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and is usually rounded out with one of the ninety-nine names of God. In this case, the irony was that the American boy was Hassan’s, in every respect you could think of except, perhaps, genetically. The word around the Street was that Abdul-Hassan had not been born a boy, in exactly the same way that Yasmin had not been born a girl; but no one I knew had the time or the inclination to launch a full-scale investigation.
    Abdul-Hassan asked me something in English. It was a mystery to the casual bargain hunter just what Hassan’s shop dealt in. That was because it was virtually empty; Hassan’s shop dealt in everything, and so there was no vital reason to display anything. I couldn’t understand English, so I just jerked my thumb toward the stained, block-printed curtain. The boy nodded and went back to his daydreaming.
    I passed through the curtain, the storeroom, and the alley. Just as I came to the iron door, it swung outward almost silently. “Open sesame,” I whispered. Then I stepped into a dimly lighted room and looked around. The drugs made me forget to be afraid. They made me forget to be cautious, too; but my instincts are my livelihood, and my instincts are firing away morning and evening, drugs or no drugs. Hassan reclined on a small mountain of cushions, puffing on a narjîlah. I smelled the tang of hashish; the burbling of Hassan’s water pipe was the only sound in the room. Nikki sat stiffly on the edge of a rug, evidently terrified, with a cup of tea in front of her crossed legs. Abdoulaye rested on a few cushions, whispering into Hassan’s ear. Hassan’s expression was as empty as a handful of wind. This was his tea party; I stood and waited for him to speak.
    “Ahlan wa sahlan!” he said, smiling briefly. It was a formal greeting, meaning something like “you have come to your people and level ground.” It was intended to set the tone for the rest of this parlay. I gave the proper response, and was invited to be seated. I sat beside Nikki; I noticed that she was wearing a single add-on in the midst of her pale blond hair. It must have been an Arabic-language daddy, because I knew she couldn’t understand a word of it without one. I accepted a small cup of coffee, heavily spiced with cardamom. I raised the cup to Hassan and said, “May your table last forever.”
    Hassan wafted a hand in the air and said, “May Allah lengthen your life.” Then I was given another cup of coffee. I nudged Nikki, who had not drunk her tea. You just can’t expect business to start immediately, not until you’d drunk at least three cups of coffee. If you declined sooner, you risked insulting your host. All the while the coffee- and tea-drinking was going on, Hassan and I asked after the health of the other’s family and friends, and called on Allah to bless this one and that one and protect all of us and the whole Muslim world from the depredations of the infidel.
    I murmured under my breath to Nikki to keep downing the odd-tasting tea. Her presence here was distasteful to Hassan for two reasons: she was a prostitute, and she wasn’t a real woman. The Muslims have never made up their minds about that. They treated their women as second-class citizens, but they weren’t exactly sure what to do with men who became women. The Qur’ân evidently makes no provisions for such things. The fact that I myself wasn’t exactly a devotee of the Book in which there is no doubt didn’t help matters. So Hassan and I kept drinking and nodding and smiling and praising Allah and trading pleasantries tit for tat, like a tennis match. The most frequent expression in the Muslim world is inshallah, if God wills. It removes all guilt: blame it on Allah. If the oasis dries up and blows away, it was Allah’s will. If you get caught sleeping with your brother’s wife, it was Allah’s will. Getting your hand or your cock or your head chopped off in reprisal is Allah’s will, too. Nothing much gets done in the Budayeen without