Florence of Arabia Read Online Free

her with an expression that went beyond strictly business. She turned back to Duckett.
    "Okay . She told me that the prince likes to smoke hash, then dress up in cow boy boots and his tribal headdress and nothing else, then line up all four of his wives with their bottoms in the air and, well, 1 guess the technical term for it would be—"
    "All right, that's all."
    CIA burst out laughing. The White House mice looked stricken.
    Florence said, "Next time a diplomatic wife confides in me, I'll be sure to put everything in writing."
    "Would y ou excuse us?" Duckett said to the others. He added to the stenographer. "You, too."
    CIA flashed Florence a grin as he exited.
    "God of heaven and earth, why would you reveal something like that?" Duckett said, aghast. "In front of them? Don't you understand the situation? The Wasabis are madder than hornets. If they find out that State has been retailing—to CIA —intimate details of..." He put his head in his hands. "Oh, what a disaster. They'll use this to crucify us. You know what they'll say, don't you? That you were on a personal vendetta."
    "That's absurd. I was trying to help a fellow human being. Ridiculous as that may sound."
    "You were married to a Wasabi. And you're Italian. 'Vendetta' is an Italian word."
    "I'm as American as you are. And that is just completely out of line. To say nothing of stupid."
    "Explain it to their Foreign Ministry!"
    Florence had grown up fascinated by her grandfather's tales of the Middle Fast. At college she majored in Arabic studies and was fluent by the time she graduated Yale. There she met H amzir, a minor Wasabi princeling, charming, handsome, raffish, rich and, being a reservist fighter pilot in the Royal Wasabi Air Force, dashing. What American girl with a predilection for the Middle E ast wouldn't have fallen in love? They were married weeks after graduation.
    After a honeymoon in the Mediterranean on a 125-foot yacht, Florence arrived in her new home of Kaffa to a succession of discoverie s, exponentially depressing. H amzir had not been straightforward about the realities of life as a foreign Wasabi bride. He'd told her that she would be exempt from the strictures governing Wasabi women. Not to worry, darling!
    Florence found herself under virtual house arrest, required to wear the veil outside t he home and to be accompanied by a male escort. With this much, she resolved to cope. But within three months, she discovered that her birth-control pills had been switched with sugar substitutes—the kind on e puts in coffee. Confronted, H amzir shrugged a nd grunted that it was time, anyway, (hat she bore him a child. She retaliated in the Ly sistrata fashion by cutting off sex. whereupon he went into a rage and announced the next evening over dinner—as if remembering a dentist's appointment the followin g day —that he was taking a second wife, a first cousin. Pass the lamb, would you'!'
    The next mor ning Florence drove herself (a fl ogging offense) to the U.S. embassy and said. Beam me up. Scotty. Their response was You got yourself into this, and now you expect us to get you out of it? Here, read this. They handed her a pamphlet tilled "What American Women Should Understand When They Marry a Wasabi National." The State Department's reflexive response to any American in extremis overseas is to hand them a pamphlet—along with a list of incompetent local lawyers—and say. "We told you so."
    Florence was not one to be deterred. She announced firmly that she would not leave the embassy except in a car driven by an embassy staffer, to Prince Babullah Airport. An enterprising young Foreign Service officer, like herself of Italian extraction, worked out a quick and dirty arrangement with the Italian embassy and got her out of the country on an Italian passport, to which Florence was technically entitled.
    Back in the U.S.A., she went to wo rk in Washington with a Middle Eastern foundation. One day, bored, and thinking about the enterprising