“You don’t look like you’re starving,” Kelly had retorted, her eyes darting blue flames, like a gas jet. She felt that he had betrayed her. God, she had been so naive, she thought. Robert had shown her the truth. But that was a secret she would never reveal, no matter what they did to her.

She went to the night table and picked up the compact Abdul Sa’ad had given her and began to do her make-up. The compact was solid gold and on the lid her new name, Saria, was spelled out in Arabic letters made of perfect blue-white diamonds. Abdul Sa’ad was generous that way, she conceded as she brushed her cheeks with powder. Her face revealed no more emotion than a doll’s face as she worked on it.

The name might be Saria, but the face was still Kelly, she thought, studying her features in the compact mirror. Like a soldier seeing to his equipment, she adjusted those ridiculous tassels hanging from the bodice of her belly-dancing costume. Fatma, another of Abdul Sa’ad’s concubines, had told her to put it on this evening. Abdul Sa’ad liked to have her wear it when she danced for him to disco records. While she smiled and danced, she would think about the one idea that had become an obsession with her. As her thoughts grew increasingly darker, the only image she could seem to focus on was murder.

In the end, the only choices we have are murder and suicide, Kelly thought, wondering if she was still sane. If they really wanted to prepare students for the real world, that’s what they should have been teaching in Philosophy 101, she thought grimly. The fact that she could even contemplate the idea astonished her. Ever since she could remember she had always been so squeamish that she couldn’t stand to squash a bug. Perhaps it was all this religious crap she had been getting from Fatma, because Kelly had correctly gambled that her treatment would be better if she expressed interest in becoming a Moslem.

Well, religion was a pretty bloodthirsty subject, she’d discovered. Something Fatma had said about the Koran had triggered a Sunday-school memory. She was sure that a woman in the Bible—was it Jael, or Judith?—something with a J—had slept with her enemy and then murdered him by pounding a tent spike into his head, thereby delivering the Israelites. The blood pounded in her temples as the idea struck her. But if she murdered Abdul Sa’ad, whom would she deliver? Because if she did it, they would kill her. Abdul Sa’ad had explained that early on.

“We Arabs are a simple people,” Abdul Sa’ad had said in perfect Oxford-educated English.