Allah akbar.  The call broke through the desert air and jarred Elizabeth into consciousness.  She rolled over and kissed Ali.

"It's six o'clock, baby, I'm going," she whispered.  He was flat on his back, chest rising and falling, rising and falling.  She pulled her hand out from under the covers and stroked his hair, smoothing the black bangs off his forehead.

"Mmmm," he said, smiling.  He rolled on his side to face her.  He put his hand on the small of her back and pulled her to him.  Their bellies pressed snug against each other.  He was warm under the covers.  Her own personal space heater, she called him.  And a good thing, too.  The air conditioner had been running all night, and the room felt refrigerated.

"Hi, baby," she said, snuggling her nose into the crook of his neck.  She loved the smell of him.  Light glinted through the gap where the curtains met in front of the patio door.  He ran his hand up her spine, over her shoulder, down her chest, and cupped her left breast.  She covered his hand with hers and sighed.

Allah akbar.

"Sweetheart, I'd better go," she whispered into his ear.

He opened his eyes.  "What time is it?"

"Six o'clock."  She climbed out of the deep indentation in the mattress, stood by the side of the bed and stretched, reaching to the ceiling with her fingertips.

He groaned.  "Don't go just yet.  Come back to bed."  She reached into the dresser and pulled out a neatly folded white garment.  His eyes followed her.  "Please?"

She slipped his dishdasha over her head.  The long cotton robe felt cool on her bare skin.  "Tonight," she said and leaned over the bed to kiss him.  She nodded toward the patio door.  "Otherwise, if I stay, it'll be too late."

She stood and fastened the button at the neck and smoothed the silky tassel that hung from the collar.  "Bye, sweetie.  Call me later."

He reached his arms out from under the covers and she went back to hug him.

"Go back to sleep," she said, and gently pushed his eyelids shut with her fingertips.  She kissed him on the cheek.  "I love you."

"I love you," he said, and pulled the covers tighter around himself.

Sliding open the patio door, she padded onto the balcony that connected her bedroom with Ali's.  Over the loudspeaker, the mullah summoned the faithful to morning prayers.  Allah akbar.  God is great.

Elizabeth paused, keeping an eye on the servants' quarters beyond the pool at the far end of the backyard.  At any moment, the Indian house boy and Filipino cook might emerge from their quarters on their way to the house.  Beyond the garden walls, a sliver of blazing orange sun appeared on the horizon.  Concrete apartment buildings, uniformly flat-roofed and painted a sandy yellow, stood in the distance against a backdrop of jagged mountains.  She took a deep breath of the cool air.  Soon the sun would resume its position overhead and heat the humid air to stifling.

Elizabeth tiptoed across the balcony and opened the patio door to her room, slunk inside, and slid the door shut.  In the room next to hers, Ali's father would be on his knees, rolling out his prayer rug in the direction of Mecca.  Her bed was still made, the sheets tucked in.  She pulled them out, crawled into bed and fell into a deep sleep.

What they told themselves when Ali decided to move back to the Middle East, was that Elizabeth would visit him, meet the family and see if she could live in Oman.  If all went well, they would get married.  Elizabeth's mother, ever the practical Midwesterner, pointed out that it was hard to uproot a relationship from Manhattan, where both people were at home, to a place where Elizabeth would be without friends, family and a job.  And what had she and Dad done, that Elizabeth would want to move so far away?  But Elizabeth figured she and Ali would make it.  They were so compatible.  They never fought.  It had all been so easy in New York for them.  She thought that for someone she loved, she could make sacrifices.  She could take a leap of faith.

Her routine was to sleep another few hours and rise after Ali had left for work, where he spent days importing and exporting. His family's company owned the country's first soda bottling company, the McDonald's franchise, and represented other Western companies that wanted to do business in Oman -- a way to keep the locals in business even as foreign companies did much of the work in the country.  Elizabeth would wrap her stick-straight blond hair into a ponytail and put on a loose t-shirt, long skirt and sandals.  Then she would go downstairs to the kitchen to ask for tea and toast.  The servants had kindly but firmly made it clear the kitchen was not a place for a lady of the house.  Whenever she opened the refrigerator to get a drink, the house boy would say, "No, no.  House boy do that."  When the phone rang, she was not allowed to answer.  So, after asking for breakfast, Elizabeth retreated to the family room, where a maid brought her breakfast on a tray with a little silver bell to summon her when she was finished.

A sectional sofa spanned three sides of the room and an entertainment center dominated the wall.  Oriental rugs lay on top of the carpet.  The walls were littered with bad art.  Further testimony to the fact that having money doesn't mean you have good taste, Elizabeth thought.  She grabbed one of the five remote controls and flicked on the television.  With the satellite system, figuring out which remote turned on the television had taken her a week.  Most days, she had to call Ali at work, since the servants had no idea.  They weren't allowed to touch valuable things.

