Darling,

I had to leave you this morning. An important appointment that could not be postponed. I am so honored by your trust. I will not disappoint you. Please be ready at 12. And pack things for two days, we will be back on Monday.

Shamar

---

Suddenly my heart rate shifts into a higher gear. We’re taking a trip. Where to? And why? What’s the plan? Well, I guess I know. Last night I let him know that I want him as much as he wants me.

So I disappear into the bathroom, take a shower and shave the tiny hair stubbles all over my whole body. Armpits, legs and bikini area are as smooth and soft as silk afterwards. I am prepared for whatever happens.

I put on some comfortable clothes and run down the stairs to my breakfast table. Despite yesterday evening’s lavish dinner, I manage to eat a large breakfast of two croissants with butter and jelly, and an apple and banana. Then I go back upstairs and start packing my overnight bag for the weekend. My white dress, cargo pants and T-shirts.

The wardrobe I’ve brought along is pretty limited seeing that I had to stick to the maximum weight. So now, seeing that I don’t have a large selection to choose from I have an easier time repacking the things I want to bring along. I’m done in a jiffy and decide that I’ll spend the hour I still have to myself sunbathing next to Shamar’s private pool.

I am enjoying the book I’ve brought along, when I hear the sliding doors being opened, and Shamar appears. He still has on the traditional robe, and his head is covered, making him look quite distinguished as he walks towards me.

“Luna,” is all he says. He gathers the kaftan to be able to kneel down. Then he kisses me. “You’re early, Shamar,” I say grinning, then kiss him. After a moment or two he moves away. “I could hardly wait to see you again, darling.”

“Where will we be going?” I want to know.

“It’s a secret. You’ll see when we are there but I am sure that you will like it.” He stands and offers his hand to help me up from the sun lounger.

“But I am sooo excited – couldn’t you just give me a little hint?”

He laughs and embraces me lightly. Then he gives me a kiss.

“Okay, we are going to the desert – but that is all I am going to say.” Then he laughs again when he sees the surprised look on my face.

“Come on, why don’t you change. Then we can leave.”

While I run up the staircase for the 2nd time today, Shamar is standing at the bottom of the staircase watching me with an amused look on his face. Then he turns around and disappears in his own bedroom. I exchange my bikini for my underwear and pack the bikini in my suitcase. Then I slip into a dark pair of jeans and a T-shirt. I tie my hair back to a ponytail and push my sun-glasses up on my head to hold my hair back. Then I put on my sneakers, and I am ready.

I grab my bag and start down. Matthew seems to have disappeared which is a shame as I would have loved to say goodbye to him. Shamar exits from his bedroom carrying a small backpack over his bag. He is dressed just as casually as I am. Black jeans and a black polo shirt.

Wow, he looks wonderful. He picks up my bag and his two bags with one hand and stares at my sunglasses, wrinkling his forehead.

“Do you have another pair of sunglasses? The one you have on is too small. You’ll need better sun protection for your eyes.”

“No, I don’t have another one. This one has been fine so far.” I look at him questioningly. “Why isn’t this one enough?”

Shamar looks down at me while he extricates my sunglasses from my hair and places them on the table.

“The sun here is much stronger than it is in Germany. That is why you need a pair that covers your eyes more and protects the sides, too. Like the kind you wear for skiing.”

I feel pretty silly that hasn’t occurred to me.

“And so now what?” I ask. “Aren’t we going?”

My question seems to amuse him because he grins at me. “No problem, darling. We’ll just make a little detour and buy some glasses downstairs in the hotel shop. They have a good selection.” He caresses my behind. “Let’s go.”

I press the elevator button, and we wait for the doors to open. While we stand there waiting, he steps up to me from behind. I lean back a bit feeling our bodies touch. He wraps his free arm around me and kisses the back of my neck. I feel like I am in heaven.

---

Twenty minutes later I am the proud owner of a sinfully expensive pair of Prada sunglasses that are so flattering they make me look like a Hollywood celebrity. I’m now incognito behind the dark lenses. Not needing them yet, I stick them up on my head, where they are waiting to be used.

Next we head up in the elevator to the roof, and when we arrive there the doors open out to a glassed room. We are near the Burj Al Arab’s viewing platform and at this elevation, it feels as though the building is swaying. I grab Shamar’s hand.

“Everything alright?” he asks me.

I nod. “Yes, it is just so high.”

He smiles and puts on his sunglasses.

“Soon we will be even higher. Come, sweetie.”

