The Kingdom Pt. 02 : The Aftermath

(Foreword : This is a slow-burn erotic fiction in two parts set in contemporary Saudi Arabia. Tension builds gradually, through silence, ritual, and repression. Explicit action appears in both parts, but the story is plot and character driven, focusing on psychology, culture, and risk.)

✅ CHAPTER 4 -- THE LAW OF SILENCE

Every night, Riyadh took on a surreal glow. Along the motorways and shopping avenues, LED strips lit up in green and violet, magenta and turquoise, cyan rippling around the curve of empty parking structures. Huge towers pulsed with electronic light, like signaling into space. Yet, the streets remained silent. Neon everywhere, but everything still.

Markus stayed awake until the last prayer, listening to the speakers echo across the rooftops, into the walls. He imagined the concrete blocks trembling with scripture. He thought of bodies buried under sand. He thought of necks, bare and still, beneath the blade of a state that never forgave.

That night, he dreamt he was kneeling on a tiled floor, blindfolded. His wrists were not bound, but he could not lift them. There were voices murmuring behind a wall, or a curtain. Someone touched his throat with the back of a hand. Then the hand withdrew, and a door opened somewhere behind him. A shadow entered. He felt something metallic touch his neck, cold and light, like the tip of a blade. Then nothing.

He woke in a full-body jolt, soaked in sweat. He rose, crossed to the sink, splashed water on his face, then leaned on the porcelain, staring at himself under the strip of light. His pulse rang in his ears. His neck felt wet. He could still feel that touch -- the cool metal on his neck. He would remember it, if it ever came for real.

Markus went to swim, like every morning, at the rooftop pool. He needed it badly. Most days he was the only one there, slicing through silence beneath a dome of empty sky. Below, through the glass wall, the gym stood lit but equally empty. He walked past it daily without entering. Machines stood aligned like sentinels, displays blinking in the dark. Mirrors lined the walls, yet reflected nothing that mattered.

He realized he had almost forgotten about women. They had faded into the background. Outside, in the streets, they were ghosts shrouded in black -- shapes reduced to outline, blurs of cloth with eyes. Even the Western ones at the hotel seemed to shrink into the marble, uncertain of the boundaries. No laughter. No perfume. No accidental brush of shoulder or glimpse of skin.

Conversely, the cult of masculinity was embedded in everything. In the oil of beards trimmed with precision. In the way men walked: controlled, balanced, shoulders pulled back -- not for beauty, but for weight. Power, here, moved not through words, but through bearing. Silence was a form of discipline. Physical stillness, a form of pride. Laughter was rare, and when it came, it was sharp -- never soft.

Even the flag said it plainly: a sword beneath the scripture. Not a metaphor. A truth. God and the blade. Submission and the right to kill. Every man, in public, performed strength. It was a fear of softness. A war on the fragile. A masculinity so rigid it had to carve out space for its own danger, its own rupture. And it did. Quietly. Out of sight. In places without names.

Desire didn't disappear. It just withdrew always further underground. It lay in wait for a crack in the surface, for the door to close. Markus felt the sexual tension constantly. Behind the loaded silences, the detours of the eyes, the theatre of indifference -- it was throbbing.

Men lingering in restrooms. Pressing against him in taxis, even when there was space to spare. Casting short but unmistakable glances in elevators, through mirrors, in reflections, behind tinted glass. Hands brushing his as if by accident -- or not. Never a word. Just a haunting presence, always on the edge of vanishing. The law of silence always prevailed.

Silence governed everything. Not as absence, but as law. Not as emptiness, but as pressure -- a texture, a climate, a code. It wrapped the taboos like a wall: around sex, around the body, around any form of dissent. It enclosed each gesture in caution, each word in risk.

Silence shaped the air like architecture. Music itself was frowned upon, seen as a form of indulgence, a potential breach in discipline. Only the call to prayer, rising five times a day, was allowed to pierce that hush -- not as rupture, but as command.

