“Are you hurt?” Bassel asked when he noticed my expression.
“No,” I breathed out, “I’m in labor.”
The terror on Bassel’s face when I told him that was unforgettable. I didn’t know if he was scared because of the complications that meant for our escape, or if he was scared for the baby, or if he was afraid of the noises I would make.
Whatever it was, he looked utterly horrified, and at a loose end about what he should do now. I braced myself using the metal bars of the door, and gritted my teeth hard until the pain was gone, all while feeling Bassel’s fearful eyes on me.
“Okay,” I said breathlessly, “it’s gone for now. What are we going to do?”
“We’ll use this ladder.” He pointed out of the door to the side. “It’s how I got in. But we have to be very quiet.”
I nodded, “Okay.”
“Are you sure you’re okay? I can carry you.”
I wasn’t sure how he planned to do that while climbing a ladder, given my situation, but I was thankful for the offer.
“I’m fine. Really,” I told him with gratitude.
Bassel nodded, then he proceeded to unlock the bolt on the door very slowly, trying not to make any noise. I held my breath as the door squeaked. I felt anxious that someone could hear it.
We made it out of the door and then to another alley, I was afraid to hope, but at the same time, I knew I had to hold on to that hope. It would be the only thing to give me the strength to get through all of this mess.
Bassel kept a step ahead of me, my hand in his, but he was always looking back to make sure that I was all right.
When we made it to the wooden ladder, I almost told him there was no way I could climb it. Maybe under different circumstances, I could, but right now, it seemed impossible. The ladder was too long and too thin.
“C’mon, Your Majesty,” Bassel encouraged me. I wished he was behind me so he might catch me if I fell. But he must go first, lest there was something – or someone – that he needed to protect me from.
Holding the wooden ladder with a death grip, I started putting one foot in front of the other. My whole body was aching, and the bottom of my abdomen was hurting badly. I was sweating and breathing heavily, but I knew I had to climb if I wanted to get out of this place.
Those steps seemed never-ending, but after what felt like forever, I finally saw the end of the ladder. Crazily, it led to another dark place, and I wondered where the heck we were and why it was so dark and quiet. Only the sound of waves hitting the shore was audible; it was faint, but it was there.
When Bassel was sure that I could stand on my feet, he pulled out his cell phone again and started tapping on it. The frustration on his face was all I needed to know that he still couldn’t get a signal.
“We’re still underground?” I whispered.
“Sort of. We are in the basement.” He said while holding his phone up and moving it around, in a desperate attempt to get a signal. “We have to keep quiet. I don’t know how many of them are around.”
I nodded, pressing my lips tightly. My shoulders were killing me, and my legs were shaking, but it was the least of my concerns. Right now, all I wanted was to bring my son into the world in a safe place. I prayed with my whole heart that I could give him that.
Putting his phone back in his pocket, Bassel took out his bloodied knife. The sight, although terrifying, gave me a small sense of safety.
I followed Bassel as he crept forward holding the knife in front of him, his other hand gripping mine tightly as if he was afraid I would let go.
“Who’s there?” we heard a gruff voice asking.
Bassel immediately let go of my hand and pushed my shoulder down, so I dropped to the floor on my knees. His body was shielding me as he answered casually, “It’s me. Bassel.” I was amazed by how calm he sounded. God only knows I was shaking like a leaf.
“Bassel! You puss! That was embarrassingly fast!” the man with the rough voice chuckled, pointing a small flashlight in our direction, but it wasn’t really on us.
“I need some help, where is everyone?” Bassel asked. It was a cunning way to find out how many were out there, and possibly where.
The man chuckled again, “Can’t do it all by yourself, kiddo? If Her Highness had told me that getting a royal ass was an option, I would’ve given her a blast!”
Bassel laughed, “You’re not that lucky. Where’s Princess Qamar, by the way?”
“In her room, I guess,” the man replied, “How many men do you want?”
The man’s words were making me angry, and I wondered how Bassel had been brought into this. It seemed to me that the idea of getting him to rape me had popped up in The Snake’s head quite suddenly, or maybe it was her revenge on me for refusing to give her the drawings.
The idea of The Snake going to her room, and maybe even falling asleep very easily, while knowing that I was being tortured nearby made me sick to my stomach. I would never understand how that woman was able to live with herself, or how she found rest on her pillow after all she’d done and was still doing. It was unbelievable.
