Youssef and Nick became inseparable. One evening after the maghrib prayers they swore to be brothers forever. Youssef gave Nick his khanjar dagger. The hilt was made of silver and the blade was shiny steel. Nick gave Youssef the only things he still owned, his Boy Scout knife and his shoes. The shoes were too small, but Youssef wore them unlaced and proudly hobbled around. From then on, Nick went barefoot like everyone else.

The first time he tried to walk barefooted on the hot sand, the pain seared his feet. It was like walking on hot coals. He hopped around like an awkward dervish and even austere old Mohammed smiled at the sight. He tried to keep up, but soon lagged further behind the others. Faisal offered him a pair of sandals, but the boy refused, his face screwed tight with pain and something else, something in his strange gray eyes that made Faisal back away. Faisal had seen the same savage glare in the eyes of his father’s falcon.

It was then that the legend began, because unlike any other kafir, the little Scorpion somehow managed to keep up, limping silently into camp. Iffat bathed his scorched and blistered feet with mineral water and looked at the child with wondering eyes. Eventually, his tender feet became calloused and impervious to pain. For the rest of his life, he felt uncomfortable wearing shoes.

Little by little he learned the harsh ways of the Bedu. He learned to be impervious to the pangs of hunger and thirst, to push his body far beyond what he ever thought his body could do. Weather no longer mattered. It was never discussed. He grew indifferent to the intense noonday heat when the sun baked down on the blazing plain as on a frying pan. He learned to sleep in his clothes in the icy chill of night, the darkness blazing with a million diamond chips that were stars, as the temperature plummeted by a hundred degrees in a matter of hours. Pain and discomfort were weaknesses to be mastered, even as the body’s pleasures were gifts from Allah to be indulged.

“The body is but a receptacle for the spirit, like the sheath for a shining sword,” Sheikh Zaid would say.

Sheikh Zaid gave him a thelul, a good riding she-camel. Her name was Jidha and she soon grew as faithful to him as a dog and would come when he called in his boyish soprano. Faisal taught him to ride. He learned to mount her and ride with his leg around the saddle pommel, how to spur her on with a cry and a touch from his whip and how to make her stop and kneel by crooning “Grrr” from deep in his throat.