As usual, Omani national television was reporting scintillating news of thank you letters and notes of condolence sent and received by the Sultan.  A Bedouin man believed to be 130 years old had just died.  What would Willard Scott make of that, Elizabeth wondered.  She took a last gulp of tea.  Weather forecast was for 45 degrees.  Celsius.  If it got to 50 degrees, government employees working outdoors got the day off.  Elizabeth made some quick calculations:  45 centigrade meant 113 degrees.  Maybe she should head for the beach before the day got too hot.

Ali had told Elizabeth the Jeep was at her disposal.  In a household of BMWs and Mercedes, the red stick-shift Jeep was the lowliest of the vehicles, but it suited Elizabeth.  The Jeep always smelled like a wet dog and had traces of sand in the corners.  She went into the kitchen, took the key off its hook and grabbed the leash.  She walked outside to the carport where the houseboy was hosing dust off the driveway.

"I'm taking Vegas to the beach," she said.  He looked at her.  "OK?"

"OK, ma'am."  He turned off the hose.

"Don't stop what you're doing . . ." she started.  But he had already gone around the side of the house to get the dog.  She was perfectly capable of calling the dog.  He came around the corner leading the family's golden retriever by the collar.  The dog spotted the leash in Elizabeth's hands and lunged toward her.

"OK, Vegas, OK.  Wanna go to the beach?"  She opened the car door and he jumped into the back, wagging his tail so hard that his rear end swung back and forth.

The houseboy brought towels and a gallon jug of water.   Elizabeth hit the remote control and the driveway gates slowly swung open.  She made a left, yanking the stick shift as she pulled hard on the wheel.  No power steering.  On the dusty street, children played soccer in bare feet.  Vegas stuck his snout over the front seat and, panting, slobbered on her.

"Vegas, sit!"

She reached back and yanked down hard on his collar with one hand on the wheel.

"Sit!  I mean it!"

Vegas sat and plastered his nose to the window.

Elizabeth expected to be in Oman for three weeks -- the minimum you should stay for a trip so far from New York, Ali said -- so she hadn't paid too much attention to the streets when Ali was driving.  Her biggest issue was street signs.  She couldn't read Arabic, but stop signs were still octagonal and red and yield signs triangular and yellow.  She knew how to get to three places:  Ali's office, the mall and the beach.  She loved the beach.  It was one of the few places she felt free from prying eyes and judgmental stares.  The fact that Omanis had miles and miles of the wide sand beaches but rarely visited them and built nothing there boggled Elizabeth's mind.

At the first corner, she took a right and headed down a steep hill to the roundabout that would put her on the highway to the beach.  She passed a long windowless building, the Al Khuwair covered souk, where you could buy fruits and vegetables, fresh meat and fish and fresh-squeezed orange juice.  She turned left at the next roundabout, marked by a statue of an enormous rosewater shaker, a silver-colored object with a bulbous bottom and a straight spout.  The oversized decoration was part of the Omani government's campaign to celebrate the country's heritage under the creeping influence of Western culture.  She passed Zawawi Mosque and the Al Khuwair Centre for Shopping and Ice Skating.  That always cracked her up.  She exited the highway at Madinat Qaboos Street, where the Iranian and American embassies sat next door to each other on beachfront property.

She drove between the embassies onto the long, flat beach.  The dog jumped back and forth with excitement.  She swore he was hyperactive, even for a dog.  Since he rarely got out of the house, he went nuts when presented with miles and miles of beach.  The dumb blonds of the dog world, Ali always said of golden retrievers.  She wondered how dumb the dog really was.  After all, he pretty much had it made in the Banikarim household.  He ate food made for him by a chef, chased the occasional stray cat that came over the backyard wall and swam in the family's Olympic-sized pool.

She climbed out and Vegas squeezed his body out of the Jeep before she had a chance to pull the front seat up for him.  He jumped out and flew toward the ocean as if he'd been shot out of the Jeep by a cannon.  He screeched to a halt at the edge of the water and looked back at her, expectantly.

"Fine, here you go, you crazy dog!" she laughed under her breath.

If she had to admit it, she was as enthused as the dog.   The beach was her place to run and yell and be free from the constraints she felt everywhere else.  She pulled a crusty tennis ball out from under the back seat and made a running start for the beach.

"Run, Vegas!" she yelled and whipped the ball out into the ocean.

