CHAPTER

30

THE VEHICLE WAS waiting outside when Amani and her father woke in the morning. Like the other guide jeeps, it had no sides; there was a makeshift roof constructed of a bedsheet wrapped around the roll bars. Kamaria’s cousin Jasim lived in an encampment on the other side of the valley and he had brought the jeep in the night. A tall man with a narrow, sun-weathered face like Kamaria’s, he bowed quickly, touching his forehead to the back of Amani’s hand. Jasim said only that he was going to drive them.

Amani felt steadier today. Gabe helped her into the back of the car. He sat up front beside Jasim. There was some discussion of which roads would best support their weight. Kamaria and the children waved and stepped back as the jeep rolled away, picking up momentum on what looked to Amani like a swath of sand inside of more sand, but which Jasim called the road. They flew into the desert, the rooftop buzzing and humming above them. The sun came up, transforming the earth into a hammered golden sheet as they wound through the valley. When they slowed, about a half hour later, near the base of a coral-colored massif, Amani thought they were taking another break. They climbed out and Jasim gestured to Amani and Gabe to follow. They climbed a powdery slope to the rock face, their feet sliding back with each step. As they reached the top, a small tent appeared. Jasim stopped a few feet from the opening and called out.

At first, the only sound was the wind beating against the sides of the rock. Amani shielded her face, looking out over the desert floor stippled with weeds, turning pink in the early morning. Just when she began to wonder if anyone would answer, a veiled woman ducked out of the tent. She was small and sturdy, her hair hidden under a black scarf. She crossed her arms over her chest, her back to the sun. The driver spoke to her and she shook her head, making brisk cutting motions with her hands. Their voices rose and fell, he pointed at Amani repeatedly. A girl of about ten or eleven came out of the tent and approached Amani. “You are America?” she asked shyly. “I’m study America.”

The woman sent the child back to the tent, then stood scowling at them, her hands on her hips. Amani looked from her to Jasim. No one explained what was going on, but she sensed that this woman knew what had happened to Musa and that she placed the blame and responsibility squarely on them. “She is doctor,” Jasim finally said. “Bedouin-style doctor. She is the one decides.”

He explained that this tabeeba was an authority held in the highest esteem among the tribespeople. This was not a place for outsiders.

Amani kept her eyes lowered as she introduced herself and her father. She told her they were searching for someone who may have become lost in Wadi Rum.

The doctor studied Amani’s face and Amani met her eyes: the doctor had dark lines like Kamaria’s, tattooed from her lower lip down her chin, and her eyes were thickly outlined in kohl, giving her face a stark, commanding appearance. After a long moment she said, “I see you’ve also been in the desert.” She took Amani’s hands and studied her palms, then turned back to her face. Gabe waited silently behind her. The doctor’s gaze shifted to Amani’s neck. “Al Jamila,” she said. “Queen Nefertiti. The beautiful one.”

Amani put her fingers over her pendant. “From my grandmother,” she said.

The doctor nodded. “It’s good you wear her. A good protector.” She cupped the side of Amani’s face for a moment, then bent and drew open the tent flap. Entering, she gestured for them to follow her.

Inside, it smelled of fresh air and sage. There was a mat tucked against the far wall and a form lay stretched full-length under a sheet. As they approached, she saw the face was dark as cinders and a crown of tiny green leaves and yellow flowers was woven through the hair. The form was so still, Amani wasn’t sure if he was alive or dead. Several children sat beside him; one held his hand, another suddenly stopped singing to stare at them. In the silence, the man turned toward the newcomers and Amani felt the bones in her legs weaken. His smile was very white. Gabe was the first to go to him. He sat up with Gabe’s help and the two men wrapped their arms around each other. Amani heard her father saying something, over and over. She crouched beside the bed and also put her arms around Musa. Her father was saying, “I never forgot you, Musa.”

“Fawg, fawg,” Musa said, smiling.

Gabe nodded. “Up.”

A COUPLE OF the Zalabiya Bedu had found Musa, the doctor said, walking north and west of Rum Village, in the belly of the desert, miles from any outpost. He was barefoot, the children said. Dehydrated. He’d had almost no food or water for two days, though he was holding an empty water bottle. He didn’t have any head covering. See? One little boy said, pointing to Musa’s face: his eyelids were scorched, as well as his nose and lips, and the tops of his scalp and ears, and his shoulders and hands.

“He’s remarkably strong,” the doctor said. She spoke with a British accent. She stood beside him, running her hand over his closely cropped hair. “He survived as well as any of the Bedu would have. Better, I think.” She showed Amani how she soaked pieces of a shrub called sheeh in oil, then ground it in a mortar to make a paste. “The medicine will keep his skin from falling in sheets. He should make a very good recovery.”

“It looks painful.” Amani’s throat still hurt from her own time in the desert.

“He doesn’t complain, but he doesn’t know why he’s here. He keeps saying he is going home.”

Gabe sat with crossed legs beside the mattress. “I like your crown,” he said in Arabic. Musa smiled and touched his head. Then he looked with a sort of wonder at Amani and said in Arabic, “The man brought me. He said I was going home.” He gazed around the small tent, then at Amani and Gabe. “I am home now?”

Gabe took his hand and said, “You’re close.”

