Maria tightened the long cloth as she bound her breasts lest it loosened throughout the day. She winced when she pulled too hard. She breathed deeply, then pulled again, only gentler. Her breasts had grown over the last few months; not only had it become more troublesome to conceal her true identity, but it had also become even more uncomfortable and slightly painful on certain days of the month.

Satisfied with her breast binding, she proceeded to dress in her usual garb of loose-fitting pants, and a loose-fitting thobe. Although the thobe dropped all the way to her ankles, she preferred to wear pants so that her well-rounded posterior was further concealed, and so that her feminine legs did not expose her if ever the thobe rode up. She hadn’t worn anything fitted or tailored to her body since that fateful day two years ago.

In a swift, practised movement, she gathered her voluminous hair, wrapped it into a bun, and then pinned it to the top of her head. Quickly and before it began to loosen, she wrapped a keffiyeh around her head. While she’d disposed of all other items that linked her to her past life, she hadn’t been able to sheer her long hair. She checked herself in the mirror. She was barely passable as a boy, but for some reason, people had yet to catch on to the ruse she and her father had devised as soon as they’d heard of Sheikh Zain’s growing harem.

Sheikh Zain. A heavy frown creased her forehead, and a deep hatred erupted in her heart and soul whenever she heard the mere mention of his name or whenever he crossed her mind. For he was the reason for Maria’s continued misery. For dressing as a male even in the safety of her own house! By pretending that ‘Maria’ was dead and for making her assume the identity of ‘Mohammed’, a servant boy living with her father as a helper. Because word had spread that Zain, not soon after he’d usurped the position of Sheikh from Sheikh Aziz, had begun to capture young town girls to form his own harem, Maria was forced to disguise herself as a male to avoid being taken. Her father had been the one to suggest it, and she’d gone along with his plan out of sheer fear. It was a ridiculous thing to do, but she could think of no other way to protect her virtue.

The thought of being owned by that demon of a man repulsed her to the bone, for he was a coward, a bandit who preyed on people like a parasite. Maria detested him.

“Maria!” She was startled out of her thoughts by her father’s beckoning call.

“Yes, father?” She saw him bent over his desk when she entered his study, squinting at what could only be a medical book. The mortar and pestle by his side told Maria her father was busy at work again, and the smell of garlic and ginger told her he made a prescribed ointment for a customer.

Without raising his head from the book, he instructed her, “Go fetch me some water from the lake. I need about two pitchers’ worth.” He waved a hand at two clay pitchers sitting in the corner.

When Maria didn’t move, her father sighed and looked up. He wore an annoyed expression, “I promise there won’t be a marriage proposition waiting for you when you return.”

Maria pursed her lips and regarded her father sceptically with narrowed eyes. She made him promise her this whenever she was sent on this particular errand. However, Maria no longer had anything to worry about. Sheikh Aziz was long dead after all. He’d been killed off by his successor.

Feeling her mood begin to sour, she distracted herself by throwing all her energy into the task at hand. She picked up the two pitchers, one in each hand, wrapping her hands tightly around them.

The heat outside fazed her for a moment as soon as she stepped out of the house. It was unusually hot and unbearably humid today. The air had a suffocating quality to it. She started to sweat almost instantly.

“I better hurry,” she muttered to herself.

It was so hot in fact that the usually busy streets of the town of Malamar were nearly empty but for a few peddlers and residents.

The lake shimmered and sparkled like the surface of a mirror under the sun. Maria looked around and saw only two goats and a camel drinking from the lake. She dunked the pitchers one after the other, then carefully balanced them in her arms. Maria started to head home.

The heavy, wet pitchers began to slowly slip from her grasp.

Frustrated, she decided to take a shortcut rather than take the main street. She hurried into an alleyway connecting the main street to a bystreet that was guaranteed to get her home much faster. She only ever used this shortcut when she really had to; the alleyway was always lined with abandoned crates, empty, smelly barrels and repugnant unmentionables. As she walked, the melodious sounds of a lute drifted to her ears. At first, she began to hum to the lute’s tunes, then she started to sing a song she’d heard a travelling troubadour singing once and had committed to memory. Her keffiyeh began to loosen and unravel. She became increasingly alarmed when she felt her hair bun begin to slide down and loosen as well. With every step she took that jostled her keffiyeh, she came dangerously close to the risk of exposure. Fear started to spread throughout her body. She picked up the pace as she rounded the corner into another street.

Bump. Thump.

Maria’s backside kissed the ground with so much force, crippling pain shot from her hide and up her spine like a lightning bolt. A pained groan escaped her lips. Her eyes squeezed shut, she bit out angrily, “Watch where you’re going!”

Someone had viciously bumped into her like a charging bull, knocking down her and her blasted pitchers. The clay pitchers lay shattered into a hundred pieces beside her.

Damn!

She slowly began to rise while gingerly rubbing her protesting posterior. It was as if she’d run straight into a wall.

“A woman…!” The masculine, sensuous voice shivered through Maria like a forbidden pleasure, gripping her almost like a fist.

A woman…?

She was jolted by a horrible realisation. A hand shot up to feel for the keffiyeh on her head, and when her hand brushed loose hair, she instantaneously blanched. Alarm followed by panic permeated her soul like a repugnant stench. Terror began clawing vehemently at her insides.

She’d been exposed.

She finally looked up at the person responsible and felt her heart give. She nearly heaved up the contents of her stomach. A feeling of dizziness slammed into her. How she did not faint at the spot, she did not know. A terrifying sense of doom loomed over her. She started to quake.

It was none other than Sheikh Zain standing in front of Maria.