DIANE CALDWELL
Desert Queen
A teacher on holiday becomes a prisoner of love.
I first saw the Bedouin’s gun when he stripped off his short-sleeved, khaki-green jacket. It was nestled in the back of his matching khaki-green, sharp-creased trousers.
His hands reached up and untwisted the red-and-white checked kaffiyeh that draped around his head and flowed down the back of his neck. He tossed it onto the cracked wooden dresser, along with the skullcap worn beneath. Then he reached behind, pulled the gun from its roost, and placed it beside the kaffiyeh. Unbuckling his brown belt, he unsheathed a large hunting knife from a brown leather case and tossed it next to the gun.
Blood rushed to my temples as I watched him undress. Was this man my protector, or my enemy? I had no idea. I didn’t really know him at all. I could be his guest or his captive.
We met three months before, in the Wadi Rum Desert of Jordan, where two teacher friends and I were spending a holiday from our English language school back in Istanbul. Our tour guide had arranged an overnight stay at a big, black Bedouin tent run by a man named Sheik Abdul. Rebhi—as I later learned his name—was spending the night there too, along with his own group of Japanese tourists.
I was dancing in my usual New York jazz-meets-Turkish-belly-dance fusion to the music playing on someone’s battery-operated cassette player. Rebhi was poking the fire with a stick, his eyes swinging between the flames and me. At the end of the song, he patted the spot on the cushion beside him and said: “Please sit. I must ask you something.”
I did. He sat cross-legged upon the pillow like an Arab prince, a traditional brown robe draped around him. Maybe thirty-two years old, his black eyes etched with sun-creased crow’s feet, he looked straight out of Lawrence of Arabia. Solemn and brooding, he was clearly thinking deeply about something. He glanced at me several times but kept averting his eyes shyly. Finally, he tossed his stick into the fire, turned to me, and said, “Do you think there is anyone in the world who has everything he wants?”
“No,” I said. “I doubt even the richest man in the world thinks he has everything.”
“Yes,” he said, continuing to stare into the fire. “I agree. But I didn’t know what I was missing until I saw you dancing across the fire. Then I knew what it was. It was you.”
I didn’t believe him for a second, but a man capable of an opener like that clearly deserved additional time.
“Come,” he said. “Let’s look at the moon on the desert.”
I rose to my feet. He pulled aside the coarse wool flap of the goat-hair tent and we stepped into the moonlit desert. He knelt ever so slightly and I found myself being lifted into his arms and carried like a baby across the sands. Conflicting emotions arose. Of course, it was thrilling, but as a 105-pound female, I have issues with empowerment. All my life, men have been lifting me up, while I’ve fought to stand on my own two feet. Yet I abandoned myself to romance, allowing this desert prince to carry me.
Rebhi was built like a satyr: slightly swayed back with a melon ass and powerfully muscled arms and chest. Satyrs had never been my type, but poets—alas—were my weakness. He quoted Rumi and then the Persian poet, Iqbal: “The moment you recognize what is beautiful in this world, you cease to be a slave.” Then he added: “It’s true. I see your beauty and I become as an eagle and soar beyond the mountains to the stars.”
We shared a few slippery kisses that night, but I put a halt to anything more. I didn’t want to spoil the sensuality of the evening with the possibility of bad sex. Another Bedu in the tent had tried to impress me earlier saying: “We Bedouin treat our women, camels, and donkeys with great care.” Rebhi, meanwhile, had been raised by a father with three wives. Would he have any idea of the kind of intimate, mutually-gratifying sex an experienced Western woman would expect?
The next morning, Rebhi arranged a ride to the sea of Aqaba for us with a Bedu driving that way. He walked me to the car, asked for my mobile phone number, and I complied. What harm could there be?
“Come back to me,” he whispered, his eyes growing moist.
I felt like the heroine of a trashy supermarket romance novel.
The first text message arrived that night:
LOOK…
the moon is calling you!
SEE…
the stars are shining for you!
LISTEN…
the birds are singing to you!
HEAR…
my heart says,
I LOVE YOU.
The next one arrived while I was eating lunch with my girlfriends back in Istanbul:
My heart is a small bird sitting in your hand singing to you “I love you.”
I gasped and nearly dropped the phone.
“What is it?” my friends asked.
Speechless, I handed over the phone.
“Wow!” was their open-mouthed reply.
Rebhi was good. And he was capturing my imagination. What did I have to lose? I was a fifty-five-year-old, twice-divorced, American teaching English in Turkey. My two children were fully grown and living their own lives back in the States. And I had a five-day vacation coming up in June. Why not fly back to Jordan for a visit?
“When you arrive at the airport, I will shower you with 2,000 kisses so that all of Jordan will know how much I love you,” he whispered during a phone call two days before my departure. Cardamom and desert sage wafted through the receiver.