On a Thursday, a second note came. Folded, exact, placed on his desk in the co-working space where no one had ever addressed him directly. The envelope was blank. Inside: one sentence. A time. A location. A request, framed as suggestion. Saturday again. No name.

He stared at it for hours. Carried it back to his room. Placed it in the minibar and closed the door, as if sealing something inside. He showered. He shaved. He lay on the bed in a towel, looking at the ceiling, then at nothing. The moment had no outside -- it was all interior now. All silence.

He dressed without thinking. Blue jeans, a white shirt, the lightest jacket he owned. He took the elevator down, crossed the lobby without seeing anyone. Outside, the heat was still present -- dry, high, suspended in the night like powder. A car was waiting.

It was already dusk. A long black sedan with tinted windows and no license plate. The driver stood, opened the rear door, and waited. Markus stepped in. The interior was refrigerated, dim. Arabic script flowed softly from the dashboard radio -- a verse recited in slow cadences, hypnotic, clear. The voice was ancient, the enunciation flawless. The air smelled of new leather, plastic, something floral.

The city receded behind them: silhouettes of minarets, interchanges, grids of neon stacked against the darkness. On the overpasses, soldiers with rifles stood still under halogen light. They passed a checkpoint without slowing. A guard saluted. The streets grew emptier. The last signs disappeared. Just heat rising from the asphalt, and the whisper of Qur'anic recitation in the cabin.

The road opened to the desert. A single lane. Sand and scrub on either side. Low fences. Faint stars. The engine whispered. The driver had not said a word. Markus had no idea where they were going. He had not answered the note. He had simply obeyed. There was no map in his mind now -- only distance, and the memory of a name he had never spoken aloud.

The car turned off the main road without slowing. The asphalt gave way to gravel. There was no sign, no gatehouse -- only a discreet break in the concrete wall, and a driveway winding toward a structure barely visible behind the palm trees. The headlights dipped, then extinguished. The motor died in silence.

The door opened. Markus stepped out into the desert night. Crickets sang in the bushes. A breeze touched his skin and vanished. The villa stood in shadow: low, angular, wrapped in flat planes of sand-coloured concrete and glass. It looked less like a home than a fragment of desert reassembled into geometry.

Inside, the air was cool. Light ran in strips along the ceiling. No decoration, no sound, no sign of life. Only white stone, smooth walls, a corridor. The room beyond was tile-lined, dimly lit with a blue glow.

On a bench near the wall, sandals and a folded towel had been laid out. No message. No instruction. But the meaning was clear. Markus stepped through the door. He undressed slowly and folded his clothes. A single showerhead extended from the wall, its fittings matte black against cream plaster.

There was a scent of cedar in the air, mingled with something else. Earthy, herbal, slightly bitter. It was strange, but clean. On a small shelf: a shallow clay bowl, filled with a thick greenish paste. A wooden spoon rested beside it.

Sidr.

Leaves of the jujube tree, ground into powder and mixed with water. Used in ablutions. In burial rites. In exorcisms. It was said to cleanse not just the body, but the unseen. The texture was soft, granular, cool.

Markus stepped under the water, and let it fall. At first it was just warmth. Then something else. The air thickened with steam. He lathered the sidr paste slowly -- neck, shoulders, arms, belly. The scent bloomed around him, foreign and ancient. Astringent. Plant-like. It felt like washing away not sweat, but memory. He closed his eyes. And rinsed.

His own clothes were gone -- folded and removed without a sound, without permission. In their place: a white thawb, freshly pressed, draped across the edge of a low bench. Beside it, a pair of sandals. The fabric was soft, fine, almost translucent in the low light. Not a uniform. An offering. Or an instruction.

He paused. Then dressed again, silently. The thawb fell differently on his body -- light, cooling, unfamiliar. The sandals fit exactly.

