In the Kingdom of Men (23 page)

While Ruthie gathered her shoes, Abdullah led me to where the she-camel rested, placidly chewing her cud. She gazed at us from beneath her long lashes, then turned away, indifferent.

“It is not like a horse,” Abdullah said, “that a boy might ride without reins.”

“I can do it,” I said, and clambered on.

Abdullah looped the rope in his hand, stepped close. “I am truly sorry,” he said quietly. “It is a weak father who uses a horse to punish his child.”

I straightened myself atop the camel, embarrassed that I had been found out. “It wasn’t my father,” I said. “It was my grandfather.”

“Allah is merciful,” he said. “There will be another horse for you.”

Ruthie approached and climbed on. “I hate these things,” she said, and the camel laid back its head as though on cue and gave a long, excruciating bellow. With Abdullah’s command, it began to rock forward, then back, bellyaching all the while. Ruthie clutched at my waist and squealed, Abdullah encouraging her to hold on, and we began the slow, jarring plod through the dunes, Mason and Lucky following in our tracks, sand filling their worthless shoes. I focused on the rope leading to Abdullah’s hand, felt as though I were being towed like a skiff across the water.

Ruthie brought her chin to my shoulder. “I think Abdullah’s got a crush on you,” she said.

“Don’t say that,” I shushed. “He’s just a friend.”

Ruthie snorted. “Remember what Marilyn Monroe said? ‘If you can make a girl laugh, you can make her do anything.’ ”

I turned as far as I could to glare at her, but she had fixed her eyes on that place where the dunes vectored. I followed her gaze, saw a large rectangular tent appear, pegged out across a salty flat, black except for a single runner of white that wrapped it like a ribbon.
Low and narrow, open along the front, it leaned into its poles with sturdy resolve against the prevailing wind. Long-eared goats grouped and broke before us as the camel groaned to her knees, mewling for her calf.

Two women emerged, covered head to wrist in black scarves, a striking contrast to the colorful patterns of their ankle-length dresses. Soft black masks with square holes framed their eyes like miniature windows. One hung back, cradling a young toddler wearing nothing but bits of strung stone, and I wondered whether Abdullah had lied to me about a wife. At his instruction, she handed the child to the older woman and set to work at the camel’s flank, filling an enameled bowl with milk. I hesitated but drank when she held it out, licking the froth from my lips, as rich and salty as smoked cheese.

“This is my mother, Fatima,” Abdullah said, “and my sister, Nadia.” The relief I felt surprised me—not his wife after all. He rested his hand on the baby’s head. “My niece,” he said, his voice resonant with affection, and she grinned up at him, paddling her feet with delight. I wondered where the father was, how many family members shared the small tent, how many mouths Abdullah had to feed.

Fatima directed us to the door, where Ruthie and I left our shoes and entered the area divided into sections by striped draperies: women, children, and the kitchen on the left, men and guests on the right, an open gathering place in the middle lined with goat-hair rugs and pillows. Abdullah hung his long sword and rifle on the center pole before arranging the coffee urn and building a small fire to roast the beans, and I remembered what Yash had told me: the highest compliment you could pay a Bedouin was that he made coffee from morning till night.

Inside the room kept private by a flapped blanket, the air smelled of wet wool, dung smoke, and the particular musk of women. Fatima urged us to sit and checked that we were hidden from the men before she and Nadia shed their veils. Nadia was
younger than I’d expected, only a girl, her hair and eyebrows jetblack. She smiled, revealing a flash of white teeth, and I grinned back, noting with pleasure her resemblance to Abdullah.

Fatima, possessed of a stately authority, sat ramrod straight. Black hair reddened with henna that rouged her temples, kohl-lined eyes, a faded blue script of tattoos along her forehead and chin, fingernails stained with dye—she looked both elegant and sinister as she watched us arrange ourselves among the cushions, assessing our every move as though she were calculating our worth.

