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He was last in line for the throne, but the Prince of Bahrain still had some official duties to fulfill, and amongst them was welcoming his new stepmother to the family. It wasn’t until he was on the flight to Dubai that he got his first warning that something wasn’t right about this. He tried to call his brothers and sisters, but his eldest brother was in Jordan and not picking up his phone, his sisters were in Bahrain but ignoring his calls, and the one brother that answered professed to know nothing about the marriage.
If this is a scam, he thought angrily, as he he collected his luggage and headed towards the smaller plane that would fly him home. It was too late now—the people he knew to be based in Dubai were all business types, and more often than not were out of the country, making their millions or billions. They were not the kinds of friends you called up five minutes before you arrived at their pristine, sparkling penthouses and asked to crash on their couch.
They got into a cab at the airport. “The Royal Palace,” Bashir said, quickly. He’d been too preoccupied on the way over to call the house ask them to send a car—and he’d found, while living in London, that he’d grown to like the quiet anonymity that taxis could give.
The driver smiled nervously and chuckled. “Only the royal family goes there,” he said.
“And who do you think I am?” asked Bashir, equal parts amused and irritated. Amused, because he could probably call the guard and have a literal army descend on this cab within minutes, and it would be funny to see the man piss himself. Irritated, because he’d rarely been disobeyed before.
“We have business with the royal family,” said Misha, before either of them could get snippy. “Security arrangements for the coming wedding.”
“Ah, yes—very important,” said the driver, as he drove off, chattering about the wedding of a second cousin’s seventh grandchild that he’d just attended. Bashir was too peeved to think of anything to say at all—and anyway he couldn’t decide whether to lash out at Misha for his impertinence or the driver for daring to disobey a prince. Which, he had to admit, was mostly his own fault. He’d been living in London since he was twenty, after all.
On the long drive to the Royal Palace he remembered why he’d only been back once in those eight years: for his mother’s funeral. She was a lovely woman, even as she neared sixty—time did not ravage her looks, they only softened her features. She had a beautiful smile, was always decorous and correct, and he could not ever remember having heard her yelling. His sisters used to joke that she’d given all of her beauty to him because Dr. Farsid made a mistake when they did the ultrasound and told her he was girl. She’d died three years ago; Dr. Farsid had told him it was most likely a heart attack, but autopsies were forbidden by Islamic law, and in any case there was no reason to suspect foul play.
Now that they were out of the glitzy high-rises of Manama the scenery turned into dreary-beige buildings in the midst of a dready, beige desert. He’d never understood why people said they loved the desert so much. It seemed ridiculous, to persist in living in a place that was trying to kill you all the time. Even now, despite the cab’s tinted windows, he was thankful he hadn’t taken off his sunglasses, because the sand outside was bright enough to burn his eyes. Even the light is deadly, Bashir groused silently.
In the distance, the Royal Palace—a surprisingly modern building, given how much the tourism board loved to boast about Bahrain’s long history of trade in the area—rose from the sands, a seemingly solid block of white marble at a distance. As they got closer, they could begin to make out the intricately-carved shutters that were drawn over the windows, and the subtle gilding of certain flowers. Bashir’s tutors had once tried to impress upon him the pattern the gilding followed, but his head had never been one for numbers.
It seemed to take forever to reach the front gate, though, and by the time the cab pulled over Bashir was more than ready to jump out. The cab driver had spent most of the ride reminiscing about how wonderful his children were, and Misha had surprised him by actually engaging the man in the conversation. It was a little strange, not to have to be the one to do all of the talking, for once, and as they got their bags Bahsir said, “I didn’t know you have a family.”
“I don’t have a family,” Misha said. “It’s my sister’s family I was talking about.”
“Oh. Do you want a family?”
It seemed like a perfectly reasonable question, but Misha froze and gave him such a hard look that Bashir was actually a little frightened. He almost said, “I’m sorry,” but Misha said, “That time is past.”
What did he mean? Misha wasn’t that old. But his bodyguard was approaching the main gate, where the guard instantly recognized him and Bashir, and moved to let them in. Not that there were many blond Russians who spoke Arabic on Bahrain.
“Forgive me, my Prince,” the guard stammered, as Bashir walked through the gate. “If we’d heard you were coming—”
“But you didn’t because I didn’t tell you,” Bashir said, dismissing the man’s professions of utmost regret and sorrow about having abandoned his duties and so on and so forth. He felt a little guilty about being so dismissive with the guard—it wasn’t the man’s fault that he’d been trained with all of the rules and regulations and decorum surrounding the job of guarding the royal house. At the same time, though, his time in London had made him impatient, with the overblown protocol and formalitiies.
Misha slowed to allow him to pass—in London or Amsterdam, it was perfectly all right by the both of them if Misha led the way. Here, though, things could get considerably more tricky for them both if either of them failed to follow protocol.
They entered the Royal Palace, into the main hall, a massive hall with panels of intricate, hand-carved tilework on the walls and floor. His father was waiting for him at the far end. Next to him stood a woman—and not just any woman, either. Her.
Now he understood why his brothers and sisters wanted nothing to do with their father’s new marriage. Alya al-Shahaad was a rich businesswoman, a designer of some clothing line or other. She was pretty enough, with her blond accents and intense gold eyes, and fantastically rich, even by the standards of the wealthy oil barons of the Arab world. Money only gets you so far, Bashir recalled now, in the voice of his mother. What she never had to specify was what it couldn’t buy: happiness, class, grace, style.
None of which this bitch has, Bashir thought, now, trying to contain his temper and keep from spitting curses at his father. She at least did not try to act as if she didn’t know what she was doing. Alya stayed back, while the king, Salaman bin Nassir, came forth to greet his son.
Bashir hugged his father, and they exchanged the customary kisses—this much was automatic to him and he found that, despite having been away for so long, his body still remembered what to do. “My son,” the king said, smiling. “I am so happy that you are home. Now, I know what you’re going to say,” he said, before Bashir could launch into the thousand reasons why this wedding should not happen, “but I am still the sheik and it does not go against the laws of the country or Islam for a man to take another wife after his wife has passed.”
“A wife, yes—a whore?”
Some fifteen, maybe twenty years ago—when Bashir was still too young to know what an affair was—the king had had an affair with Alya. All he knew, though, was that his mother had cried for weeks, refused to eat, could hardly be moved from her room. At that time, he’d been having his own heartbreak—a girl he’d liked in school had moved away. He was old enough, by then, to realize that grown-ups sometimes lied, so to have his father lie to him about the affair wasn’t especially world-shattering. But to see Dr. Farsid hanging outside his mother’s rooms for weeks at a time—weeks when he wasn’t allowed in to see her, not even to give her a flower—was terrifying to his child’s mind, and somehow the affair with Alya became conflated with the near-loss of his mother. Even now, Bashir still felt a wave of sickness going through him when he thought of his father, bringing this woman into their house.
“You’ll not speak like that to my wife,” the king said, sternly.
“She’s not your wife yet.”
“She’ll be my wife longer than you’ll be my son if you don’t stop this childish pouting,” the king said.
Bashir wanted to protest: What are you thinking? Do you not remember what happened the last time you slept with this woman?
“I know you love your mother, and so do I,” said the king, softly. “I was lucky for that. Not all arranged marriages are so seamless and easy. But Alya and I have been partners for far longer—”
“Partners,” Bashir spat, scowling at the woman and his father, wondering what they could have possibly partnered in besides breaking his mother’s heart. “She didn’t deserve that,” he said.
