Highlander - Donna Lettow [21]
MacLeod escorted Maral inside to find the place completely empty. “I hope this isn’t a commentary on the food,” he remarked, surveying the empty tables.
“We have it all to ourselves this evening,” Maral explained. “Just the four of us? How romantic.”
The owner of the establishment, a rotund Frenchman with a handlebar mustache, hurried over to greet them and ushered them to a table. MacLeod helped seat Maral and then sat himself down opposite her. The two bodyguards took up their positions, standing like twin towers of doom and gloom at the corners of the table.
Maral removed her shawl and draped it on the back of the empty chair to her right, but the silk was slippery and slid from the chair to the floor. Immediately, both guards swooped in to rescue it as if throwing themselves on a live grenade. Maral had to laugh at how ridiculous they looked, and once she’d started, found she couldn’t stop. “I can’t do this,” she said through her laughter.“This is all too surreal. I’ll never get used to it.” Tears came to her eyes, though whether they were tears of laughter or frustration at their situation, MacLeod couldn’t tell.
He got up and pulled two nearby tables a little closer to the table where he and Maral were seated. He pulled a chair out from under one table, grabbed Assad by the shoulders and directed him to the chair. “You, Beavis, sit.” He pulled a chair out from under the second table and indicated it to Assad’s partner. “And you, Butthead, over here.” The partner was about to protest, but one glance at the look on MacLeod’s face and he sat where ordered. MacLeod sat back down in his own seat. “Better?”
“Much better,” Maral agreed. “Thank you.”
MacLeod reached for the wine list, then stopped. “Would you be offended if I had a drink?”
“Offended? Why would I be offended?”
“Islam. You said at lunch yesterday you didn’t drink, and I thought…”
Maral shook her head. “I’m afraid the last devout Muslim in my family was my grandfather. I don’t drink, but it’s not a religious obligation. You should help yourself.” MacLeod called the owner over and ordered a glass of wine.
“Would Monsieur like to see a dinner menu?” the owner asked.
“No…” MacLeod looked over at Maral with a twinkle in his eye. “Surprise us.” The owner hurried off to confer with the chef. “Now,” he said to Maral, “tell me more about your family.”
“My father was raised in Islam, but he was always full of doubt, even as a child. He grew up in a Palestinian refugee camp in Jordan, and he always had trouble understanding why my grandfather believed it was written that peasants from Russia should take away the farm that had been in our family for nearly three hundred years. My mother was a Christian, from Bethlehem. My uncles, who still raise sheep there, like to claim that it was our ancestors who saw the great star over Bethlehem and found the baby Jesus. That’s how long they say my mother’s family have herded sheep in that area.”
MacLeod could remember many sunny afternoons as a boy spent off adventuring with his cousin Robert, even though they’d both been warned to mind the sheep. And many’s the cold, lonely night spent helping a ewe bring new life into the world. “I come from a long line of shepherds, myself.”
The owner brought MacLeod’s wine to the table, but MacLeod, fascinated by this glimpse into the complex layers that made up his dinner companion, didn’t touch it. “So, your mother was an Arab Christian, your father an apostate Muslim. How about you?”
She shrugged. “I guess you could say my brothers and I are interested spectators. Respectful of both traditions and practicing none. That’s why my father wanted to move to America, where race and religion wouldn’t matter so much anymore.”
MacLeod knew better than that and could tell she did, too. “And did it?” he prompted.
“Of course it still mattered. “Dirty Arab’ hurts a child as much in English as it does in Hebrew. And we could never truly get away from everything