Secrets of the Oasis

Salman watched, stunned and in shock, as Jamilah fled outside. Her words had fallen like little arrow tips all over his skin. A baby. His baby. It wasn’t possible. Medically, it wasn’t possible. If it was any other woman he would automatically negate what she’d said, but it was Jamilah. She wasn’t like that. She wouldn’t lie. And, as if to compound the suspicion that she could be right, the doctor’s words came back to him as if it were yesterday.

‘You’ll need to come for regular check-ups to make sure the operation has been successful. There shouldn’t be a problem, but as with anything else there’s a small failure rate.’

Recrimination burnt through him. Salman had naturally gone to the doctor with the highest success rate in his field. Once he’d had the operation he’d been supremely confident, and he’d been supremely busy. Of course he hadn’t gone for any follow-up appointments…so it was very possible that the operation might indeed have failed. He had a sick feeling that if he went to get checked out that was exactly what he would find.

His head bursting and reeling with this knowledge, Salman remembered the hurt look in Jamilah’s eyes the night she’d told him of the miscarriage. He’d thought it had been for the loss of the child, not because he hadn’t recognised that it had been his. He cursed himself. Blindly, he went outside to follow her, but couldn’t see her anywhere. He cursed again, and then heard a thunderous sound. Jamilah appeared from one of the enclosures on the back of a horse, hair streaming out behind her.

‘Jamilah!’ Salman shouted, furious with the fear that rose up even now to strangle him. He couldn’t move, and could only watch as Jamilah cantered towards him, bringing the horse to a dramatic stop just feet away. Salman could feel clammy sweat break out on his brow. He’d never felt so weak in his life, and he detested that weakness.

A wealth of sadness rang in Jamilah’s voice. ‘At least I know you won’t follow me, Salman. I’ll come back when I hear the helicopter, and not before.’ She whirled the horse around on the spot with an expert precision that even Salman could appreciate, and in a flurry of dust she was gone. Far away from him.

For hours Salman paced up and down outside the tent, his face as black as thunder. He’d issued orders and now waited for them to materialise. No one came near him, and there was no sign of Jamilah.

When the helicopter finally arrived he breathed a sigh of relief. Now she would come back, and he would talk to her. He knew now that he had to at least give her some kind of explanation.

The chopper pilot checked in with Salman. Time went past with no sign of Jamilah. Salman felt rage building upwards, and wondered if she’d been stupid enough to try and ride all the way home. Then he reassured himself. She wouldn’t have—not without provisions. Jamilah had local knowledge, and while their country might not consist of the more traditional desert, its rocky and mountainous topography held just as many dangers as an undulating sea of sands.

Just then Salman saw a young boy, leading a horse by the reins. It was the horse Jamilah had been on. With a different kind of fear constricting his insides into a knot, he strode over, learning that the boy had found it wandering in the village shortly before. Salman’s insides curdled. It had come back without Jamilah.

Shouting orders—and an urgent one for someone to find the local doctor—and ruing the decision he’d made to bring Jamilah out here in the first place, Salman gritted his jaw against the onset of panic at what he was about to do. He swung himself onto the horse’s back. He knew the chopper was nearby, but the horse itself would be the quickest way back to Jamilah’s exact location. He would call the pilot and navigate him in if he needed to.

He hadn’t been on a horse since the age of eight, but up until that time he’d been a more proficient horseman than even his own brother. Now he depended on knowledge he’d long since buried, nudging the horse in the direction it had taken with Jamilah and praying that it would take him back to her. If anything had happened to her— He blanked his mind. He couldn’t go there.

The horse only started slowing down when it had cantered for about half an hour on the other side of the village. Miles from any habitation. This area was far from the lush oasis he’d left behind, and was as arid and rocky as the moon.

‘Jamilah!’ Salman’s voice was hoarse from roaring her name.

He stopped the horse and turned it round and round, despair starting to snake into his veins even as he denied it. There was nothing remotely human as far as the eye could see. He knew the search party he’d commandeered wouldn’t be far behind him, and they would have supplies, but there were treacherous rocks everywhere. A sudden mental image of Jamilah lying unconscious and bleeding made him squeeze the horse into a trot again as he called out her name for the umpteenth time.

And then he heard it—faint but distinct. ‘Go away!’

Salman’s head went back. He closed his eyes for a moment, and the relief that went through him was nothing short of monumental.

He nudged the horse in the direction of her voice. ‘Jamilah, habiba, where are you?’

‘I’m not your habiba. Leave me alone. I’m fine.’

Salman followed the voice easily enough, and jumped off the horse when he saw a familiar, albeit dusty figure sitting on a rock, long tendrils of black hair loose over her shoulders. He made sure to

tie the recalcitrant horse to a lone tree before walking over to her. She was looking resolutely away from him with arms crossed, and he sucked in a breath when he saw blood and a nasty bump on her forehead.

‘You’re bleeding.’

Salman’s voice was like a balm to Jamilah’s ravaged emotions, but at the same time she wanted to stand up and rant and rail and beat her fists on his chest until he might feel even a smidgen of the pain she felt. She sniffed, finally allowing that she’d been far more scared than she was letting on. ‘The horse got spooked by an eagle and threw me. It was gone before I could get up.’

Salman was in front of her now, and to her chagrin all Jamilah could think about was how wrecked she must look. She still wouldn’t look at him. His big hands were gentle, probing and touching her, smoothing back her hair to see the bump. She uncrossed her arms and slapped his hands away ineffectually, but she might as well have been swatting a fly. She heard the ripping of material and felt him press something damp to her sore head. She sucked in a breath.

Feeling very thirsty, but loath to admit it after doing something as immature and foolish as haring off on horse into the unknown with no supplies whatsoever, she gasped with relief when she felt an open water bottle being pressed to her mouth, a hand on the back of her head.

For the first time she let her eyes meet Salman’s. She choked on the water; he looked wild. His eyes were very dark and his face was pale. He was covered in dust. He was encouraging her to take more water, and as she did so he said throatily, ‘I’ll save the lecture on running off so irresponsibly on a stupid horse for later. How sore is your head? Do you hurt anywhere else?’

Jamilah said meekly, ‘I glanced my head off a rock. It’s just a bump.’ She saw how Salman’s face paled even more. And then she said hurriedly, when that set off butterflies in her belly, ‘I think my right ankle is sprained.’

He crouched down at her feet and peeled up her jean-leg. Her foot was indeed swollen above her sneaker and he gently took it off—and the sock. Jamilah winced with the pain as her ankle seemed to balloon before their very eyes.

Salman looked up at her and the set of his face was grim. ‘We need to get you back to Merkazad.’

He lifted her up into his arms, and it was only then that Jamilah saw how he’d got there. She’d been too intent on ignoring him before.