said. “I dream of being back in London, but it’s impossible, given who I am.”
“I suppose being a member of the royal family comes with many obligations.”
“We say that every blessing carries a curse. So yes. I am a prince. I have ten thousand cousins just like me. We are rich, yes. We have power. But we live with the knowledge that one day our tribe will be overthrown. This will happen; we know this. Two things we don’t know: when this will happen and what will come after us. We close our eyes to that. We are like thieves who hear the police sirens, but there is no place to run.”
“Why did you never marry?” Henry asked boldly.
“I had an exceedingly common fantasy that I would marry a blond Western girl with blue eyes and excellent taste and a fine education. And in fact, I did this.”
“You never told me you are married!”
“I am divorced. Her name was Marian. She was a part of the whole picture, the townhouse in Mayfair, the rewarding medical practice, tea and crumpets in the afternoons, a civilized life with shade trees and foggy streets and elevated friends. The complete expat dream! But as I say, every blessing comes with its own curse. For me, the curse was the realization that I would never be a part of that life, I would always stand outside, peering in the window like a spy. I loved my wife, but there was a divide between Marian’s world and mine. I looked at who I was in their eyes and saw an Arab. A Muslim. That was the main thing. Not a prince. Not a doctor. After 9/11, that was constantly on my mind.
“And then came the bombs of 7/7. You remember the suicide bombings in the London Underground? More than fifty people killed. Seven hundred injured, including my beautiful blond, blue-eyed, well-educated wife. They took off her right arm above the elbow. I loved her, I swear. I love her now. But she could no longer live with me. It wasn’t my being an Arab and a Muslim. Marian couldn’t live with my shame.”
“What happened to her?”
“Oh, she married again, another doctor, one of those Brits with a hyphenated name, a very fine man. I am always grateful that he cares for her so well. They have two lovely children. I see pictures of them on Facebook.”
“Your story makes me realize how fortunate I am,” said Henry. “I have been given more than I deserve. My family is my greatest happiness, but I’ve always been afraid that they would be taken away from me, and this would be somehow my fault—and this is exactly what is happening.”
“The odds are in your favor, Henry. Most people survive this contagion.”
“I am helpless. It’s killing me that I can’t save them.”
“Do you ever pray, my friend?” Majid asked.
“Never.”
“Does it occur to you, the yearning to do so?”
“Just last night, as I tried to sleep, the idea of prayer did come into my mind, but only as a measure of my total defeat.”
“Perhaps it is a message, a knock on the door from the Great Unknowable.”
“I hope you won’t take offense, but I’ve renounced all forms of superstition, including religion. I have nothing against Islam that I don’t hold against all beliefs.”
“You are such a Muslim, Henry.”
“Nothing of the sort. I’m a hard-boiled atheist.”
“On the one hand, you suggest that the blessings you receive you did not earn, and on the other you believe that you are responsible for everything bad that happens. This is a very Islamic attitude.”
“Don’t get your hopes up,” said Henry.
The sun was in their eyes like a searchlight. Majid handed Henry a headscarf to shield himself from the merciless rays.
“See? You even look like a real Saudi now,” Majid said with satisfaction.
“I feel more like a boiled lobster.”
Majid laughed. “I have met atheists before, many of them. In London, everyone is a pagan! They never think about the things I worry about all the time. We believers say that we are good because we believe, but the nonbelievers I meet are good people, most of them, just like Muslims and Christians and Jews. So I wonder what difference it makes to believe or not to believe.”
“A friend of mine once said that when good people do good, and evil people do evil, it is not surprising. But when good people do evil, it takes religion to do that.”