Sweet Revenge

harem.”
    Not long enough, Adrianne thought. “Are you happy?”
    “Yes.” Duja crossed long brown legs and flirted automatically with a man across the circular bar. She was thirty, lushly built, and secure in her own power. “I’m liberated.” Laughing, she lifted her glass. “J.T. is a wonderful man, very kind, very American. I have my own credit cards.”
    “Is that all it takes?”
    “It helps. He also loves me, and I love him. I know how frightened I was when my father agreed to give me to him.Everything we’d heard or been taught about Americans.” She sighed and turned on the stool so that she could watch the sunbathers at the edge of the pool. “When I think I could be sitting in the harem, pregnant with my sixth or seventh child and wondering if my husband would be pleased or displeased with me.” She licked salt from the rim of her glass. “Yes, I’m happy. The world’s different from the one we knew as children. American men don’t expect their women to sit quietly in the corner and have baby after baby. I love my son, but I’m also content to have only him.”
    “Where is he?”
    “With his father. Johnny is as much a fanatic about diving as J.T. He’s also very much the American. Baseball, pizza, arcade games. Sometimes I look back and wonder what my life would have been like if oil hadn’t brought J.T. to Jaquir… and me to J.T.” She shrugged it off as she blew out fragrant smoke that reminded Adrianne of afternoons in the harem and the sound of drums. “But I don’t look back often.”
    “I’m happy for you. When we were children I used to look up to you. You were always so poised and well-behaved, so beautiful. I thought it was because you were a few years older and that I’d be like you when I caught up.”
    “Things were more difficult for you. You wanted to please your father, but your loyalties were always with your mother. I realize now how miserable she must have been when the king took a second wife.”
    “It was the beginning of the end for her.” The bitterness came through. She sipped to wash it away. “Do you ever go back?”
    “I go once a year to see my mother. I sneak her movies for her VCR and red silk underwear. It hasn’t changed,” she said, answering Adrianne’s unspoken question. “When I go back, I’m a proper, obedient daughter, with my hair bound and my face veiled. I wear my
abaaya
and sit in the harem drinking green tea. Strange, while I’m there it doesn’t feel odd, it feels right.”
    “How?”
    “It’s hard to explain. When I go to Jaquir, when I put on the veil, I begin to think like a woman of Jaquir, feel like a woman of Jaquir. What seems right, even natural in Americabecomes totally foreign. When I leave, the veil comes off and so do all those feelings, along with the restrictions.”
    “I don’t understand that. It’s like being two people.”
    “Aren’t we? The way we were raised and the way we live. Have you never been back?”
    “No. But I am considering it.”
    “We won’t go this year. J.T. is uneasy about the trouble in the Persian Gulf. Jaquir has been successful in avoiding a confrontation, but it can’t last.”
    “Abdu knows how to pick his fights, and his friends.”
    Duja lifted a brow. Even after all these years she would never have called the king by his first name. “J.T. said the same just a little while ago.” Unsure of her ground, Duja skirted the edge. “You know your father has divorced Risa? She was barren.”
    “I heard.” She felt a faint tug of pity for her father’s latest wife.
    “He’s taken another, only a few months ago.”
    “So soon?” Adrianne drank again, more deeply. “I didn’t _ know. Leiha gave him seven healthy children.”
    “Five of which were girls.” Duja shrugged again. It seemed Adrianne was cool enough discussing her half siblings. “The two oldest have already been married.”
    “Yes, I know. I get news.”
    “The king bartered wisely with each, sending one to Iran and one to Iraq. The next is only fourteen. It’s said she’ll go to Egypt or perhaps Saudi Arabia.”
    “He shows more affection to his horses than his daughters.”
    “In Jaquir, horses are of more use.” Duja signaled for another round.
    From his window five flights up, Philip had an excellent view of the pool, the gardens, and the sea. He’d been watching Adrianne since she’d come out of the water. With his field glasses he’d been able to see the drops of water glistening as