And so began the ritual compliments, the round of questions and answers, the drinking of coffee, the snacking on dried fruit and nuts, a few jokes, and some gossip. In the plastic bathtub, the baby snored, its top lip quivering and pink. Thick kohl lined its eyes to keep evil spirits away.

Rania didn’t know if the new mother had other children, but if she did, they would have been dispatched to stay with relatives. In general, children weren’t welcome at these visits. They woke the baby and knocked over coffee cups. They messed about with the guests’ sandals, took them outside and pretended they were swords, or set them sailing on the stream like tiny canoes. Rania was permitted only because she was an emissary of the sheikh.

As the maid refilled the coffee cups, Rania snuck toward a smaller room off the side of the sitting area. Often the hosts arranged for a woman to paint henna on guests’ hands or to sell clothes or pots and pans. This time they’d hired a perfume vendor. The middle-aged merchant was plump as a fig, nestled amid her stock of jewel-colored vials. Pale twigs of arak lay in neat rows beside cones of incense. She eyed Rania’s frilly dress.

“You must be from the sheikh’s family?”

Rania nodded.

“Come here, dear.” The woman hooked her finger. “Come smell my perfumes.”

“I don’t care much about the smell,” said Rania. “All I want is a red bottle and a blue one too.”

The woman cocked a brow.

“You want frankincense? And jasmine too?”

“As long as one bottle is red, and the other blue.”

“I’m at your command.” The woman showed her long teeth. “Now tell me, how much money did your mother give you?”

A few minutes later, perfume in hand, Rania crept out the back door. She wandered past rows of okra, cucumber, and eggplant. Hens clucked in a coop. Drawn by the burble of the swift-flowing stream, Rania slipped out the back gate. She strolled toward the bank, rolling the vials back and forth: red in one hand, blue in the other. Rays of light hit the curve of colored glass and emerged from the other side bright as cloth dying in a vat. She raised her hands and cast red and blue stripes across the fine sand.

Rania propped one hand on top of the other. The two beams merged into one thick band of purple. She wiggled the red vial and kept the blue still, creating a pulsing purple stripe with a rippling ruby frill. It reminded Rania of an exotic sea snake or an eel, like the one she’d spied on her ninth birthday poking from the rocks of the Basra corniche.