The corridor ahead was lit again. At its end: a staircase, a door ajar. Inside: a wide bed, white linen, a tray of dried figs and dates, a carafe of water. A dry note of incense in the air. He stepped in. Waited. Long minutes passed.

Markus stood motionless, his breath high, eyes on the doorframe. The silence around him was unnatural, curated. The stone walls, the filtered air, the absence of clocks or noise. A room like this wasn't built for guests. It was built for containment.

He looked around -- no phone, no lock, no map. No signal. No way back. He had stepped into something he didn't understand. A flicker passed through him -- real fear. Not dramatic. Not cinematic. Primal.

He was alone, wearing a white robe, in an unmarked villa outside a city that devoured secrets. He didn't know the address. He didn't know the man. And he remembered, very clearly, the legal code of the kingdom.

What was this place? A trap? A test? A sanctuary? Or a tomb?

His hand trembled. He took a step backward, but there was nowhere to go. He felt the vertigo of irrevocability.

✅ CHAPTER 5 -- THIS PLACE DOES NOT EXIST

Suddenly, the door opened. Light spilled into the room. A silhouette entered. And everything stilled.

Hamid.

His thawb glowed faintly under the ceiling light. His face was unreadable. He padded forward, like a big cat-- not fast, not slow. Just inevitable. Markus didn't move. His heart beat like a fist.

Then, just as Hamid came close enough to touch him, he did something strange. He paused. He didn't issue a word or a command. Instead, with a quiet motion, he removed the agal from his head -- the black cord that had held his ghutra in place -- and set it gently on the low table beside the bed.

Markus felt something shift. The ring, the circle of control, undone. Not dominance. Not seduction. Something older. A man laying down his symbol of command. And in that moment, Markus understood. He was still not safe. But he was not in danger either.

Hamid approached without a word, stopped two paces away. His eyes didn't search. They held. The silence pressed between them. Then he turned and gestured. Markus followed. The corridor lights had shifted, warmer now, golden. The floor beneath their feet was carpeted in thick silk, the walls lined in dark wood. At the end: a double door. Hamid opened it.

The room beyond was rich, vast. Arched ceilings, carved niches, light flickering in alabaster bowls. A low table held fruit, pastries, a silver teapot. The air was thick with cardamom and orange blossom.

Hamid poured tea. No servant appeared. He offered a cup with both hands. Markus took it. Their fingers brushed.

He looked at him -- truly looked. It struck him again, with the force of a wave: the man was clearly older, a mature gentleman, rugged, male to the core, foreign by all means. A face shaped by sun and silence. Skin tanned, beard coarse, eyes shadowed. The white robe hardly concealed the rest -- broad chest, arms thick with black hair. The body of someone built not for beauty, but for power.

They sat. Hamid beside him, close but not touching. Still, no word.

Then, quietly: "This place does not exist. Do you understand?"

His voice was low, controlled. Markus said nothing. He felt that scent again, mysterious, inebriating. Something smoky and wooded and at the same time feral, almost uric.

The memory of their first night surged through him. Not as thought. As sensation. The sight of Hamid's rough body. The musky smell of it. The touch of his leathered skin. The feel of his ripe cock. The burn, the stretch, the breath caught between pain and joy. The look in his eyes when he came. The silence after.

A sudden tightness hit him in the throat. Then lower. A clutch in the gut, sharp, almost painful. He felt his whole body respond. Want. Longing. Something deeper still: relief. Relief that the man before him was real. That it had not been a dream. That it was happening again.

Hamid looked at him. The same steady gaze. Then he leaned in. His hand found Markus's neck. He brought their faces near. And kissed his mouth. The kiss was hard, unsparing.

Markus froze -- but his body flooded with adrenaline. Heat surged through his chest, his spine, down to his gut and groin. Not from shock, but from the sheer clarity of what was happening.

He whispered: "Do you know what you're doing?"

Hamid didn't blink. "Do you?"

He stood, took Markus by the hand, and led him through another door.

