“We would be poor, of course,” Philippe said with a smile, his hand closing over hers. “But speak for yourself. I’m only a country doctor who makes house calls, and who has to pay French taxes.”

Amira smiled back. She knew very well that the “house calls” he mentioned often started with a jet flight to Riyadh or Muscat or Amman. But what she was thinking about was what it would be like if she were away from Ali and every- thing he represented, if she were just a woman on holiday in Paris, meeting a man she adored at a Left Bank sidewalk cafe.

In the months since they’d first met, Amira had seen Philippe a half- dozen times, a few hours here and there in al-Remal and once at an embassy party in Paris. Yet, he’d been with her in dreams and fantasies. When her bed seemed lonely and cold, she imagined him as he was today, his blue Norman eyes twin- kling in the sunlight, the Parisian breeze pushing at his salt-and-pepper hair.

Is this what it’s like to love a man? Is this what caused Laila to risk her life, and then to lose it?

“What’s it like to be veiled?” Philippe asked, suddenly serious.

“I hate it. I’ve always hated it. At one time, I had become used to it, I suppose, but now it seems worse than ever.”

“I know you have no choice, but what’s the justification for the whole thing? I mean the religious reason.”

“Well, the mullahs say it’s mandated by the Koran, but my sister-in- law pointed out that the Koran admonishes both men and women to be modest, nothing more. Apparently, veiling began as a voluntary practice among upper-class women—to set them apart from the lower classes. Munira says that male-dominated societies used it to keep women separate and powerless.” She smiled tentatively because she wasn’t sure she believed everything Munira said. Philippe listened as carefully as if she were a colleague describing some important advance in medical science. It was typical of him. She remembered the way he’d listened to her that first night in al-Remal. Not that he refused to assume a mentor’s role where circumstances warranted it: he advised her which of her biology and psychology books were outdated or mere popularizations and sent her better ones. Once, when she complained of how dull she found chemistry, he reminded her of Freud’s own prediction that “the future belongs to the chemicals.” But in matters where her knowledge or insight was greater than his, he listened as if she were the teacher.