LITMIR.BIZ

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open, of course. Never know when something will blow up in Yemen.”

      “Sure, but you don’t have to put it quite that way.”

      This brought a chuckle from Mac.

      I continued. “I’m planning to do some backgrounders. I expect to head to Egypt on schedule, in two weeks.” Inshallah, I added to myself. God willing.

      “Well, unless something like war happens, please do. Goddammit, I need some copy!” His voice softened. “You know how impressed the Pulitzer people were with your coverage of the civil war the last time. Even with the grief it brought you.”

      His mention of the war brought my heart into my throat for just a moment. “I love Yemen, Mac. All that stuff could have happened anywhere.” Not precisely true, but I wanted to put his mind to rest. I also hoped to put my own mind at rest.

      Like others who hadn’t been there, Mac didn’t understand that, to me, Yemen is a world down the rabbit hole, a medieval Narnia. A kaleidoscope of color, sound, and fantasy. A place that draws me like a spider web—glittery, sticky, unforgiving. Once you’ve been in Yemen, you can never quite escape it.

      “I’ll do backgrounders,” I assured him. “You know, about the fabulous architecture, the mountains, the whole exotic place. Independent mountain folk. Mysterious women. Armed warriors.” I warmed to my pep talk as the words poured forth.

      “And armed terrorists,” he mused. Always looking on the bright side, Mac was sitting at his desk on a Washington afternoon while we were in the midst of night here.

      Still, he had a point. Rumors were just beginning in well-read circles that terrorists who used to be our allies in Afghanistan against the Soviets might be a threat to America now that they had declared jihad against infidels.

      “Yemen doesn’t feel dangerous when you’re here,” I assured Mac.

      “Just one thing, Elizabeth.” His voice sounded remote. “I don’t want the Trib to be making any news with you over there. I don’t want any demands for ransom, any Embassy complaints that we’re mixing in the CIA’s business. I don’t want to see any bruises, broken bones, or gunshot wounds when you get back. Okay?” His worry was touching.

      “Why, Mac Snyder. I’m surprised at you. You know you can trust me to take care of myself.”

      He tried to laugh but just harrumphed. We both hung up.

      My connection severed, I missed Washington for a moment. Almost-bare trees along 18th Street; skies looming gray over pedestrians in sober suits with umbrellas. The smell of rotting leaves. So Washington. So far away.

      Yes, I was an alien. I rinsed off the plane ride and donned my nightgown. It would take Emma tonight for me to read myself to sleep. I felt rather alone.

      Suddenly, that loneliness eased. With a brief meow of greeting, a handsome calico cat curled itself around windowsills to enter my room and reached a paw out for a bite of the uninteresting biscuit that had come with my tea. Demand is more the term. When I tried to break the biscuit to offer it, the cat sliced decisively with her claws, knocking it out of my hand.

      “Okay, kitty,” I said, impressed she hadn’t scratched me. She nibbled delicately, and I left the window open enough for her to leave when she wished.

      I was asleep long before I finished drinking the tea. My last waking thought was that, despite the chill air coming in from the open window, my feet were not cold. Something warm and furry had curled up on them and was purring.

      I had a friend.

      CHAPTER 6

      The desert, I’ve found, is a good place for the curious, for even on a short walk you can expect the unexpected, a glimpse of something you’ve never seen before… It’s the desert—open, apparently lifeless, with few places to conceal anything—where secrets, perhaps the best secrets, are to be found.

      Nicholas Clapp, Sheba

      Tom Reilly often took advantage of his status as a foreigner to go out at night. For one thing, it kept the short working morning followed by the long lunch and qat hours sacred. For another, soldiers usually didn’t accost ferengi, even during curfew hours. The code of Arab hospitality held even in those situations.

      And what could a foreigner do that would affect Yemen in any basic way? Tom enjoyed the casual attitude most Yemenis had toward guests, even if the guests stayed on far past their invitation.

      Sometimes he wondered what they thought of him, really. He had lots of qat friends. But were they friends behind his back? Yemenis were irreverent and always joking. Did they joke about him?

      Fortunately for his purposes, Tom’s business dealings had not aroused much curiosity in the capital. That would have been most inconvenient.

      On this evening, Tom Reilly plunged ahead into the narrow alleys of the souq, not looking left or right. He had a man to meet about a dog.

      CHAPTER 7

      “We don’t have to show the world what Islam is any more,” Zafran declared. “We have to show people what true Islam is.”

      Victoria Clark, Yemen, Dancing on the Heads of Snakes

      Halima rolled over as moonlight hit her face, faint red, blue, green through the colored glass arch above one of the windows in the mufraj. For a moment, her natural optimism tried to emulate the moon.

      Then hellish reality hit her again. Ali. Dear, mischievous, naïve Ali. What had he done? Why had he brought the family to this dreadful pass?

      Halima pulled the handspun cotton cover over herself. The early morning chill had penetrated her aching body. From the kitchen below, smells of baking bread floated up. For women in the household, work was hardly nine to five. The call to prayer started gradually from the Great Mosque near her house and spread quickly to the minarets of both the Old City and the new until the air was full of the familiar tremulous calls, interrupting and overlapping each other. She had nearly slept through it.

      Her cousin, Zuheyla, who had slept on a thin mufraj mattress near her, must have let her sleep. She was gone now. It had been a sleepless night for both of them.

      Had Elizabeth arrived last night? What a terrible breach of hospitality to not meet her, or even send a driver out with her name on a card. It broke Halima’s heart.

      But her family was now watched by the President’s own security forces. If connections with Elizabeth were known, she would be unable to help. She might even be endangered, herself. Could anyone help, honestly? It felt like the end of the world.

      She rose, did the ritual ablutions, brought out her prayer rug, and appealed to the Divine.

      CHAPTER 8

      A curious thing happens on the Jol—a constant bird-like twitter in the moonlight, a pleasant and companionable noise… At about 3 a.m. the Great Bear appeared for half an hour, wheeling low over the horizon and the Polar star. My companions murmured that they heard footsteps; they made a small clatter of stones, unlike a wild animal… I blamed myself for a camp so defencelessly scattered…

      Freya Stark, A Winter in Arabia

      The cat was gone when I woke at four to the cacophonous sounds of the call to prayer from every mosque in Sana’a. I lay there soaking it up. Yemeni imams don’t have the studied melodic smoothness of those in Istanbul or Cairo, they shout out the message in syncopated rhythms: Allah huwa akbar…Allah is great. There is no God but God.

      They sound convincing—particularly in the mysterious pre-dawn hour.

      I paused a moment to meditate in my own way. My first thought was of my friend Halima. What could be happening to her? Why did she need me? How could I find her? Perhaps we both needed divine guidance!

      I read some of Freya Stark’s Southern Gates of Arabia, about her 1936 adventures on a donkey following the ancient spice route in the Wadi Hadhramaut in Yemen’s southeast near the Empty Quarter, then fell back

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