When they’d drunk in enough of her fill of sunshine that Nadya’s curiosity began to outweigh her desire to sit just a bit longer, he let her down to the basement.
They went through the door in Salman’s own side, and she caught just a hint of the rooms beyond. She wanted to explore them. She wanted to see the bedroom. She wanted to feel the way it would feel to wake up there, every day.
But that could wait. Maybe forever. No sense in torturing herself over something she couldn’t have. She followed him through a door that led to a long staircase. It took her down, deeper than she had expected, until they were well below both the house and the garden.
When they reached the bottom, they came out into a large, round room, with a tall, sloping ceiling. Salman flicked a switch, and turned on the lights. But the lights weren’t up on the ceiling. They were only about nine or ten feet above them, about at the height a normal ceiling would be. Up on the ceiling, high above them, were what looked like a million tiny, twinkling lights, laid out against a curving, dark blue field.
“A bowling alley?” she asked, surprised.
“Bowling under the stars!” He had his arms out, presenting. “I should explain,” he said, when Nadya continued to look a bit puzzled.
“It’s a reminder of home. In fact, I just had it completed, so my family can see it when they come for the wedding. When we were young, my father found out that the White House had its own bowling alley. We didn’t bowl – no one at home did. But still, my father was not a man to be outdone. So he set one up, out in the courtyard. And we played on it constantly.
“But we didn’t really know the rules, and maybe we should have found out how the game was supposed to be played, but the children were the only ones who used it. So we just made up our own rules, and played by those.”
Everything in the room shone. Nadya could have sworn that if she walked over and looked down at the lane, she would be able to see her face in it. Looking up at the “stars” above was captivating. So much so that she had a hard time concentrating on his words.
“Would you like to christen it?” he asked. He had walked up close to her, and it startled her to hear him so close so suddenly.
“Certainly,” Nadya said. “But only if you teach me your rules.”
He smiled, and obliged. As far as Nadya could tell, it was like a mixture of bowling and golf. Instead of keeping track of how many pins were taken down, instead, they kept track of how many throws it took to take down all the pins; the lower the score, the better.
“You have great form,” Salman said, watching her ready herself to throw her first try of the last round. If she got it in less than three tries, she would win.
“Thanks. I worked at a bowling alley in High School.” She began her backswing, and was halfway through the motion when she realized what she had said. The thought threw her off, and she released the ball too late, sending it flying up instead out smoothly out. The ball made a horrible banging noise as it bounced itself heavily into the gutter.
“It’s just like Dubai to have a bowling alley before everyone else. Tell me, did they know who you were? Or were you doing it in secret, just to try and get away from everything?”
She tried to stifle her sigh of relief as she readied her next shot, facing away from him so that he wouldn’t see the stress on her face. “The second one. What about you? Did you ever have anything like that?”
She bowled her second throw. A much better result, though not perfect. Losing was a real possibility, if he did well on his turn.
“Me? Oh, no. I think my mother wanted me to, in retrospect. She would tell me bedtime stories about princes that disguised themselves so they could walk amongst their people. But I was a good boy. I cared far too much about pleasing my father to ever do anything like that.”
The ball hit the pins, but left three standing. He’d have a chance.
“Is that why you’re getting married? For him?” Nadya was concentrating too hard on readying her next shot to keep the words from slipping out.
He didn’t reply. They both watched the ball roll down the aisle and blast away all three remaining pins.
Walking over to the ball return, Salman looked like he was considering what to say. “We all have our reasons for the decisions we make. It’s a hard thing, to try and find the balance between meeting your own needs, and doing what your family requires of you. The idea that the individual is all that matters, and the family has no say is very American. I’m surprised at you.”
“Well I am surprising,” she said. “I thought we covered that.”
He’d gotten his ball and was heading to the lane. Mute, Nadya watched him throw it, decisively. It struck perfectly, scattering all the pins on impact.
“And you’re surprising, too,” she said, as he turned with a grin that nearly split his face in two. “Have you been holding back?”
He shrugged. “I want you to like it here.”
“Oh, we’re playing again,” Nadya said, standing. “For real, this time. I was holding back, too.”
He raised his eyebrow ske
ptically. But he agreed. “On one condition, though,” he said.
“Anything.”
“If I win again, you’ll take a walk with me out across the property. There’s something I want to show you.”
She picked up her ball, and walked over to the lane, where the pins had already been set up for her next throw.
“Deal,” she said, and sent the ball screaming decisively towards them.