Only the black-and-white striped tent of Prince Abdul Sa’ad, near the far corner of the royal enclosure, was unvisited. It sat closed and silent, like an abandoned house. A fat eunuch with a curving scimitar stood guard by the tent flap.

At the gate to the royal pavilion the jewelers had set up their stalls. The women were permitted to shop there under the watchful eyes of the Guardsmen, without having to officially leave the enclosure.

“You are robbing me blind! The angel Gabriel is my witness! From Muscat even to Damascus, all know of Abdul and the quality of his gems. But for a princess royal, who can deny anything?” loudly proclaimed a one-eyed jeweler, slapping his hand to his chest as a gesture of sincerity.

He was a short fat man, lavishly dressed in a gold and silver silk robe. His face was round as the man in the moon and radiated good will. He grinned constantly, like a cartoon chipmunk, not unaware that his teeth were his best advertisement. Every one of his teeth was inlaid with gold. Diamonds, rubies and other precious gems twinkled in the sunlight from his gold caps. He wore a platinum patch encrusted with diamonds over a scarred right eye and rolled his good eye at the sky, that Allah might vouch for the value of his wares.

“You’re a rare scoundrel,” a veiled elderly woman muttered, a glint of amusement in her dark eyes outlined with kohl to hide the wrinkles. “It’s not worth twenty thousand, much less fifty.”

“Behold the value, mistress and let Allah guide you. Offer what you think is just, no more,” the little man said, holding a gold and diamond bracelet so that it caught the sunlight. “Behold!” he declared.

The diamonds were like sunlight, too bright to look at.

“I’ll give you thirty thousand and good riddance,” the woman snapped and gathered her robe as if to leave.

“Done!” the jeweler cried boisterously and with a flourish, he handed over the bracelet.

The woman pulled an Hermes purse from beneath her robe and took out a wad of thousand-riyal notes which needed two hands to hold. She whispered something to the jeweler, then counted out the notes with the speed of a bank teller. The jeweler made another bow and in a twinkling he had whisked the money into his sash and was suddenly gone in the direction of the canvas enclosure used for the men’s public lavatory.

The urinal was a trough in the sand. The plump jeweler with the multicolored silk robe made an astonishing contrast to the grim image beside him. He stood next to a desert-lean Bedu with eyes the color of smoke. An ancient musket with an inlaid stock slung across the Bedu’s back marked him as one of the riders in the race. The Bedu wore the black robe and face veil of a Saar tribesman.