I hardly recognized him. His flowing desert robe had been replaced with a khaki-green, short-sleeved suit. He looked awkward and ill at ease out of the desert. He extended his hand in a business-like manner when I walked out of passport control into the hub of the Amman airport.
“Where are my 2,000 kisses?” I asked. My lower lip pushed forward and I could feel my face pouting like a disappointed five-year-old.
“What?” he asked incredulously. “Here? In the airport?”
“Yes. You said you would shower me with 2,000 kisses.”
He planted one rooster-like peck on my cheek. “I am too shy. It is not possible,” he whispered. “Wait till we get to the room.”
How many times had I fantasized our meeting? How he would drench me in kisses, pick me up in his strong, robe-draped arms, carry me to the cab of his 4X4, drive off into the tawny sand desert, and make desert love to me beneath the starlit sky….
“There’s a sandstorm,” he said. “We can’t go to the desert today.”
He started his spiffy new four-wheel-drive vehicle and headed out of the airport.
“Where are we going then?” I asked.
“My brother’s in Amman.”
His “brother’s in Amman” turned out to be a dingy hotel room strewn with dirty clothes, remnants of take-out food, and crumpled bed sheets. The dresser was missing two of its drawers, the gaps as empty as promises. The sole window faced a construction site.
I whispered, “slowly slowly,” but he stripped in thirty seconds flat and started tugging at my clothes. With his gun and hunting knife in clear view, I really had no other options, yet I had fantasized about making love to him for three months. Desert or no desert, I had to find out if sex with Rebhi would be as poetic as his words.
Outside, the roar of the construction jarred my brain as he pulled me up onto him. With my legs straddling his waist and his hands cupping my ass, he carried me to the mirror where he watched as he bounced my rump up and down like a trampoline act in time to the jack-hammer beat outside our window.
So much for romantic delusions.
The following morning, as he emerged from the disheveled bed sheets, he announced that we were going to the desert. Finally, I thought, we’ll be alone in the desert. The desert will restore Rebhi to his poetic self. Alone under the desert sky, we can recapture the magic of our first meeting.
From the hotel, Rebhi’s submissive little brother, Iman, followed us to the car, carrying our bags like a porter. Rebhi indicated that I should get in the passenger seat in front, while Iman climbed in the back. Apparently, he was coming with us.
At twenty-one, Iman was Rebhi’s youngest brother from his father’s third wife. Their relationship seemed like one of owner and slave: Rebhi barked out orders, while Iman silently carried them out. Iman rarely said anything, looking sadly out at the world from his perpetually lowered head. I squirmed as Rebhi growled at him, sent him on errands, and treated him like a servant.
We drove to a restaurant, where we loaded up on falafel, hummus, and fuul, then hit the road. Within a half hour, Rebhi had picked up two more Bedu who were hitchhiking along the road. One was a tall skinny black-skinned man; the other, a pock-faced, gap-toothed fellow. Both were in their mid-thirties. The blacker man grinned wildly and rattled on in Arabic for a few minutes before falling silent. The cassette player whined Arabic songs. “Ha bibi, ha bibi…” The scenery changed from urban to desolate. My mood changed from hopeful to fearful.
Rebhi growled something to the three men in the back of the cab and their hands shot up in the air and started twirling about.
“What did you say to them?”
“Diane loves music and dancing: dance, or I’ll shoot you!”
Rebhi placed my hand atop the knob of the stick shift and etched delicate patterns across my skin with his thumb as he drove. The car in front of us was driving too slowly for his taste, so he flicked a switch on his dashboard. A police siren blared out. The car promptly moved to the side of the road and Rebhi sped past. Apparently, Rebhi had fitted his car with police and ambulance sirens. He issued another order to the back of the vehicle. Iman mixed whiskey and Coke in plastic cups and handed one to Rebhi and to me, then made drinks for the other two Bedu. Considering the situation, I decided a little alcohol could only help. Rebhi lit one cigarette and handed it to me, then lit another for himself. It seemed a good time to take up smoking, too. With the cassette player blasting “Ha bibi, Ha bibi,” I circled my arms through the air, rolled my shoulders, sipped my drink, and blew smoke out the window as Rebhi sped south along the Kings Highway.
Behind us, a siren sounded. This time, it was a real police car. Cursing, Rebhi pulled over. Two policemen peered inside the car and Rebhi told them he was a guide taking me to the Wadi Rum. They demanded his driver’s license and then refused to return it.
“Fucking police!” he said when he got back inside the car. “Now I have to go to court in Amman. Fuck them! Fuck the government! Fuck the fuckers!” He urged the back-seaters to join his protest. They obligingly raised their fists: “Fuck the police.”
