The everyday rites of survival, the actions that become ritual—so often, they are what saves us.
I remember how I took Ross’s glass to the kitchen and scoured it with soap until it squeaked and smelled like lemons. I brewed a pot of tea, raised the cup to my face, and breathed in, wishing I had drunk every drop that Yash had offered. In the refrigerator, I found what remained of the curried shrimp he had made for me and savored it like a last meal. I remembered the liquor in the cupboard that Lucky had brought from Bahrain, how he said we would celebrate when all this was over, and poured myself a shot. I raised the glass, whispered, “A la sature,” and swallowed it down.
I went to the linen closet, pulled out a folded towel, then stopped to consider the tapestry: a flowering field of French knots and raised roses, tight satin stitches filling the body of the white unicorn. I ran my fingers along the silken thread, thought of all the hours Betsy Bodeen had sat in this house, plying her needle and thread even as her life was unraveling just as mine was now. What had the unicorn meant to her, captured as it was in its small pen? A representation of Christ, Mason had said, alive again. When had I ever known such faith?
I took a shower so cold that my teeth chattered and my lips turned blue, rubbed myself dry, pulled on Mason’s work shirt and jeans, dropped the fob Abdullah had given me in my pocket, and toed into my mother’s boots. I combed my wet hair, tied on a scarf. I knew I was going somewhere. I didn’t know where that somewhere might be.
The knock at the back door startled me with expectation, and then fear, but it was only Faris, standing there like a delivery boy, holding out a fistful of beets from the garden. I took them, felt their greens nettling my arms.
“Thank you,” I said, and then lowered my face, wondering how it could be this that made me cry. “Do you want water?” I asked. “Sweet water?” But he just peered at me, his eyes clouded with cataracts, and ran his tongue over his wrinkled lips before motioning me out the door. I followed him around the house to the front yard, where he stopped and pointed. A quarter mile beyond the fence, a wavering image shifted and disappeared, only to appear again—a black tent pitched like a mirage against the backdrop of sky. The familiar leanings and ropes, the single white stripe—even from a distance, I knew it was Abdullah’s.
I wasn’t sure what Faris had expected me to do, whether he was surprised when I began walking, then running down the street, the beets falling from my arms. He didn’t call after me, didn’t do anything but watch me go. The few cars that passed gave me wide berth, the drivers and passengers peering out at me like I was someone’s lost dog. Habib must have heard me coming, my mother’s boots clopping the asphalt, because he stepped out and sucked in his belly. I didn’t have my purse, my identification card, but I knew that, for better or worse, he would recognize me.
“I have to go to the tent,” I said.
Habib peered back at the compound, his gaze more serious. “Do you think it is all right if you go to the tent?” he asked.
“Fatima is there,” I said. He waited as though he needed something more. “Yes,” I said, raising my voice, impatient. “I think it is all right if I go to the tent.”
He considered a long moment, then nodded and stepped back. I looked to the road open before me. The urge to run that I had expected to feel wasn’t there, only a pounding awareness of the sun beating down. I struck out across the wind-sculpted desert, my boots slewing sand. The goats set up a ruckus as I approached, the camel and her calf bawling until Fatima appeared. I stopped several yards away, breathless and damp with sweat.
“Peace be upon you,” I called, and Fatima raised her veiled face, her graying eyes holding mine. I thought for a moment that she might deny me, send me back through the gate, but she motioned me forward, and I heeled off my boots before entering. The coffee roaster and urn, the pillows and rugs—all arranged just as they had been before, but no sign of Abdullah, the center pole empty of his rifle and sword.
Fatima took off her scarf, her hennaed braids falling to her waist, and began to make our tea, and I remembered what Abdullah had told me about the code of Bedouin hospitality and dakheel, wondered for the first time whether Abdullah might have taken Mason in. I looked into the tent’s shadowed corners, saw nothing but the pillows and rugs, Fatima’s loom, felt my hope husk away. We sat across from each other, quietly sipping through the ritual three cups, my impatience quelled by the memory of Yash’s admonishment that I must learn to hold my tea. When Fatima gestured to the space beside me where Ruthie might have been, I lowered my eyes. I didn’t know how to speak of any of it, didn’t know whether I should say Nadia’s name, what Fatima might tell me if she could. I looked up, saw the grief and confusion on her face mirroring my own, heard her murmur as though she understood.
“Abdullah?” I said, tentative, unsure. “Do you know where he is?”
She didn’t answer, but after a moment, she reached for a small bronze box, opened its lid. She held out her fist to me, and I felt the pearl necklace flow into my palm like sand.
I wanted to tell Fatima that I was sorry, that something had gone terribly wrong, but all I could do was bring the chain to my neck, clasp it behind. In the silence that settled between us, I heard the nicker of a horse, the calming voice of a man. I followed Fatima’s gaze and saw Abdullah silhouetted against the sun. He wore the full garb of a Bedouin, his ghutra wrapped at his throat, his robe belted, a dagger at his waist. I hadn’t thought I would be afraid, but I was.
He lifted his chin and studied me for a moment before stepping away, and I heard the sound of a fire being struck, smelled the smoke that carried with it some hint of incense, and then the coffee being roasted, like the burning of summer’s dry stubble. When Fatima mimed as though drinking, pointed me to the open center of the tent, and took up her weaving, I rose slowly as though I were the one stiffened with age.
“Ashkurik,” I said, and the corners of her sad eyes lifted.
Abdullah stood at the fire, a brass urn and two cups before him. He gestured to his right, where a rug had been spread and dusted free of sand.
He wouldn’t serve me this way, I reasoned, if he meant to hurt Mason. The idea that he might do so seemed suddenly absurd, a drama only a pirate would pretend.
