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I’m not a dog, Bashir thought, but he took the next chair. “What is it?” he asked.
“Nothing,” his father said. “Nothing important, at any rate.”
“Then why do you want me to sit with you?” he asked.
“Can a father not enjoy the company of his son?”
There was an uncomfortable silence, broken only by the chirping of the birds and the squeaking of the last of the night’s bats, while Bashir settled into his chair and resumed sipping at his tea. “You were out with a woman,” his father said, making a guess. Bashir didn’t deny it.
“Your mother didn’t want me to arrange a marriage for you,” the king said.
“It didn’t stop you from trying,” Bashir retorted.
“No,” the king agreed. “But that was before I realized that I’d never been out of love with Alya. The heart does what it wants, you know?”
It was true, that the marriage proposals that he’d occasionally receive in his email had stopped a few years ago. But Bashir had thought that that was because his father had finally gotten the message: he wasn’t interested in getting married.
“Your mother and I—we respected each other, and yes, we grew to love each other,” the king continued. “Your brothers will say the same thing of their wives, and your sisters will say the same thing of their husbands. But your mother was adamant that we leave you be, to find your own path and your own wife. I thought for sure that it was a bad idea. I thought you’d go off with the first whore that you met—”
“I did,” said Bashir.
“But you didn’t marry her,” his father said, “and I’m certain that I taught you to pay her well for her time. I was afraid that you’d have all these silly ideas of what it means to fall in love and that you’d choose a common woman who was only interested in your money.”
“Melinda is not like that,” Bashir said.
“Maybe, maybe not. Who knows?” the king said. “You love her, though. And that’s what I discovered when I first fell for Alya, even though I was betrothed to your mother: the heart wants what it wants.”
Was his father actually granting him his blessing to go ahead with Melinda? For a moment Bashir wondered if someone had spiked the tea with hashish or something. “Are you feeling all right?” he asked, instead. “Or am I hearing things?”
The king snorted. “Well, if it makes you feel any better, you’ll never be the king or in charge of the money from the family investments.”
Bashir grinned ruefully. “That’s all right. I’m a terrible investor, anyway.”
“What are you studying in Oxford, then?” the king asked. “I don’t remember what you told me.”
“That’s because you never asked,” Bashir said, and almost immediately he regretted it. He hadn’t meant to sound petty. His father had five children, and the year he started at Oxford, two of them were getting married and the pro-democracy advocates were rioting. His studies were trivial in comparison to the state of the realm, and he accepted that.
But that didn’t mean that some acknowledgment wasn’t appreciated. “I’m studying international law,” he said. “When I graduate I’ve got a few offers from multinationals and one from the UN.”
“The UN are a bunch of hypocritical bastards,” muttered the king.
“Maybe, but at least they pay well. And it’s a good position,” Bashir said, “mostly writing contracts and treaties. It’s interesting work, believe it or not.”
“You really are making your own way,” the king said, smiling. Bashir thought he saw a hint of pride in the way his father looked at him. Pride? No, that can’t be, he thought. His father, who’d only ever treated him like an afterthought, being proud of his last son?
And yet, as the king pulled himself to his feet, Bashir caught a subtle nod from his father. It was hard to be certain whether it was real or just an effect of the rapidly brightening sky. But in either case, he felt only ecstasy—his father would not interfere with Melinda.
Now it was just a matter of convincing her to go to England with him. And somehow, he had the feeling that this was going to be a lot harder.
***
He borrowed his father’s sedan for this trip to Melinda’s—a simple BMW, elegant but common. He didn’t have to make a statement this time. He didn’t want to play the rich guy with too much money and no common sense, but he was aware of the irony that he was rich enough to pick and choose a car to match his mood, much the same way most other people decided what to wear.
Well, why shouldn’t I? He’d always felt vaguely guilty about the money in his family, aware that it was all because Bahrain had billions of barrels of oil just offshore and not because his father or grandfather had been especially intelligent or insightful. In fact, until the 1960s, Bahrain was considered a backwater country, a country that nobody could wait to get out of. Then oil was discovered, and money came pouring in—just as his grandfather seized power. It was an incredible stroke of luck that had made his family rich and his life of privilege possible. It’d taken years of therapy and philosophical debates with his friends at Oxford to come to the conclusion that he couldn’t help being born rich, just as he couldn’t help those who’d been born poor—the only thing that was to be done was to use the money well, and part of that was enjoying his life.
He drove to her catering company this time, having gotten the information from the cook who’d hired Melinda. Her catering company was located on the outskirts of Manama, in a small, unassuming building that was shared with a laundromat. It didn’t look very impressive at all—the lettering on the sign was elegant enough, but the pictures of the dishes in the window were faded from the sun and there was no “open” sign on the door. When he stepped out of the car the air was an odd perfume of Ras-al-hanout and dryer sheets.
A bell announced his presence, but there was nobody to greet him. The inside of her company was just as strictly-business as she was. There was her desk, neat and spare, with her computer that was locked to her the desk, a cup with three pens, and a thick planner, filled with scribbled notes. The floor was thin, industrial carpet, in that dark gray that never seemed to match anything. The sofa and chairs her customers sat in were mismatched. Behind the desk was a wall, with a single door, through which he could hear her barking orders in her oddly-accented Arabic: stir this, chop that, I needed this done yesterday.