He drove to the nearest town, parked on a side street, rummaged through the back of the car, and emerged with a new license plate. Adeptly, he replaced the old one and slipped a new driver’s license into his wallet. The two hitchhikers got out, thanked Rebhi for the ride, and we continued on.
Finally the desert appeared. Rebhi drove along the sand-strewn road, then stopped. I walked into the sand and felt my heart lighten. There was something so mystical about the orange sands and craggy ancient cliffs: a sense of something lost being recaptured. I understood why T. E. Lawrence had been so captivated by this place.
I turned to see Rebhi ferreting about in the back of his car. He emerged with his revolver and strode straight toward me.
There was only the passive little brother, the sands, the cliffs, and me. Nobody else. No other vehicles. The silent desert stretched before us. He was going to kill me. Take my passport, my bankcard, and my credit card, cast me into the ditch, and leave me for the vultures.
“Shoot it,” he said, handing me the gun.
“I’ve never shot a gun,” I said, forcing sound through my parched lips. I was both startled and relieved.
“Just pull the trigger.”
I took the amazingly heavy gun, pointed it at the wide-open nothingness, and attempted to press the trigger. But try as I might, I lacked the finger strength to fire. Reluctantly, I handed the gun back to Rebhi. He placed it back into my hand, covered my hand with his, and squeezed the trigger. The shot rang out into the desert.
We climbed back into the vehicle, my head swimming in fog. I was still alive: that was what mattered. We drove further into the Wadi Rum, into air heavy with pink-orange haze from the recently subsided sandstorm. Finally the huge tent of Sheik Abdul appeared like an apparition. We stopped.
Rebhi and Iman pulled out some bedding, lay down in the shade of the tent, and fell asleep. Filled with manic energy, I bounded across the sand to the cliffs. Each footstep that sank into the amorphous sand brought me joy. I spread my arms and twirled like a drunken mad-woman, then scaled the rocky plateau for a 360-degree view of desert and craggy mountains. In the distance, a camel caravan of two families trod over a dune. For the longest time, my heartbeat and the whoosh of the wind were the only sounds audible. Then came a muffled drone of car alarms. It slowly dawned on me that it was Rebhi’s car. I tried to sashay down the mountain like a goat, but the going was slow. Back on the sands, I crested the ridge and—to my horror—saw nothing. Rebhi’s car was gone. There was not a human in sight.
I kept turning in circles, as if a previously empty spot would suddenly reveal something new. I couldn’t absorb this situation. How could he possibly have abandoned me in the middle of the desert? I ran in one direction and then the other. Everywhere the truth was the same. No car. No Rebhi.
I sat down on the sand, my heart pounding in my temples. With no other options presenting themselves, I decided to go inside the tent, try to rest, and pray that Rebhi would return.
Temporarily blinded by the darkness of the tent after the harsh light of the sun, my eyes took a minute to acclimate. Slowly I distinguished the shape of someone lying on one of the rough settees that circled the inside of the tent. I tiptoed toward the sleeping body. As I approached, it suddenly sat up. I nearly fainted, then realized it was Iman.
“Oh,” he said in his quiet voice, his Arabic accent as thick as cardamom-flavored coffee. “You are back.”
“Where is Rebhi? Where is the car? Where did he go?”
“Other brother stuck in sand with tourists. Rebhi, he go pull out of sand. We wait here. You need something, you tell me. I do it. O.K.?” His eyes peeked up from his lowered head and a smile tugged at the corners of his mouth.
Rebhi didn’t return that night, but Sheik Abdul—King of the Bedouin—and several Bedouin boys did. They cooked a dinner of tough chicken, vegetables, and pita, and shared it with us. I was relieved to see food, but trepidation remained my overriding emotion. I had read stories about intrepid European women who ventured into the desert, only to be forced to share their bodies with their hosts. What fate awaited me?
When night fell, Iman shyly took my hand and led me to a settee where I was to sleep. Sheik Abdul brought me blankets and bid me goodnight. I slept fitfully as the winds surged. The wooden tent poles shook, and the sides of the tent flapped about like a hoochie-koochie dancer. It made such a racket, I decided to try sleeping outside. Big mistake: although wrapped in a heavy blanket, I was suddenly besieged by mosquitoes. What they were doing in the desert, so far from any water, was a mystery, but they attacked in full force. As I scurried back inside the tent, some slipped under the flap with me.
Morning finally arrived, and Iman explained what happened.
“Wind push them from Sea of Aqaba. Only happen one time in year.”
And I just happened to be here for it.
The boys brought in platters of eggs and potatoes, pita and jam, and a pot of sickeningly sweet tea. As I ate alongside Iman, an approaching vehicle grew audible. I rushed outside to see a bus filled with tourists arrive and park.
“Oh, isn’t this quaint?”
“Like something out of National Geographic.”
“I’ve heard camels are nasty beasts.”
