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‘I might have been naïve to assume that Hatem would have kept it with him.’
Khalif shook his head. ‘The men in our family do not wear jewellery.’
She nodded in understanding. ‘And what do you know of where it came from?’
‘I thought you were supposed to be telling me,’ he said, half impatient, half grumble, his tone completely familiar to her from the little children she taught when they weren’t given what they wanted easily.
‘Humour me?’ she asked.
He sighed and ran a hand absently through his hair. ‘Honestly, even now it feels more like a fairy tale than reality or a part of family history. I used to tease Faizan about it when we were children.’
‘About what?’
‘That his wife would have to wear thefairy talenecklace.’
Star threw a hand-woven tapestry pillow at him without realising that the piece was from the seventeenth century and probably hadn’t actually been touched for at least two.
He caught it one-handed and put it down with great care.
‘I was a child,’ he defended. ‘Anyway, we knew that it had been worn by our mother, and our grandmother, and our great-grandmother and so on. Every generation was proud and protective of it, always ensuring that the first in line to the throne would present the necklace to his wife.’
Goosebumps pebbled on his skin and the hairs on the back of his neck lifted as he followed his thought to its natural conclusion.
‘But you take it seriously now,’ she said, unaware of his thoughts.
‘Very,’ he replied without hesitation. ‘We were told that some day someone would come and claim the necklace. That it would be clear who they were and they would be given it without question or hesitation. Any more than that, I’m afraid I have no idea. My mother might know, but...’ He shrugged, his mind still half on the thought that if Star was pregnant it might have found its way to her anyway. Either by becoming his wife, or it being returned to her, Star would end up wearing the same necklace as his grandmother, mother...and Samira.
‘My great-great-great-grandmother came here,’ Star said, causing Khalif to blink in surprise. ‘In the late eighteen-hundreds she was travelling with her uncle as his wife’s companion. They were passing through the Middle East and had come to Duratra to meet with His Majesty Sheikh Hatem Al Azhar to discuss Duratra becoming part of the British protectorate. Many other countries in the area had agreed, but Hatem had neither interest or need to do so.’
Khalif raised a sceptical eyebrow. ‘And you know this how?’ She was right, but it was strange hearing her so certain of the thoughts and feelings of a man who had died over one hundred years before.
‘Because Hatem and Catherine grew very close and she wrote about it in her diaries,’ she stated, her large blue eyes shining up at him with nothing but sincerity.
‘I don’t—’ He stopped short, his mind incapable of processing what Star was implying. ‘This is not possible,’ he declared.
Star looked down at the necklace in her hands as if trying to soften the blow of what she was implying. ‘Catherine’s uncle was called back to Egypt, but his wife refused to travel again so soon. According to Catherine, her aunt had a weak constitution, not suited to the climate, which irritated the husband she was angry with for bringing her to the Middle East in the first place.
‘But Catherine was happy to stay behind. She loved it here. She begged Hatem to take her out on horseback so that she could explore as much of the desert as possible.’
‘Star, this is all very fanciful but—’
‘She spoke of an oasis. Which is what had me confused,’ Star said, not noticing the stillness that had come over him. ‘I was confused at the palace in Burami because some of her descriptions didn’t seem to fit. I just assumed that things had changed in the last hundred years. But when you showed me the gardens here, I realised...thisis where Catherine met with Hatem. This is where she stayed with her aunt, and spent the night at the oasis with the crossed palms.’
Khalif’s mind screeched to a halt. No one outside the family had visited the oasis. So there was no way that Star could have known about the crossed palms. A sudden memory of him and Faizan digging at the base of the huge ancient trees, convinced there was buried treasure to be found, filled his mind and heart, his ears echoing with the sounds of boys’ laughter and the feel of sand against his skin.
‘What do the diaries say of Hatem?’ he ventured, half hoping she was being truthful and half still disbelieving.
‘Quite a lot,’ Star replied with a smile. ‘That he’d seen what had happened in Egypt and the way it was being torn between Britain and the Europeans, the impossible loan rates and finally the political coup. According to Catherine, Hatem insisted that Duratra had been fine without being under the British protectorate and would continue to be so. He’d been surprised when Catherine had agreed with him though.’
‘Why did she?’
Star bit down on her lip, distracting him momentarily. ‘Because she knew what it was like to live with a gun to her head.’ She turned to look at the desert as if needing to gather her thoughts.
‘When Hatem and Catherine returned from the oasis, it was to news that her father had died. Everything that Catherine had, all she had known, would be inherited by her cousin—a man who had made it clear he intended marriage. Would it surprise you to know that Hatem asked Catherine to marry him?’
‘Yes,’ Khalif barked. And then, ‘No. At this point, Star, I don’t think anything would surprise me,’ he said, reaching for his tea to quench both his thirst and his wonder at all of this...information he’d never known about his ancestor.
‘Catherine knew that he was betrothed to Alyah. She thought Alyah would be a good bride for Hatem.’