He pulls me closer, and we run up a few steps and finally reach a huge round platform where a helicopter is parked. Well, that is going to be another first for me. I have never been in a helicopter before. There is a man standing next to the door to the helicopter to help us get in and the pilot is sitting in front. He is wearing headphones and a dark black pair of sunglasses. There is a microphone extending from the headphones that ends right in front of his mouth.

I am suddenly so nervous, that my hands are sweating. Shamar hands the two travel bags to the man holding the doors open for us and he stows away our bags behind the seats. Shamar helps me get in.

The helicopter has room for six people. We sit down on the seats in the back area, where Shamar helps me close my safety belt, once I get it on. The straps reach over my shoulders, one from the side and one even from below. They meet in the middle where they are fastened. I put on my glasses quickly, before Shamar hands me the same kind of headset that the pilot is wearing. Then he sits down next to me and fastens his own seat belt, while he pulls a headset over his head.

“Can you hear me?” he asks.

I can hear his voice loud and clear over the headset. I nod and look at him.

Then I hear him again.

“Okay, we are ready now.”

That was not directed at me, but to the pilot. So we are all talking via the same radio frequency. The man outside is checking whether the doors have all been closed correctly, and then he signals to the pilot. The pilot answers with the same signal. The voice of the pilot appears in my headphones as he is being given the all clear signal, and immediately he starts the rotors of the helicopter. The blades of the helicopter come alive and start rotating faster and faster, while a whistling noise can be heard. I’m afraid, and I grab Shamar’s hand. He looks at me encouragingly.

“Don’t be afraid. The view is spectacular. Just enjoy it.”

With a jolt, the helicopter lifts off and slowly climbs higher and higher. Oh my, I can look down almost vertically. It is totally different than sitting in a plane. I move as close to Shamar as my safety belt allows, and he puts his arm around me to calm me down.

“Just enjoy the flight, darling,” I hear him say close to my ear. I nod my head because I can’t speak. I am too overwhelmed. The view is out of this world and it feels as if I had grown wings and was flying over the rooftops of hotels and buildings. No one is about to wake me from this dream, and no one seems to be bothered by the racket the helicopter is making. We fly around the center of Dubai and then head away from the ocean and towards the center of Dubai.

After the last houses, the desert begins below us. Endless waves of sand seem to stretch to the horizon. We fly over sand dunes and after a while a huge hotel complex appears. I see the landing strip with a great H on it. The helicopter starts descending to the ground gradually and a few minutes it lands as soft as a feather.

We’ve arrived. The second the helicopter touches the ground, Shamar frees first himself and then me of the safety belt and headset. The door is opened from the outside. A little car that looks like a golf cart is waiting for us, so we throw our bags in.

Shamar and the pilot exchange a few words before we get into the car and are chauffeured to the hotel. The complex is large and extends in all directions with small buildings grouped in various places. The cart stops in front of one of these buildings, and the driver opens the door to an apartment.When I peek inside I realize it is even bigger than Shamar’s suite in the Burj Al Arab.

“Where are we?” I ask Shamar.

“This is my brother Nadim’s hotel. Do you like it?” The view bowls me over. It has a panorama view of the desert, and the room is designed to make you feel like you’re one with the desert. There is a large terrace with sun sails and a large private pool. Shamar does not seem to want to do without a pool.

“I’m so impressed. Really. Truly. This is amazing!” I turn around and face him. He is busy with the key, and the driver leaves.

“I’m glad you like it. We will be coming back here.” He has that mischievous grin on his face then says that we have not reached our final destination yet.

“Do you like horseback riding?”

Of course, I like horseback riding. In fact, I love it. Like millions of other girls, I spent a lot of time learning how to ride horses when I was young. That was ten years ago. “Yes,” I answer. “I am pretty good at it. It’s been quite a while, and I might be rusty, but it should be fun.”

“It’s like riding a bike. You never forget how to do it. Do you want to freshen up or can we hit the road?” I tell him I’d just like to freshen up a bit before we leave and when I’m done, Shamar is waiting for me. He has a long shawl wrapped around his forehead and the back of his head. I pin up my hair, and Shamar wraps my sun protection around my head and hands me a long sleeved shirt.

“Here, otherwise you might get a sunburn.” I look at him, sort of confused because I think I’ll be looking like a Martian from another planet.

“How about our bags?”

“We’ll just leave them here. We won’t be needing them.”

My curiosity is piqued. There wouldn’t be enough room on a horse anyway. So I follow him outside where the small golf-cart like electronic car is still waiting for us. We take a seat on the back bench, and the adventure begins. A few minutes later we end up in front of a stable while two horses are being led out. One of them is a white horse while the other one is dark, almost black.