The dog took off, running through the waves and further out, paddling to the tennis ball, which floated on the surface.  He chomped onto it and swam triumphantly back to Elizabeth, dropped the ball at her feet and shook himself off, spraying water all over her.  She ran backwards from him, which only made him think it was a game.  Vegas stopped and stood still, perking his ears up.

"What do you see, boy?"

The dog wagged his tail, then bolted and ran at a full sprint down the beach behind her.

"Vegas!" she yelled, and started walking in his direction, annoyed.  He loved seagulls and had a tendency to take off on her.  She started after him at a jog.  In the distance, she could make out a dhow, a painted wooden fishing boat.  Fishermen squatted at the edges, making repairs.  Elizabeth stopped in her tracks.  Most Omanis weren't comfortable around dogs.  It was a foreign thing, to have a dog as a pet.

"Vegas!" she called, trying to sound normal.  She could see the dog come to a screeching halt just in front of the net.  He sniffed the ground.

"Vegas!" she yelled, and started running for him.

The dog squatted.

Elizabeth had no idea what the fishermen would do.   Either the men were terrified of the dog or thought it was a filthy animal.  One of the Omanis stood up and started waving his arms at Vegas.  He was dressed in a tunic, belted with a wide striped cloth.  On his head was a turban.  He had a long, scraggly beard and no teeth.  Elizabeth couldn't see that much, but she was sure of it.  The man picked up a big stick.  Elizabeth saw him raise the stick over his head.  She broke into a sprint.  The stick crashed down onto the dog's haunches.  Vegas yelped and scrambled away.  Gasping for air, Elizabeth lunged for his collar.

"My God!  Vegas, are you OK?"  She turned to the men.   "You might have broken his spine!  What were you thinking?  It's just a dog, for God's sake!"  She squatted down and took Vegas' snout in her hands.  She looked into his eyes.

"Are you OK?" she asked Vegas.  She ran her hands back across his shoulders and over his back, pressing lightly.  She reached his haunches and pressed on the side where he had been hit.  He whined.  She took a few steps and he followed her.  He walked gingerly but seemed to be all right.

The men glowered at her.  The man with the stick spit on the ground.  Talking amongst themselves, squatted again at their nets and continued tying knots.  She wanted to swear at them.  She wanted to call the police.  What was the chance the police would be on her side?  None.

"You . . . you're not nice men!  Not nice at all!  A poor dog.  You should be ashamed of yourselves."  The men stared at her, then looked back at their nets.  She should know better than to insult these men on their turf, she thought.   She took Vegas by the collar and walked away.

At 1:30, Ali came home for lunch, as he did every day.   His father and older brother Nabil arrived from the family's offices at the same time, and the driver would take 20 minutes to turn everyone's car around in the driveway so they were facing the right way when the time came for them to leave.  Sometimes Elizabeth would open the heavy front doors and stand on the stoop, watching the complex maneuvering until the heat made sweat run down her back.  In a household of men, cars were important.  Discussions revolved around their washing and waxing, how to keep them from fading in the desert sun, and most importantly, which brother had the most harrowing near-miss traffic accident.  Nabil had driven off an overpass in his BMW, gone airborne and landed on the highway below.  Miraculously, there were no other cars on the highway to Muscat.  The police were amazed when they arrived on the scene to find Nabil nonchalantly swinging open the door to climb out.  This was considered hands-down the story to beat, and strong evidence of the possible superiority of BMW vehicles.

Elizabeth wanted to tell Ali what happened, but she was afraid his father would be angry at her for letting the dog run free.  She decided to keep quiet until she could tell Ali in private.

Nabil challenged Ali to backgammon.  They put the board between them on the couch and played a vicious and competitive game.  Elizabeth felt bad for Ali, as Nabil attacked him from every possible angle and gloated when he put Ali's pieces in no man's land.  After Nabil won, he asked Elizabeth to play.

"Why don't you have Scrabble?" she asked.  That was a game she could really play -- assuming they didn't play in Arabic, that was.

"Backgammon is a much better game.  More strategic," Nabil said.  "Backgammon is for men.  Scrabble is for women."

The Filipino maid came to the entrance of the family room and announced that lunch was served.  Everyone adjourned to the dining room.  The servants came around with a creamy chicken-flavored soup, then a fish dish and a veal dish, both with vegetables, and a big platter of rice.  Ali's father had been diagnosed with high cholesterol, so red meat was out.  Fine with Elizabeth, since red meat in Oman often meant goat.

Ali's father asked the maid in a stern voice, "What kind of fish is this?  Where did you get it?"  It was the same question he asked every day.

