Philippe took a small notebook and a pen from the pocket of his tweed sports jacket. “I do worry about your health,” he said, writing as he spoke. “Are you sure you’re recovered from the accident enough for all this travel?” “Oh, I’m much better, thanks to you and Dr. Konyali.”

“Good.” He showed the paper to her: Are you going to Egyptian Night tomorrow?

She nodded.

“And yet, I worry about my patient,” Philippe said, writing again. “It would be dangerous to exert yourself too much.”

I’ll be in the garden when you return, the note said. I’ll wait. “I’ll be careful, doctor,” said Amira.

“I promise.”

O

For the younger women of the Remali elite, Egyptian Night was a keenly anticipated feature of the semicentennial. It was an all-female party at which they could talk without restraint and wear the most outrageous fashions they owned, changing back to more modest clothes before going home. It was something new; it couldn’t have happened even ten years earlier in al-Remal.

The venue was the ballroom of the Hilton, the activities being considered too Western for the palace. In her Givenchy gown, with its fitted sequined bodice and flared taffeta skirt, Amira arrived to find what looked like a very large European dinner party—except that there were no drinks and no men. Three or four hundred women milled and mingled, drinking sweet fruit drinks and munching hors d’oeuvres amid a cacophony of compliments, jokes, gossip, and laughter. Only a few had been too timid to abandon traditional dress, and even these were unveiled.

As the evening went on, a feeling of camaraderie developed in the room. It was as if what they were doing was very daring and called for openness, one woman to another. Amira heard complaints about men, laws, and Remali society in general that would never have been voiced under other circumstances.

At one point, she was confronted by a princess she hardly knew who demanded, “Amira, tell us the truth: Did you wreck a car or not?”

She was saved from having to answer by a burst of recorded music and an announcement of the main event, a performance by the great beledi dancer, Sonia Murad. This was one reason why Egyptian Night was too risqué for the palace, and why so few older women attended: their generation had been taught that professional dancers were little better than prostitutes. Amira’s own knowledge of beledi was limited to the few moves she had learned from Jihan and practiced with Laila. She was about to learn a great deal more.

Sonia Murad was an artist. There was no other word for it. From the moment she took the stage, it was obvious. She had the presence and beauty—not looks, but beauty—of one born to show others the way.