Compared to horses in Germany they are both small and dainty. They are beautiful. Their coats glisten in the sun and their mouths are soft and smooth. I cannot resist and reach out to pet them while Shamar watches me, smiling.

And then it’s time to see what it’s like to be on such a beautiful horse. Shamar helps me up into the saddle on the dark horse, and when I am up there, I am relieved that the horses are not all that big. Somehow I remembered that part differently. I pick up the reins and wait for Shamar to get into his saddle. He looks so graceful when he does, yet I would not have expected anything different. And then the adventure continues. My horse is easy to manage and reacts to all the things I tell it to do, including my commands. So commands seem to be international where horses are concerned.

Shamar has a rucksack over his back that contains things to drink and a satellite telephone. The horses are moving at a leisurely pace, and soon we leave the hotel behind us as we head out into the sand.

I hope Shamar knows what he is doing, I think to myself. Wouldn’t be much fun getting lost in the desert. It’s good to have your bearings and better yet to have a compass and an exact idea of where you are heading. Shamar starts telling me things about the desert, pointing in various directions, explaining about the areas there, some of which are sheikhdoms.

The sun beats down on us mercilessly even though it is late September. I’m happy I’m wrapped up in all of this light material, otherwise I’d turn as red as a lobster in no time.

We stop several times to rest and drink and at some point a black dot appears on the horizon. And since we are not moving away from it, but towards it, that seems to be our destination.

And indeed - the closer we come, the more the black spot turns out to be a collection of Bedouin tents.

Nobody is to be seen. Except for our horses, we are all alone. We are somewhere in the Rub‘al-Khali desert, blue skies above us and the sun that has already passed half the way to the horizon. The silence is delicious. I have never perceived a kind of silence like this before. I’ve heard so many people speak of the desert as having a divine kind of silence, but I did not quite imagine the silence to be this absolute. No wonder people come to the desert to learn to listen to their own thoughts. As we arrive, Shamar hops off his horse and helps me dismount mine.

I guess I have sort of forgotten what it is like to go horseback riding as I did not remember my knees giving out from under me when I got off horses when I was a teenager. But it only lasts for a short time and passes. Shamar takes both horses and leads them to a shelter, then takes off their bridles and provides them with water that he dumps from canisters into a drinking trough, then he takes a feed bag that is hanging there and dumps it in another trough.

Aside from the shelter there is a large round tent and a small rectangular tent next to it that contains toilets of the kind you find in camping places, and showers. Shamar explains that the various water bags I see distributed along the roof of the tent are interconnected and that the sunlight warms the water they contain. At night, there is a gas-driven thermal water heater that that can provide warm water when needed.

So we don’t have a shower as in our hotel rooms but rather a tent right in the middle of the desert, which in my mind must be the epitome of luxury.

We walk over to the large tent. From the inside, it seems even larger than from the outside. It has transparent interior walls that separate the various areas. The floor of the living-room like area is covered with very colorful rugs and pillows of all sizes, and also a low woven table. Against the length of the tent room I see various trunks and the opening to the bedroom, which looks airy and spacious with a real bed.

I think I would have imagined a bed in a tent in a desert different from this one. Not like a standard bed with metal bars at the head. How did they get all the things here? A whole army of helpers must have been busy carting things here and setting everything up.

“Would you like to change while I prepare us something to drink?” Shamar asks turning towards me.

But since I only have brought one change of clothes, I hesitate. This man seems to be able to read my mind, I think to myself, as he suddenly heads towards a trunk, opens it and squats next to it while removing a number of various billowy looking garments.

“Here are some things that you can wear, if you would like. They are appropriate for the desert. They are cotton, and light and will protect you from the sun and the sand, which has a tendency to creep into all tiny little nooks and crannies.

I walk over to inspect the clothing, while he stands next to me. I decide on a wide pair of pants that are made of very thin cotton material that taper off and end below the knee, together with a matching top that has the same color. It is also very light and airy.

I walk over to the bathroom tent and take off my things and put on the robes I have borrowed. They are new and are freshly laundered and were probably selected by the same person who selected the blue evening dress. They fit perfectly and are very comfortable, especially in the heat of the desert.

As I exit from the bathroom, Shamar is spreading blankets and pillows around outside under the awning of the tent.

He hands me a glass of water, and I realize immediately how thirsty I am. Shamar tells me to relax and stretch out, so I settle back into my blanket and lean back against the pillow while he goes to freshen up.