The Weeping Desert by Alexandra Thomas

Arabic custom of complete obedience. Silently she pointed at the cases she wished to keep, and then shook her head at the remainder. John noticed that the Diorling perfume and rose-leaf jam were accompanying them to Pinethorpe, but the ink horns and pieces of ambergris were destined to remain in store. For a moment John felt a fleeting admiration for Khadija. She was behaving in a brave and dignified manner. She had arrived in a foreign country, with a strange man to whom she had given her trust, and was now being made to part with half of her belongings. John promised himself that he would buy her something really frivolous and feminine to make up for his harshness.
    “We’ll go and find a taxi into London,” said John heartily, trying to lift the atmosphere of gloom. Khadija padded silently behind him. John stopped and turned to her.
    “This is England,” he said. “You don’t have to walk behind me. You walk at my side, like this.”
    He took her arm and steered her through the crowds.
     
    Khadija’s sadness lifted a little as she walked beside the tall, sunburnt Englishman. So many things in the last few hours had dismayed and frightened her. Many times she dearly wished herself back in the cushioned familiarity and safety of the royal harem. Then her young, struggling spirit that yearned to be free looked around at the European women with their bare faces and short skirts, and she realised that if she wanted to taste these freedoms, then she must conform to other Western customs, however strange and heartbreaking they might be.
    They had to take two taxis into London, for there were still ten pieces of luggage. John saw his savings disappearing as fast as ice under the desert sun, if this was a sample of how much Khadija was going to cost him.
    “Is this still London?” she asked every few minutes, hardly taking her eyes off the busy streets.
    John nodded. “It’s a big place.”
    He booked into a hotel near Marble Arch and took two rooms for the night. Khadija was obviously flagging. The long flight had been tiring and neither of them had had any sleep the previous night.
    Khadija looked round the foyer of the hotel, at the modern decor and deep, comfortable furniture. Her appearance had caused very little stir, for the hotel staff were used to a cosmopolitan clientele.
    “Is this your palace?” she asked, impressed.
    “I have already told you, I do not live in a palace,” said John, steering her towards the lift. “Glen Craven House is large but by no means a palace. My father has his surgery, a waiting room and an office downstairs. There are four bedrooms, and two more bedrooms above them in the roof, which my brother and I used to have when we were kids.”
    The lift doors clanged shut, and with a faint whir the lift shot upwards. Khadija would have fallen if John had not caught her arm.
    “What is happening?” she gasped.
    John explained the function of a lift. “We can always walk down if you don’t like it,” he sighed.
    Khadija did not like it, and once she had reached the safety of her bedroom on the sixth floor, she refused to leave it. John tried to persuade her to join him in the dining room for a meal, but she was adamant. In the end he rang room service and ordered a light supper for her on a tray. Perhaps it was just as well. He supposed Arab women removed their masks in order to eat, and Khadija did not seem ready to do that in public yet. She liked her room and the adjoining private bathroom, although she remarked that it was the size for a doll. John explained that his room was next door, but Khadija did not answer.
    John left her when the supper trolley arrived. Khadija looked at it distastefully, and John knew what she was thinking.
    “You’ll just have to get used to using other people’s cups,” he said, which sounded unhygienic even to his ears.
    When John knocked at her door early next morning, Khadija appeared, very subdued. She had not found it easy without Is-if to