Tears flowed down her cheeks. This sign of weakness made her seem somehow even more violent and intimidating; standing below her, Abu thought he understood some of the animosity that ordinary people felt for the antinomial women. It came from fear. At hangings, the spectators wailed with delight and shouted obscenities. In prison, gangs of jailers raped them.

Sniffling and wheezing blood, the woman fumbled with the torch. The prince reached up to help her, but she hit him across the face with the back of her hand, a careless slap, so that he staggered and fell down.

She pushed back her hair and shook the flashlight furiously. Nothing happened, and so she threw it against the side of a nearby car, laughing when it shattered.

The hole led down into a tunnel in the earth, barely big enough to crawl through. The woman pushed Abu along it in the dark; he was on his hands and knees, and she pushed him from behind. Then, after a long while, the walls and ceiling seemed to open out, and she stopped pushing him; he sat down on a pile of stones while the woman muttered in the darkness, and groped around him, and found a lamp, and lit it.

She squatted near him and ran her fingers experimentally over her face. The tune she hummed had changed. The frustration had gone out of it, and it seemed more methodical, more regular. She rose and went out of the circle of the lamp into the dark, and returned with a bucket of water which she put down on the floor and sat cross-legged around it, washing her face and rinsing her mouth. Then, to Abu’s surprise, she took a mirror and a comb out from a pocket in her shirt. The humming changed again as she examined her reflection—an intake of breath mixed with the melody, and Abu seemed to hear some humor in it too, when she smiled and displayed her broken teeth. She started to comb her hair.

“Where are we?” asked the prince.

The woman looked at him and frowned, a puzzled expression on her face, as if she had forgotten who he was.

“Why did you bring me here? Please tell me . . .”

She said nothing and resumed combing her hair.

“Where am I?” repeated the prince miserably. He felt sick. His clothes were filthy and he was very tired.

“You are free to go,” she said, motioning away into the dark.

“No. I don’t know where I am. Do I sound ungrateful? I guess you saved my life. Back there it was so . . .”

“Stop that,” she interrupted, pouting into the mirror. “There is a tune called, ‘I forget.’ ”

“I can’t forget. It just happened.”

“It is a hopeful tune.”

“I’m afraid I don’t understand.”

“You’re safe here. There’s no need to be afraid.”

“That’s not what I meant. I mean I don’t . . .”

“Stop talking!” she said. “You are like a baby. I try to help, but you can only remember the last time you were fed and look forward to the next time. Why should you understand?”