Jay gave a slow nod. “I guess you’re right. Wow, Hess. You keep giving me insights into the culture I would have never come to see on my own. Getting to know you is one of the best ways I’m learning about Damhoor today.”
Hessuh’s lips twisted. “You mean an unmarried woman in her early thirties in a land where marriage is viewed as a woman’s only reason for existence and where a woman over twenty-five is an ajooz, a hag? An obstetrician when marriage is considered a woman’s only viable ‘career’?”
“Yeah, all that. Also unveiled when all the local women I’ve seen wear veils to one degree or another. How come?”
“That’s another example of what time and the right people in the right places can achieve.” Hessuh smoothed the gleaming wealth of her long mahogany ponytail. “I personally owe being unveiled to Sheikh Malek. He made a decree that women who work in the medical field can dress however they choose—but only a handful took him up on his offer. He also lets girls enter medical school here when our only local female doctors had their education abroad, like I did, also thanks to the vision of another man—my father. In the last six years the number of females in medical school has risen to almost that of the males.”
So it had come back to Malek again. As it always would.
Hearing about him and his achievements, which was constant when everyone, even her GAO partners, had something new to relate about him, only slashed at her rawness.
She groped desperately for a change of subject. “So, to continue my curiosity—what does Hessuh mean?”
“Share,” Hessuh said briefly, a challenging expression on her face, as if she was daring Jay to make a comment.
Jay obliged. “So that’s why you share everything with me!”
Hessuh let out that ready, tinkling laugh. “I knew you couldn’t resist it. My name is the noun, not the verb, dear lady. Though don’t ask me what my father was thinking when he named me. Share of what, b’Ellahi? I always asked him. After thirty years of racking his brains, he came up with a satisfying answer. I’m his share of life’s happiness.”
“And you’re my share of this mission’s,” Jay teased. “I wouldn’t replace you with the lion’s share.”
Their banter was interrupted by their next patient, a woman of sixty who Jay mistook for almost eighty, with a jarring pink and violet dress and blue dots tattooed all over her face.
After careful examination they looked at each other and nodded. This woman was there to check them out, no more. As Jay punched in her data on the computer, the woman insisted on enlightening them that electricity was trapped jinn whom God had enslaved in the wires to serve humans.
As the woman left, Jay stared after her open-mouthed.
Hessuh burst out laughing. “Wait until we go back to Halwan where your patients will make stock-market transactions from their cellphone internet connections while waiting for their CT session, then tell you you made them late for their hegamah and roggiah sessions. The first is the so-called cureall by leeches and bloodletting and the second is the jinn-powered method of warding off the evil eye and extracting malevolent influences.”
Hessuh laughed again as that expression took over Jay’s face on just imagining the incongruities. “I should have my camera ready at all times. Your reactions are delightful.”
“You’re making me sound like a clueless tourist here!”
“Well …” Hessuh spluttered at Jay’s mock indignation. “Oh, you’re just a newcomer. Your wonder is very … refreshing.”
Jay poked her. “That was ‘laughable’, wasn’t it?”
Hessuh giggled again. Jay couldn’t remember when she’d made friends with another person more easily or quickly. Except for Malek.
Malek. How she missed him, ached, burned for him.
God. Everything came back to him. Every thought, every hearbeat, every impulse streaking through her nerves.
It was far worse to see him and suffer his distance and formality after she’d basked in his nearness and spontaneity than not seeing him at all again.
All she could do now was count down the remaining weeks, pray she’d toughened up enough by now that they wouldn’t hurt as much.
Oh, who was she kidding?
“Doctorah Janaan, we have an emergency!”
Saeed! Janaan jerked out of her torment, swung around.
“Here, or are we responding to a distress call?” she gasped.
“A distress call. A cave-in in a quarry around forty miles away.” He rushed to carry her suitcase-sized emergency bag then rushed out after her, giving her that penetrating look that read her down to her last secret. He knew how she felt about Malek, probably even pitied her for the hopelessness of it all.
“Did you alert Ma—er, Sheikh Malek?” Jay asked, remembering that no one called him Doctor, that his sheikhdom superseded his medical status, and that here people called each other by their first name, not their family name, even in formal situations.
“Yes, he said to get you, ask you to organize an appropriate team. He’s organizing the rescue operation.”
And there he was. Malek. Taking charge of the surgery unit. Would he let her work with him again? Would he even look at her?
Get a grip, you pathetic fool. See to your job.
Angry, crushed by longing, humiliated by it, she rushed about, gathering the team best equipped for the emergency.
She jogged to the ambulance as Hessuh caught up with her. Steve and Elaine, her GAO nurses, followed, while one of Malek’s aides took the wheel. Two more GAO nurses as well as Malek’s Lobna and Alyaa went to the other ambulance, with Saeed driving. Then she realized they’d be following a camel-riding messenger!
“That’s a racing camel,” Hessuh said, reading her alarm. “He can do 40 miles an hour, easily keep up 25 miles an hour for an hour. On this terrain, we won’t be able to top that speed ourselves.”
Jay exhaled. “I hope the rescue choppers arrive before us.”
Hessuh sighed. “Sheikh Malek says the quarry is uncharted and only this guy knows the way. Sheikh Malek will relay its position once we arrive—in less than two hours, hopefully.”
Jay felt her stomach knotting. Less than two hours when every minute might mean someone losing their chance to be saved.
She could do nothing but sit and watch their guide prodding his galloping camel, and watch as the endless desert sped by.
She had a feeling this was very much what her life would be like from now on.