because the doctor could point to nothing physically wrong with him. The brothers took him to Little Syria, and before the disoriented Saleh could protest they had found him a place to live. It cost only a few pennies a week: a tiny room in a damp cellar that smelled of rotting vegetables. The only light came from a small grate, high on the wall. The young men took him around the neighborhood and showed him where he could buy milk and ice, salt and sugar. Then they purchased sacks full of peddling notions, wished him good luck, and left town for a place called Grand Rapids. That evening Saleh found in his pockets two dollars in change that had not been there before. After weeks of seasickness and exhaustion, he didn’t even have the strength to be angry.
And so once again he became Ice Cream Saleh. The streets of New York were more crowded and treacherous than Homs, but his route was smaller and simpler, a narrow loop: Washington Street south to Cedar, then Greenwich north to Park, and back to Washington Street again. The children learned just as quickly as their Homs cousins to put the coin in his outstretched hand, and never to look into his eyes.
One sweltering afternoon, he was scooping ice cream into his small tin bowls when he felt a soft hand touch his elbow. Startled, he turned and glimpsed a woman’s cheekbone. Quickly he looked away. “Sir?” a voice said. “I have water for you, if you’d like. It’s so hot today.”
For a moment he considered refusing. But it was indeed incredibly hot, a humid oppression like none he’d ever known. His throat felt thick, and his head ached. He realized he didn’t have the strength to refuse. “Thank you,” he said finally, and held out one hand toward the direction of her voice.
She must have appeared puzzled, for he heard a child’s voice say, “You’ll have to give him the glass, he never looks at anyone.”
“Oh, I see,” the woman said. Carefully she placed the glass of water in his hand. The water was cool and clean, and he drank it down. “Thank you,” he said again, holding the glass out to her.
“You’re welcome. May I ask, what is your name?”
“Mahmoud Saleh. From Homs.”
“Mahmoud, I’m Maryam Faddoul. We’re standing in front of my coffeehouse. I live upstairs with my husband. If you’re in need of anything—more water, or a place to sit out of the sun—please, come in.”
“Thank you, madam,” he said to her.
“Please call me Maryam,” she said, and there was a friendly smile in her voice. “Everyone does.”
After that day, Maryam would often come out and speak with him and the children, whenever his slow trudge took him past her shop. The children all seemed to like Maryam: she took them seriously, remembered their names and the details of their lives. When Maryam was at his side he was inundated with customers, not just children but their mothers as well, and even merchants and factory workers returning home at the end of a shift. His route was a fraction of what it had been in Homs, but he sold just as much ice cream, if not more. In a way it was exasperating: he hadn’t come to America to succeed, but it seemed that America would not let him fail.
Now, with his churn in tow, he considered Maryam’s news of the Bedouin apprentice as he passed Arbeely’s shop. He’d never gone in, only felt the wave of heat from the open door. For a moment he considered it. Then, irritated at memories, he resolved to give no more thought to Maryam’s news but only watched the dark shapes of his feet as they moved inexorably toward his cellar home.
In the Syrian Desert, the three days of rain came to an end. The waters soaked into the earth, and soon green shoots were carpeting the lowlands, spreading up the sides of the hills. For the Bedouin tribes, these brief days were of great significance: a chance to turn their animals out to pasture and let them eat their fill, before the days grew hotter and the new growth died away.
And so it happened that one morning a Bedouin girl named Fadwa al-Hadid drove her small flock of goats out to the valley near her family’s encampment. Singing softly to herself and switching the straying goats with a thin branch, she crested a small ridge—and there, glinting in the valley, was an enormous palace made entirely of glass.
She goggled at it for a moment before deciding that it was, indeed, truly there. Bursting with excitement, she gathered her goats, ran them back to the encampment, and rushed into her father’s tent shouting about a shining palace that had suddenly appeared in the valley.
“It must have been a mirage,” said her father, Jalal ibn Karim al-Hadid, who was known to his clan as Abu Yusuf. Her mother, Fatim, simply snorted and shook her head, and went back to nursing her youngest. But the girl, who was fifteen, stubborn, and headstrong, dragged her father from the tent, pleading with him to go look at the palace with her.
“Daughter, you simply can’t have seen what you thought you saw,” said Abu Yusuf.
“Do you think me a child? I know a mirage when I see one,” she insisted. “And it stood as real before me as you do now.”
Abu Yusuf sighed. He knew that look in his daughter’s eye, that blazing indignation that defied any attempt at reason. Worse, he knew it was his own fault. Their clan had been fortunate of late, and it had made him indulgent. The winter had been mild, and the rains had come on time. His brothers’ wives had both born thriving sons. At the turning of the year, as Abu Yusuf had sat warm in the glow of the fires and watched his clan as they ate and played and squabbled around him, he’d told himself that perhaps finding a husband for Fadwa could wait. Let the girl have one more year with her family, before sending her away. But now Abu Yusuf wondered if his wife was right: perhaps he had coddled his only daughter beyond reason.
“I don’t have time to argue about nonsense,” he told her sharply. “Your uncles and I are taking the sheep to pasture. If there’s a magical palace out there, we’ll see it. Now go and help your mother.”
“But—”
“Girl, do as I say!”
He rarely shouted. She drew back, stung. Then she turned and ran into the women’s tent.
Fatim, who’d heard it all, came in after her and clucked her tongue at her daughter. Fadwa sniffed and avoided her eyes. She sat herself in front of the low table where the day’s dough was rising and began to rip the dough to pieces and pound them flat, using rather more force than necessary. Her mother sighed at the noise, but said nothing. Better the girl exhaust herself than stay a simmering nuisance all morning.
The women cooked and milked and mended as the sun traced its familiar path through the sky. Fadwa bathed her little cousins, and endured their howls and recriminations. The sun set, and still the men were not yet returned. Fatim’s expression began to darken. Bandits were rare in their valley, but even so, three men and a large herd of sheep would make an easy target. “Enough of that,” she snapped at Fadwa, who was struggling to clothe a squirming boy. “I’ll do it, since you can’t. Go and sew your wedding dress.”
Fadwa obeyed, though she’d rather do just about anything else. She was no good at fine stitching, she had little patience for it; she could weave well enough, and mend a tent as quick as Fatim, but embroidery? Little stitches arranged just so? It was dull work, and it made her go cross-eyed. More than once Fatim had looked over her daughter’s progress and commanded her to rip it all out again. No girl of hers, she declared, would be married in such a sloppy dress.
If it were up to Fadwa, she would toss the dress into the cooking fire