The bedroom was darker. No windows. A bed wider than anything Markus had ever seen. The door closed. Locked. Hamid removed his thawb and underwear with slow intent. Every gesture precise. He stepped forward, hard and ready. Unashamed this time.

Hamid looked at him. "You're afraid."

Markus nodded. "Yes."

"Good."

He bit into his neck, not violently, but to claim. He pulled up his thawb, pushed him onto the mattress and lay on top of him. He kissed his mouth -- hard, wet, without negotiation. Then he stood firmly and made Markus kneel between his open legs. There was barely time for him to breathe. Within a second, Hamid's thick, unyielding cock was claiming his mouth. This wasn't tenderness, but command.

Markus felt confused. The unbearable fusion of fear, desire and surrender. He was shaking, yet his own erection throbbed. He gagged once, and had to pause to get air. Then he opened slower, carefully, breathing through his nose as though he were swimming, and took him in readily, cupping his full balls.

The scent, the weight, the taste, felt so human, so intimate, that it made his whole body ache. Hamid controlled the rhythm. Not violently. But fully. One hand behind Markus's head, the other resting on his shoulder.

Then Hamid pulled his head back and stared at him with intensity. Markus returned his look. He understood what was coming, and wanted it just as badly as hunger. He wrapped his legs around his waist, his arms around his neck. Hamid reached down and spat in his hand.

And in the hollow of that villa in the desert, with not a sound outside, they burned through each other.

The first thrust was a shock. The force, the heat, the presence. Markus winced, gasped, clenched -- but held. He didn't break eye contact. The feeling was too much: pressure, pain, heat, fullness, the unbearable knowledge of what they were doing.

Yet within a minute, Hamid felt Markus open up without resistance. Tight, but slick. As if he had been made for this. As if he had waited for this moment, for his body, for this law. Their sweat mixed. Their skins slid. Each thrust of Hamid's was deliberate. Power without violence. Each motion sent a shock through his core. A reversed act of worship.

Markus arched, took in, offered, led. His hands slid over Hamid's shoulders and chest. Hamid was holding him by the waist. He kept going -- pushing deeper, claiming every inch. The rhythm built. Their faces were inches apart. Their foreheads touched. Hamid's eyes were penetrating his soul while his cock was plowing his body.

"Mine," Hamid whispered with glee, sounding almost childlike.

They kissed again -- the kind of kiss that makes breathing irrelevant. Markus whispered something in Hamid's neck -- not a word, a sound. Raw, involuntary, ancestral. Hamid's eyes held something strange now -- tender, worried, almost reverent.

By now, he was just gliding through, effortlessly. Markus felt it coming -- not only the climax, but the fracture. It ripped through his belly and chest. A wave, a crack, a letting go. He clenched his teeth to keep from screaming. His knees almost gave way. Hamid shook, his entire body tensing in a single arc. A grunt escaped him -- low, guttural, stunned.

Markus felt the gush inside him. Tears rose without warning. He didn't hide them. He sobbed -- but it wasn't pain. It was as if Hamid had poured himself into him -- not only the body, but the soul.

Hamid's gaze was startled, looking clueless for a moment. His arms loosened slightly. He leaned his forehead against Markus's temple. They were panting, gasping, their bodies tangled. They didn't move, like warriors locked and sworn. Something in that holding felt like mercy. Or possession. Or both.

Then, Hamid pulled out and took Markus down, gently. Laid a hand on his shoulder. Leaned forward, kissed the back of his neck. Pulled the sheets over them both. One arm around him, one hand brushing his hair back. As if, having taken everything, he felt now safe from the raw force inside himself.

The sweat between them cooled. The air returned. Markus felt dizzy, as though he hadn't really ever had sex before. He had never been able to give himself that way, never been so completely taken. Not as prey. Not as equal. Something he had no word for but felt obvious.

