Page 11 of The Sheikh's Secret Family

“How is he doing now?” Emelia asked.

“He’s all right. But he did say quite some things about his father. Apparently, his father is an airline pilot who fights pirates and sometimes goes to the moon.”

Emelia rested her head briefly in her hands. “Thank you for letting me know. I’ll have a talk with Owen today about telling the truth.”

She and the principle said their goodbyes and Emelia slowly walked back to her computer, refreshing her email one more time. No matter what kind of relationship Tariq and Owen would have, any contact would be better than nothing. Even a birthday card a year might help Owen feel like he didn’t have to make up these lies. The reunion, when Emelia could finally tell Tariq about Owen, couldn’t come soon enough. As long as Tariq really was planning to come. Emelia refreshed her email once more, but there was still no reply.

Emelia tried to tell herself that the only reason she was so anxious to hear from Tariq was that she knew Owen needed a father figure. She wasn’t going to admit that she was looking forward to seeing him for more selfish reasons, too.

CHAPTER7

TARIQ

“And finally, I agree to the four percent subsidy on dates and nuts,” Tariq said. When his advisors nodded around the table, he closed the folder in front of him with a snap. “Thank you all. Meeting adjourned.”

Slowly, his advisors started to trickle out, moving on from discussions about Al Salyan agriculture to comparing their dinner plans. Tariq followed, glad that the meeting was over. He was dedicated to Al Salyah and invested in any initiative to make it a better place, but agricultural meetings tended to be very dull. Today had been no exception.

Bidding a few last goodbyes to his advisors, he turned towards his mother’s rooms. After her husband had died, Tariq’s mother, Maryam, had moved to a spacious cottage on the palace grounds, giving the rooms meant for the sheikh to Tariq, despite his arguments against it. He’d worried that she would miss the rooms where she’d lived for most of her life, but he had to admit that she seemed happier in the cottage.

The loss of Tariq’s father, the former sheikh of Al Salyah, still hurt both Tariq and his mother. Even though he’d passed away years ago. Living away from the palace, even by just a few hundred feet, was good for Maryam. Tariq wished that he could also step away from his life as a sheikh, the life that his father had led so well before him, for just a moment, too. His father had such an amazing legacy that Tariq always felt like he was falling short. To this day, whenever someone called for ‘Sheikh Ibrahim’ Tariq looked around for his father. But his father wasn’t there. Everything fell on Tariq, and if he failed, the whole of Al Salyah would suffer from his mistakes. The pressure was huge.

As he stepped outside into the warm, dry air, he heard his phone ding with a notification. He pulled it out to see that he’d gotten an email in his personal account, which was rare. Most of his correspondence came to his professional email, which was managed by his assistants. Interested, Tariq clicked on the notification.

The subject line of the email,Stonebridge Five-Year Reunion, caught his attention right away and Tariq froze like a boy playing musical statues. A stream of memories started to rush over him and he pushed them away, as he always did. He needed to actually read the email before he did anything else. Tariq paused, sitting on an ornate metal bench covered in intricately worked birds and wines, to read the message.

Dear Sheikh Ibrahim,

I am reaching out to ask if you would be willing to be the official class speaker for Stonebridge’s Five-Year Reunion. As well as participating in our reunion events, you would be asked to give a short speech on leadership and your experiences since graduation.

Please see the attached document for more information on the reunion agenda. We would appreciate your response as soon as possible.

Sincerely,

Stonebridge Reunion Team

Tariq read the email three or four times in a row, his heart beating fast. His year at Stonebridge was now (he paused to calculate) more than six years ago. That was hard to believe. No matter the time that had passed, though, the email brought memories rushing back. The most vivid was of him standing in his dorm room when the Al Salyan secret service came to tell him that his father had died and that he was needed at home. His whole world had shattered in that moment.

The other moments standing out in his memory all involved Emelia. The woman he’d left behind without even a goodbye. Tariq’s heart still ached when he thought of her, so he tried not to. He did his best to keep his heart safe and closed, with all thoughts of Emelia and of his father locked away in some faraway place. His mental images of how crushed Emelia must have been when he left hurt him too much otherwise.

“Tariq? Habibi? Did you get lost on the way?”

Tariq looked up to see his mother, Maryam Ibrahim, slowly crossing the garden towards him. She was wearing a traditional outfit of a long, embroidered skirt and matching top, and her gray hair hung in a loose braid over her shoulder. In her hand, she was carrying a rose from the garden.

Tariq slipped his phone back into his pocket and stood to join his mother. She took his arm as they started off towards her cottage. He would reply to the email later, thanking Stonebridge for the offer but politely declining. There was no reason to bring up those painful memories. The best thing to do was continue what he’d been doing for the past six years: pushing away any thoughts of his time in the United States.

“You seem quiet today,” Maryam said, squeezing his arm. “Everything okay?” She glanced up at him with her piercing brown eyes which seemed to see everything. She had on the same expression as when she’d caught him with sticky hands stealing halwa from the kitchens as a child.

“Yes,” Tariq said. He hadn’t realized he’d been lost in thought for so long, but they were nearly to her cottage. It must have been a few minutes. He couldn’t let himself slip like that. Telling his mother about Stonebridge, about Emelia, would be a terrible idea. She would never understand why he’d let himself fall in love with a girl from the United States. She would never understand how much it hurt him to be away from Emelia, even after all this time. “Sorry. I just had a lot of meetings today.”

“I worry about you,” Maryam said plainly. “You work so much and you’re still alone at twenty-eight.”

Tariq shook his head, letting out a little sigh as he and his mother stepped through the threshold into her cottage. “Ummah,” he said, using the Arabic work for mother, “Twenty-eight is hardly an old man. I’ll have time to settle down later.”

Although, what Tariq could never admit was that no woman could ever compare to Emelia. It had been years and Tariq knew that he was probably remembering their time together as even more perfect than it had been. Still, Emelia was his first and only love. After her, he couldn’t imagine being happy with anyone else. What was the point in trying?

“What about Leila Al Kindi?” Maryam asked, leading him into the dining room. Dinner was already set out, a huge feast of Al Salyan delicacies that was their Friday night tradition. “She’s a nice girl and I know you like her.”

Tariq sighed again. He was used to his mother’s constant hounding about finding a match among the legion of eligible Al Salyan women. He was also used to politely turning her down every time.

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