Page 5 of Under the Arabian Sky

“By making me fall head over heels for you. All that’s left now is for the two of us to grow old and become antiques together.”

That was the moment I decided I was going to love Andrew forever.

It never occurred to me at the time that loving someone forever, and being together forever, were not the same thing.

As time would tell, I was destined to become an antique all by myself.

CHAPTER4

I leftmy little flat before sunrise.

The click of the door behind me had a strange ring of finality about it.

I felt the need to turn back and say to the doorknob in my hand— “I’ll be back. I promise.”

But try as I might, there was nothing convincing in my voice.

I left my spare housekey under Mrs. Abbott’s doormat.

Out on the street, I opened my umbrella and waited for a cab.

Remarkably at such short notice, Henderson had pulled some strings and secured me a cabin on an archaeological research vessel sailing from Southampton across the Mediterranean and eventually arriving at Port Said at the mouth of the Suez Canal. From there I boarded a freighter bound for Muscat, the capital of Oman.

On board, a man tried to take my suitcase.

I held onto it as though I was handcuffed to it.

I felt the hinge of the handle about to break.

“Please, let me carry it,” I insisted. “Fragile. Fragile!”

The man said something to me in Egyptian, something I didn’t understand, then let go of the suitcase and threw his hands in the air.

I got the impression he was trying to help me, but the last thing I needed was someone breaking my suitcase and all my equipment inside it.

I hugged the old suitcase tightly to my chest and suddenly realised—

Right now, this was all I had in the world.

I heard laughter and turned to see several of the crew pointing at me and laughing at the sight of me cradling my suitcase, as they passed a cigarette amongst them.

I decided then and there to keep a safe distance from everyone on the ship.

Don’t get me wrong, I was appreciative of the passage to Oman.

But I wasn’t there to make friends.

I wasn’t there to have my things broken or stolen.

And I certainly wasn’t there to be mocked by the ship’s crew.

This ship was purely a means to an end, and that end was the port of Muscat.

As the ship began its voyage, I found solitude in a quiet section of the upper deck near the stern. There I stood as the ship cruised slowly down the Suez Canal, the ancient sands of Egypt on either side of the narrow passage. Occasionally I lifted the camera from around my neck to take photos of the dunes as they sailed by.

I watched the winds of Egypt skim the top off the dunes and send gusts of sand into the air, moving like fish fleeing a predator or birds chasing the sun, shifting this way then that, before dispersing completely, vanishing into the sky only to settle upon the next dune…

Or the next…

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