Claudine found her attention bouncing between the view of the cobalt-blue waters of the Gulf of Aqaba beyond the patio bar and listening to the accented English of the man across the table. What was his name? Yuri? Vasily? Yes, that was it. Vasily. She tried to think of where he said he was from. Ukraine, she recalled. Vasily had appeared at her table – when? – an hour ago, and before she finished the gin and tonic he bought her, she had heard all about his last six months spent here in Dahab as a diving instructor and of his grandiose plans to open his own diving school in Sharm El Sheikh, the larger Egyptian town to the south. He said he was going to call the school Ivan’s of Sinai.
“There’s a storm coming this way,” she now heard him say.
Claudine focused on Vasily. He’s cute, she thought. His light hair hanging over his ears was bleached by the sun, while his face and arms were tanned bronze beneath a milk-white shirt. She imagined he had blue eyes, but they were hidden behind wraparound sunglasses. Her own skin was more the colour of his shirt – the result of living through a cold, wet English spring while she completed her next-to-last term at the University of London.
“A storm?” asked Claudine. She peered at the sky over the gulf. “There’s not a cloud anywhere.”
“It arrives from within Sinai. And without rain. It will be a sandstorm, with strong winds. The Egyptians call this wind the khamaseen. It’s fantastic.”
Claudine turned and gazed inland toward the red, craggy mountains rising above Dahab. “I don’t see anything.”
“It will move fast. Look. It’s already started.”
Claudine glanced around the bar, saw tablecloths and the fronds of decorative palms gently flapping.
“Aren’t you worried about your classmates?” Vasily asked.
She thought about Hayley and Fiona. They had gone to a dinner in the desert arranged by the hotel. Claudine had been too fatigued by the three-hour taxi ride from the southern Israeli town of Eilat to go. “They’ll be tip-top,” she said.
Vasily waved at their waitress. “Good. Another drink, then.”
Claudine felt relaxed, almost dream-like. She knew she should be drinking more water in this climate. “Okay.”
The waitress arrived; a pretty Bedouin, somewhat older than Claudine, with long, uncovered hair and dark features. She took Vasily’s order, studied Claudine a moment, and left.
Claudine saw the Bedouin go to the bar and speak with the bartender; another woman, tanned but very blonde. Vasily had told her the bartender was Ukrainian, too.
A burst of hot wind surprised Claudine. She viewed paper napkins fly across the patio, felt her own highlighted hair lift above her head as if it was weightless. She giggled as other patrons scurried inside.
The waitress returned, her long skirt and black hair billowing. As she set the drinks down, she spilled gin on the flowery sarong Claudine wore tied around her bikini bottom.
“Fuck,” spat Claudine. “Be careful, you bloody clod.”
“I’m sorry, miss,” the waitress said. “I’ll get you another.”
“Leave it.”
The waitress retreated. At once, Claudine regretted her words. She wasn’t at all the bitchy sort. Why had she said that? Her thoughts were distracted by Vasily sliding her glass toward her.
“Have your drink before we get blown away,” he said.
Claudine sensed the increased speed of the wind, felt grains of sand fly into her face, arms, the bare parts of her legs. She raised her voice, said, “This is wicked.”
“Yes, now drink.”
Claudine swallowed what was left of the gin and tonic. It tasted too salty – worse than the first drink – but she was mesmerised by the storm and ignored the flavour. By now, brown clouds of sand were blurring the sights beyond the patio and had driven away the remaining customers. Only the bartender and the waitress were left, huddled behind the bar, and as the winds picked up even more, the Ukrainian woman also slipped away.
“It’s time to leave,” Vasily said.
Claudine moved to rise, but her arms and legs failed to respond. It seemed funny at first, then confusing.
“We leave,” repeated Vasily.
She tried again but her limbs felt leaden.
In a flash, Vasily was at her side. He helped her up and began guiding her off the patio.
Claudine tripped on something – a corner of carpet, a table leg – and grasped Vasily’s arm. As she struggled to regain her balance, she caught sight of a police vehicle’s flashing blue lights penetrate the blowing sand in the car park outside. She felt Vasily release her.
“Meet me at the coffee bar next door,” he instructed, and melted away.
Claudine tried to fathom what was happening, but her brain felt numb. Alone, she groped her way across the wind-blown patio, bumping into empty chairs as she tried to navigate the gritty gusts pushing against her. Somewhere behind, she heard a glass break. Unable to see more than a few feet, she made for the blue police lights, the roaring wind the only sound. Just as she reached the edge of the patio, she saw the lights move away. She tried to quicken her step but ran her shin into an unseen planter box that housed a squat palm.
