by DJ Black
The desert was hot and relentless; there was nothing romantic about it in Megan's view. She eyed the man at the wheel beside her and made a pout with her lips. Some prince he was, she thought, the white T-shirt and Ray-Bans he wore made him look more like a Californian poser than anything. It just wasn't the story she was after. Oh he was handsome enough, but if it had been pretty boys she was wanting then she could have stayed in LA.
The Range Rover slid down the highway between hills of orange sand for mile after mile and so far she had seen nothing.
"Tell me Sir, what do you do? For a living I mean?" she asked him with a yawn.
At least the air conditioning worked and her short pixie hair cupped the top of her head much as it had back in the salon. But now she thought she needn't have cut it all to accommodate the heat.
"Hey, call me Ahmed," Sheikh Ahmed Aleem Al Elohahem said, pronouncing his name in its Anglicised form. "I am an engineer, but my uncle was concerned that..." He gave her an easy smile and shrugged. "He just wanted you to get what you needed. My cousin usually handles PR, but quite frankly, well... let's say it is not his forte." He smiled warmly. "You know... well, jobs can be hereditary. I am supposed to be a soldier, but I prefer building to destruction." He sighed. "But sometimes I still have to be a colonel."
His English was better than good; it sounded almost as if he were English, Megan thought. It even made her West Coast vowels sound coarse by comparison.
"So where were you educated?" Megan asked politely.
"Kings, Cambridge and London, Sandhurst, the LSE, Harvard, Brunel..." He reeled off his list as if it was of no particular concern.
"So you are the brains of the family and they have lumbered you with babysitting." She let her professional cynicism show.
"Hardly, but if you want technical details rather than overly bold hubris, then I will prove more useful," Ahmed said with a wink.
"So you're serious then, I mean about developing solar power?" Megan slipped the question in through a row of even white teeth better matched to a crocodile.
"The oil won't last forever." Ahmed shrugged.
Megan pushed her mouth back into a pout, a thinking pose for the 32-year-old journalist. Oh hell, a man of vision and modesty, he really did just want to talk about engineering, she thought; where is my damn story?
The solar array was impressive. Mile upon mile of silver grey glass all facing heaven. But even after she heard the numbers Megan had nothing that she couldn't have got on the website from LA.
"What about the desert? The real country, the real people out there?" she asked, narrowing her gaze as though it would suck a story from the man. "How will your project affect them?"
Ahmed frowned and followed her gesture to the horizon of sand. "Those that get jobs will be satisfied, those that don't will complain about western influence," he said in a sad voice. "As for the desert," he relaxed into a shrug and sighed, "the desert is the desert, and we learn not to fight it."
"Can I see it? The desert I mean?" she asked eagerly. For a moment her professional mask slipped and she was genuinely enthusiastic.
"It is uncomfortable and dangerous for a..." he began.
"A woman?" Megan finished for him.
"I was going to say outsider, but it is hard for a woman too," he said without the insincere bluster of one of her own countrymen pretending to be a new man.
"Oh, how so?"
He turned to study her. "Out there I do not make the law or seek to shape the sands," he said sounding like a sheik for the first time. "I bend with the desert winds. Here I am a modern man, an engineer, and we can be equals sharing an air conditioned British-made SUV. Out there I am my grandfather's grandson, a prince of the desert with a lineage going back before..." He broke off and smiled, slightly embarrassed. "Out there we play by different rules," he continued with sharp eyes and a touch of steel in his voice.
Megan shrugged. "Yes but can I see it?" she asked, looking again out to the desert horizon.
"Can you ride a camel?" he countered, his boyish smile re-masking his face.
There had been a lot of rules. Ahmed had told her everything twice and the important things he had said a third time. There was just to be the two of them and four camels: one each, one for water and a spare with more water and a long-range radio.
He had obtained for her a sand-coloured cotton jacket and pants, with beige desert boots. He had insisted that she also cover her hair with a bandanna in case they encountered someone, which he stressed, was unlikely.
Ahmed himself wore a green safari suit with a tradition headpiece like she had imagined a sheikh should look. But on him it conjured up Valentino and not oil billionaires, although she knew he was one.
But the romance soon evaporated in the heat and an hour out in the sun was relentless and the camel was hell on her ass. Inwardly she cursed. Damn, why couldn't he have shown her the desert by helicopter and they could have been home in time for a five star dinner?
