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By Root 1992 0

his wife Nazik. Nazik wore a long white dress cut in the traditional Bedouin style, with a blue waistband and bare-headed, her thick black hair drawn back into a flat comb and then left to fall down her back. Frank had read enough to know that this was all wrong; among the Bedouin of the Awlad ‘Ali, women wore black dresses and red sashes, to indicate their impurity, sexuality, and moral inferiority, and they kept their heads covered, and used the veil in an elaborate hierarchical code of modesty. All in deference to male power, so that Nazik’s clothes would be deeply shocking to her mother and grandmothers, even if she was, as now, wearing them before an outsider who didn’t really matter. But if he knew enough to understand, then it was a sign.

And then at one point, when they were all laughing, Nazik rose at Zeyk’s request to get them dessert, and she said to Zeyk with a laugh, “Yes, master.”

Zeyk scowled and said, “Go, slave,” and took a swipe at her, and she snapped her teeth at him. They laughed at Frank’s fierce blush, and saw that he understood: they were mocking him, and also breaking the Bedouin taboo against showing marital affection of any kind, to anyone. Nazik came over and put her fingertip on his shoulder, which shocked him further. “We are only joking with you, you know,” she said. “We women heard about your declaration to the men, and we love you for it. You could have as many wives among us as an Ottoman sultan. Because there is some truth to what you said, too much.” She nodded seriously, and pointed a finger at Zeyk, who wiped the grin from his face and nodded as well. Nazik went on: “But so much depends on the people within the laws, don’t you find? The men in this caravan are good men, smart men. And the women are even smarter, and we have taken over entirely.” Zeyk’s eyebrows shot up, and Nazik laughed. “No, really, we have only taken our share. Seriously.”

“But where are you, then?” Frank said. “I mean where are the caravan’s women, during the day? What do you do?”

“We work,” Nazik said simply. “Take a look, you’ll see us.”

“Doing all the kinds of work?”

“Oh yes. Perhaps not where you can see us much. There are still some— habits, customs. We are reclusive, separate, we have our own world— it is perhaps not good. We Bedu tend to group together, men and women. We have our traditions, you see, and they endure. But there is much that is changing here, changing fast. So that this is the next stage of the Islamic way. We are . . .” She searched for the word.

“Utopia,” Zeyk suggested. “The Moslem utopia.”

She waggled a hand doubtfully. “History,” she said. “The hadj to utopia.”

Zeyk laughed with pleasure. “But the hadj is the destination,” he said. “That is what the mullahs always teach us. So we are already there, no?” And he and his wife smiled at each other, a private communication with a high density of information exchange, a smile which they shared, for a moment, with Frank. And their talk veered elsewhere.

• • •

In practical terms Al-Qahira was the pan-Arab dream come alive, as all the Arab nations had contributed money and people to the Mahjaris. The mix of Arab nationalities on Mars was complete, but in the individual caravans it separated out a bit. Still, they mixed; and whether they came from the oil-rich nations or the oil-poor ones didn’t seem to matter. Here among the foreigners they were all cousins. Syrians and Iraqis, Egyptians and Saudis, Gulf Staters and Palestinians, Libyans and Bedouins. All cousins here.

• • •

Frank began to feel better. He slept deeply again, refreshed by the timeslip in every day, a little slack in the circadian rhythm, the body’s own time off. Indeed all life in the caravan had an altered duration, as if the moment itself had dilated; he felt there was time to spare, that there was never a reason to hurry.

And the seasons rolled by. The sun set in almost the same spot every night, shifting ever so slowly; they lived entirely by the Martian calendar now, it was the only new year they noticed or celebrated: Ls = 0, the start of northern spring, of the