He had changed since the night of the reception. He seemed thinner, and that wheezy cough bounced intermittently around his chest with the flat resonance of a muffled drum. On a shoulder was perched a strong-smelling monkey with arrogant, evil eyes, wearing a necklace of blue glass beads I had last seen at Daphne’s throat. The sheik brushed the ape aside—it seemed to take some effort. The beast bared its yellow teeth in a snarl and scrambled up a phallic pillar.

Saeed called, “Zun!”—that’s what it sounded like, more of a snort than a directive—and a moldy old gnome of a man appeared. Draped over an arm was a rat-skin pouch containing an aba, the burnoose worn by desert nomads—this, then, was my reward for gallantry. It symbolized, I suppose, my validation as one of the boys, an honorary citizen of the wasteland. “Accept this garb,” said the sheik, “as a token of our esteem.”

I accepted it with soldierly restraint, and we lapsed into silence. I thought I’d be dismissed at any moment; not so. Time dragged by; finally the old man said, “You did well against the pig-fuckers of the eastern kasham beit.”

I nodded modestly.

Then, gesturing toward the aba, “We don’t expect you to wear it,” he added with a smile, “except on public occasions.”

“I’d be proud to,” I said. Not exactly the truth, but the truth at times can be unfruitful.

“That’s hardly the case with your friend Abdul,” he said. “He feels it is the uniform of backwardness. He does not approve of our ways. Nor does he approve of me.”

That too was true—another unproductive subject I had the prudence to ignore. Once, long ago, in our shared ostracism at Chatterton’s place, Abdul had alluded to his father as “the last of the Stone Age holdouts.” Saeed al Sadr didn’t look like, nor did he sound, Paleolithic to me. His speech was a trifle stilted, like that of a highborn Indian who had maintained the language of the ruling Brits long after the raj had expired. Despite his leanness and his cough, he remained an imposing specimen. Although his muscles had gone lax with time, he conveyed the power, the dignity of those sages on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.

The gnome had settled down in a corner. Who was he, I wondered, to sit in the presence of the sheik?

“He’s like that damned monkey,” al Sadr said.

My eyes went to the gnome. Indeed, there was something simian about him, the way he hunkered, his hands, too large for his body, dripping over his knees.

“Not Zun,” the King said. “Abdul. He and that monkey share a certain attitude toward me. I have great affection for him…” he gestured toward the sullen little ape. His finger had a jagged gash in it. “…and he bites me.”