I looked to where Badra grazed a small clutch of brown grass, her back still marked with the dark sweat of her ride. I pressed my fingers against the horsehair fob in my pocket like a charm and took my place, tucked my feet, and waited until Abdullah lowered himself to the sand before looking up. It seemed impossible that we had ever spoken, that there was a language that we shared, that we had told each other stories and teased. I watched as he tended the small fire, each movement precise, efficient, and remembered my grandfather—each morning, the four sticks of kindling split and feathered, laid atop a twist of paper, the single match struck, the wait to add another piece of wood to the stove, and then another, never rushing no matter how icy the room. “Do it right once,” he would say, “or do it twice wrong.” It was a lesson I seemed never to learn.
Abdullah poured our coffee—another three servings before I shook my cup in the mute gesture that meant enough. He stirred the fire, then elbowed back into a bolster and crossed his fingers at his chest. I saw him glance at me quickly, then away.
“You never brought our lunch,” he said.
It took me a moment to remember: Texas chili, no beans, Abdullah just pulling away as I came back from the movie theater. That moment seemed years ago, and I gave a strange laugh that set my teeth to chattering.
“I wish I had a cigarette,” I said.
When Abdullah reached inside the placket of his robe and pulled out a pack, I realized that I had never seen him smoke before. I steadied my own shaking hand as he held the lighter to my cigarette, then his own. He reclined again, let out a slow breath, the smoke rising to the soft wind that raised the folds of his scarf, revealing the round of his ear, the nape of his neck. I watched, oddly mesmerized by the tensing of his jaw, the configuration of his hands. His calm was nothing new to me—he was every man I had ever known, resolute against any show of emotion. I believed that my only hope was to match my stoicism to his, to earn my place at the fire, to not be exiled to the weaker world of women.
“Yash is gone,” I said, “but you probably already know that.” When he didn’t respond I looked down at my hands. “Ross took the ledger,” I said. “It’s all the proof we had.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Abdullah said. “None of it matters anymore.”
“But it does,” I said. “Mason is your friend. You know he has always been on your side.” I fought to keep my voice from rising. “You know what those four men are saying isn’t true. Someone paid them to lie.” I let a moment skip by. “And you know who it was who paid them.”
He blinked his eyes away, then glanced to where Fatima sat in the shadows, weaving with the unhurried efficiency of someone who has learned to bide her time.
“It was during the shamal,” he said quietly. “I had gone into camp, hoping only to see you. When you brought me the tea, I thought it was fate, and I left the compound happy.” He balanced the cup in the center of his hand. “When I returned to the tent, I found my mother weeping. She told me that Nadia had gone to the shore. I tried to follow, but the storm filled my eyes with sand.” The lines around his mouth tightened. “There was nothing I could do to save her,” he said. “It is better that she gave herself to the sea.”
He paused, and in the silence, I heard the sound of Abqaiq’s schoolchildren float in on a torpid current of air, mixing with the muezzin’s call.
“She drowned herself,” I said—a possibility I hadn’t imagined but now seemed so clear. “Because of Alireza,” I said. “The baby.”
Abdullah rolled his cigarette against a stone. “They have found the Arabesque run aground,” he said, “just north of Jubail.”
“Then they made it,” I said. “They survived the storm.” When he didn’t answer, I felt a claw of new fear scrabbling to take hold. “You would tell me …” I trailed off, blinking against the dark edges of my vision. “Please,” I said, “just tell me the truth.”
He lifted his face, looked to the east. “There is something happening here,” he said, as though in a dream. “It is something that nothing, no one can stop.”
“I don’t know what that means,” I said. “Why won’t you just tell me? Why won’t you say if he’s dead?”
“Because I can’t say,” he said.
“Why? Why can’t you say?”
“Because I don’t know.” He considered his empty cup. “All around the boat, the wind had swept the sand clean. The trackers had no trail to follow.” He looked toward the compound, the smutty flares warbling the air, then lowered his gaze. “I have brought you Badra,” he said.
I looked to where the mare had dropped her head and dozed, her ears tenting forward to catch the tenor of our voices, her breath sculpting a small bowl in the sand.
“A horse?” I asked. “Do you think that a horse is what I want from you?”
“It was your husband who asked to buy her, but the emir is a generous man. Because you admired her, he has sent her as a gift.” His eyes came up to meet mine. “Mason is gone, Gin. He isn’t coming back.”
It wasn’t only what he was saying to me that shocked me into stillness but the sound of my name in his mouth.
“I don’t understand,” I said. “I don’t know what you are telling me.”
He offered his words like a heaping of small stones. “I am telling you that even if Mason survived the shamal, there are men who will not let him live, and there is nothing I can do to stop them.” He lifted one hand tentatively, as though in offering. “I am telling you that you can stay,” he said, “here with me.”
Stay here. I met his gaze because I couldn’t look away, and I wonder now: What did he see in my face?
I staggered up, trying to stand, but the sand caught my heels, and I fell to the edge of the fire. The stink of burned animals took to the air, the skin of my right arm singed before Abdullah could grab my wrists and snatch me up. I tried to wrench myself free, saw the look in his eyes, a mix of excitement and fear, and I thought he might pull me close, hold me against him, and what then, I ask myself now. What then?
“Abdullah.”
It was Fatima’s strong voice that broke the spell. She stood unveiled in the open door of the tent, her chin lifted.
“Abdullah,” she said louder, the word like a command, and I felt him let go. He looked at me, then dared to rest his palm against my cheek before turning to where the mare waited, tied to nothing but sand. He grabbed a hank of her mane, pulled himself up. No word, no kick of his heels or snap of the reins, just his body leaned forward, and they were moving away so fast it did me no good to call, though I did, again and again, for Badra to come back, to wait, to please wait for me.