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stomping and snorting of the camels and the harsh voices of the men.
    “They hurt Papa,” Zainab said.
    “Hush,” said her mother. “They will take us back to the city. They will care for us.”
    “Will they make him better?”
    “Hush…” Her mother reached over to her and touched her on the arm. “They will not harm us. They will take us back to the sheik.”
    “I don’t want to go,” Zainab said in a whisper.
    “We have no choice.”
    The other children made low mewling noises, like hungry animals. Mother crawled toward them.
    “Get up,” said one of the traders, a lean man wrapped in a gray djellabah, his bald head catching the reflection of the early rising light.
    “My children,” her mother said.
    “They are my children now,” the trader said.
    “We belong to the sheik,” mother said. “If you harm us he will be angry.”
    “You belong to us now,” the trader said. “Do you think the sheik will be happy to see you return after you have run from him? You are safer with us than with him. Is that not right, brothers?”
    How many were there? Five, six? Most of them muttered their assent.
    The sun lifted up from the eastern rim of the desert, splashing all of them in glorious red first light. The men sat her on a camel, with her siblings behind her. Her mother rode behind one of the traders, her hands bound, and somewhat off balance as they trotted away from the broad beaming rays of the newly risen sun. They rode west along the river. Zainab could hear her mother weep into her scarf as they moved slowly along.
    “Where is Papa?” asked one of her sisters.
    Zainab herself began to weep.
    “You cannot do this to us,” she heard her mother say in protest to one of the traders. “We belong to—”
    Rough rude sound of flesh meeting flesh.
    “We do what we must do,” the trader said, moving on his beast up in rank, so that he led the little troop further west along the north bank of the river. The air grew thick with dust as the wind sailed down from the north, and the traders turned their faces away from it, one of them motioning for Zainab to cover her nose and mouth in her scarf. The children began weeping again and she tried to quiet them. It was hot. They were frightened. It was difficult to breathe. A coughing spell overtook her, to the point where one of the traders trotted up to her on his beast and handed her a vessel of water.
    “Drink,” he said.
    She refused.
    “Drink, Zainab,” her mother called from where she rode along.
    As she often would over the years, she felt beneath her clothing for the stone, and rubbed her fingers on it, rubbing, rubbing. Rubbing helped pass the minutes, it helped pass the hours.
    One of her siblings coughed, and Zainab looked around and saw that the sun had slid across the southern sky, pointing them now to the west. That much geography she knew—this river ran from west to east, at least up to the near-gates of the city she had just left behind—and the sun rose in the east and set just ahead, in the mountains from whence the river sprang—she had heard the traders talking about the source of the river—and…and…and…Well, she did not know much more than that about the land and water, but she knew that God lived in the sky and watched over those who obeyed his laws.
    Did she obey his laws?
    “She’s just a child,” she remembered her mother saying once, when she and the jar-maker talked about the future of their older daughter. Their voices in her mind seemed so real to her, even though she knew her father lay sprawled on the stones back at that rough encampment they had left behind so many hours ago. Now the sun settled itself toward the western horizon. Fingers of light reached past it toward a few straggling clouds, turning them orange and then pink and then a certain variety of blue for which she had no name. These soon faded into the darkening sky behind them. She appeared to be riding toward the end of the earth, and after the short