As planned, Duane, Tristan, Isabela and Roslyn go on a trip
into the city. On their way in they pass by some Oriental tropes: Isabela is as
“proud and distant as Queen Nefertiti” (83) and the scene around a water-hole
has a “Biblical quality, unchanged down the centuries” (84).
Ivan Kalmar, a professor at the University of Toronto, has
argued in fact that paintings of Biblical scenes were influenced by contemporary fashions in the ‘East’. So perhaps this ‘Biblical quality’ is more related to tropes of representing
the Bible than the persistence of an
unchanging style in 'the East'…
In more self-referentiality, Isabela remarks that “real
Arabs were certainly not like the sheiks in novels and films” and Duane agrees: “I
should hope not! […] those are real men and women, hewn out of the fire and ice
of their land. In actual fact, a desert sheik is little more than a shepherd, a
nomad wanderer who opens his eyes for the first time in a hair tent, who marries
a girl of his own tribe and rarely takes a second wife, let alone a third or a
fourth” (84).
The four enjoy the city, shopping in the souk, going out for
dinner and dancing (Roslyn quite poorly). At night, Roslyn goes down to the lake by their hotel, to
clear her mind and runs into Duane – and another romance plot-line. They get caught in the rain and have to take
shelter in a boatshed and ‘get out of those wet things’, if you know what I
mean.
They have to stay in the shed overnight, because a
landslide has blocked the path back up the hotel and it’s too dangerous to try to climb it at night. When Duane takes off his shirt (Just to go to sleep, I
promise! We aren't in the 80s yet. While The Sheik may have had pre-marital sex, this book does not.), Roslyn sees the jagged scar on this shoulder, from his years in the jungle,
she assumes: “a jaguar hiding in a tree, leaping down when his back was turned
and rending his body…as that woman he had known had rended him on the inside”
(128).
But in seriousness, they bond during the night, as Duane
tells Roslyn about his father moving to England and his own choice to come to
Dar Al Amra. Roslyn, of course, has no stories of her own to tell, as she still
has no memories…
The next morning, they both sneak back into the hotel and,
for some reason, don’t tell anyone about
it. It’s really not clear why. It would be too scandalous? They like having
a secret little secret? Roslyn and Tristan go on horseback rides together, Roslyn hangs
out with Nanette and when she goes into town with Tristan, learns about the
improvements that Duane is planning with the locals. He has started a Food Association Board and is
friends with the man who will be the headman when the current headman dies, who
wants modernization: education and new crop-growing schemes.
In another Biblical reference, Tristan suggests that whoever
marries Duane “will have to fold her tent like Ruth and dwell with him in the
desert” (154), like any daughter-in-law should (well, he doesn’t say that part,
or the part where she later seduces some guy named Boaz).
Foreshadowing?
Finally, a crisis arrives. Nanette becomes ill. Duane calls
in Dr. Suleiman, who represents the highly qualified modern Arab, trained in
Algiers and in England, but come back to El Khadia to help the local people. And…
you’ll never guess… his hands are “narrow and shapely as a woman’s” (160). So I
guess this is a thing, at least in sheik romances!
Nanette apparently needs just a bit of bed-rest, so Roslyn
takes over her nursing. Isabela is getting restless because she is not having
enough attention paid to her. This bit then comes out of the blue:
There is a
sandstorm coming, but Isabela persuades Roslyn to come for a drive with her.
She interrogates Roslyn about her and Duane’s relationship and then tricks
Roslyn into getting out of the car and leaves her behind! In the desert! With a
sandstorm coming! It’s very dramatic, and Isabela has been set up as selfish
and temperamental, but it does seem like a bit much.
Luckily Duane happens to be driving by and he rescues
Roslyn. He also reveals to her the
secret of his cynicism around love. It was his mother! She was selfish like
Isabela and after a series of affairs left his father, running away with a wealthy Brazilian only to be
killed in an earthquake. After this revelation, the sandstorm hits and
Roslyn hits her head on the front of the car. And…
Recovers her memory, of course!
She is indeed Juliet Grey,
just as Duane suspected. This prompts Duane to kiss her: “his mouth on hers was relentless, hurting her until she
ceased to struggle…then, eyes closed, senses fully awake, she surrendered to the
kiss that searched through all her being until it plundered the heart right out
of her” (184). Duane reveals he loves her and she, of course, loves him. And
then he gives her a ring.
I may have been a little snarky about this book's plot,
but it is actually quite pleasant to read (despite the endless ruminations on
the nature of love). The ‘local colour’ details are evocative. Morocco serves as a wonderful setting, and the novel
is very revealing about the remainders of French colonialism (in a
non-political way), but Moroccan people are only background actors in the
story. I'm not sure any Moroccan women even have any lines...
Next up, Immortal Flower.
This one has two potential heroes on the cover: a Tunisian man and a British
man (I think). Who will the heroine
choose?
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