The smile melted from Huda’s lips. What had Rania said? Had she taken her daughter into the garden, beneath the swaying eucalypts, and whispered about blackmail, informants, and the mukhabarat?

“Yes.” Huda couldn’t bring herself to say her own name aloud. “I am Khalid’s mother.”

“My mom told me all about you.”

The girl stared at her, eyes wide, unblinking.

Shame bloodied Huda’s cheeks.

“Oh, yes,” said Hanan. “If she sees a boatman on a river, my mom always says, ‘Huda could sail better than that.’ If I scrape my toe, she says, ‘Huda could mix up a magic salve,’ like the one you made for the scar on her thumb.” The girl giggled. The sound cut Huda to the core.

It had been twenty years or more, but Huda still remembered the salve Hanan referred to, and the scar. Huda had been at the sheikh’s farm. Her grandmother was busy giving readings and dispensing advice in the women’s quarters, when Huda snuck out to the farmhouse kitchen. Rania was already there, virtually vibrating with excitement. She’d seen an American film where two friends pledged undying loyalty by slicing their hands and mixing their blood. She’d proposed Huda and her do the same, with a few twists of their own.

“I’ve got the honey,” said Rania, in a stage whisper. “What about you?”

Huda rifled through the pockets of her long apricot dress. She produced a small bottle of brown glass, borrowed from her grandmother’s saddlebag. Huda uncorked the bottle and carefully measured out a teaspoon of foul-smelling liquid. Rania’s nose wrinkled.

“Tincture of myrrh,” whispered Huda, before mixing it with a generous glug of honey harvested from the sheikh’s hives.

Next she retrieved a dented tin from the depths of her pocket and scooped out an oily paste made of Palestinian thyme. Its herbaceous aroma of mint and lemon neutralized the stink of the myrrh. Rania peered over Huda’s shoulder.

“Is that it?” she whispered, disappointed. “What about some henna?”

“I knew you’d say that,” said Huda. She untwisted a small scrap of paper and poured a generous pinch of red henna powder into the concoction. It was a waste, really. Thyme, honey, and myrrh were more than enough to do the job, but Rania put great store in henna, ever since the day she met Huda, with her bag of runes and henna-painted feet. Rania grinned with satisfaction as Huda mixed the dye into her salve.

“We should hurry.” Rania glanced over her shoulder. “The cook could come back any moment.”

Quickly, Huda scraped the mixture onto a square of banana leaf, then folded it into a neat package.

“Let’s go somewhere they won’t think to look.”

“Not the stables, then,” said Rania.

“What about the riverbank, over by that stork’s nest we found last year? Do you remember?”

“Of course I remember,” said Rania.