And last came Tora, wearing a sleeveless gown of golden silk ruched over her breasts and hips with a sweeping train and with her hair piled high and studded with champagne-coloured pearls and who was walked along the foreshore to meet her groom by the three best men, Zoltan, Bahir and Kadar.
At the very front stood Rashid, waiting as each group made its way to him, waiting impatiently for the moment he would be joined by his glowing bride. Under Qajarese law, he had been a married man for six months, and Tora a married woman. Six months during which the state of Qajaran had grown up, a period full of the necessary aches and pains of change but the benefits were already there, the confidence of the economy picking up, the lacklustre tourism sector finally getting off the ground.
Six months during which he had grown up and changed and become the ruler Qajaran needed, but only, he knew, because this woman had been by his side every step of the way.
Half a year they had been together, but today was the start of their real marriage, he knew. Today what had begun as a hastily arranged marriage of convenience would become a marriage of necessity, a marriage of free choice, a marriage to last until the end of days.
He smiled at the children as they made their way closer, saw Yousra in the throng holding a growing Atiyah in her frothy white dress, a white ribbon tying up her black curls, and he knew life was good.
The three brides of his brothers, their beautiful faces beaming, stepped to his left. How was it possible for his brothers to find such remarkable women, each and every one of them, and yet to leave the pearl of the collection for him? How lucky was he?
She was drawing closer, his brothers cutting in on each other to take turns on her arms. She was laughing at something one of them said and Rashid was struck by her beauty and her joy. She was radiant. She looked up then, and the laughter died on her lips as their eyes locked. He saw the cognac-coloured eyes darken with smouldering need and the smile that she gave just to him and his heart swelled.
And then she was there before him and his three desert brothers lifted her hand to place in his, before, with a slap to his back, they peeled away to stand on his right.
‘You look beautiful,’ he said softly. ‘I love you.’
‘As I love you,’ she said, unable to stop the two tears of joy that squeezed unbidden from her eyes. ‘For ever.’
It was a fairy tale, it occurred to Tora in that moment as she looked up into the dark gaze of the man she loved. A tale of trials and tribulations decorated with palaces and pavilions, peacocks and fountains. A tale of the exotic. And yet a tale of the most basic human needs.
Like life.
She glanced towards her friend Sally where she sat beaming alongside Steve in his wheelchair—Steve, who was growing stronger by the day. Sally blew her a kiss and Tora smiled back, before looking up to the sky and feeling her mother and father soaring in the heights and beaming down upon her on her proudest day. They were here, she knew, and it was good.
Even better when she felt Rashid’s lips on her cheek. ‘You have made me the happiest man in the world,’ he whispered, and she wondered just how much joy it was possible to feel before one exploded with it.
For together they had conquered the tests put before them, had overcome their own fears and confronted their own feelings, and as their reward they had won the greatest prize of all. Had earned the greatest gift of all, for even life itself was worthless without it.
Love.
‘Dearly beloved,’ the celebrant began then as the gulls wheeled in the sky above and the passing ferry drivers tooted their horns in celebration, ‘we are gathered here today for this very special Christmas wedding...’