Then Hamid rose and disappeared for a while. He came back with a copper tray holding a jug of cold water and two glasses. Markus gave him a thumbs-up and a wink, pursing his lips -- easing into a playful, unspoken kind of male camaraderie. Hamid smiled and blushed at once, caught between amusement, pride and modesty.

They drank in long draughts. The water was icy, clean, faintly mineral -- it cut through the heat in their mouths, their chests, their limbs. For a moment, nothing existed but the cool trickle and the faint sound of swallowing.

Then Hamid led Markus into another bathroom -- larger than the first, built in stone and glass. But that same perfume of sidr, warm and woody, still hung in the air like a veil. Not just a fragrance now, but the echo of a moment. Something private. Unrepeatable.

They showered together again, washing each other as they had done at the hotel, rubbing the sidr paste over their bodies. They didn't speak, but their glances couldn't part. They dried themselves and returned -- wrapped in white towels. They sat beside each other for a while. They could not talk, but there was no need.

By now, Hamid was breathing calmly. His gaze was like a lion at rest. Markus moved closer, laid his hands on his shoulders, and pressed -- almost like a farewell massage. Not seductive. Not hesitant. A quiet act of care.

Markus had a perplexed grin, and finally dared a question on his mind.

"What is that perfume on you?"

Hamid's mouth curled. His chest trembled from soft laughter, but he didn't reply. After thirty seconds, he said, almost in a whisper:

"Back in your world, it will be a memory. Here, it's a crime."

He dressed slowly. The thawb fell over his body like closure. Then, with a pause heavy with unspoken things, he looked at Markus and said in careful, memorized Swedish:

"Jag kommer att minnas dig." I will remember you.

Markus understood: this meant goodbye. He didn't speak. He nodded, something faint shifting behind his eyes. Then he smiled -- a real smile, without irony, without resistance.

When he woke up, the bed was empty. The sheet beside him had been folded back, not rumpled. The pillow bore no dent. The silence held a kind of stillness that did not feel natural. He sat up slowly. His body ached. Something between sadness, fulfillment and relief.

The tray of fruit had disappeared. So had the silver teapot, the cups. So had the white thawb. On the bench near the wall, his own clothes were laid out. Pressed. Folded with care. But now they retained that strange, ubiquitous scent of incense. His shoes had been polished. His belt coiled like a serpent. And something new had appeared.

On the low table near the window stood a different tray. A quiet offering. Warm flatbread stacked beneath a cloth. A bowl of fava beans, dressed with lemon and olive oil. Small dishes of olives, cucumbers and tomatoes, sliced with precision. A thick yogurt laced with mint. A small glass jar of honey, golden and untouched. And beside them, a tall metal carafe, still warm, filled with dark, cardamom-scented coffee. The grounds swirled when he poured it.

No note. No message. Only this.

Markus ate slowly, alone. Each bite steadying him, returning him to something solid. But it was not comfort. It was care -- deliberate, distant, already vanishing.

He dressed in silence. Every gesture was a return to himself, but slower, heavier. His underwear felt too sharp against the skin. The buttons on his shirt too tight. The zipper looked awful. When he stepped into the corridor, the lights were dimmed. No footsteps echoed. The hush was absolute.

Outside, the desert was already heating up. Dawn painted the horizon in dry strokes of beige and violet. The same black sedan waited at the foot of the stairs. Its motor silent. The driver stood beside it, head bowed.

Markus hesitated. He looked once behind him -- at the villa, the palm trees, the faceless architecture swallowed by sand. But the door was already closed. The place no longer invited memory. It had sealed itself. As if it had never opened. He got in. The door closed with a soft thud.

The car moved off the gravel. They crossed the outer road. Then the highway. The driver did not speak. The desert receded. The towers of Riyadh returned, rising into the sky like the teeth of a machine. The city reassembled itself around him with every kilometer -- glass, order, silence. On the radio: a surah, soft and slow. At the checkpoint, a soldier raised his hand halfway, then let it fall. The car passed. The world reabsorbed them without resistance.

