Yasser El-Sayed has recently published fiction in Natural Bridge, The New Orphic Review, The Marlboro Review, Red Truck Review, and elsewhere. His short stories have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize in 2014 and in 2008. Yasser’s prose focuses upon the intersections of Arab and American experience both in the Middle East and the United States, including the contemporary American South. He is at work on a short story collection, Casket and Other Stories. Yasser is a physician and professor at Stanford University where he specializes in high-risk obstetrics. He lives and writes in Northern California.

They drove to the beach house and unloaded. Joanne changed into her one-piece—her body still trim—crazy crimson against her pale skin, her backside like a split peach. If she felt poorly with the pregnancy, she had not mentioned anything to Nabil. She unlocked the French windows, hurried out onto the rectangular tiled patio, rolling desert all around them except for the back of the house which opened to the sea, a crescent of blue.

The desert drifted into the cool expanse of water. “A slow ebb of pain,” said Joanne.  From where they stood it was no more than 100 yards across the white sand to the sea.  The beach was deserted, the midday air uncomfortably dense.

“You should come with,” she said.

I’ll watch you from here,” Nabil said. How beautiful she looked to him, her auburn hair radiant in the harsh sunlight.

She shrugged, turned her back to him, moved briskly across the sandy beach to the water’s edge. She waded in, barely a ripple, water lapping hip level.  He thought of his mother, his father by her side, their bodies leaning into each other, braced against the breaking waves.  His parents had seemed close at that moment, almost intimate.

“Bathwater!” Joanne called.

Unbidden, the foggy northern California coastline came to mind, the place he’d first met Joanne, Steve Pullman’s 35^th birthday party at Half Moon Bay.  She was as exotic to him as he was to her, the daughter of a Scotch-Irish rancher from the Oklahoma Panhandle, her hair settling gently against her pale shoulders, which were bare in a strapless dress. You could hear an accent when she talked about it: “I got tired of the red dirt and scrub grass and rednecks and wandered west.”

Joanne cut a path into deeper water past a patch of seaweed.  She twirled and waved to him, dove in, did a flawless breast-stroke parallel to the coastline before turning back to the shore.  Nabil had experienced a surge of anxiety watching her, but it was transient, immediately suppressed.

He jumped at the sound of knocking on the front door: a stranger.  He shielded his eyes from the sunlight to get a better look. The man was short, heavy set, dressed in a loose short-sleeve shirt, embroidery on the sides, gray slacks. Not a uniform per se, but still something official about his appearance Nabil thought.

“I hope I’m not disturbing,” the man said in surprisingly good English. “Sorry for the trouble. A routine security check.”

Nabil, uneasy by the man’s presence, said, “Is there a problem?”

The man laughed pleasantly. He had his sunglasses perched atop his head, a stubbly double chin. “No. No. Please. Not at all. You arrived very late last night. My name is Mr. Abu-Bakr. My security officer didn’t have a chance to do the standard passport inspection at the registration desk, that’s all.” On his face an expression of regret for the tedium of official protocol. “I am very sorry to bother you. It will just take a moment.”

Nabil stepped aside to let the man enter. “If you give me a moment, I’ll find our passports.”

“Please,” said Abu-Bakr.

In the bedroom he peered out the window at the beach for Joanne and didn’t see her. He grabbed the passports from the drawer where he had slipped them under some folded clothes, then hurried back out to the entranceway, determined to finish up with Abu-Bakr as rapidly as possible and check on Joanne.

The man hadn’t moved. He leafed quickly through Joanne’s passport, more slowly through Nabil’s.

“The lady,” Abu-Bakr asked, “is she here?”

“She went for a swim,” said Nabil. “Are we done? I need to check on her.”

“Certainly,” said Abu-Bakr, then peered past Nabil as Joanne appeared in her bathing suit, the material still wet, molded against her breasts, snug against the gentle fullness of her hips. Nabil wished he could wrap the towel which hung from her shoulders around her.

“I think she is now found and safe,” Abu-Bakr said pleasantly, handing the passports back.

“Indeed I am,” she said, looking unperturbed. “And who are you?”

Nabil admired her confidence. So unlike his own untidy emotions. The hardest place is the “in between”—not tourist, no longer native.

“My dear lady. I am Captain Lutfi Abu-Bakr, the head of the police here.”

“Impressive! The hotel has its own police department?” said Joanne

Abu-Bakr regarded Joanne for a moment, impassively at first, then he broke into a grin, said with a laugh, “No, just for the entire city, unfortunately. A much more trivial responsibility.”

“A routine security check,” said Nabil. “I think we’re done?”

Abu-Bakr nodded, his gaze lingering on Joanne, though he spoke to Nabil. “Do you still speak your native tongue or have we lost you completely?”

“Itsharafna,” Nabil said.

“The pleasure was all mine,” replied Abu-Bakr in English, now eyeing Nabil directly.

“Strange character,” said Joanne after Abu-Bakr had left. She roped the beach towel around her hair. “Not sure he wanted to leave.”

“He was enjoying the view,” said Nabil. He pulled her close to him, her swimsuit damp against his shirt, kissed her.

“Well that’s just not right,” whispered Joanne, her tongue sea-chilled, darting between his lips. “I almost feel like I cheated on you.”

In the bedroom she finished peeling off her bathing suit, pressed herself against him. He ran his lips between her breasts, tasted the salty skin down to her navel and below where part of him now resided, the child that he’d never wanted.

To be continued…