It was a rainy night in Düsseldorf.  My ladies wanted to leave this Rhineland for the dry heat of home, but while they bundled up against the evening chill, the air and rain off the river left me refreshed, like a brittle plant finally watered and coming into bloom.

Düsseldorf tasted like fresh bread and freedom, all the more so because my time there was limited.  My Düsseldorf was a vivid dreamland: Frank Gehry designed buildings in the skyline, the all-consuming mania of fashion week, the luxury of shopping on the Konigsallee with my face unveiled.

My father had been clear on the rules of my exile to Germany.  I was not, under any circumstances, to return to any of our residences without his permission.  Not until I’d learned German and satisfied my tutor’s standards for what constituted a thorough understanding of the people and the culture.  Ironically, this included a thorough understanding of Western dress and customs, though once I was called back home I would be forbidden these things once more.

My arguments that it would help my education if I were allowed to go to school or out to bars or restaurants with these Germans were rebuked so fiercely that I dared not broach the topic again.

To provoke my father was madness.

And who was I, a mere woman, to question a sultan?  I supposed I should be grateful for this respite from the desert, this chance for freedom, even if it was fleeting.  My brothers were granted this privilege, but not my older sisters.  They were all married with several children by the time they were my age.

Still, I was due to return to the desert, to veils and hot air and submission, in a little less than a month.  I had a passport and the not inconsiderable sum my father had set aside in a local bank for my comforts.

Obviously, I would have to leave Düsseldorf.  Where could I go?  Would they find me?

I could also find someone here and marry.  Either of my tutors would a decent candidate.  He could never come home with me, and if I were to return without my father’s permission as a married woman … well, I might as well be dead.  But if I were to stay here with a husband, this life, this simple happiness found by the river, in the old and new of the city together, in tripping on cobblestones, in sipping Altbier (whatever that may taste like), might be mine.

Sleep eluded me and I sat up most of the night in the window seat, the glass cracked to let in the breeze.  When I finally dozed off I was awakened by the drunken singing of a rugby squad leaving the bar across the street.  A quick peek out the window showed them using something akin to a scrum to hold each other up as they sang bawdy verses insulting the masculinity of the entire city of Cologne.

I laughed.

And in that moment, I knew what my decision would be.