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is too hot for my bare hand, place it directly over the incision, pressing down firmly to create the cupping effect. The suction takes hold, the cup begins to cool and as it cools it fills with blood.
    “Raise up the candle, please,” I say, and Mr. Abu Halaweh obeys. “Look,” I say, and he leans over for a better view, and I am pleased to see he does not appear squeamish. “Matter,” threads of white floating in the dark blood. “Pus. Sickness. It is being drawn out of her. This is what we want.”
    Mr. Abu Halaweh says, his voice uncertain, “Are you certain this will make
Sitti
Duff Gordon feel better?” He clearly does not believe such a treatment can possibly work.
    I find my hand begins to shake. I am having difficulty keeping the cup in place and am afraid I will lose the suction I have created. At first, I think his question ridiculous, but then I see the truth of it. “No,” I reply. “I’m not sure this will make Lady Duff Gordon feel better, Mr. Abu Halaweh. But this is what I’ve been taught, this is how I’ve been instructed to treat her by her English physician. And Lady Duff Gordon and I agreed: cupping, Mr. Abu Halaweh, it is what is needed.”
    To my relief, he nods and I am able to keep my grip secure on the cup until it is full of blood and other bodily matter.
    WE TRAVEL SOUTH. THE CREW SWING FROM STERN TO BOW WITH tremendous ease. The river narrows into a steep canyon, bringing with it a kind of night blackness that I have never before experienced, as though the cliffs press together until they meet, high above our heads. Then the valley widens, broadens out again, pastoral. “Biblical,” my Lady proclaims from where she reclines on her makeshift daybed, and indeed, I think of Moses in his reed basket, floating along beside us. My Lady likes to be on the deck, under the shade of the canopy the crew have rigged, where she can watch the boatmen and the country, and she is making a good recovery now, the cupping wound healing well. In Cairo, Mr. Abu Halaweh wanted to hire a man to stand over her with a fan for the journey, but she would not agree. “There must be economies,” she declared. She lies back in the shade as a small breeze lifts off the water, not enough to cool anyone, but a breeze nonetheless. I move around the boat. I ask my Lady if there is any sewing, even though I know there is not. “Tearing,” says my Lady, “we should be tearing these clothes of ours to let in the air.” And yet with every mile south her breath grows a little easier and after a few more days she takes up her letters home once again. She is happy when she is writing; happiest when surrounded by her friends and family and making a great occasion of it, it’s true, but away from all that, her letters home are her family.
    In the middle of the night, I wake. What is it? What is different? Then I realize—I am cool. I do not have to peel my nightdress away from my skin. There is a breeze, a real breeze, and it enters through my tiny window and departs by slipping beneath my cabin door. What month is it now? I ask myself, and I have to think hard before I can remember. November. I wrap a shawl around my shoulders and follow the breeze out onto the deck of the
dahabieh.
I walk forward, step on something, and skid back, alarmed. A half-awake Egyptian oath, followed by what sounds like an apology. There are men sleeping everywhere, the deck is covered with men, rolled up like carpets in a
souk.
The breeze lifts their hair and drops it again. I find a perch and sit down, taking long, slow breaths, and I marvel at the fact that here I am, awake in the night, surrounded by sleeping men, and it feels perfectly natural to me. The air is sweet, clear, and so pure that I suddenly feel that all my life, up to this point, I have been choking. No wonder my mistress has begun to improve at last. The night is moonlit and soft; the river is wide and the banks are broad. A lone ox moves along beside us. Egypt is