CHAPTER

1

• Al-Mafraq, Jordan, Saturday, October 28, 1995 •

THE SCREAM FELL from the sky. Amani watched the falcon pause in midair, fold its wings and dive.

“Too fast to measure,” the man beside her remarked. “Extraordinary things.”

She fanned herself with a program, smearing ink on her hand. “So, this is—a race?”

He nodded. “The four hundred meter.”

Under the open-air warm-up tent, trainers milled around, forearms lifted, hooded falcons balanced on leather gloves, showing off. The birds looked heavy and monumental, like imperial beings. Amani and Gabe were allowed to watch from the warm-up tent which smelled of hay and bird shit. There were photographers, wealthy tourists in suits, necks slung with camera equipment. Servers with trays walked through a sea of conversation. Amani accepted a glass of something nearly transparent; it smelled grassy and felt light in her mouth. She would have given her last dollar for an ice cube. Somewhere on the risers under the sun, amid a sea of white dishdashes and keffiyehs, sat the King.

“Don’t they believe in water?” her father asked.

“They?” Hafez looked bemused. Someone edged in front of Amani and took a picture of her uncle. She shuffled backward.

“All day and all night in those airplanes—it’s like crossing the Sahara,” Gabe said.

“I’m well aware.” Hafez lowered his nose to his glass. “This vintage is from the palace sommelier.” He looked up in the direction of the royal entourage: it was the third time Amani noticed him doing this. She took another swallow: it was warm.

“If there’s time later, I’ll introduce you.” He smoothed back his shock of white hair and nodded toward the King.

On the competition field, a man in jeans, T-shirt, and creased red keffiyeh jogged backward across the swept ground, swinging bait on a long tether.

“Okay, what’s that thing?” Amani pointed. “Fill me in here.”

“Feathers,” her father said. “Feathered incentive.”

The falcon flashed past the bait, flew in a narrow ellipsis, returned for another attempt. The man lowered the bait and swung it along the earth before the bird descended.

“It’s duck wing,” the man beside her said. “And that field is now falcon territory.” Wind rumbled along the roof of the tent and everyone lifted a hand against the dust. His brown eyes had a green light to them, the irises shone with flecks. He took something from a boy and offered it to Amani. A little paper cup of tepid water.

She thanked him profusely, swallowed it in one gulp, gave a second cup to her father.

“You have it,” Gabe said. “I can wait.”

“Dad, just—have this. Please?” She turned back to see the boy already returning with two more tiny cups.

“No, no.” Hafez shooed the boy. “Don’t drink that. Ya’ Allah. He’s getting that from the animal hose.” Hafez gestured to someone in the crowd; minutes later, his driver appeared with frosted glass bottles of Evian. “Samir can find anything,” he said, handing them to Amani and Gabe. “Five-hundred-dinar donation to get into the trainers’ tent and they can’t give us decent water.”

Falcon-oriented discussions circulated all around: she heard that Sheikh Majed had bought out first and business classes on Emirates Air to fly his eighty falcons to Jordan on the arms of their trainers, the Abu-Dhabi Falconers Club. The birds had needed passports to travel internationally. “Required—to protect against smuggling,” one of the trainers said. “It’s easier for a falcon to get a UAE passport than for me.” Behind him, a silk banner rippled, inscribed in Arabic and English: In Commemoration of the Sixtieth Birthday of King H. of Jordan.

She swiped an arm across her forehead. Her eyes felt gritty. Heat waves warped the air and she couldn’t shake the sense that the ground was creeping underfoot. They were at a desert camp in Al-Mafraq, sixty-eight kilometers north of Amman, on the edge of the Jordan valley. Ivory-colored swells of dust filled the air, hitting the back of her sinuses. In the distance rose a sparse, shaggy landscape, everything dried to the same colors, the trees pointed, rows of spindly firs like last survivors. She felt as if she had walked through fiery curtains to get here.

Throughout their long trip, her father had sat gray-faced, pale with sweat—she’d thought he was anxious about flying, but he looked much the same today. They’d landed in Amman at two a.m. Saturday morning, then Hafez had appeared at nine a.m., banging on the front door, calling, I’m here! He had plans. He’d walked in and clapped his arms around his youngest brother. “And your lovely wife?” he’d asked. “We won’t be seeing her?”

“It’s her busy time,” Amani said. “School started last month.”

“You Americans. You know what they say?” He smiled broadly. “Arabs have family, Americans have work.”

She laughed a little, uncertain if she should feel hurt or flattered.

Driving to the falconry exhibition, they’d passed hillsides scattered with low buildings, roadside vegetable markets under tents, hand-lettered signs for petrol, sizzling high tension towers. Beige cinder blocks. The entire country appeared to be under construction. “Welcome to Jordan in October!” her uncle said expansively, twisting around in the front passenger seat, slapping the arm of his driver, who didn’t flinch. Dizzy with jet lag, Amani wanted to crawl back into bed, but her uncle was an undeniable force. He was determined that these birds be watched and admired. “Thirty years I don’t see my favorite niece unless I take three airplanes to get to Syracuse,” he said. “Now it’s my turn.”

