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the shape of a spinning hawk. The letters and diacritics wrapped around one another like wings and feathers, clouds and sun. For most men who entered the room, the screen's picture was simply a hawk, but a searching, patient eye would find the phrase that Nayir had deciphered long ago:
Whoever pays the tax on his wealth will have its evil removed from him.
    It was a reference to the Shrawi business, the First Muslim International Cooperative, a network of charitable organizations whose income flowed from the ancient principle of
zakat,
religious almsgiving. Saudis gave 2.5 percent of all monthly earnings as alms, a practice enforced by law. Every year some $10 billion passed from rich to poor. It was money for needy Muslims, not for hospitals or mosques or religious schools, and so, under law, the cooperative could accept donations only for the poor.
    And accept it did. The Shrawis acquired nearly a quarter of the cash and assets that the citizens of Jeddah donated. Over the years the Shrawi cooperative had become so renowned, the family so respected, that donors began to heap money on the Shrawis themselves, which enabled them to live very well.
    But in honor of their Bedouin ancestry, their furnishings were elegant and plain. Except for a glass globe that hung from the ceiling, the sitting rooms where they welcomed guests had none of the typically ostentatious decor of the wealthy. The carpets were flat and white, the sofas well used. Even the water tray was simple: white ceramic mugs, a bamboo tray.
God Himself is graceful,
the Prophet said,
and elegance pleases Him.
    The Shrawi sons lived by this code, which their father taught them with unrelenting drive. Abu Tahsin was a Bedouin who'd grown up in the desert, where a man kept only what he could carry. He believed that nothing material was worth having. "You can't take it with you when you die," he would say. "Remember that! No baggage on the final journey." He was well known for giving things away, not just money but cars and boats and purebred horses. The sons too gave their belongings away, so that the family was in effect a channel through which vast treasures flowed but never quite rested.
    And that,
thought Nayir,
is why I can stand them.
    He heard shuffling in the hallway. The door opened and the Shrawi brothers entered the room with two other men, whom Nayir vaguely recognized as cousins. The brothers greeted him with hugs and a kiss on each cheek. Had he been blind, he could have identified them by their colognes alone—Tahsin wore Gucci, Fahad wore Giorgio. But when he cheeked Othman, he smelled a musk that suggested a sweaty sleep.
    The eldest brother, Tahsin, introduced the cousins, one of whom shook Nayir's hand with a jerk and said, "You're the Bedouin I'm always hearing about!"
    "Nayir's not a Bedouin," Othman remarked.
    "Oh—what are you, then?" the cousin asked, his tone suggesting the existence of a new and fantastical race that would be even funnier and more backward than the Bedouin.
    "Palestinian," Othman said, preempting Nayir.
    "Ah, Palestinian." The cousin plunked onto a sofa and glanced up at Nayir, who stood uncomfortably in the center of the room. There was nothing funny about a Palestinian. All eyes studied his ill-fitting suit, and Nayir wondered for the thousandth time what it was about him that made people stare. Perhaps it was his size, which, coupled with a stern manner, made him seem unfriendly. Either that or he looked like a dolt, a dusty, understimulated man who had spent too long in the stupefying heat.
    "It's good to see you, Nayir. Please, sit down." Tahsin spread his arm in a generous arc, gathered his robe in his fist, and settled onto a sofa. He laid his manicured hands on his lap, one hand poised to fidget with the mammoth ring on his pinkie. "We would offer something, but—"
    Nayir raised a hand. It was gauche to offer well-wishers food until three days after the funeral. Othman motioned him to sit on one of the white foam