Helga Tells You How She First Met Edward Ware

    I was born a dirt poor Arab named Fatinah. We lived in a mud hut next to Petra in the Syrian Desert when I was a little girl. My father did odd jobs here and there. Mostly he was a potter. My mother took in sewing to make ends meet. But my father also drank, and that made my mother go crazy. He would beat her. She would fly into a rage and beat me. I ran away when I was twelve. I found a man to take me in and keep me as his fancy woman. But of course the man had a wife who was very jealous. She found out about me and burned down my hut. I had to go into hiding or she would have murdered me. I found a new hut to hide in. But she planted a spitting cobra in front of my doorway. It almost blinded me. And all this happened before I was fifteen!
    When I was sixteen I met Mohamed. He was considered a rogue, a  ne'er-do-well by the so-called respectable people in my village. But, youj see, I was no longer respectable since I'd been a kept woman for so long. So he agreed to marry me if I would do his dirty work for him. He was a thug and got paid good money by Prince Ali of Arabia to hunt down his enemies, and his chief enemy was Lawrence of Arabia.
    That was where I met Edward Ware. Edward was Lawrence's adjutant during the Arab Revolt. I'd heard plenty about the red-haired shereef. I'd even caught a glimpse of him riding on a camel in the market place in Damascus. I disguised myself in a robe and sneaked into his tent disguised in an abaya, pretending I was working for Lawrence of Arabia. I told Edward that Lawrence paid me to get him released from the prison at Deraa where the Turks had captured him. (I didn't tell him that it was my husband and his cronies who had put Lawrence there to begin with.) Really I stole some of Mohamed's treasure trove just so I could get a good look at Edward close up.
    I will be the first to admit I was mightily impressed. He talked with an upper class British accent. His father was a sir. He carried himself just so, and he was handsome --- very handsome. He awakened something in me no man had ever awakened before. I won't go so far as to say I fell in love with him. But he stirred a certain lust. I also wanted to have a son who looked like him, especially the white skin part.
    I will tell you tomorrow just what I did next.