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names while jabbing the spoon in the air for emphasis. My father was speaking, “Oh my,” he sputtered. “Tell me everything. Don’t leave out a single detail.”
    The sickly looking man took a deep breath. He wiped his brow with his good hand, then he began, “We were in the middle of our annual western journey. We were traveling by boat from Bombay to Oman. Once on land, we hired camels and were crossing the southern edge of the Rub’ al Khali. We reached a place called the Oasis of Screams. We stopped in the oasis to water our camels, and spent two nights enjoying the hospitality of the Bedouin who made their camp there. On the third night catastrophe struck. We were beset upon by a pair of criminals. I heard my camels moaning, woke up, went to see what the trouble was. When the thieves saw me, one drew a knife and slashed me deeply in the arm, you see, right here, just below the shoulder. The thieves made off with the bulk of my merchandise, and left me bleeding to death in a fetid puddle of sand where the terrified camels had pissed out their fear at the goings-on.”
    The man stopped talking. My father said, “And then what? Who tended your injuries?” But before the stranger could answer, I heard footsteps and jumped off the basin. I crawled under a nearby rosebush. Thorns stabbed my back, but I ignored the pain. If my mother found me eavesdropping, she would beat me with that wooden spoon. But the footsteps were not my mother’s; they belonged to a boy who looked about my age. He was crouching down and staring at me under the bush, motioning for me to come out. Slowly, I obliged. Soon we stood face-to-face. I had never seen him before. I assumed that he belonged with the man in the house, but they didn’t look anything alike. He was wearing a red cap, a wrinkled and patched brown suit. His gently sloping eyes were a startling eggshell blue. He had a pleasant upturned nose, high cheeks, and very pretty lips, soft and round like a girl’s. His twisted earlocks hung all the way down to his chin. His front teeth were missing, though one was in the process of growing in. I too was missing my front teeth, and at the sight of his, I felt my tongue explore the empty spaces in my mouth. I was scratched up and tousled from my run home, my fallon the escarpment, and my tenure under the rosebush. My headdress had come askew, and the point was tilting toward my right ear, the tassels thrown over my neck. He crooked his hand, and motioned for me to get up. I righted my headdress and followed him around to the front of our house, where a donkey cart was tied to the hitching post. The donkey was out of the harness, eating from the trough my father used to feed Pishtish, our donkey, and Pishtish was tied to the other side of the trough, reluctantly sharing his dinner with the interloper. The boy climbed onto the cart and dug under some blankets. He pulled something out, scrambled back down, and reached for my hand. He opened my fingers, for they were clenched in a fist, and put something on my palm. It was a crude little amulet, a round wooden disk affixed to a square leather backing. I had seen one like this before. My brother Ephrim wore one around his neck for a while, before he was wed. I knew that in between the wooden disk and the leather backing would be a tiny piece of parchment writ with either an angel’s name, or one of the many names of God. I wondered which name was inscribed on this little amulet—whether it was a name I knew, or one of the more mysterious names that were never pronounced when girls were listening. We heard a noise from the front of the house. The boy looked me straight in the eye and then nodded down at the amulet. I slid it into my pocket.
    My mother burst out the front door. I instinctively crouched down and curled up into a little ball, the better to ward off her blows. Masudah said that she watched out the kitchen window and saw the boy step