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were friends," I said. I didn't have so much trouble talking this morning.
Her brows drew together and she shook her head. I wasn't having trouble talking, but I was still having trouble being understood. I tried again, speaking more slowly and using both hands to amplify my words. "We... are ... friends," she said. Each word was strangely accented, but I could decipher the dialect if she gave me a little time. "You . . . guest ... of ... Bani Salim."
Ah, the legendary hospitality of the Bedu! "Hassanein is your father?" I asked. She shook her head; I didn't know if she was denying the relationship or if she just hadn't understood my question. I repeated it more slowly. "Shaykh . . . Hassanein , . . father's . . . brother," she said.
After that, we both got used to speaking simply and putting space between our words. It wasn't long before we weren't having any trouble following each other, even at normal conversational speed.
"Where are we?" I asked. I had to find where I was in relation to the city, and how far from the nearest outpost of civilization.
Noora's brow wrinkled again as she considered her geography. She poked a forefinger into the sand in front of her. "Here is Bir Balagh. The Bani Salim have camped here two weeks." She poked another hole in the sand, about three inches from the first. "Here is Khaba well, three days south." She reached across the much greater distance between us and made another hole with her fin-ger. "Here is Mughshin. Mughshin is hauta."
"What's hauta?" I asked.
"A holy place, Shaykh Marid. The Bani Salim will meet other tribes there, and sell their camel herd."
Fine, I thought, we were all headed for Mughshin. I'd never heard of Mughshin, and I imagined it was probably just a little patch of palm trees and a well, stuck in the middle of the awful desert. It most likely didn't have a suborbital shuttle field nearby. I knew I was lost some-where in the kingdoms and unmarked tribal turfs of Ara-bia. "How far from Riyadh?" I asked.
. "I don't know Riyadh," said Noora. Riyadh was the former capital of her country, when it had been united under the House of Saud. It was still a great city.
"Mecca?"
"Makkah," she corrected me. She thought for a few seconds, then pointed confidently across my body.
"That way," I said. "Good. How far?" Noora only shrugged. I hadn't learned very much.
"I'm sorry," she said. "The old shaykh asked the same questions. Maybe Uncle Hassanein knows more."
The old shaykh! I'd been so wrapped up in my own misery that I'd forgotten about Papa. "The old shaykh is
alive?"
"Yes, thanks to you, and thanks to the wisdom of Un-cle Hassanein. When Hilal and bin Turki found the two of you on the dunes, they thought you were both dead. They came back to our camp, and if they hadn't told Uncle Hassanein about you later that evening, you surely would be dead."
I stared at her for a moment. "Hilal and bin Turki just left us out there?"
She shrugged. "They thought you were dead."
I shivered. "Glad it crossed their minds to mention us while they were sitting comfortably around the communal fire."
Noora didn't catch my bitterness. "Uncle Hassanein brought you back to camp. This is his tent. The old shaykh is in the tent of bin Musaid." Her eyes lowered when she mentioned his name.
"Then where are your uncle and bin Musaid sleep-ing?" I asked.
"They sleep with the others who have no tents. On the sand by the fire."
That naturally made me feel a little guilty, because I knew the desert got very cold at night. "How is the old shaykh?" I asked.
"He is getting stronger every day. He suffered greatly from exposure and thirst, but not as greatly as you. It was your sacrifice that kept him alive, Shaykh Marid."
I didn't remember any sacrifice. I didn't remember anything about what we'd been through. Noora must have seen my confusion, because she reached out and almost touched my implants. "These," she said. "You abused them and now you suffer, but it saved the life of the old shaykh. He wants very