“Damn!” she cried as pain shot up her leg.
Claudine eased around the box and limped outside – or what she thought was outside. All she could see was brown dust that obliterated the car park, the Coral Sea Hotel, the rest of Dahab, and the mountains beyond. The police vehicle seemed to have vanished.
She turned in a confused circle, unsure where to go. Forgetting about Vasily and the coffee bar, she lurched in a direction she believed led to the surf. She had seen bathers on the beach from her table. They must still be there. And at least the water would tell her where she was.
After trudging less than fifty feet in the whirling storm, Claudine lost all sense of direction. Her sarong whipping around her, she choked on blinding, suffocating waves of blowing sand.
Claudine shielded her eyes and ploughed into particles that stung her exposed skin like thousands of needles. Growing desperate to reach the water, she stumbled over a rock and fell to her knees, realising only then she was barefoot, her sandals left under the table at the bar.
Claudine, nauseous now, tried to stand. Out of nowhere, she felt someone grasp her. She imagined it was Vasily, and a corner of her brain panicked. She stiffened in fear as she was pulled to her feet by strong arms.
“You were walking straight into the sea,” said a voice that wasn’t Vasily’s.
Claudine squinted through air blurred with sand and dust, saw the outline and swirling hair of another woman less than a foot away. She recognised the Bedouin waitress.
“What were you trying to do?” the waitress asked in a loud voice.
Claudine tried to clear her mind. “I thought I’d be safer.”
“In the water?”
“Yes.”
“Can you swim?”
“No.”
There was a pause as the two women swayed face to face in the buffeting wind. Finally, the waitress said, “Do you want to come with me? You’ll be safe. I promise. My name’s Leila.”
Claudine sensed an instinct to trust. “Yes, please.”
Twenty minutes later, the khamaseen began to die. Claudine and Leila, sharing a bottle of water, watched in silence from stools behind the patio bar. They were alone. Though the winds were faltering, Claudine stared in fascination at an evening sky still tinged gold by suspended silt. So much sand had blown into the gulf that the waters offshore were brown.
Leila asked, “Do you know what happened to you?”
Claudine felt grit on every inch of her body. “Fuck no. I’ve never been trolleyed by just two gins.”
“I saw the bartender put something in your drink. I think it was Cherry Meth. There’s a lot of it in Sharm El Sheikh. It seems to be in Dahab now.”
Claudine, her head pounding as if from a hangover, realised with alarm what the woman was saying. “You mean I was drugged? Date rape shit?”
Leila nodded. “I believe that man and the bartender do this together. I wanted to tell you somehow, but this is my first day working here and I didn’t want to get in trouble. I tried to convince myself you weren’t my business, but I couldn’t, so I watched from the bar. I followed you when you left with that guy, then the police showed up and he took off.”
Claudine shivered over what almost happened. “Did they arrest him?”
“The police weren’t even looking for him. They drive with their big lights on when the khamaseen comes so no one runs into them. So, the man and woman got away.”
“They’re Ukrainians,” offered Claudine.
“That won’t make them easier to find. There are Ukrainians and Russians all over Sinai. I don’t believe you’ll see those two again, but we need to be careful the next few days.”
Claudine, feeling stupid at her naiveté, avoided Leila by looking around. The bar was such a mess of settled dust from the windstorm that it resembled a children’s sandpit. She tried to think of something to say. She finally remarked, “You know a lot about this Cherry Meth shit.”
Leila made a wry smile. “You think because I’m Bedouin that I’m not sophisticated like you?”
Claudine felt fresh embarrassment. “I didn’t mean that.”
Leila looked amused. “I believe you. At least you didn’t tell me how excellent my English is. That’s what I usually hear.”
“Well, you English is good. Better than mine.”
“My family aren’t typical Bedouins.” Leila brushed sand out of her hair. “My parents wanted me educated instead of spending my life taking care of goats.”
“Is that how you know about Cherry Meth?”
“Give credit to my medical studies in Cairo,” Leila said. “I’m going to be a doctor.”
“Oh. That’s grand, isn’t it?” Claudine glimpsed the chair Vasily had occupied. “I haven’t thanked you properly, have I?”
Leila shrugged. “If women don’t guard each other in this life, who will? I only worry now for the woman with that terrible man. Who will watch over her?”
“At least you were here for me, thank Christ.”
“I’m certain you would do the same.”
Would she? Claudine hoped so. At least, she knew she would help this woman. And Hayley and Fiona. But a complete stranger? Again, she hoped it would be true. She smiled at the Bedouin, said, “I’m Claudine.”
Leila held out her hand. “Hello, Claudine.”
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