Married to the Sheikh by Katheryn Lane

Author:Katheryn Lane [Lane, Katheryn]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Goodreads: 17340784
Published: 2013-01-18T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 7

It was mid-morning when they arrived at the camp of the Mansoori tribe. Sheikh Akbar said that several of the Mansooris had attended their wedding, though Sarah couldn’t see a single familiar face.

They brought a camel with them as a gift in return for the wedding presents they had received and the first half of the visit was spent discussing the animal. All the men agreed that the camel was a very fine specimen. It had good teeth, large beautiful eyes, and soft golden hair. Everyone patted it and admired it as if they were discussing a glamour model and not an imposing beast with a foul temper.

Finally, the camel was taken away to get some food and water, and the head of the tribe, an older man with a long shaggy beard, invited Sheikh Akbar into his tent and Sarah was invited to visit his wife, Neema.

When Sarah walked into Neema’s tent, the first thing she noticed was how dilapidated it was. Instead of a multitude of bolsters and cushions on richly woven rugs, there were just a few large pillows lying on threadbare carpets. It certainly didn’t appear to be the tent of a sheikh’s wife, but Sarah knew that she was in the correct one as it was full of women sitting in a line along the far side, staring at her, with the sheikh’s wife perched in the middle on a noticeably higher cushion.

Nobody said anything. No one greeted her or offered her tea as they should have done according to local custom. Finally, Sarah came forward and presented herself to the sheikh’s wife, which was followed by a long silence. Neema eventually gestured to her to sit.

“Why are you here? What do you want?” Neema asked. She was an older woman and had the same dark blue tattoos on her face that Akbar’s mother, Fatima, had.

“I’ve come to thank you for attending my wedding,” Sarah replied. The cushion she’d been offered was hard and lumpy and she found it difficult to get comfortable.

“She doesn’t look like a wife,” one of the women said to Neema.

“Not like a wife at all,” another one said.

“Definitely not the wife of an important sheikh,” a third woman added.

Soon all the women in the tent had come to an agreement that Sarah was not the sheikh’s wife.

“I am Sheikh Akbar’s wife,” Sarah asserted. “Some of you came to my wedding. You saw me marry him.” At least she thought some of them came. Akbar had told her that a lot of people from this tribe had attended, but he didn’t tell her which women, if any, and she hadn’t thought to ask.

“The woman who married Sheikh Akbar was covered in gold and fine clothes,” Neema said. The other women nodded in agreement and began talking about how much they had admired the veil of coins and the beautifully embroidered clothes that the bride had worn.

Sarah looked at what she was wearing. Although she wasn’t wearing heaps of gold and coins, she was certainly well-dressed.

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