Back at the hotel, no one looked up. The elevator rose with its usual hum. In his room, everything was untouched. The curtains drawn. The minibar unopened. His laptop asleep. His phone showed the correct time. No messages. No record of anything. No one had noticed he was gone. No one asked where he had been. Or maybe they had never expected to know.

The days passed. He sat through meetings on glass facades, solar massing, sustainable shade strategies. Nodded. Sketched. Avoided the mezzanine, the business lounge, the café, his own reflection. He went to the gym once, stared at the mirror, then left without touching a machine. He lay on his bed for hours with the lights off.

Then, one morning, in the office pantry, two project managers were speaking in low voices. Their tones flat. Controlled.

"It happened fast," one of them said. "The guy from the Ministry of Cultural Affairs. Gone."

"Fired?"

A pause. "Reassigned. Or worse."

Later, in the elevator, someone else mentioned it again. No names. Just a phrase:

"After what came out, they couldn't keep him."

By the evening, he knew. It didn't need confirmation. The silence around the incident was louder than any fact. Hamid was gone. Or made to disappear.

Erased. As if he'd never existed. Just like this place.

✅ CHAPTER 6 -- THE DESERT ROSE

Markus had almost believed it was all over. It wasn't.

Upon departure, he was stopped at the airport, just after checking in his luggage.

Two armed policemen in beige uniforms with green berets. One barked something into a phone, the other scanned his passport again. A red light flashed. Markus was pulled out of line. His suitcase taken without a word. No explanations.

The two men exchanged short, harsh bursts of Arabic -- clipped, urgent, like dogs snapping at each other. He was flanked on both sides and led down a private corridor lined with heavy metal doors, unmarked. They stopped in front of one of them. It opened.

Inside: green walls, a single chair, a metal table bolted to the floor, and a camera blinking in the corner. Fluorescent light, cold and merciless. No clock. No window. Markus was pushed into the seat. His hands were sweating.

The door opened again. Two other men entered and sat down in front of him. Civilian clothes. Looking ominous. One of them slammed a folder on the table. His gaze was rough. His voice even rougher. At least he spoke English.

"Markus Isaksson," he said. Not a question.

"You work for NordArk. You stayed in the Kingdom three weeks?"

Markus nodded. The man leaned forward, inquisitorial.

"Where were you Saturday 14th, after 8 p. m.?"

Markus hesitated. He remembered the villa did not exist.

He looked up, calm. "At the hotel. In my room."

The man opened the folder. Flipped to a page. Turned it toward him. A photo. Grainy. Infrared. A hotel room. A naked man kneeling, young, smooth, white skin, visibly giving head to another naked man seated, with dark hair and complexion. The picture was dark and quite blurred.

"This was taken the week before. At your hotel. That is you."

"No," Markus said evenly. "That isn't my room. And that isn't me."

The man frowned. Paused. Then flipped again. Another image. Clearer, this time. It was Hamid. Seated at a desk. Looking majestic.

"You know this man, right?"

Markus kept a poker face.

"Oh yes, I met him briefly. During a work meeting."

Something snapped. The interrogator's fist came down on the table like a gunshot. He leaned forward with hate in his eyes. He roared in Arabic like a raving madman, his mouth contorted and foaming, vein pulsing at his neck.

"You liar! You insult this country! You insult the law!

Do you think we are blind? Do you think we don't know what you are?"

Markus said nothing. His hands stayed flat on the metal. His gaze didn't waver. The other officer, silent until now, intervened. He spoke calmly. Almost softly.

"Someone tried to compromise you. You understand that. But you've been lucky. Very lucky."

He looked at the folder, then closed it and nodded. "You may go now."

He handed back the passport. No stamp. No warning. Just the words:

"Have a safe trip back home, Mr. Isaksson."

Markus was led back through the corridor. His suitcase had been repacked. Nothing missing. Nothing added. No one followed him to the gate. The gate agent scanned his passport and waved him through. The flight to Stockholm took off at 1:35 p. m.