“Yes, I hope ours will be well-trained.”
“Can’t trust these people though, you know.”
As the tourists spilled out of the bus, their words spilled onto the sands. They’d come for a short camel ride and would then return to Wadi Musa, the city that had sprung up outside Petra to accommodate tourists.
I followed the driver into the tent.
“I want to return to Wadi Musa with you,” I said.
He looked up at me, then turned to the Bedouin boys in the tent. Though I didn’t understand a word of Arabic, it was clear that he was asking about me. One of the boys said Rebhi’s name.
Without looking at me, the driver snapped: “No, not possible.”
“Why?”
He refused to answer.
Iman glanced from me to the bus driver and then carefully wiped the sand from the toes of his city shoes.
“Why?” I persisted, hoping for a human response. He only glanced at me sideways, his head tilted. Then he resumed his conversation with the Bedu.
It was a male conspiracy. I was now the property of Rebhi and had lost my freedom of movement. It was like some awful film where the heroine gets herself in a bad situation and you think, “Stupid woman! How could you?” Only I was that stupid woman: a prisoner who had blithely stepped into a trap.
Still, my prison guards were accommodating—as long as I didn’t try to escape. My friends back in Istanbul knew what I was doing. One had even spent the night in Sheik Abdul’s tent. I was only being held temporarily, until Rebhi returned. I sure didn’t like it, however.
“You want see special place?” Iman asked. “Not far.”
With nothing better to do, I accepted his offer.
He gently took my hand. “Come,” he said and led me into the dunes.
We walked hand in hand across the sand. An only child, I felt like I had acquired a sweet little brother. Ascending and descending dunes, we at last arrived at a hidden cove surrounded by burnt sienna cliffs.
“Lie down,” he instructed.
My heart beat wildly as I realized my vulnerable situation. Had I misunderstood Iman’s intentions? He looked up at me with such innocence, I chided my mistrust and sat down beside him. He lay down on his back and motioned to do the same. Above us the cliffs almost touched, forming a pinnacle with points of light angling down onto the shaded sand. As we lay on our backs gazing up, Iman took my hand again, and for an hour we lay side-by-side, holding hands and gazing up towards the apex.
His ringing phone shot me back to reality: “Rebhi want speak to you.”
“My brother is coming to pick you up,” Rebhi crooned over the receiver. “There was another sandstorm, my darling, and I couldn’t come to you. How I’ve missed you, but we will soon be together.”
We drove away in the new brother’s jeep. Orange sand seeped through every crack and crevice in the car, coating our faces. The brother rubbed his sleeve across the windshield, then dabbed his eyes with a rag. As we sped away from Sheik Abdul’s, the winds grew fiercer. The jeep swayed like a toy.
We finally reached the highway, then stopped. I could see a robed figure emerge from a vehicle on the other side of the road. Rebhi. He opened the door of the jeep and I stepped out. Bending over, he picked me up into his arms and strode across the highway, bearing me like the Queen of Sheba to his vehicle.
“Oh my darling, how I’ve missed you,” he whispered.
I got in the front seat. Iman hopped in back and we slowly made our way back to Amman.
At the airport, Rebhi stood awkwardly, studying his boots. “I pray that you will return to me. Let me show you the glory of life in the desert. Together we can live beneath the stars. You are my Desert Queen.”
As I turned toward the glass doors of the airport, Rebhi put his hand on my arm.
“I never asked you for anything, did I? I paid for everything, didn’t I? You were my guest. Is that not so?”
I nodded.
“But now we are together. You will return to me and we will live the beauty of the desert. There is just one thing I ask of you.”
“What is it?”
“Please, my darling. Give me your bank card.” His eyes held mine for a split second before he resumed studying his boots.
An involuntary laugh escaped. “Why would I give you my bank card? Do you think I’m crazy?” I pulled my wallet from my backpack and slid out the few remaining Jordanian bills. “Here, I can’t use these. They’ll help cover the cost of my food.”
“But my darling, it is normal for a woman to share everything with her man, is it not?”
“I am not your woman,” I said. Then I turned to Iman. He looked up at me and I lightly kissed both of his cheeks. “Take care of yourself,” I said.
With that, I entered the airport, where music bellowed from the sound system: “Ha bibi, Ha bibi…”
That night I wrote my final message to Rebhi:
My heart is a small bird sitting in your hand singing to you:
“You will never get my bank card.”
Stifling her sobs and dabbing her eyes, Diane Caldwell boarded a plane to Greece in 2003 and hasn’t returned home to the United States since. She currently lives in Istanbul, where she dances with gypsies and washes her hair in the welcome rain of August thunderstorms. She won the Solas Awards Gold Medal for Best Travel Memoir in 2009 and is a featured author in the anthology Tales of the Expat Harem, a collection of stories written by women living in Turkey.
