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Kamal blinked as if emerging from a trance. “That’s your solution? Inserting the Aal Kussaimis as preceding claimants? Widening the dispute and adding more fuel to the fire?”
“Actually, I am ending the dispute. The Aal Kussaimis’ claim trumps both the Aal Ghaanems’ and the Aal Masoods’. Any regional or international court would sanction that claim.”
Kamal’s eyes burned with contemplation. “If all this is true, shouldn’t I be talking to the tribe’s elder? Who can’t be you since you’re...how old? Thirty?”
“Thirty-eight. But while it’s true I’m not the tribe’s elder, I am the highest-ranking tribe member by merit. I was elected the tribe’s leader years ago. Which effectively makes me the king of Jareer.”
Kamal’s lashes lowered. A testament to his surprise.
When his gaze rose again, it was tranquil. That didn’t fool Mohab for a second. He could almost hear the gears of Kamal’s formidable mind screeching.
“Interesting. So you’re claiming to be King Solution. Even if you prove to be the first, how do you propose to be the second?”
“Proving my claim is a foregone conclusion. The second should be self-evident.”
“Not to me.”
Jala’s exact words that fateful night. Said in the same tone. Kamal’s likeness to her had suddenly ceased to be reminiscent and had become only grating.
Mohab gritted his teeth. “My uncle assumed I would never invoke my claim, that I would always let him speak for me concerning Jareer’s fate. And he was right—I didn’t have time to be more than an honorary leader and had no desire to upset a status quo my people were perfectly content with under Judar’s protection. But now things have changed.”
Kamal huffed. “Tell me about it. Just two months ago, you were the ‘rightful heir’ to a stretch of desert with three towns and seven villages whose people lived on date and Arabian coffee production, souvenir manufacturing and desert tourism. Now you’re the king of a land sitting on top of one of the biggest oil reservoirs ever discovered.”
“I have no personal stake in Jareer’s newfound wealth. I’m not interested in being richer, and I never wanted to be king. However, my people are demanding I declare Jareer an independent state and that I become their full-fledged ruler. But business and politics aren’t my forte. So while I will do my people’s bidding, I think it’s in their best interests to leave their new oil-based prosperity to the experts.”
“By experts, I assume you mean oil moguls.”
“With you in charge of every step they take into Jareer.”
Kamal raised one eyebrow. “You want me to run the show?”
“Yes.”
Kamal digested this. “So that’s Judar and Jareer and the oil companies. What about Saraya?”
“As a Sarayan, too, and because I admit the treaties with Saraya were never properly resolved before entering into the new ones with Judar, I will recognize its claim.”
“So you claim Jareer, and split the cake between us all. Why do you assume I’ll consider it? If I can have the whole cake?”
He sat forward, holding Kamal’s gaze. “I do because you’re an honorable man and a just king. Because I believe you’ll do everything in your power to avoid escalating hostilities between our kingdoms. Before, it was about family feuds and pride. Now we’re talking staggering wealth and power. If you decimate my claim and take all of Jareer, those who stand to lose that much would cause unspeakable damage. I regularly deal with situations that rage over way less, and believe me, nothing is worth the price of such conflicts.”
“So how do you propose we split the cake?”
“For its historical role and ties to Jareer, and because both Judar and Jareer will need its cooperation, Saraya will get twenty percent of Jareer’s oil. In recognition of Judar’s more recent claim and its much bigger role in Jareer till this day, Judar gets forty percent. Jareer gets the other forty percent. Plus, its inhabitants would be first in line for all benefits and job opportunities that arise, and you will also be responsible to provide training for them.”
“You’ve got it all worked out, don’t you?”
“I have been working on my pitch since the oil’s discovery. I was far from ready, but my uncle’s theatrics at the UN yesterday forced my hand prematurely.”
“What if I don’t like your percentages or terms?”
“I would grant you whatever you wish.”
“Even if you wanted to, as kings, we’re not omnipotent. Why would your people agree to let you be so generous with their resources?”
Here it was. Moment of truth. The point of all this.
He took the plunge. “They would because it would be the mahr of your sister, Princess Jala.”
Kamal rose to his feet in perfect calmness. It screamed instantaneous rejection more than anything openly indignant would have.
“No.”
The cold, final word fell on Mohab like a lash. As Jala’s rejection once had.
He resisted the urge to flinch at the sting. “Just no?”
“Consider yourself honored I deemed to articulate it. That you dared to voice this boggles the mind.”
“Why?”
Kamal glared down at him. “I’ll have my secretary of state draw you up an inventory of the reasons.”
“Give me the broad lines.”
“How about just one? Your bloodline.”
“You’d condemn a man by others’ transgressions?”
“We do inherit others’ mistakes and enmities.”
“And we can resolve them, not insist on regurgitating hatreds and spawning warring generations.”
