Besma pushed past Ishmael and said, "She's with us now. But she told me she'd left behind her doll and . . . "
"She's with you now?" the Nazrani woman repeated. "Who are 'you'?"
"I'm Besma bint Abdul Mohsem. My father is a merchant . . . not a slave dealer; he doesn't sell people."
Backing away from the door with unsteady steps the woman sat heavily into a roughhewn chair. "You mean my daughter was not sold to . . . to . . . ?"
"She's with us," Besma repeated. She saw that the woman's eyes were red and puffy as if she'd been crying for days. "She's fine but she misses her family and her dolly. So I came to get it for her. I can't be away from home very long," the girl added.
"Her dolly? Yes, her dolly!" the woman said, excitedly. "Please wait . . . just a minute, please."
She immediately raced from the room, disappearing somewhere into the back of the hovel. Besma heard scuffling of feet and the opening and slamming of trunks. When the woman came back she had a doll in her hands, but also a bundle of clothing, ratty clothing, to be honest, in her arms. She was also accompanied by a boy who looked enough like Petra that he just had to be her brother.
As the mother turned the bundle of loosely gathered clothes over to Ishmael, Hans pressed an old leather bound volume into Besma's hands.
"It's our great-grandmother's journal," he explained. "They won't let me take it where I'm going soon. Petra can't read it yet but . . . "
"I can read," Besma said. "My father insisted. I can teach her."
Room 217, Olson Hall, Fort Benning,
6 October, 2106
"Yes, I read history," Hamilton said to the form lying next to him on the narrow, issue bed. "But, no, I never read that."
"Patton . . . in Italy, I think, during the Second World War," Hodge explained.
"Okay, if you say so. But I'd like to see the history book you dug that little tidbit out of."
"It was down in the library back at IMA. Deep down," she amended.
"Yes, but in the sober . . . okay, the seriously hungover, light of day, we're still—"
"—no longer cadets," Hodge interrupted. "Not in either's chain of command. Free and over twenty-one. Adults. Moreover, there'll be no punishment tours for you from getting blown by the first captain."
"Hey, at least the first captain was female. That isn't always the way it works." Hamilton laughed aloud. "You know what, Laurie?"
"No, what?"
"She wasn't worth it. Unlike say, you, she gave lousy head. Mechanical, you know. All technique and no feeling."
"That's what I heard . . . from more people than you would care to imagine."
"Jealous, are we?" Hamilton smirked.
"Not anymore," she answered, turning to face him.
Interlude
Kitzingen, Federal Republic of Germany,
16 April, 2003
Tikrit had fallen the previous day, totally eliminating any chance that Saddam Hussein might defeat, or even slow down, the American-led invasion. Gabrielle was of mixed feelings about that. The fighting was over, she thought, and civilian casualties would stop. These were unquestionably good things. But the Americans had not been humbled; America bestrode the world like a colossus. There was no way that could be good.
She saw the waiter from the previous week, Mahmoud, at this week's protest. He stood out for at least four reasons. One was that there were many fewer people; most of the stalwarts who could be counted on for this sort of thing were disillusioned and heartsick, and saw no reason to contest a fait accompli. Another was that he wasn't carrying a sign; indeed he was sitting down sipping a beer, a Kesselring, on this fine spring morning. The third was that he had a look of wry amusement written across his face. He didn't really seem to be part of the demonstration at all. The fourth was that, as she had thought when she had first seen him, Yum.
Gabrielle walked over and sat down. Well, she was, after all, a very modern girl.
"It's pretty hopeless, isn't it," she said, meaning the protest.
"Beyond hopeless," Mahmoud agreed, still smiling wryly. If he meant the protest he didn't specify. "If I cared it would be humiliating."
"You don't care?" she asked. "You don't care about the hundreds and thousands of innocent people hurt and killed?"
"Don't you care about the tens and hundreds of thousands killed by the former regime or the even greater number who will now be saved?" he countered.
"But—"
"Never mind," he interrupted. The look of wry amusement disappeared. "I can't care because I can't do anything about any of it. What the Americans don't know, though, is that neither can they. The Arab world is a mess . . . beyond redemption. There is nothing anyone can do to change it. All you can hope for is to escape. That's why I came here. I don't even want to be an Arab anymore."
"You are Arab?" Gabrielle asked. "I would have thought Turkish."
He shook his head. "No, not a Turk. I'm from Egypt."
Ah, well, that was okay. Gabrielle hadn't known many Egyptians but those she had known seemed among the gentlest and most reasonable of people.
"Moslem, though?" she asked, eyeing the beer.
The wry smile returned as Mahmoud put out one hand, palm down and just above the beer, and wagged it. "If so, not much of one," he shrugged.
Egypt . . . Egypt. There was a beautiful actor from Egypt . . . very famous. What was that man's name? He looked a little like this one, too.
Which prompted another thought. "I don't even know your name," she said, which was not strictly true. On the other hand, asking was a way to be friendly.
"Mahmoud," the Egyptian answered. "Mahmoud al Beshay. And . . . ?"
"Gabrielle von Minden."
Mahmoud raised an eyebrow. "Ohhh . . . a 'von.'"
"Not the way you say it. 'Von' hardly means a thing anymore for ninety percent of the people who have it. And for the other ten percent . . . to hell with them. I'm an artist, not an aristocrat."
Mahmoud shrugged. "I'm just a waiter, but I hope to be something more someday. The problem though, is that while I came here to escape, I think I am still stuck with the Bedouin curse."
Gabi raised a quizzical eyebrow. "Curse?" she asked.
"We flee the desert, but we bring it with us wherever we go. I, and many like me, flee the restraints of Islam, yet we bring it with us, wherever we go."
Chapter Three
Narrated Ibn Abbas:
My mother and I were among the weak and oppressed. I from among the children, and my mother from among the women.
—Imam Muhammad Ibn Ismail Ibn Ibrahim
Ibn al-Mughirah Ibn Bardiziyeh, al-Bukhari
Kitznen, Affrankon, 7 Shawwal,
1530 AH (6 October, 2106)