Free Nashville SEAL: SEAL Brotherhood: Nashville SEALs by Sharon Hamilton

Her mind wanted to embrace the hope they could be a family. But even if they weren’t meant to be a family, he would be Charlotte’s daddy.
    And that was way more of a future than she ever thought possible. She’d take it one day at a time. Whatever happened, she’d accept it with her full heart.

Chapter 9
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    “W e are going on a field trip this evening. We will gather after evening prayers. Light refreshment will be provided, and then when we come back, we shall feast before turning in for bed. You will do an hour of study before we dine, before our field trip. Wear your western clothes, but wear the ones you’ve had washed, not the new ones.”
    Assad opened the Rumi book and began reading.
    ‘ With the Beloved’s water of life,
    No illness remains.
    In the Beloved’s rose garden of union,
    No thorn remains.
    They say there is a window from one heart to another,
    How can there be a window where no wall remains?’
    Most the boys had a confused look on their faces. “Sweet cherubs, you have no idea how the pleasures of a woman can turn your heart. Understand some of you have been sent by parents who know you might become martyred. ‘How can this be?’ you say. The woman gives to you the baby you send off to war.”
    One of the boys sitting toward the front, his best and brightest pupil, turned around behind him. “Answer the teacher,” he demanded of the crowd. He was the one they all feared. Assad knew he would make a great leader because he did not care for feelings, which helped with some of the difficult decisions.
    “So, Ari, you tell them then.” Assad nodded to the pupil.
    “I have felt the calling of a woman. What the poem is saying is that as your loins increase, as you swell and ache to join, it is a false sense of duty and loyalty.”
    “Exactly! Ari has stated it perfectly. How can a window exist where there are no walls? In other words, they have merged, become one. This is a very dangerous concept.” He held his finger to the air, stressing the point. “There is only one calling. There is only one love greater than all others; it transcends the limits of the flesh.”
    Assad walked over to the side, looking out over the green rolling hills of the farm they’d rented. The land in Tennessee was beautiful. Lush and greenish gold this time of year. It was as if Mother Earth, as the hippies in America called it, was ripe with abundance, distracting her people from their true calling. It would be easy to fall into the beauty of this land, to lie in her arms and explore her valleys like he would a lover.
    “The temptations are greater here. But so is the opportunity. The Americans are weak people. They trust everybody. They don’t like to ‘make waves’ as they say it.” Assad knew they enjoyed when he spoke English idioms. His eyes rolled as he pretended to be a surfer on a surfboard somewhere in the ocean he’d never seen.
    The students chuckled similar to what he’d remembered as a schoolboy at his mother’s skirts. Again, his breath was taken away at the purity of their thoughts in face of the hell he was going to ask them to create. They’d walk into the blast furnace of their cause with a smile on their faces, willingly. And Assad knew that every time they would do this, the Americans would be afraid. They grew weaker with each new bold confrontation. He wanted them not to feel safe in their land of milk and honey, wanted them to think everything was falling apart, as it would one day. They blamed their own police, everyone in charge. Soon, they’d be running in the streets like the band of thieves they really were. Selfish, beaten down by a soft belly and a lifestyle that didn’t prepare them for the blood that was coming.
    “The girls you will meet will want to learn things about you. You can smile and pretend to be shy. American girls love that. And let’s face it,” he said with a shrug, “it’s true. You will be shy. You will see and hear things you’ve been told you