Brilliant by Denise Roig Read Free Book Online Page A

said to me the other day, “In the desert there isn’t much you can do but submit.”
    Â 
    Everywhere we are greeted with open arms. Families who’ve had babies with us issue pressing invitations. “You must come to see your baby.” Marian says that whoever cuts the cord is honoured forever as The Mother, sweet compensation for the children God has chosen not to bless me with. When we arrive, our patients run out to meet us at the car, then walk with us to their homes. Sometimes these are beside a dune or inside a date garden. There is always food to share, and, of course, coffee.
    At first I found the coffee impossibly strong — thank goodness for such small cups — but the longer I am here, the more I love the smell and the ritual. It can go on for ages — the roasting of the beans over an open fire, the crushing with mortar and pestle, the boiling and foaming up of the liquid two, three times, then the pouring over pounded cardamom seeds. My new friends tell me that when they travel by camel, the coffee pot is the last thing packed and the first thing unpacked.
    Â 
    It’s difficult for me to write anything about Sheikh Zayed that doesn’t sound like overstatement. But if anyone can carry his people into the twentieth century, it is this man with the long stride, children always running by his side to keep up. He is a man as large as the desert. But I was surprised to discover he’s also a practical joker. Once when Marian and I had gone to visit Sheikh Zayed’s mother, he was there, standing by the car. As we said our goodbyes, he played with his camel stick in the sand. “
Haneesh
!” he called out suddenly, the Arabic word for snake, meanwhile scribbling a wavy line in the sand. We jumped back and he roared with laughter.
    Whenever Sheikh Zayed sees me now, he calls out, “
Marhaba
, Latifa!” Hello, Latifa!
    My identity, it seems, is sealed.

The Knowledge
    Â 
    Mohsin thinks this is nothing. You drive in the desert, he says. Abu Dhabi is not a real city. Not like London or Paris or Rome. Mohsin has not been to Paris or Rome, but he pronounces this with authority. Sami can see his brother Mohsin’s mouth: turned down at the corners, disdainful but humouring. Sami talks to Mohsin often in his head, especially when driving, which means all the time. Perhaps he even speaks to him in dreams.
    Sami’s back at Al Zaabi Finest Bakery, already the third pick-up of the day. Shhhh, he tells Mohsin. You are wrong. Abu Dhabi is a real city. You come see. For thirty-four years Mohsin has been driving cabs in London, six more than Sami has been head driver for the Al Qubaisis, a family one rung down from the Al Nahyans, one remove from royalty. My life, Sami tells Mohsin silently as he gets out of the SUV , has been touched by luxury.
    It’s already so hot his khaki shirt is stuck to his back, his whole back, not just the small of it. He will change at the next stop. Saeed Al Qubaisi likes staff to look military-sharp, no sweaty men in damp
shalwar kameez
in
his
employ. Sami appreciates this. My life, he thinks, passing through the bakery’s air-conditioned entry, has been touched by excellence.
    Dania, the Palestinian counter girl, looks up, smiles slightly, drops her gaze. They have known each other for more than ten years, but both watch over-friendliness. “This place has eyes,” she told him once when he inquired after her young son, living in Jordan with extended family. He’d willed himself not to look up at the security monitor in the ceiling, and nodded, complicit. The camera is always on, training itself on who comes and who goes, though who would steal
maamoul
and
baklawa
? True, Al Zaabi’s Arabic sweets are delicious, the best in the Emirates, some say. But really…
maamoul
? Working for the Al Qubaisis, he can have all the
maamoul
he wants. Platters of
maamoul
, the really big ones Saeed Al Qubaisi prefers, are