"From up ahead we can get a better view of the solar field and you will see its true size. We might even see the dam if it is clear and the oil wells of course. It will make a good picture; the three faces of the modern Arabia." He spoke in clipped tones as if unconsciously he had reverted to his warrior heritage.
Megan pulled a face and nodded as she shifted her weight on the camel's back.
If he noticed her discomfort he didn't show it and turned back to face the track. Track was a generous term for a groove of dust between the ever higher dunes. In fact they had not travelled for another five minutes when it was lost where two great hills of sand had finally merged.
"You had better wait here with the animals," he said wearily. "I will go around and find a better path. Mark me well though, stay here." He pointed down sharply and glared at her.
Megan nodded and slid gratefully off the back of the huge beast and down into some soft hot sand. The water from her flask was good and with one checking glance at her guide's retreating back, she took several extra forbidden swigs. After all there was plenty more on the camel.
The first thing that struck her was the sound. Even in the desert calm the light breeze sang as it whispered over the dunes, a low buzzing hum like some small golden bird to lull her to sleep. Megan closed her eyes and took another swig. This time she let the cool water splash out and over her face in a cascade of bliss.
She didn't actually sleep. It was more of a momentary doze, but her head blinked open with a start. The two spare camels were anchored down where Ahmed had left them, dozing as she had done. But her beast was nowhere to be seen.
"Shit," she spat and leapt to her feet. "Hey you stupid... here camel, camel..." she called as if luring a kitten.
There were tracks, they led off in the direction Ahmed had gone and she broke into a short dash. It had only been a minute or two and at each small bend in the dunes she expected to see the straying animal up ahead. Damn if I can't outsmart a... she stopped and looked at the shallowest dune side. If she gained some height she would see the creature.
Nevertheless, it took more effort than Megan had thought and by the time she gained the top she was wasted with heaving dry sobs and drenched as if from rain. She crashed to her knees, suddenly afraid that she might have made matters worse. But there below impossibly close were the two tethered camels and just around a curve was a clear track of the other. Not that she could actually see it yet. She could drop down the other side and cut it off easily, she supposed. She would get back to the others before Ahmed even knew she was gone.
Finally, Megan had given up. The camel was lost and Megan couldn't even find tracks anymore. Then it had taken twice as long to climb back up the dune to drop back to the others and she was sure by now that Ahmed would have returned. It was just 10 feet to go, she thought as she slowed to a trudge to top the dune. God she was relieved. She was about to drop for a breath when she looked down. The world was pebble-dashed with smooth rounded hills for as far as the eye could see. It was astonishing in its beauty, but also sickening as hard dread gripped her innards. The vista was one she had never seen. There were certainly no camels. They must be lost somewhere behind her or... she bit back a harsh dry swallow... out there somewhere.
It was obvious that when she had turned back she had ascended the wrong dune. If that was so then all she had to do was backtrack. She looked down. All footsteps had flowed away like sand in an hour glass and she gasped. She shot a glance over the valley she had just ascended, but there was no clear trace of a path there either.
"Is there anybody there?" she called out and then as reality took hold she added in a louder voice, "Hey, is there anyone there?" Then she screamed for help.
The water she had taken was suddenly gone and she began to feel woozy. A second and third attempt at backtracking had led her nowhere and she began to wonder if she should just try and go back using the sun. They had been going... south was it? Or no, maybe more like west. Where had the sun been? She closed her eyes and tried to picture it. If she didn't panic...
As she cleared her mind she imagined she heard the cry of a camel, but the desert was still singing and she knew if she listened hard enough it would sing any song she wanted as her befogged mind began to make sense from the matrix of nonsense.
As if to prove her rationale, she even thought she heard her name.
"Megan," said someone darkly and close by, and then more sharply, "Megan."
She hadn't realised until then that she had been sitting down and her eyes were still closed. She opened them.
Ahmed had angry concern chiselled into his face. His polished brown eyes shone like some exotic gemstones and looking into them for an instant Megan saw something of a world beyond all that she knew.
"Megan," he said again.
She exploded into his arms and held on as if he was life itself.
"There is a ruined temple near an oasis not far from there," he said as they reached all four camels by the track. "We will be alright there for the night." She felt too foolish to acknowledge him and kicked uselessly at the sand at her feet. "We'll light a fire," he continued. "Believe it or not it gets cold at night."
"I'm sorry," she muttered.
"No doubt, but did I not speak about the law of the desert?" His voice was stern like a schoolmaster.
She nodded.
"You deserve to be whipped," he growled.
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