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an Arab. Here in
Has-sanein's tent that relaxed definition would not do. "I am Berber," I told him.
"I do not know Berbers. We are Bani Salim." "Badawi?" I asked.
"Bedu," he corrected me. It turned out that the word I'd always used for the Arabian nomads, Badawi or Bedouin, was an inelegant plural of a plural. The nomads themselves preferred Bedu, which derives from the word for desert.
"You treated me?" I said.
Hassanein nodded. He reached out his hand. In the flickering lamplight, I could see the dusting of sand on the hairs of his arm, like sugar on a lemon cake. He lightly touched my corymbic implants. "You are cursed," he said. I didn't reply. Apparently he was a strict Muslim who felt that I was going to hell because I'd had my brain wired. "You are doubly cursed," he said. Even here, my sec-ond implant was a topic of conversation. I wondered where my rack of moddies and daddies was. "Hungry," I said.
He nodded. "Tomorrow, you may eat, inshallah." If God wills. It was hard for me to imagine that Allah had brought me through whatever trials I'd endured, just to keep me from having breakfast in the morning. He picked up the lamp and held it close to my face. I With a grimy thumb he pulled down my eyelid and ex-amined my eye. He had me open my mouth, and he looked at my tongue and the back of my throat. He bent forward and put his ear on my chest, then had me cough. He poked and prodded me expertly. "School," I said, pointing at him. "University." He laughed and shook his head. He slowly bent my legs up and then tickled the soles of my feet. He pressed on my fingernails and watched to see how long it took for the color to return.
"Doctor?" I asked.
He shook his head again. Then he looked at me and came to some decision. He grabbed his keffiya and pulled it loose. I was astonished to see that he had his own moddy plug on the crown of his skull. Then he carefully wrapped the keffiya around his head again.
I looked at him questioningly. "Cursed," I said.
"Yes," he said. He wore a stoic expression. "I am the
shaykh of the Bani Salim. It is my responsibility. I must
wear the mark of the shaitan." '
"How many moddies?" I asked.
He didn't understand the word "moddies." I re-phrased the question, and found out that he'd had his skull amped so that he could use just two modules: the doctor moddy, and one that made him the equivalent of a learned religious leader. Those were all he owned. In the arid wilderness that was home to the Bani Salim, Has-sanein was the wise elder who had, in his own eyes, damned his soul for the sake of his tribe. I realized that we were understanding each other thanks to grammar and vocabulary built into the doctor : moddy. When he took it out, we'd have as much trouble communicating as we'd had before. I was getting too weary to keep up this conversation any further, though. Any more would have to wait until tomorrow.
He gave me a capsule to help me sleep through the
night. I swallowed it with more of the water from the
goatskin. "May you arise in the morning in well-being, O
Shaykh," he said. j
"God bless you, O Wise One," I murmured. He left * the lamp burning on the sand floor beside me, and stood up. He went out into the darkness, and I heard him drop the tent flap behind him. I still didn't know where I was, and I didn't know a damn thing about the Bani Salim, but for some reason I felt perfectly safe. I fell asleep quickly and woke up only once during the night, to see Noora sitting crosslegged against the black wall of the tent, asleep. When I woke again in the morning, I could see more clearly. I raised my head a little and stared out through the bright triangle. Now I could see a landscape of golden sand and, not far away, two hobbled camels. In the tent, Noora still watched over me. She had awakened before me, and when she saw me move my head, she came closer. She still self-consciously drew the edge of her head scarf across her face, which was a shame because she was very pretty. "Thought we