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Issam growled in frustration, turning back to the window.
A door opened, and another man spoke to Bahir. Outside in the hallway, a child’s footsteps clattered on the floor, and a woman called, “Inan, slow down!” Her voice was kind but firm, and it hit Issam like a punch in the gut.
He’d had a nanny growing up. Sabah. She’d been warm and kind, older than his mother, and he couldn’t remember exactly when, but at some point Issam had become aware that Sabah’s life was much harder than his own. She worried over money for her five children.
It was his own ignorance of the law then that had been her undoing.
Issam had taken some of his mother’s old clothes, set for donation to a local charity, and given them to Sabah. His face burned with shame thinking of what had happened.
Her daughter had been sick. She’d mentioned it to Issam in passing, and he’d seen the fear in her eyes. The child was her youngest, and they’d needed to take her to the hospital. There were bills. Somehow, he’d thought the clothes would help.
Sabah had tried to pawn them in the local marketplace.
It was not an imam, then, who caught her, but one of his father’s advisers who was at the marketplace on the same day. He questioned her, then brought her back to the palace to confess to her crime.
Issam had not been at home when they brought her back. He had been at a football tournament, surrounded by the children of other wealthy citizens of Al-Dashalid.
It was the next day, when he had a new nanny he had never seen before, that he learned what happened.
He had not known that it was illegal to sell royal property for personal gain. Sabah had not known it was still royal property, since Issam had given her the clothes as a gift. Even after all these years, he could still see her face, her raised eyebrows when he’d brought the dresses to her.
“Are you sure?” She had asked him again and again. “Issam, if you’ve gone into your mother’s closet—”
“I haven’t,” he had insisted. “She had these set out to go to charity. Why can’t you have them? She’s giving them away. It’s the same thing.”
Now, as an adult, he could see what an impossible position he’d put her in. The job was important to her. It was essential to her family’s livelihood. And to turn down his gift would have been a risky proposition. But her mind had been clouded with worry about the hospital bills.
One trip to the marketplace had ended in her banishment.
He’d raged at the new nanny when he heard. “Banished? Banished from Al-Dashalid?” He felt so guilty. So angry. “Where will she go? How will her family survive without her?”
“That’s not our concern,” said the new nanny. “She broke the law and put the royal family at risk. That is the consequence.”
“It’s not fair,” Issam had spat, then run into another room. That new nanny had spent the entire day chasing after him, trying to contain his fury.
A person’s life destroyed by an ancient law because no one would reconsider.
He couldn’t let it happen again.
“It wasn’t fair,” he said to the window.
“What was that, Sheikh Issam?” said Bahir.
Issam turned toward him. “It’s not fair. The sentence cannot stand. I will not destroy—end—this woman’s life to appease a set of unjust laws.”
Bahir’s frown deepened. “But the laws themselves cannot be changed. All the research leads to the same conclusion, and with the imam—”
“I will find a way around the imam.”
At that moment, Kyril walked by in the hallway and poked his head in. “Are you all right, Issam? Your face normally isn’t so serious.”
He was joking, of course. Issam usually wore a serious expression, because his work was serious.
Hannah came up beside Kyril and put her hand through the crook of his elbow. “Are we stopping to chat?”
Hannah, Kyril’s American wife.
His wife.