“The Aal Masoods aren’t angels, but there is good reason why we abhor you, why all attempts at peacemaking fell through for centuries. Surely you remember the last marriage between our kingdoms and what your great-grandfather did to my great-aunt. I’m not letting my sister marry a man who comes from a family where the men mistreat their women.”
“My great-grandfather and uncle don’t represent the rest of us. I am nothing like them. You can investigate me further. And then consider the merits of my proposal. Once I claim Jareer, my uncle can retreat from his warpath. We’d appease his pride while going over his head in forging peaceful relations between all sides, to the benefit of all our people.” Mohab rose to his feet to face him. “What I’m proposing is the best solution for all concerned, now and into the far future. And you know it.”
After a protracted stare, Kamal finally exhaled. “We can forge peace with other kinds of treaties. Why bring marriage into this? And more important, why Jala? If you want to solidify the new alliance in the oldest way in the book, and the most enduring in our region, the Aal Masoods have other princesses who would definitely be more acceptable to your stick-in-the-mud family.”
“My family has nothing to do with it. Jala is my choice.” Kamal’s astonishment made Mohab decide to come clean, as much as it was prudent to. “I had a...thing for Jala years ago, and I thought she reciprocated. It didn’t end as I hoped. Now, years later, with both of us still unattached, I thought it might be fate’s way of telling me I had to make another attempt at claiming the one woman who captured my fancy...and wouldn’t let go. So while resolving our kingdoms’ long-standing conflicts would certainly be a bonus, she’s always been my main objective.”
Expecting Kamal, as Jala’s brother, to be offended—or at least to grill him about the nature of the “thing” he’d had for Jala—Kamal surprised him again, a hint of a smile dawning. “You mean discovering oil in Jareer and the crisis that ensued just presented you with the best bargaining chip to propose? And you didn’t propose before because you never had enough leverage?”
Mohab shrugged, tension killing him. “Do I have enough now?”
Kamal’s smile became definite. “If I disregard the stench of your paternal lineage and consider you based on your own merits, this might be a good idea. A perfect one, even. Knowing Jala, she’d never marry of her own accord and I hate to think she’ll end up alone. And you, apart from the despicable flaw of having the Aal Ghaanem blood and name, seem like a...reasonably good match for her.”
“So you’re saying yes?”
“A yes isn’t mine to say. I can’t force her to marry you and wouldn’t even if I could. Clearly this marriage quest of yours is hardly a done deal, since you require my intervention to even reach her. I won’t ask what earned you a place on Jala’s viciously strict no-approach list. Ullah knows I’m the last man to go all holier-than-thou on you for whatever transgression you committed to deserve this kind of treatment.”
What would Kamal say if Mohab told him he didn’t know exactly why he’d deserved that till this day?
Kamal gazed into the distance as if peering into a distasteful past. “I once did unforgivable things to the one woman who’d captured my fancy and wouldn’t let go, and it took the intervention of others to give me that second chance with her.”
“So you’re paying it forward.”
Kamal’s eyes returned to his, the crooked smile back. “I am. But if she agrees to marry you, I’ll take sixty percent as her mahr. If she refuses, the whole deal is off—and we’ll draw up another treaty that saves your king’s face so he can go sit in his throne and stop throwing war-agitating tantrums.”
Mohab’s first impulse was to kiss Kamal on both cheeks. This was beyond anything he’d come here expecting.
He extended his hand to Kamal instead, his smile the widest it had been in...six years. “Deal. You won’t regret this.”
Kamal shook his hand slowly. “You were wrong when you said you don’t know much about business. You know nothing. You could have gotten me to agree to thirty percent. You’re holding all the cards after all.”
Mohab’s smiled widened more. “I’m not so oblivious that I don’t know the power I wield. But I would never haggle over Jala’s mahr. If my decision didn’t affect millions of people in both Saraya and Jareer, I would have given you the whole thing.”
“You got it that bad?” Kamal drilled him with an incredulous gaze. “Do you love her?”
Love? He once had...or thought he had. But now he knew it hadn’t been real. Because nothing real could ever exist for a man like him. He only knew he couldn’t move on. And that she hadn’t moved on, either. He was still obsessed with their every touch, had starved for her every pleasure. Love didn’t enter into the equation. Not only was it an illusion, it was one he couldn’t afford.
But the pact he’d struck with Kamal was real. As was his hunger for Jala. That was more than enough. In fact, that was everything.
Kamal waved his hand. “Don’t answer that. I don’t think you can answer. If you haven’t seen her in years, whatever you felt for her back then might be totally moot once you come face-to-face with each other again. So I won’t hold you to this proposal for now. But since Jala is the most intractable entity I have the misfortune to know and love...” At Mohab’s raised eyebrow, Kamal sighed. “Aih, she takes after her older brother, as Aliyah tells me.”
