Palace of the Pomegranate: the romantic vet!

Late post! Well, this is not an auspicious beginning to my new posting schedule. I’ll have to step it up.

Back to Palace of the Pomegranate…Tony, Grace, Kharim and the whole expedition start to head back to Reza Shahr, despite Kharim’s warnings that they may be headed into a dangerous sand storm.    

Everyone is an idiot.

During the ride, Grace makes some pretty big assumptions about Kharim.  For instance, while she’s embarrassed that Kharim must be able to tell that Tony hit her the night before, she thinks that “Kharim was a Persian, and for him a woman was an obedient slave or she was nothing.  He was too primitive at heart to know or care that women needed to be loved for more than their bodies” (52).  She has not exchanged more than ten words with this guy! Why does she assume this?

The sand storm begins to arrive, “like a savage tiger with a lashing tail and teeth bared to bite them” (53) – again with the big cats. This sparks another argument between Grace and Tony. He makes to strike her with his whip (!), but instead startles his horse, which runs off into the storm. I think we can all predict how the problem of a married heroine is going to be solved here.

Grace wants to ride off after Tony (why?!), but Kharim stops her. They wait out the storm together and then Kharim sends some of his men out to find Tony. While the men are searching, Grace becomes suspicious about Kharim’s identity (it’s obvious now that he’s not just a guide) and he reveals that is indeed a leader, not a guide. He had seen Grace before her marriage, when she visited a Persian wedding with her grandfather, and was taken with her. 

Kharim has a…poetic…way about him. Grace describes him as “saying the sort of things no man had ever said to her” (64). When Grace says that he must have been born in the desert, he replies:

“True, I was born in the very heart of it, and the first thing I saw when my eyes were fully open was a desert star.  I would say that it has led me ever since on a quest for – heaven” (64). 

Which I guess no one has ever said to me either? 

As predicted, the men return with Tony’s body strapped to their horse.  He’s suffocated in the sandstorm and they bury him there in the desert. Grace is, understandably, feeling pretty conflicted about this and also pretty guilty. She feels like it was her fault, that she brought Tony to the desert, although I have to say that I’m not sure how guilty she should feel since he was (only allegedly I suppose) trying to kill her.

Anyway, in her distraction Grace almost sprains her ankle, leading Kharim to chide her about taking care of injuries in the harsh desert. And to reveal that he is…a qualified vet! Just like The Sheik! It’s an odd continuity for Winspear to insert into the book, since that qualified vet bit never did make that much sense to me. It didn't seem particularly romantic or revealing of East/West or man/woman relations. But obviously it means something to her. Speculations anyone? 

Anyway, the fact that he’s a qualified vet does give Kharim the opportunity to mention the ever popular comparison between women and horses:

“I am a qualified vet, milady, and you would be surprised how much a highly strung filly and a woman have in common.  They both have emotional natures and fine-boned ankles” (68). Well, he does have a sense of humor!

Anyway, Kharim has been leading the party not back to Reza Shahr but instead further into the desert – he says towards to the garden of Sheba. Kharim tells Grace that now that her husband is dead, he is in charge of her; apparently, it is the custom that “when a woman loses her husband in the desert, the head of a caravan then becomes responsible for her” (70). Grace is dubious about this and threatens him with jail. 

It seems that Kharim has planned to take Grace away with him all along. She’s just that beautiful. That’s how she’s attracted the notice of the man who turns out to be “Kharim Khan, and the paramount chief of my tribe, the Haklyt Rohim.  In this the Land of the Peacock Throne and the King of Kings, I am more powerful than even you may imagine. For me the abduction of a mere girl is a bagatelle.  I could be assassinated at any time, having enemies who hate me as you could never dream of hating anyone, even such as me, a man of a desert nation who saw you – and wanted you!” (73). It’s like this dialogue was written in the 1920s! It’s very striking.  I don’t remember Violet Winspear’s other romances being like this.

Kharim “the paramount chief” then takes Grace back to his tribe’s camp, where he installs her in the ‘harem section’ of his tent. What awaits her? Will she ever escape? We'll have to wait until Monday to find out...