpets – Persian in style – and gold gilt paint. There were flower arrangements everywhere, but not serene and calming like she enjoyed. These golden vases were filled with exotic, spiked flowers, each more colorful and oddly shaped than the next. There was a beautiful fragrance in the palace; a mix of spices and sweetness. The sweetness she attributed to the flowers. If her guide had not been walking at such a clipped pace, she might have indulged her desire and moved to a vase to breathe the scent more closely.