Mohab did a double take. It was amazing, the change that came over Kamal’s face as he mentioned his wife and queen. It was as if he glowed inside just thinking of her.
Kamal went on. “But for this to have a prayer of working, I need to give you much more of a helping hand than putting you in the same room with her. I need to give her a shove. I’ll make it sound as if refusal isn’t an option. Of course, if she really wants to refuse, she will, no matter what.” His lips spread into a smile again. “All I can hope is that if I make things sound drastic enough, it’ll give you that chance to make your approach. The rest...is up to you.”
Two
“You...what?”
Jala stared at Kamal, her shrill cry ringing in her own ears.
Staggering, she collapsed on the nearest horizontal surface, gaping up at Kamal who came to stand over her.
“I lied.”
Ya Ullah. She had heard right the first time.
Another cry of sheer incredulity scratched her throat raw. “How could you do this to me? Are you insane?”
Kamal shrugged, not looking in the least repentant. “I had to get you here. Sorry.”
“Sorry? You let me have a thousand panic attacks during the hours it took me to get here, thinking that Farooq was lying in hospital, critically injured, and you say...sorry?”
Even now that she knew Farooq was safe, the horror still reverberated in her bones. She’d never known such desperation, not even when she’d been held hostage and thought she’d die a violent death.
Fury seethed inside of her. “Don’t you know what you did to me? As I thought of beautiful, vital Farooq lying broken, struggling for his life, how I wept as I thought how much he had to live for, as I thought of Carmen losing her soul mate, of Mennah growing up without her father.... You’re a monstrous pig, Kamal!”
Kamal winced. “I said he was injured but that he was stable. I wanted you here, but didn’t want to scare you more than necessary. How am I responsible for your exaggerations?”
“How? How?” She threw her hands up in the air in frustration. “How does Aliyah bear you?”
Kamal had the temerity to flash her that wolfish grin of his. “I never ask. I just wallow in the miracle of her, and that she thinks I’m the best thing that ever walked the earth.”
“Then Aliyah, although she looks sane, is clearly deranged. Or under a spell....”
“It’s called love.” Kamal raised his hands before she exploded again. “I am sorry. But you said you’d never set foot here again, and I knew you wouldn’t come unless you thought one of us was dying.”
“I know you’re ruthless and manipulative and a dozen other inhuman adjectives but...argh! Whatever you needed to drag me here for, you could have tried telling me the truth first!”
Kamal smirked. “Aih, and when that didn’t work, I would have tried the lie next. I would have ordered you to come, but knowing you, you would have probably renounced your Judarian citizenship just so I’d stop being your king. If you weren’t that intractable I wouldn’t have had to lie, and you wouldn’t have had those harrowing sixteen hours.”
“So it’s now my fault? You—you humongous, malignant rat! What could possibly be enough reason for you to drag me back here with this terrible lie?”
“Just that Judar is about to go to war.”
She shot back up to her feet. “Kaffa, Kamal...enough. I’m already here. So stop lying.”
His face was suddenly grim. “No lie this time.” He put his hand on her shoulder, gently pressed her down to the couch, coming down beside her this time. “It’s a long story.”
She gaped at him as he recounted it, plunging deeper into a surreal scape with every word.
But wars did erupt over far less, especially in their region. This was real.
When he was done, she exhaled. “You can’t even consider war over oil rights, no matter how massive. Aren’t you the wizard of diplomacy who peacefully resolves conflicts to every side’s benefit?”
“Seems you’re not familiar with King Hassan.” A scoff almost escaped her. Oh, she was so very familiar with King Hassan. “Some people are immune to diplomacy.”
“And you’re not posturing and allowing your council to egg you on with hand-me-down rivalries and vendettas?”
It was Kamal’s turn to scoff. “Give me some credit, Jala. I care nothing about any of this bull. I don’t have an inflamed ego and don’t borrow others’ enmities.”
“Yet you’re letting someone who has and does drag you down to his level, when you should contain him and his petty aggressions.” She exhaled her exasperation. “No wonder I did everything I could to get out of this godforsaken region and had to be told my oldest brother was dying to set foot here again. All this feudal backwardness is just...nauseating. You’d think nothing ever changed since the eleventh century!”
“War over oil rights is very twenty-first century.”
“Congratulations to all of you, then, for your leap into modern warfare. I hope you’ll enjoy deploying long-range missiles and playing high-tech war games.” She muttered something about monkeys under her breath. “I still don’t get why you conned me back here. You want me to have a front row seat with you lunkheads when the war begins?”
He reached for her hand, his eyes cajoling. Uh-oh.
“You actually play the lead role in averting this catastrophe.”
“What could I possibly have to do with resolving your political conflicts?”
“Everything really. Only you can stop the war now, by marrying an Aal Ghaanem prince.”