Although my knees were giving out, I tried my best ―and then some ― not to move an inch. The man was occasionally moving the light, and I bit my lips hard, terrified I’d make a sound.
“How many do you think I could have?” Bassel responded to the man’s question with another question, and when the first took a pause before replying, I suspected it was a bad sign.
Suddenly, the light moved, and I became aware that Bassel was running towards the man, launching himself into the air and then he landed on top of the guard, forcing them both to the ground.
I watched with terrified eyes as Bassel struggled to get the gun out of the man’s hand before he could pull the trigger while putting his hand over his mouth to prevent him from calling for help.
The second the gun dropped, Bassel stabbed the man’s throat. I put my hand over my mouth to muffle the gasp, the horrifying sight making me even more scared.
Bassel picked up the gun and tucked it in his waistband; I assumed he thought he’d need it later. Just the thought of that made me shudder. Without another word, Bassel helped me up and started dragging me towards where the-now-dead-man was lying.
Climbing up another ladder, I noticed that this one was not as rickety as the other one. Made from expensive wood, this ladder felt very sturdy and, as far as I could see through the darkness, adorned with elegant decorations. We were now inside the house where I had been imprisoned underground.
We moved very slowly and carefully. I was afraid that someone would hear the sound of my heartbeat, which, to my ears, thundered loudly. I tried to calm myself so my breaths wouldn’t be as audible, and I was somewhat successful.
From what I understood from the conversation between Bassel and the man he’d just killed, Bassel had no idea how many men stood between us and freedom. But given the way he kept looking around, I knew he didn’t even know where to go.
It was a wonder how The Snake was able to reach him so fast, although I’d noticed from the way they talked that they knew each other previously. I just didn’t know how or why. It was too confusing to think about, so I concentrated solely on getting out of this place.
My first impression, as I saw inside the walls of the house, was that it belonged to rich people. As far as I could see through the darkness, the paintings hanging on the walls weren’t ones you’d buy from indie artists. They were ones that might belong in a museum one day; the same kind that you’d find in our palace.
The dusty floor under my bare feet and the smell of the stale air surrounding us clued me in that it had been a long time since this place had a good cleaning, maybe years. I dismissed the idea that it might be The Snake’s house.
It felt like we were going nowhere. The hallway was too long. We continued to move very carefully. Bassel kept looking back at me while I followed behind him. Now and then, he would motion for me not to make a sound, and then would continue walking. He gestured more than ten times or so, which made me increasingly edgy, for I always thought he might have heard something that I couldn’t. All the while, Bassel kept groping the walls, presumably in search of a doorknob or a place where we could hide.
I was confused on why he repeatedly looked up at the ceiling as if he was searching for cameras or something else. I couldn’t understand what that was about, but I was sure he had a plan. At least, I hoped so.
Without warning, Bassel took a turn and quickly pulled me in what I assumed to be a room.
Once inside, Bassel closed the door behind us. We seemed to be in a storeroom –it had no furniture or even a window. Bassel released my hand and pulled his cell-phone out.
There was a somewhat victorious look in his eyes. “We have a signal,” he whispered.
It was an exciting thing to hear; it meant that we were very close to getting out of here soon.
“Are you going to call the police? Or the palace?” I whispered.
“Neither.” He replied, not looking at me as he tapped on his phone.
“What?” I was shocked by his answer, not understanding what he meant. Why wouldn’t he call the royal guards? Or if they were far – why not call the police directly? I couldn’t understand.
“Shhh!”
He paused for a second, listening to see if there was someone outside who’d heard my outburst. I mentally slapped myself for raising my voice and looked at him apologetically.
“I’ll tell you all you want to know, Your Majesty, but not now. I just need a few minutes.”
I nodded without saying another word, then took myself aside and sat on the floor for a much-needed rest, if you could call it a rest. My legs hurt, and the pain in my back was ever present. I couldn’t imagine I could manage much longer in this state; I had to get out of here, and very soon.
I was pulled back from my thoughts and the pain I was in by the sound of someone speaking on the other end of Bassel’s phone.
“This has to be good,” the familiar voice said. The sound was so loud against the complete silence that surrounded us that Bassel had to lower the call’s volume before replying.
Bassel spoke rapidly in an Arabian dialect that I recognized but could never understand, no matter what. I also knew that Mazen couldn’t understand most of that dialect, either. He’d told me that you had to be born into it and use it daily to be able to speak and understand it: The Bedouin dialect.
