Several times in her life, she had seen little encampments of Bedu, but never anything like this. Hundreds of black tents stretched to the distant low hills. The air was hazy with the smoke of cooking fires. More horses and camels than could be counted stood in little knots among the tents. Men turned to look at the car, then resumed their conversations.

“My people,” Jabr said proudly. “I left them when I was twelve to serve His Majesty, by God’s will.”

“So many!” was all Amira could say. The sight stirred her deeply. Until this moment, she had thought of the semicentennial as a palace party. Now she saw that it was much more than that; it was a celebration of the whole people. Many of these leathery men and black-clad women had crossed hundreds of miles of open desert to be here.

“May God give their numbers increase,” said Jabr. “As long as there are Bedu, there will be an al-Remal.”

It was true, Amira thought. The desert people, though they were now only a small fraction of the population, were the country’s soul.

“It’s beautiful, Jabr. I’ll make you bring me here again.” She would. She would bring Faiza, too. She wanted to see the older woman’s reaction, in all her royal elegance, to the life from which she had sprung. Would Faiza’s fingers remember how to weave black-dyed goats’ hair and wool into a Bedu tent?

Jabr took a last look at the vast camp and turned the Rolls south.

At the new house, there was little for Amira to do. The servants knew their work and constantly urged her to rest. She did oversee one task personally—the hanging of a painting over the bed in what would be Philippe’s room. It was one of Henri Rousseau’s jungle fantasies. Amira had never seen a jungle. She wondered if the artist had. It looked like a very French idea of a jungle to her. She hoped that Philippe would like it enough to compliment her taste. Then Ali would feel compelled to give the painting to him.

But probably Philippe would say nothing. He knew al-Remal better than any European had a right to know it.

O

“Highness, Prince Ali wishes for you to come and greet his guest.”

It was about time. Ali had monopolized Philippe for nearly an hour. She followed the servant into the men’s quarters.

There he was.

He looked paler than the last time she had seen him. The European winter, she remembered. European skin.

“Welcome, doctor, to these poor temporary lodgings. You’ve come to see if your patient survived?”

“Hello, Highness. God willing, all my patients should survive so well. I’ll be as another Avicenna.”

“Spoken like a Remali, doctor,” said Ali with a smile. And so it was, thought Amira, right down to the reference to the great Arab physician of antiquity; most Westerners would have mentioned Hippocrates.