Secrets of the Oasis

She watched as he too disrobed and stood there, powerful and intimidating. ‘I want you to touch yourself like you did the other night,’ he said.

Jamilah groaned softly. He was going to make her pay for what she had done to him earlier, in the glade. She’d noted the glint of determination in his eyes at the time, and now it was payback. She found the soap and let the magic of this moment out of time suck her under again, giving in to the heady pleasure and telling herself weakly that she’d let the questions go unanswered for now.

The following morning, early, Jamilah sat on a bench outside the tent and saw some of the local boys tending to the horses in nearby enclosures. She quirked a wry smile at the memory that she’d threatened to escape on one the other evening, when she’d arrived, and how Salman had autocratically declared that he’d forbidden anyone to let her take one.

Her smile faded, though, when she went inwards to the thoughts that had been plaguing her ever since Salman had fallen into a deep slumber beside her. She’d envied him his ease of sleep. It was day three. They were due to go back to Merkazad. And Jamilah knew she had two options open to her: she could avoid Salman again, for all the good it would do for her mental health, or she could try and take things further, but in the process risk much much more. She risked everything with that option—risked being hurt all over again.

She knew that if she insisted on pressing him to open up even more, he’d push her away for good. At least that was the gamble. Even as she accepted the futility of wanting that, a small, ever-persistent and ever-optimistic voice pointed out that things were different this time. This Salman was a different Salman from the one she’d known in Paris.

She sighed deeply. She couldn’t stop the hopes and dreams. Was she on some level hoping for him to be cruel again? To reject her brutally? Wishing for a sort of punishment for having allowed herself to be so stupid as to believe that he might have changed? Her mouth tightened. She certainly deserved it, if that was the case.

She heard a movement come from inside the tent and resolutely stood up, mentally steeling herself for the exchange to come.

Salman had woken up to find Jamilah gone. He was pulling on a pair of discarded jeans when she appeared in the doorway, dressed in her own jeans and a shirt. The village girl had returned them yesterday, washed and ironed. A frisson of unease went down his spine when he saw the familiar tilt to her chin and the crossed arms.

‘Good morning.’ His voice was still husky from sleep, and he could see how Jamilah’s arms tightened fractionally, as if it had affected her. Immediately blood thickened and rushed to a strategic part of his anatomy. Pushing aside any niggles of inexplicable apprehension, Salman strode over to where Jamilah still stood, just inside the entrance, as if she were about to bolt.

He caught her face in his hands and pressed a kiss to her mouth, willing her to soften and relax into him. But she was rigid. He pressed a hand down her back to her bottom and pulled her into him, but to his chagrin she fought and pulled back, out of his arms.

‘No, Salman. We’re done with this. We’re done here. Three days—that was it. We go home today, and I’m not going to go through this again with you. This time it is over. Really over.’

Salman looked at her and tried not to let those huge pools of blue affect him. He felt tight inside. ‘Why does it have to end, Jamilah? I fail to see why when we’re so good together. Why would you want to do that to yourself?’

‘Because I’m trying my best not to be a complete masochist, Salman. You hurt me badly once before, and I’m not going down that route again.’

Salman felt sick inside. ‘But it’s not the same this time. We’re different—you’re different. You know why—’

‘Why what, Salman? Why you rejected me in Paris even though you didn’t want to? Well, you did…and I have a confession now, too.’ Her heart thumped ominously. ‘I was in love with you. And it hurt me more than I can tell you. I’m not a robot, Salman. Perhaps it’s easy for you to keep your feelings on ice and locked away, but I can’t promise that…’

Salman felt anything but cold at that moment. He felt heat rising, because Jamilah had just told him she had loved him. He ran a hand through his hair impatiently, loath to keep on this track, afraid of what she might say…

Feeling desperate, as if something precious was slipping out of his grasp, and not liking it, he said, ‘Stay here with me for another few days…until Nadim comes home. We don’t have to deal with anything till then.’

Jamilah shook her head, her eyes huge and boring all the way to his soul. ‘No. We have to deal with this now. All you’re asking for is a stay of execution. I’m not interested in prolonging an affair that’s just about sex. We have a relationship, whether you want to admit it or not, and relationships are about intimacy. Telling each other things, opening up. Nothing has really changed from six years ago, and when you walk away again, back to your life and your other women, I’ll be right back to square one.’

Anger was like a tight knot deep inside Salman—anger at himself, for having indulged his weakness for Jamilah again. ‘What do you want, Jamilah? More sordid tales of what happened to me? Like the fact that one day the so

ldiers brought out one of the maids from the castle and used her to give me a demonstration of what a man did with a woman? Is that what you want? Is that what will allow us to continue this affair?’

Salman saw how Jamilah paled, and immediately he cursed and wanted to claw the words back. He’d had no right to tell her that. He’d already burdened her with too much. But even as he watched she composed herself and stood up tall, colour slashing her cheeks.

Jamilah shook her head sadly. His words this affair were lancing her inside. She was doing the right thing. That was all it was to him—all it ever would be. ‘I’m sorry, Salman, truly sorry that you had to see that. But I’m not talking about that kind of intimacy. I’m talking about something that grows between two people in a relationship who…who care for one another, and you just won’t admit that we have that. I’m talking about the banal details of our lives, our hopes and dreams.’

She had no idea how monumental what she asked was. Salman reached out to take Jamilah’s shoulders in his hands, barely aware of what he was doing. ‘You ask too much. It’s an intimacy I’m not prepared to indulge in with anyone. I can’t.’

Shock and renewed pain cut through Jamilah like a serrated knife-edge. She wrenched free of Salman, tears blurring her vision and slipping down her hot cheeks. ‘I know the horrors you faced, Salman, and I can imagine how they made your belief in the fundamental goodness of man disappear. But it doesn’t have to be like that again. What happened to you doesn’t happen to everyone, and it’s not to be expected.’

Salman’s face was stark. He sneered, ‘How can you possibly know what it’s like?’

Jamilah put out a hand. ‘Exactly—how can I know, unless you tell me?’

Unconsciously she put a hand to her belly.

‘It’s not that you can’t indulge in that kind of intimacy, Salman, it’s that you just won’t. And all the sex in the world can’t disguise that. I don’t know why I let you believe that my baby wasn’t yours, Salman, when you need a good dose of reality. But it was!’

She tried to dash tears away ineffectually, not even noticing the way Salman had paled. ‘I know that must be hard to take—a man of your supreme control failing in one crucial aspect. But the fact is that it was your baby, and mine, and it died before it had a chance to live.’

The awful remembered pain nearly crippled her. She was livid with herself for being so stupid all over again. She was so angry she lashed out with words designed purely to wound and hurt as she hurt. ‘Do you know what? I’m glad that baby didn’t live, because you would have made a terrible father, Salman. You’re an emotional wasteland, clinging onto your past like a shield, and you don’t even deserve to be loved.’