In his seat, he buckled in. Leaned his head back, and closed his eyes. It was a long flight, nine and a half hours. Yet he couldn't sleep. Not over the Black Sea. Not over the Baltic. He arrived at Arlanda airport late in the evening. Only after he unlocked the door to his apartment did he collapse, fully clothed, onto the bed -- as if washed ashore after a shipwreck.

When Markus woke up the next morning, it took him a moment to realize he was back home. He felt hungover. He opened the blinds. Let the light in. The sun was bright, the sky clear, but the color looked bleached. The weather was mild, but when he opened the window, the crisp air struck him with its sharpness. He inhaled deeply. Heard birds singing. The headache and nausea began to lift.

He felt a gnawing hunger. The fridge was empty. He stayed long under the shower, changed clothes, and put on a sweater -- the first in three weeks. Then he went out to buy food. It was a pleasant spring day. As he stepped onto the streets of Stockholm, the contrast hit him like a blow.

Water and parks. Red and yellow brick. Green bronze rooftops. The rhythmic ticking of crosswalk signals. People in motion -- jogging, cycling, walking dogs. Blonde girls scantily clad in bright colors, moving freely. Men pushing strollers. It all felt strange. Like slipping out of shoes that had been too tight for too long. Like a prisoner readjusting to the outside world.

First thing, he bought dark rye bread, a boiled egg, hard cheese, bacon, a piece of mackerel. And a pack of drinking yogurt. He ate on a bench in a small shady park, without haste. The cheese was firm, the meat heavy with smoke, the fish sharp with vinegar and salt, dense in the mouth. The yogurt was sour, but it soothed his throat. Whole food that stayed in the body.

He felt steadied and did some more shopping. Back home, he checked the post, unpacked his suitcase, sent three text messages. Put some piano music on, but couldn't hold it long. Then lay down on his bed in silence, blinds down. Empty, numb, meditative. He just let the day fade away. He ate again in the evening and fell asleep right after, for eleven more hours.

The following day, he returned to work in a fog. Offered only vague replies to the curious and impatient questions about the trip. His friends and family felt his voice had changed on the phone -- as if something had detached. His mind was still back in Saudi Arabia.

Something was missing in the air -- something he couldn't quite name. Then, all of a sudden, it came back to him, like a chill across the skin: that hypnotic lament of the call to prayer, rising like a blade and tearing through the sky five times a day.

Without knowing it, his body and mind had absorbed it like a rite -- a sharp, sacred murmur, now gone, leaving him hollow. It had become addictive, like a poison: too piercing to comfort, too ancient to forget. Here, only a few polite chimes were heard, ringing faintly in the distance, as if to remind him he was still alive.

His dreams writhed on -- jagged, unresolved. He would wake up at night, the images returning at once. He replayed the sequence: the hotel. The silent driver. The mysterious desert villa. The arrest. Who had filmed them? Who had access to that room? Who wanted them destroyed? The secret services? A jealous cousin? A devout brother? No answers came. Only silence -- the kind that doesn't forget.

A registered letter arrived. A summons -- not to a courtroom, not to a police station. A private address. Handwritten.

It was a discreet house on the island of Lidingö. A young woman opened the door. Braid, ice blue eyes, navy uniform. She took him to a large, bright room with wooden floors, sheer white curtains, and minimal furniture. A man in his forties sat waiting at a large desk. Civilian. Squat and muscular. Shaved hair, a light jacket, with a sting of pungent lye soap.

Markus figured out this was the Swedish intelligence service.

"Routine verification related to a diplomatic incident," the officer said. "You were seen," he added, softly. "With someone important -- someone who should not be seen that way."

They had the same photos shown at Riyadh airport. Now safe, Markus admitted everything. The officer questioned him, listened attentively, nodding with a sharp, watchful gaze. The young lady was typing every word in silence on her laptop.

