Malik longed to see his mother and sister, but feared that “paying his respects” to his father’s second wife would be awkward. She was only a matter of months older than he was, and had never appeared to like him. But as it turned out, his stepmother was still so overjoyed at having a son of her own— an accomplishment that earned her the right to be called “Um” or “Mother” of Yusef—that she was positively cordial.

With a son, Malik reflected with a taste of bitterness, she had a security she had not enjoyed before. A security gained at his own mother’s expense.

“But you’ll want to say hello to Amira,” she finally burbled. “I think she’s up in her room. Do you know the way? Oh, how stupid of me—of course, you do.”

Malik climbed the familiar stairs and, in the Western fashion, knocked at the door. For a moment, he didn’t recognize the woman who answered. Then he did.

Clearly, Amira was the desert flower that waits for the rain to bloom. When he’d last seen her, she’d shown only a hint of ever becoming anything more than a tomboyish adolescent, but before him now stood a beauty. “Little Sister?” he heard himself ask.

“Who else, big Brother idiot,” she said and threw herself into his arms. How was he, how was Marseilles, how did he like being in al-Remal—as always, she was full of questions.

“Has Farid spoken with you?” Malik managed to interject. “About his idea for Laila?” The rudeness was forgivable. Time was short: the radio was cautioning that prayer time was near.

“Yes. Meet me in the garden after dinner. Then we can talk.”

“All right. Oh! I met our new brother.”

“He’s a sweetness. But did you notice the charms?”

“Yes.” The custom of covering an infant with protective amulets was widespread, but among educated people, it was only a custom. To take it seriously carried a certain aura of peasant superstition. Commenting on it at all was a small, delicious act of brother-sister conspiracy against their father’s second wife.

“You see what I must live with,” said Amira, “although certainly she’s more pleasant than she once was. Go. We’ll talk later.”

Malik hurried to his room to find a thobe and sandals to replace his suit and shoes. Already, the radio was sounding the muezzin’s call, every line but the final one repeated:

“God is more great.

I testify that there is no god but God.

I testify that Mohammed is the Prophet of God.

Come to prayer. Come to salvation.

Prayer is better than sleep. There is no god but God.”

In the darkening garden, Malik wandered among the oleander and bougainvillea, savoring the fragrance, smiling at the sound of the little fountain whose tiny trickle proclaimed his father’s wealth. He remembered the story, famously known, that when the Americans and British had first come to search for oil, the king of al-Remal had prayed that their drills would strike water instead.