Date with a Surgeon Prince(29)

It appeared perfectly simple in style and cut and yet was breathtakingly beautiful.

‘Local things first,’ Tasnim declared, returning with the saleswoman and a young woman who was pushing a trolley hung with clothes, spectacular clothes in rich greens and blues, long loose trousers, patterned and beaded tunics that would go over them and at the end of the rack a selection of black abayas.

An hour later, Marni was the rather hesitant possessor of four new pairs of trousers and five new tunics. She’d put her foot down over Tasnim’s suggestion she’d need half a dozen, listened in disbelief as Tasnim and the saleswoman claimed to have hundreds of such outfits, and had been talked into the fifth tunic because it was so beautiful.

It was the simplest of them all, not bright but a pale blue-grey with a pearl-coloured thread woven through it and the patterning around the bottom in the pointy-topped shape of the local arches, picked out in darker blue.

As for the abayas! Far from the plain cotton garment she’d borrowed from Jawa, these were woven from the finest silk, with delicate ebony bead embroidery around the hem, sleeves and neckline. Beautiful garments to cover other beautiful garments.

The fantasy deepened!

‘If you choose a couple with hoods, it will save you tying a tight scarf over your hair when you go out,’ Tasnim advised. ‘Abayas used not to have hoods as we wore a hijab—a specially tied scarf—over our heads. But with the hoods, any of your scarves would go under the hood.’

The saleswoman hung the abaya Marni had tried for size back on the rack—on the buying side, not the reject side—and studied Marni yet again.

‘Surely that’s enough for one day,’ she begged Tasnim, but her new friend wouldn’t be distracted.

‘We haven’t done the scarves,’ she scolded. ‘If you’re insisting on only having four outfits, at least you can vary them with scarves.’

Long scarves, as fine as gossamer, were produced, most in tantalising colours, all embroidered in different ways.

She was wearing the tunic she’d been unable to resist, and the woman found a scarf in the darker blue of the embroidery and draped it around Marni’s head and shoulders.

‘Perfect. It makes your skin gleam like alabaster and turns your eyes as blue as cornflowers,’ Tasnim said, clapping her hands in delight. ‘But you will need more. Darker ones are good for evening, and if you have a darker one over your hair, you can still tie it hijab style and need not pull the hood of the abaya over your head.’

Marni assumed Tasnim was talking sense but she was lost. She found herself drifting, doing whatever Tasnim or the saleslady told her, lost in the mad dream that had become her life.

The evening gowns were unbelievable—like things she’d seen actresses wearing on the red carpet when the Oscars were televised. And the names of the designers—names she’d heard with awe and had never in her wildest dreams imagined wearing clothes they’d designed.

But she was also tiring fast and after trying on and removing the sixth evening gown she found the energy to protest.

‘Tasnim, we’ve settled on three, that’s enough,’ she said, although her eyes strayed to the silver creation on the shop model.

Tasnim saw her look that way then she said, ‘Just one more,’ and spoke to the saleswoman, who immediately began disrobing the mannequin.

‘It’s made for you with your fair skin and hair,’ Tasnim insisted, and when Marni put it on she knew she had to have it. She’d never considered herself beautiful, but in this dress?

She remembered Gaz saying after dinner at the hospital that she was like a silver wraith—well, in this dress she almost was.

So why was that lump back in her chest and her heart hurting, just a little bit?

‘Sandals next,’ Tasnim decreed, and another saleswoman appeared pushing a trolley laden with shoeboxes. Marni gave up. She pushed her feet in and out of sandals, stood in them, walked around, and finally settled on a few pairs, although it seemed Tasnim was making her own decisions as at least ten boxes were piled together while the rest were wheeled away.

But when make-up and perfume were suggested, Marni stood her ground.

‘I can handle that myself,’ she said firmly. ‘I have my own make-up and have always used the same perfume, a particular scent my grandfather first bought me when I was eighteen. I’m not changing that!’

Tasnim argued she needed more than one so she could choose according to the time of day and the occasion and the outfit, but Marni was adamant—she’d wear her own, any time, any day, anywhere!

Exhausted by the decision-making, all she wanted to do was go home—well, back to Tasnim’s place, and lie on the bed, and try to make sense of all that had happened to her.