"He was too highly placed to be exposed. But they still had to change his position for the time being. You have been used as bait. You weren't aware, and he wasn't either. Some people wanted him taken down. Fortunately for everyone, they had no serious proof."

He paused.

"If you had actually confessed at Riyadh airport, as a Western foreigner you might have faced lashes. Or worse -- prison. And getting you out would have been a diplomatic ordeal. But he, on the other hand, could have been executed. That was their real objective."

Markus froze. Hamid was alive.

On the way back, he crossed the Lidingö bridge but walked past the metro stop. He went all the way back through the city, processing what had just been said. Slowly, the pieces fell into place.

At last, he began to understand what he had only sensed in confusion. Hamid had chosen him, above all others. He had known it would be him -- from that long, mesmerizing gaze in the lobby. And after their first embrace, he had known -- with aching certainty -- he had chosen right. Enough to summon him again.

He hadn't chosen him for pleasure, but for something sacred. Something worth dying for. He had placed him in danger, yes -- but it was he, Hamid, who had offered himself to the fire.

It was an honour. One Markus hadn't been ready to carry -- and yet, deep down, he had felt it. He had accepted it. That was why he went. That was why he yielded. That was why he gave himself, body and soul. That was why he wept as he came. No one would ever want him like that again.

Because it wasn't sex. It was defiance. Wordless. Reckless. Entire. In a kingdom where desire lay buried beneath the threat of whip and sword, to give himself was not to bow. It was to rise.

One month later, he received a notification for a registered parcel from Dubai. It came in a padded envelope, discreet, compact -- just under the weight that might raise suspicion. The sender's name meant nothing to him.

The handwriting was careful. Neutral. He turned it over in his hands a long time before opening it, as if its weight might shift and tell him something. There was no stamp of familiarity, just that glint of something deliberate.

Markus slit the seal slowly, almost ceremonially. A tight little box inside. He felt a strange expectancy -- not hope, not fear exactly, but something in between.

Inside: a desert rose. A small vial. And a calligraphed card in Arabic:

أستذكرك

I will remember you.

Opening the small vial, Markus inhaled.

Oud.

That was that strange scent Markus had always traced on Hamid -- on his skin, and in the air around him. Carried in his thawb, in the folds of his collar. The trace of something expensive and old. The quiet wealth of those who do not display.

The first time he had noticed it, he hadn't known the word. Just a sensation: wood, yes, but burnt, resinous, bittersweet. Like a forest mourning its own fire.

Later, he learned its name. Black resin drawn from wounded trees. A perfume born of infection, of survival. The most prized scent in the Arab world -- and the rarest.

It was the scent of night prayers and old manuscripts. Of silent power and sealed doors. The scent of men who said little but were obeyed. Of women veiled in smoke. It was law, veiled in softness. Fire, hidden in silk.

It clung to sheets. It lingered in corridors. It said: I have nothing to prove.

It said: I am watched, but I am not afraid.

He closed the bottle. That scent was a memory he could never describe. But would never forget.

Then, Markus held the desert rose in his palm.

It was light, almost fragile, yet impossible to break. A mineral born not from fire, but from dryness. From stillness. From time. No blossom, no scent -- just petals of dust shaped by pressure and silence. Not alive. Not dead. A flower made by absence.

It was not decorative. It was not tender. It was a message. The desert rose does not grow. It appears. Where nothing should.

A crystal born under sand, in places that erase footprints and burn memory. A flower with no root, no season, no color -- only form. Layers of sediment, shaped by wind and evaporation. Time without growth. A beauty that never opens and never fades.

He understood why Hamid had chosen it. It was a sign. A sign that what had happened between them was impossible. And irreversible. That it had no place. No soil. No future. But it had form. And that form would last.

He closed his fingers around it. It didn't cut. But it held. A weight without threat. A gift without return. A flower from the place where flowers do not grow.

And that, more than anything, was love.

THE END