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in between me and my mother, and that because he was there, my mother turned away. But my meanest sister-in-law, Yerushalmit, who was always out to get me and always saw trouble where others saw goodness, said that this was a lie and that the boy ran into the house and abandoned me to my mother’s wrath. She added that my mother beat me, but with little enthusiasm, before ordering my sister-in-law Masudah to take me home, clean me up, and not to dare bring me back until the next morning.
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    That night I learned that the strange boy was my cousin Asaf, whose name meant gatherer. He was the youngest son of my father’s brother—Uncle Zecharia, the man whose arm was in a sling. I had never met either of them before, but I had heard many stories about Uncle Zecharia. Iknew that he was a spice merchant and a procurer of rare unguents and perfume ingredients. Once I overheard someone say that a precious vial of agarwood attar had been sent to a bride by my uncle Zecharia, whose relation to the bride was also unclear to me. Another time I overheard my mother call my uncle by a name that both shocked and amused me, for it was the same as a word that I knew—from eavesdropping on my brothers—that referred to a man’s flaccid penis. Not long after, I heard my father brag to a friend that his brother was once the guest of an African prince in Djibouti. Another time, I heard him say that his brother had been involved in an ugly brawl with Chinese merchants in the Port of Mocha. My father had two living brothers: Uncle Barhun, who lived in Aden, and was married to my Aunt Rahel, the witch in my mother’s stories, and Uncle Zecharia, the eldest, who had never before come to Qaraah. I never thought Uncle Zecharia’s colorful travels would lead to our doorstep. But here he was.
    After the attack, Asaf and my uncle had made their way through the Naquum Mountains. They came to us seeking refuge. My uncle was weak and in need of a place to rest and heal. Their cart was laden with their entire store of worldly goods, which, thanks to the thieves, had been reduced considerably. But among my uncle’s meager possessions remained a true prize, a small deerskin Torah that he had somehow acquired from an Iraqi cedar-essence merchant. The Torah was in tatters, and should have been buried long ago. But Uncle Zecharia was the sort of man who saw wholeness where others saw deficiency, and was in the habit of reading the weekly portion from this sad little Torah, even though it would not have passed holy muster. The Torah had been buried under rags in the cart in order to protect it from the elements and criminal eyes. Now it was brought into my father’s house and stored in a place of honor: the big wooden chest on the top floor of the house, in the men’s salon. The chest had been part of my mother’s dowry, and was decorated with bone and iron inlay. It was the only chest in the house that had a lock on it. It is hard to say what flustered my mother more, having to host her wounded brother-in-law or the deerskin Torah, for she venerated holy books, and saw it as a grave and fraught responsibility to be given charge of such a treasure, albeit a pasul one, fouled by its own poor condition.
    But the deerskin Torah was not the center of attention, and only my mother paid it much heed. Uncle Zecharia was garrulous that first night.He explained how even before the attack he had been growing tired of his itinerant life, and had been contemplating coming to Qaraah. Asaf, like me, was his father’s youngest child, the child of his mother’s old age. Three older children in the family were all married and settled in homes along his father’s route—a daughter in Bombay, a son in Jerusalem, another son in Egypt, in a suburb of Alexandria. Asaf’s mother had died giving birth to him, and he had spent his babyhood in the saddle in front of his father.
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