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.The man has been Alhassan’s friend for many years.And in Islam, you don’t ask a woman to resolve a man’s problem, especially when it comes to such a delicate situation as this one.”Carl was hopeful that Alhassan could pull through this ordeal with only the scars on his back.132When Samir and Talya were alone in the apartment, they decided it was time for them to go swimming.They needed to escape.They suffered from the same disease, an intense desire for solitude where no words were spoken; where there was no need for words to be spoken.Using some subterfuge to divert the attention of their bodyguard, they found themselves swimming long and hard until they were out of breath, having left the beach far away behind them.At one point, Talya flung herself back onto the water surface, splashing Samir in the process, and quickly swimming a backstroke away from him.She wasn’t fast enough however, to escape his grasp.He had reached for her knife belt and pulling her back forcefully toward him he said, “Princess, if you think I’m ever going to let you go away from me again, you’re deluding yourself.”They laughed and started swimming aimlessly once again, as the clouds were gathering quickly overhead.“Let’s go home,” Samir said, looking upward at the menacing sky.This being July, the rain season was upon them.It meant intermittent and furious downpours for hours on end.On land, it wouldn’t have mattered to them at all, but in the ocean they had a problem, a problem called jellyfish.They come up to the surface just before the rain, and they are deadly.It takes five seconds for their caressing touch to paralyze your body and another five minutes for you to die in abominable agony.The only way Talya and Samir could avoid such a fate was to swim under water, and find a passage between their rising bulbous, white heads while avoiding their filaments at all costs.As soon as they heard the first thunder clap, they plunged downward and swam as long as they could before surfacing briefly to catch their breaths.Thankfully it was still early in the season and they were not seeing too many of the jellyfish as they progressed slowly back to the beach.However, one thing they did see overhead was the bottom of a speedboat passing them and then turning around slowly.Samir took Talya’s hand, leading her upward to surface near the launch.As their heads popped up above water, the first thing they saw was their cat at the wheel.The rain was pelting down on the water surface in millions of droplets hitting the swells.Samir yelled Christian’s name from the top of his lungs repeatedly until their cat finally turned his head and noticed them.In minutes, they were aboard unharmed.Samir wrapped a blanket around Talya and threw one over his shoulders, which were wet from the rain within seconds.Christian hadn’t said ‘boo’ to either of them since they had climbed into the boat.He looked positively distressed and deeply hurt.“Don’t you know that cats don’t like water?” he uttered at long last as he was starting the engine again.Samir instantly went to turn it off and took the keys from the ignition.“Samir! Why, why did you do that? Why are you both here? I don’t understand.”“Come and sit down for a minute, will you?” Samir put his arm around Christian’s shoulders and led him to sit on the bench beside Talya.Christian was bewildered.Talya couldn’t talk for her teeth were clattering so hard that she had a difficult time keeping her mouth shut.“You don’t understand, you say, and that’s obvious.So let me explain it to you.Talya and I have been through what you could qualify mildly as an ordeal.For the past several weeks, we have not had a chance to be alone together for one single moment except perhaps when we were riding a camel in the middle of a sandstorm, or when Talya fainted in my arms from a heat stroke, and I watched her for hours before she recovered consciousness.What’s more, from now and for several more weeks, we’re going to be facing another nightmare and we can’t do it, Christian, unless we have time to ourselves.The ocean provided us with the solitude we needed, to face what’s awaiting us in Paris.Until Charos is dead and buried we are not going to rest with peace in our hearts.So, what I am going to ask you now is to understand what it is to be living with the fear of tomorrow in your mind and in your heart day after day [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]