One of the trainers approached Amani. He held an immense gray falcon on his forearm. Its merciless eyes like onyx and flattened head made Amani think of gryphons. It clicked its curved beak open then closed, then shifted, spreading and closing its black enamel talons on the glove. The trainer spoke little English but he held out his bird and Amani understood that he thought she might like to pet it. She pointed to her chest. “Me?”

Hafez chuckled. “Be careful—they can smell fear.”

The trainer said something. “He says this is a sweet bird,” her father translated.

“Ah, a cozy falcon.” Hafez smiled, jingling his pocket change. “Charming.”

“Your grandfather owned a falcon. . . .” Gabe told Amani.

“He did?” She glanced again at the gray bird. “You never told me.”

“Several actually,” Hafez said.

“But this one, it was devoted to him. He always said that falcons aren’t affectionate, but that bird. . . . It was a good animal. It let me stroke its head. I wrapped up my hand with a dishrag and carried him around.”

“Damnedest thing,” Hafez said complacently. “Ugly as a buzzard.”

A couple of the trainers started talking to Gabe, gesturing. He lowered his head, laughing. Hafez cut in with some remark and Gabe lifted his eyes. He stopped laughing. The men looked at Hafez, who was still smiling. Amani turned to the speckled falcon and tentatively lifted the back of her index finger to its breast. Under its feathers, she felt the soft tap of its heart.

Gabe started walking out to the competition area.

“Dad?” Amani stepped forward. “Hey, Dad? Where you going?” She and the trainer went to the end of the tent where sunlight fell in a sharp slant. The temperature had risen steadily and the seats were emptying. “I don’t think you’re supposed to be out there!” The air was thin, the sky like solid glass.

The man with the flecked eyes also moved to the tent’s edge. “What’s he doing?”

“Brother, y’akhi, you are lost?” Hafez yelled. He was smiling but he stopped at the shadow’s edge. Watching her father, Amani felt a twinge of uneasiness.

Out in the field, someone handed Gabe a creased leather glove: he slipped it on his left hand. A trainer with an amber-colored falcon came to the start of the field and waved to Gabe. He released his bird and it flapped to the flagpole beside the risers. It landed, its head ticking with tiny movements. Gabe raised his glove, gave a low whistle, but the bird remained in place.

Gabe lifted the glove again, holding his hand out. He shook it a few times, index finger curved, and gave another whistle. With a sound like snapping sheets, the falcon lifted from its perch, sailed, head level, talons outstretched: it landed on Gabe’s hand. Amani clapped, startled, delighted. “Look! Look your baba!” the trainer beside her said, his own falcon ruffling and resettling. “Is in the blood,” the man said. “The history. You know? The birds scent it. They know he is real Bedu.” Her father was laughing out in the field. Someone whistled. He tossed the bird into the air and it swooped back toward its trainer.

Her uncle had clapped as well, but then crossed his arms. There was an empty section in the risers where the King had been seated. Seeing her uncle, something in her chest softened. When she was a child, she had liked to imagine that suave, educated Uncle Hafez was her actual father. He recited poetry and spoke with presidents and traveled the world. Oh, she did love her father, but Gabe kept to his woodshop and barely knew how to read English. Uncle Hafez did such marvelous things, helping to govern a kingdom, steering the world in the direction of peace. And he spoke up for the Palestinians and other dispossessed people—at a time when few others dared to.

When Amani was in college and worried about what to major in, he’d told her: Follow your voice. You love to write, yes? So, you will do that. As soon as she made that decision, her anxiety dissolved.

Now she watched her father with the birds. People, even parents, could continually surprise you. She sensed the tilting pull between the brothers—was this what it was like to have a sibling?

Amani trotted out to claim her dad. Gabe smiled, shaking his head at himself. Then he halted, eyes lifting above Amani, his lips parted, his expression stopped. Amani slowed down. An instant later, she heard wings, an uproar of feathers. She turned to see two slim black talons extended. She shrieked, lifting her arms, the bird’s grand wings outstretched, beating furiously, as if to carry her away. The trainer sprinted over, shouting in Arabic, and grabbed his bird. Two welts were torn through her cotton shirt and into her shoulder. She tried to catch her breath, to laugh, but when she saw a bright crimson stripe run down her arm, her knees buckled.

A mistake, she thought as she hit the ground. I’m not supposed to be here. I shouldn’t have come. Then the other one was at her side, the first man who’d talked to her, lifting her head, pressing a bandage to her shoulder. “My God, I’ve never seen one of them do that before. Like you’d called to it.”

She tried to laugh. “Did I call it to come eat me?”

“Whatever you were saying,” he said. “He heard you.”