Page 45 of Under the Arabian Sky

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“Have you finished counting them yet?”

“I’m up to one billion and one. Now shush or I’ll lose my place.”

Tariq laughed and I laughed along with him.

We were lying on our backs, a hand-stitched Bedouin quilt beneath us and one resting on top of us. After eating more than our fill of the feast our hosts had so generously provided, we were shown our place to lay for the night. There was no tent over our heads, only a blanket of stars so bright that the heavens cast of warm glow over the entire desert.

All around the campsite, the Bedouins were preparing for bed, the noises they made becoming fewer and farther between until soon the silence of the dunes stilled the world.

Without taking my eyes off the dazzling night sky, I whispered to Tariq, “I’ve never seen so many stars.”

“My mother used to tell me that for every star was a wish waiting to be made.”

“How old were you?”

He shrugged. “Perhaps six or seven.”

“And did your wishes come true?”

“I’m not sure yet. I wished that Allah would accept me for who I was. I suppose I won’t know until he either welcomes me into Paradise or banishes me toJahannam.”

“What’sJahannam?”

“It’s the Muslim version of hell… although if you’ve sat through prayers with my father, you’d be forgiven for thinking it’s the same thing. He can’t hold a note to save his life.”

I turned to look at him, watching his handsome face as he continued to stare up at the stars. “How do you do it?”

“Do what?”

“Walk the tightrope between your faith in Islam and the fact that you’re gay?”

He smiled. “I like it when you say the word ‘gay’. It’s a word very few people use here in the Middle East. But that’s changing. Attitudes are slowly evolving. Will we strike a balance one day between our religious laws and the need to accept everyone for who they are? Who knows? The fact is, I cannot help that I was born into an Islamic culture just as much as I cannot help that I’m gay. All I can do is show my respect to my fellow humans, no matter who they love or what they believe, and hope that they will show me the same respect in return.”

“But Islam has a troubled history when it comes to its treatment of gay people. It’s almost frightening.”

“Itisfrightening.”

“Yet you still pray to Allah.”

“The Islamic laws against homosexuality are not Allah’s laws. They are man’s laws. Modern scholars are united in their views that although the Prophet Mohammad disapproved of homosexual practices, he did not outlaw them. I believe that over the centuries, men have used religion as a platform to uphold and enforce their own prejudices, just as men of the Christian faith have done in the west. Such distortions of the Quran or the Bible should never have been condoned, and yet discrimination within religion is more rife than ever. Ironic, given that both religions preach compassion and acceptance above all else.”

He propped himself up on one elbow to look at me. “I hope that one day tolerance will be embraced unconditionally by all people of faith. Until then, I will continue to pray to Allah. I will continue to practice compassion and acceptance above all else. And I will continue to hope that someday, someone will truly love me for who I am.”

Without being able to, or even wanting to stop myself, I leaned over and kissed him— tenderly, quietly, passionately.

When we lay back down, we stared up at the stars once more as he asked me, “So what doyoubelieve in, Arthur Somersby?”

I wasn’t sure what the answer to that question was. “I don’t really know. I don’t think I believed in much at all… after Andrew died.”

“Was he your husband?”

I shook my head. “We’d talked about it. A lot. But he was always so busy jetting around the world on his expeditions, we never really gave it the time. We always said, ‘One day.’ You never really think that ‘one day’ might never come.”

He paused a moment, then asked quietly, “How did he die? If you don’t mind me asking.”

“It was a plane crash. They were told to evacuate their camp. A storm was coming. They took off from the glacier but they never made it out of that storm.”

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