The doctor hadn’t told the park officials about Musa, nor did she trust the clinic doctor in Rum Village. Musa, she believed, required extra protection. “Sometimes the Bedu bring in tourists, different people—they fly here from all around the world, come to the desert and get stranded or lost. Sometimes on purpose. The Bedu, they find climbers stuck up on the high rocks. Often, they find just bones. But this time was different. He is not only lost.” Musa had told her about the man who’d brought him and turned him loose in the desert, and the doctor suspected someone had tried to kill him. She sat beside Amani on the edge of the mat and touched Musa’s forehead. “There’s something about this one. The children took to him—you see?” She stroked a white salve that smelled like mint tea just above his brow and temples. “One extraordinary thing—even though he had no compass or instruments—he was walking in a straight line. Everyone lost out on the desert floor—they go in orbits. Not this one. Straight, as if he knew just where he was going.”

Amani nodded. “He did maybe.”

“Do you know of anyone who would want to hurt him?” she asked, turning from Gabe to Amani.

Amani raised her eyebrows at her father. “He’s safe now,” Gabe said. He patted Musa’s hand and sighed.

The young girl who had first greeted Amani brought them a lunch of lentil soup, bread, and yogurt. This was followed by small cups of coffee. Gabe tried again to pay Jasim for his help. There was extensive arguing before they would accept a few dinars to help cover the cost of the gasoline. He insisted on staying until Gabe and his daughter were ready to go. Amani refused to leave Wadi Rum without Musa. And the doctor needed to tend to several patients before deciding what to do about him.

“This could take a while,” Gabe warned Jasim.

“Everything takes what it takes,” Jasim said.

A number of patients arrived to consult with the doctor. A man asked the tabeeba about a rash on his leg. She made a sticky paste in a mortar and told him to use it twice a day until it was gone. An elderly man came in with his wife who was too timid to speak or to let the doctor examine her under her robe, so the man described her symptoms while his wife listened in silence. The doctor looked at the woman’s teeth, tongue, wrists, and palms, and recommended she fast during the day for four weeks. Another woman came in and gave the doctor a clucking chicken to thank her for curing her baby’s cough.

While patients came in and out, Amani and Gabe stayed with Musa, drinking the sharply bitter coffee, and waiting. After a few hours, the tabeeba returned to take another look at Musa. “I’d prefer to keep him here longer, but he does seem eager to be off.” She checked his tongue, his eyes, and his hands, and wrapped his head in a white keffiyeh. “The real medicine is inside the mind, of course.” She sighed deeply. “We will miss this one. Do you suppose you’re ready to travel again?” she asked him in Arabic. “But no more strolls in the desert.” He nodded solemnly.

The doctor prepared a few jars of ointments and released Musa to Gabe and Amani. “Please be careful with him,” she said. Musa took a small orange from the floor at the side of the bed. Jasim drove them the two hours back to the guesthouse in Rum Village, where they reunited with Omar and Samir.

Late in the afternoon, they headed north while Amani and the others tried to convince Musa to come to Amman with them. He shook his head. “Home,” he said again. “I’m going home.” They took him to the little al-Karak Hospital, where Musa sat on a padded table, craning his head as if dazzled by the lights and instruments. The doctor wore a spotless coat, Dr. Afaf embroidered in English beneath one shoulder. After his exam, he switched off the lamp, shook his head, and told them that Musa was really quite healthy. “Right.” He patted Musa’s shoulder. “The burns on his head are already starting to heal. I see no evidence of heat stress. No disorientation. Though he does seem a bit . . . dissociated, is it?”

“Yeah. No, that’s just how he is,” Omar said.

The doctor wanted to keep him in the hospital for the night, but Musa repeated, “I’m going home,” and stared at the wall.

“He’s not used to being away,” Amani said. “It’ll probably be more trouble than it’s worth to try to keep him here.”

Like the tabeeba in Wadi Rum, Dr. Afaf looked unhappy yet unsurprised, as if he were already familiar with this sort of recalcitrance. Musa was released with more ointments and bottles of a pale-green drink that Omar sniffed and identified as Gatorade. Amani called Sister Sylvain at the convent to tell her they were coming, and the nun’s voice had risen with relief. “Of course. Bring him back,” she said. “He has to be in his place. We’ll watch over him. If the officials come after him, we’ll find another cave. We will do whatever we must.”

They discussed it further in the car. “Everyone totally watches for everyone here,” Omar tried to reassure Amani. “One thing Jordanians know how to do is get up in each other’s business.”

“It’s not like in the States,” her father said.

“No, I guess it isn’t, is it?” she said.

Musa rode between Amani and Omar on the drive to the convent. He held the orange in his lap. Amani asked in Arabic, “That orange—from Wadi Rum?” He nodded and smiled as if seeing it for the first time.

“You just gonna carry it around?” Omar asked.

Musa said something more in Arabic: Amani realized he’d said he was saving it for his mother, and touched his shoulder. He stared at the fruit in his lap for a long moment, then looked at Amani. “Or maybe you would like to have it?” he asked her in Arabic and handed it to her.

Amani peeled the orange, its sweet incense filling the car. She offered sections. After watching Amani eat a section, Musa accepted one as well. When they pulled into the dusty parking area, a tall nun holding a basket of allium stopped in her tracks, dropping and spilling purple flowers on the ground. She ran to him, helping him out of the car, kissing his hands, and hurried him inside. A moment later, Sylvain pushed through the wooden convent doors, “Oh he’s home.” Her arms opened. “Alhamdullilah.”