FIFTY-THREE

Sitting on the wooden chair, with a table beside her bearing a bowl of water, a bar of soap, a pile of clean white rags torn from a nightdress brought from England, Yael was humming. She encircled the squirming body on her lap with one arm and with the other reached for a scrap of cotton, dipped it into the water, and squeezed it out, dabbing a corner on a thinning oval of translucent soap. “Send her victorious,” she said, drawing the cloth over the child’s forehead.

She plunged the rag back into the water, squeezed it out again, and applied it to the little girl’s right eye, cleaning it from the inside corner to the outside. The lashes were long and lustrous, each one thick and black as a miniature quill.

The infant sent up a scream. “There, there,” said Yael.

Wiping the other eye in the same way, she rinsed out the cloth, gave the girl’s nose and mouth a rub with the damp, soft cotton. Cleaned her cheeks and ears, dabbed her dry. She looked like a child again. She’d ceased crying, was looking at Yael curiously from between the long lashes. Her eyes were still healthy, the iris clearly defined, delicate as a watercolor. Only the youngest children, and animals, did not know that one was foreign. Or, at any rate, gave one the benefit of the doubt.

Yael experienced a sudden yawning ache inside, that she would never experience her own baby wriggling and warm on her lap. She wanted to tell the mother that her child was beautiful, a miracle, that she trailed clouds of glory. She could not, knew better, understood that such remarks risked bringing down the evil eye. “God save the Queen,” she said, dropping the cloth back into the bowl, lifting the child up underneath her arm, handing her back to the mother. “Clean water, Suraya, please. Another rag.”

Suraya put the other bowl down on the table, took away the used one. Yael added the alum herself, one teaspoonful per half bowl of boiled water, stirring it in until the white powder dissolved. The mothers only wanted her to treat the children who were already affected by eye disease but Yael was trying through Suraya to teach them the value of prevention. She had spent long hours speaking to her, with Mustapha acting as translator, at the villa. Washing the hands and faces of their children. Explaining the meaning of hygiene.

She and Suraya had developed a rhythm for the mornings at the clinic. First, Yael treated the children. Afterward, Suraya demonstrated to the women the washing of the doll, explained the connection between dirt and disease. Only then did they distribute the rations bought with the donations from the congregation of St. Mark’s.

Yael heard a knock and looked up. Through the crack in the door she saw a long robe, draped on a tall, upright figure. Sheikh Hamada. He had never been to the clinic. She handed back the child she was about to treat and hurried toward the door, held it open.

“What a surprise. An honor. Welcome, Sheikh Hamada. Come in, please.”

He remained outside, his eyes flickering over the inside of the room, then resuming their gaze down the alley. The women were dragging their veils back over their faces and had fallen silent. Suraya was scrambling for her burka. Yael understood that the sheikh could not come in. She removed her apron, dried her hands on it, and dropped it on the wooden bed. Picking up her umbrella, she stepped outside.

“I am honored that you have come to visit us, Sheikh.”

He stood a couple of paces away, his bearing as proud as on the first occasion she had met him, his gaze as elusive, fixed on a spot beyond her shoulder. She put up the umbrella, feeling a sudden need for some form of shelter. Not from the sun but from the scorch of the sheikh’s presence, his unwillingness to engage in social niceties.

She answered the question he had not asked.

“Yes, all is going well. You see that the women attend,” she said. “They listen. They take the rations we’ve been able to find since the vicar’s welcome change of heart. You were right, Sheikh, about the food. Some of the children are improving now, in their health. In everything. The next thing will be to get them to school.”

He nodded. His silence was unnerving her.

“I am grateful to you,” she said. “Without your encouragement, they might never have come.”

“The time is finished for this work.”

“What do you mean?”

“Your work here is over, Sitti.”

Yael peered at him. She could understand the words he spoke but not what he meant by them. Half a dozen more little children played in the dust close to where they stood, the corners of their eyes studded with flies, their hands sticky with dirt. She felt a surge of indignation, like heat.

“Oh, no,” she said, shaking her head. “The work is not over, Sheikh. Far from it. It has only just begun.”

“You must close your clinic. It is time to go home.”

Putting down the umbrella, she looked him straight in the face. “Don’t you care for your people?”

“We care for them, and for those who would help them. I am trying to inform you of something.”

“I do not care to hear it, Sheikh Hamada.”

Yael went back inside, controlling her urge to slam the door, closing it quietly behind her. Shaking with anger, she tied her apron strings behind her back and resumed her seat, holding out her hands to receive a little boy. He seemed not to see Yael as he arrived on her lap. His swollen eyelids were stuck together with dried yellow secretions and his ribs, clearly visible, narrow as matchsticks, rose and fell with each breath. He sat still, not, Yael sensed, from an absence of fear but from a state of weakness too great to allow for bawling.

“Claptrap, sir,” she called toward the door to the street, baptizing the fresh cloth in the clean water, squeezing it out. “Drivel, twaddle, and bunkum.” She wiped her own eyes on her sleeve and, with the greatest gentleness, began to clean the little boy’s eyes. “Jack fell down and broke his crown,” she whispered. “And Jill came tumbling after.”