Now Amira’s days were truly full, nursing Karim, bathing him, making sure he was comfortable and secure. There was an army of maids and nurses living in the palace, but Amira wanted to do as much as possible herself.

Though Ali doted on his own son, he seemed to have little time for Amira, mumbling excuses about business, affairs of state, meetings with his father.

And though he was less important to her than her baby, Ali’s indifference reproached her. Surely, she must be failing in some wifely duty, she thought. And so she tried to make herself more attractive and went out of her way to make certain the meals they shared were properly prepared. She put together little conversational tidbits to feed him with his grilled fish or roasted quail—and was rewarded with monosyllables and polite smiles.

When the prescribed period of abstinence—forty days—passed, she felt shamed by Ali’s lack of ardor, his obvious disinterest. Was something wrong with her? Maybe it was because she’d been fat and ugly for so long. And how would she bear another child, another son, if he never touched her? These were troubling questions, but there was no one she could consult, no one to talk to.

Certainly, not her mother-in-law, who believed that her Ali was not just a prince of al-Remal but of the entire universe. Nor fat Zeinab who delighted in telling anyone who’d listen that her husband would just not leave her alone. That he demanded sex at all hours of the day and night, even when she was asleep. That he’d gone so far as to caress her when she was in the throes of labor.

As for Munira, though she was the most intelligent of all, she turned a sour face when there was any talk of men. She seemed to see them as conspirators in a plot to make her unhappy and had managed to persuade her doting father that each and every candidate he suggested was in some way unsuitable or unworthy. No, neither of her sisters-in-law would be of any help.

How she longed for her mother. Though she remembered the time she’d seen Omar trying to force himself on Jihan, surely her marriage must have been happy once. Maybe she could have explained how desire could live for so many years in some marriages—and then flicker and die in others.

And there was more. Her feelings for Philippe, the experience of child- birth, the ripening of her body, all these changes had wakened her sensuality. She wanted to be touched and caressed. Perhaps now she might even find pleasure in the things Ali did to her.