Ruthie bumped my shoulder. “Remember to tuck your legs so that the soles of your feet don’t offend them. Arabs are touchy that way.” I folded my knees modestly under Fatima’s appraising gaze as Nadia offered us a bowl of sticky dates, which we ate like candy, licking our fingers. When Ruthie opened her purse, Nadia leaned forward, curious. What was a purse, and what did it carry? Ruthie pulled out a pack of cigarettes, passed them around, then popped open her Zippo, eliciting a whoop of delight from Nadia. When we had smoked them down to the filters, Fatima and Nadia began to talk among themselves, pointing to our blouses and slacks, sometimes moving close to rub the cloth between their fingers. Nadia rose with the sleeping child in her arms and knelt at my side. Could she touch my hair? I pulled off my kerchief and tried to finger out the tangles, but she stopped me, laid the little girl in my lap, and reached for a wooden comb. Gently, never a snag or a pull, she worked the strands from top to bottom, her rhythmic concentration like a lullaby, thin bangles of gold tinkling at her wrists, a small circle of ink like a single black coin tattooed into her palm. I cradled the soft blanket, studied the baby’s round face, ears pierced with lapis, dark lashes and rosebud lips. When she woke, her eyes—brown irises set in deep blue coronas—studied me with such intensity that I shivered and handed her back to Nadia, my chest aching.

When the dates came around again, I shook my head, and the
women looked disappointed. “Good, good,” I said, and rubbed my stomach. The sand beneath me had molded to my body, and I settled myself a little deeper into its hold. A pleasant silence filled the room as Fatima began working the loom, her wooden shuttle polished by decades of spinning and weaving, and I felt myself drift, lulled by the low voices, the shush of thread against thread, the long-ago memory of rainy afternoons, my grandmother cutting old clothes into squares, pinning, and stitching remnants of shirts and flour sacks into Flying Geese; my outgrown nightgowns and the least faded swatches of my calico dress snipped and puzzled into Nine Patch and Snowball. I’d fall into my nap and wake to find a limp stack of scraps blocked and basted. By first frost, I’d have a new quilt at my chin, soft and familiar.

I raised my eyes when I heard Nadia speaking directly to Fatima, who shook her head decisively. Nadia patted her mother’s arm, imploring until Fatima sighed, dropped her weaving to her lap, and took the baby. Nadia rose and pulled on her head scarf, then made motions like she was swimming and reached for my hand. I looked at Ruthie, who shrugged.

“We must be near the shore north of Ras Tanura,” she said. “We’re lucky we didn’t end up in Kuwait.” She lay back and closed her eyes. “You kids go ahead. Us old ladies will take a nap.”

I thought I should ask Mason, or at least tell him, but I let Nadia lead me to a gap in the tent’s back wall, and then we were moving out of the shadows, the sun a waning glow, the sand warming my feet. Nadia’s fingers seemed small in mine, but her strength kept me upright as we both staggered, laughing and breathless. When we topped over the dune, I stopped. It was as though the world had fallen away, the sand flowing into the sea.

Nadia tugged at my hand before letting go and running toward the water. A few yards from the shallow lap of waves, she took off her scarf and pulled her hair free of its braids. She touched one finger to her lips—this would be our secret—then dropped her
dress and folded it neatly at her feet, giggling and motioning for me to do the same.

How could my modesty be greater than hers, this girl who walked through her life cloaked and veiled? I fumbled at the buttons of my blouse, embarrassed. Since my mother’s death, no one but Mason had seen me naked, not even when my son was born and the doctor had groped beneath my hospital gown without once looking at my face as though he, too, were ashamed.

Nadia soothed my distress with girlish laughter, lifting the camera from my neck, helping me to bundle my clothes, averting her eyes to allow me what privacy she could. This time, when she took my hand and began pulling me forward, I hesitated. “I’m afraid,” I said. “I don’t know how.”

She encouraged me, holding my arm, reassuring. I could hardly feel the warm water at my ankles. When we were in to our knees, Nadia stopped to cup handfuls and pour them over my shoulders. I trailed her until we were up to our waists. When the water rocked me off my heels, she leaned into the sea, let her feet kick up.
“Ta’alay ma’ee!”
she said, and I knew she meant that I should follow her.

I bent my knees, submerged to my neck, and made a few bobs to test the buoyancy of my body, felt Nadia take my hands and lead me deeper until I could no longer touch bottom. When I panicked, she calmed me and ferried me after her as she floated on her back, legs fluttering. I lifted my chin and sputtered, resisting the urge to jerk free, thrash my way back to shore. The moment I quit fighting, I felt my body rise, as though my resistance had some weight of its own. Like my own skin, that water, and after a time I couldn’t tell where it ended and I began. Only Nadia’s hands kept me tethered, or I might have floated away. When I felt her body shift, I closed my eyes and let myself go, surprised to feel the loose bed come up beneath my feet. The sea was at our chins, our hair spreading out around us like the fine roots of mangrove. She was
happy, I could tell, so happy to be teaching me to do this impossible thing.