With a gaping mouth, I gazed at Bassel as he spoke, and I could only figure out my name throughout the whole conversation, which lasted less than a minute. I believe the guy on the other end confirmed that he’d heard Bassel correctly before hanging up.
“It’s going to be okay, Your Majesty, they’re on their way,” Bassel told me.
I let out a breath that I didn’t know I was holding, and internally thanked God for blessing me with such great news.
“Who did you talk to?”
Bassel put his ear to the door, listened for a long minute, then sat down beside me on the floor when – assumingly – he was positive that no one was outside.
“Princess Qamar has eyes everywhere. Trust me, I know. If I called the police, she’d know in a minute. Not only that, the police would be all around the mansion, making a huge fuss. She and her gang would find us before the police could. We don’t want that,” Bassel explained. “It’s the same thing if I called the palace. She would know.”
My first thought was to ask him how did he know all that, but instead, I asked again, “So, who did you call?”
“Sheikh Qapeel. Sheikh Omran’s son.” Bassel answered, and my eyes widened. “He’ll get here as soon as possible with enough undercover men to distract the gang until we find our way out.”
“Ar-are you sure about that?” I asked, feeling doubtful.
“Positive. He’ll know what to do.”
I replied to him with a slight nod; just the thought of how far we were from where the Bedouins were located was making me sick. We could be caught well before that.
As if he could read my thoughts, Bassel spoke again. “It will be fine, Your Majesty. Help will be here soon.”
I whispered my fears to him. “If we’re close to my mansion – that’s two hours away from where the Sheikh is. That’s too far.”
“Princess Najma’s mansion is nearer to him than your mansion. I know it’s not much, but it’s something.”
Princess Najma? Rosanna’s mother, I wondered, and my eyes widened when the realization hit me. We were in Rosanna’s beach mansion, the one her mother had given to her. This was the same mansion where Rosanna’s mother was raised, which meant that The Snake grew up here as well. I assumed that Bassel didn’t know that it was Rosanna’s now. How would he? She told me herself that they barely ever used it.
“How come the royal guards haven’t found me?” I whispered my question, but you still could hear my frustration, I was so close to them all of this time.
“I’m so sorry, Your Majesty. I’m trying to wrap my mind around everything I know so far, but I can tell you, it’s almost impossible for them to know that you’re here,” Bassel said. When I looked at him with questioning eyes, he knew I wanted him to explain further, and he did.
“Your beach mansion blew up, burnt completely down to the ground. It took them hours to find the bodies and count them. There were 64, the exact number of all the royal guards and servants and, well, you,” Bassel kept his voice just above a whisper. “But His Majesty insisted that you’d been kidnapped, and refused any suggestion that you were dead. He also gave no explanation why he believed so, despite everything pointing to your death.”
My throat tightened, and my eyes welled up with tears, not just as I thought of Mazen and how heartbroken he must have been when he learned that news, but also as I thought of all of the people who had lost their lives trying to protect or serve me. It wasn’t fair.
“Traces of the explosive materials and the smell of the burnt mansion messed up the search dogs’ ability to capture your scent, I guess. They didn’t come up with any result; they only paced along the beach where you and His Majesty had walked earlier, that was all.”
Closing my eyes, I listened to Bassel speak of all that had happened in the outside world where I didn’t seem to exist for the past few days. It was such chaos.
“From what you told me about the tunnel, and where I found you, I believe they dug an underground tunnel that connected the two mansions to each other. That was why cameras did not capture your departure ― although the inside cameras were messed with before anything happened.”
“How come they couldn’t find a hole?” I asked in a choked voice.
“I don’t know, Your Majesty. But explosions tend to make many holes, they must have thought it was just one caused by one of the bombs, that if they saw it at all,” Bassel replied just as I felt the tightening in my lower back as a new contraction ensued.
It was such a miracle that I didn’t scream in agony, and managed to keep quiet until it lessened. Bassel looked freaked out, though. Under other circumstances, I would’ve laughed at his reaction. He was such a typical man.
I shook my head, “We need to leave. I’m going to give birth soon, very soon.”
“I’m so sorry, Your Majesty. I wish I could get you out of here right now. But I’m all by myself against all of them. A pocketknife and a gun with six bullets are not enough. It would be a lost cause if we tried,” Bassel whispered. Although I already knew all that, it was still devastating to hear.
I could only nod once, and before I could respond to him, we heard footsteps approaching.