“Ashkurik,”
I said. “Thank you.”

She smiled, held my eyes for a moment before pushing away. This time, she swam in earnest, long strokes that took her out to open sea. I wanted to call her back, tell her she was going too far, but what did I know of her world?

I waded to land, wrung my hair before pulling on my clothes, then sat in the sand and watched for any sign of her, sure that a rising swell was the round of her shoulder, a ripple the dark fan of her hair. In the fading light, the phosphorescent glow of brine shrimp played across the waves like sheet lightning, and I let out a breath when Nadia finally emerged, her breasts round with milk. She dressed and motioned me to follow, and it was then that I lifted my camera to capture her moving ahead of me, cresting the dune, her black silhouette against the sky, her unveiled face turned toward me like an orphan moon.

When we reentered the tent, we found Ruthie and Fatima in careful silence. Nadia took the child, who gripped her mother’s hair as Nadia pressed her close. She laid her hand on my arm.

“Sadiqati,”
she said.

“My friend,” I said, and a smile broke across Nadia’s face. When I unclasped the small pearl from my neck and held it out to her, she looked from me to Fatima, and they exchanged anxious whispers.

“Now you’ve done it.” Ruthie yawned as she gathered her purse and scarf. “If they can’t give an equal gift in return, it will be a dishonor.”

I stumbled over my words, trying to make them understand. “Please,” I said, “for the baby.”

When Fatima finally voiced her approval, I gently laid the gold chain around the child’s neck, then gripped Nadia’s hand. I gathered my camera and followed Ruthie outside, where the men
waited. I looked at Abdullah and smiled my happiness, and he smiled back before bringing the camel around.

Ruthie and I remounted, the camel’s buck and heave more familiar now, like the persnickety habits of a mule. Abdullah handed me a stick and showed me how to tap its neck to guide it in lieu of reins. When his fingers grazed mine, he looked away quickly and busied himself with the rope. Ruthie pinched my waist. “Told you,” she muttered.

By the time we reached the Volkswagen, the rising wind had blown troughs around the tires, and it tipped precariously. With the help of ropes and the camel, Abdullah and Mason broke the axles free, and Lucky steered the little car to a cracked salt flat.

“Allah kareem,”
Abdullah said. “God is kind.” He kissed Mason’s cheeks, held his shoulders in an affectionate embrace until Lucky honked the horn, and we piled in. This time, I welcomed the snug closeness of bodies, warmth against the desert’s descending chill. The discomforts of the day were nothing compared to the delight I had felt in Nadia’s company, an accidental adventure that, more than anything, I wanted to make happen again.

Lucky waited until we lost sight of Abdullah before reaching beneath his shirt and sliding the pistol onto the dash.

“Took it along just in case,” he said. “Never know who you’re going to run into out here.”

Mason looked at him like he had lost his mind. “And who did we run into?”

“Abdullah.” Lucky nodded. “He’s all right, but you never know. Some of them’s good and some of them’s bad, just like all people is. One lays a finger on my wife, I’ll shoot him standing up. And that includes Abdullah.” He pinched shut one eye. “Don’t tell me you wouldn’t do the same.”

Mason glanced at me. “Guess it’s not something I plan to see happen.”

“You’re in Arabia, partner,” Lucky said. “You’d better be
armed and ready when that plan of yours breaks down.” He flicked his cigarette out the window. “You think you’ve got the world by the tail, but you’re forgetting one thing. This ain’t your world.” He let the words settle before snorting. “Listen,” he said. “If there’s one thing I’m aiming to teach you, it’s how to stop being so damn serious.” He pointed past the stand of acacia lit by our headlights. “If we can believe your buddy Abdullah, we got a straight shot right out of here.” He thumped the stick into low, loosened his shoulders, and crinkled his eyes. “Old Sahid, he saved our bacon, didn’t he? Him and his sorry-assed donkey.”

When that rolling Cajun laugh came up from Lucky’s belly, Mason smiled in spite of himself, and I felt my own spirits lighten. Lucky broke into a chorus of “Camptown Races” and steered us toward the flattening horizon as we all joined in, following the road headed south, guided by the flares marking home.