"Cook got it this morning at the fish market.  I don't know what kind.  I will ask."  She thought he was angry.  She always thought he was angry.   She went to the kitchen and came back, stepping over Vegas, who lay in the doorway to the dining room.

"It's grouper, sir."  Or snapper.  Or flounder.  It made no difference to the outcome of the game.  The father furrowed his brow.

Ali said, "It's very good."

And the father said, "Yes, it's good.  Tell him to get this again tomorrow."

The game was a way to keep the servants on their toes.   They had it pretty easy in the Banikarim household -- no kids or wives to take care of all day long, Mr. Banikarim said.  He worried lest they become lax.

Elizabeth ate little at family meals.  Weight was slipping off her. She hated to be served, and felt guilty about the servants.  And feeling guilty made her mad, and she wouldn't want to take the food the servants offered.  She wanted to serve herself.  She was a snacker, not a meal person, and she could never have a snack in the house because the servants owned the kitchen.  She couldn't just open the refrigerator and stare into it without someone asking what she wanted.  She had no idea what she wanted, so she would always say, "water."  Of course she probably should have said, "RC."  Ali's family bottled RC and it was the most popular soft drink in the country.  The refrigerator was lined with rows of glass RC bottles laying on their sides.  She didn't know what Omanis snacked on, anyway.  She hated figs and she was sick of looking at dates. Dates and tea.  Dates and coffee.  Dates and dates.   There was one snack she liked, a fruit called rambutan.  Rambutans were a small red prickly fruit, like a lichi fruit, that she would peel and eat by the dozen.  Ali joked that she would start to sprout red spikes from her head, but she could tell he was glad she was eating something.

After lunch, Nabil went back to his house and their father retired to his room for a nap.  Ali went into the family room and read the paper.  Elizabeth stood in the foyer in front of the huge aquarium and watched the shimmering fish swim laps, around and around.    She pressed a fingertip against the glass and an orange and white striped clownfish darted toward it, placing its mouth against the glass.

"Hey little fish," she said, scratching the glass.  The fish darted away into a conch shell.

She turned to Ali, who was sitting on the couch with his back to her, a little bald spot on the crown of his head showing.  In New York, she used to tease him that he should have been Jewish so he could cover it up with a yarmulke.

"I'm going to get a bowl," she said.

"What do you want a bowl for?"  He kept reading the paper.

"You'll see."

"Fine, then go ask the cook."

She went to the kitchen and the Filippino cook gave her a mixing bowl.  She walked back into the family room.

"Come on, we're going upstairs," she said.

"Really?"  He looked up from the newspaper, immediately interested.

"Not for what you think.  Just come on."

She had him sit in the old swivel leather chair in his bedroom, in front of the patio door.  She went into the bathroom and ran the water until it was hot.  Then she poured some Kiehl's shampoo into the bowl and filled it.  She grabbed a towel and a manicure kit from his toiletry bag.

She laid the towel across his lap and set the bowl between his legs.  "Soak your hands," she said.  "Let me see your left hand," and he pulled it out of the water.  "You're biting again," she said.

"I know, I'm sorry," he said.  "It's a disgusting habit."

"Well, put it back.  Let me have the other one."  And she wiped the soap suds off with a towel, pulled out an orange stick and began the process of gently pushing back the cuticles, one by one.  The ritual was her way of taking care of him.  Especially now that she had little to give, she loved to do this for him.  It made her feel in charge.  He loved to be touched and cared for.  Back in the States, she used to give him a manicure every Sunday night, as they talked about the week ahead.

"I took Vegas to the beach.  Something bad happened."

"What?"

"The dog took off running.  You know, like a crazy animal.  And he came up to these fishermen and started squatting to do his business on their net."

Ali was grinning.

"No, it was really bad!  And I had to run up and try to grab him, and then one of the fishermen hit him with a stick on his butt."

"He hit him?  What a bastard.  I hope you told him so."

"Told him?  What was I going to say in English?  The guy looked like something out of the ancient ages.  I'm just lucky they didn't beat me."

"Habibti, they would never hit you.  They're more scared of you than you are of them."

"Do you think we should take him to the vet?  Do you have vets?"

"Yes, we have vets," he said.  "I'll check on him.  If he's not back to his hyperactive self, I'll have the houseboy take him in."

She pulled out the nail brush and dipped it in the suds.  She lightly brushed the nails to clean them and dried them with a towel.  Holding his hand closely, she clipped his nails and rounded them with an emery board.  When they were perfect ovals with a sliver of white around the edge, she buffed them to a shine, going back and forth quickly with a buffer made of chamois.  He turned his palms up and folded his fingers in to look at the nails.

"They look great.  I feel like a new man.  Thank you, baby," he said, giving her a big hug.  "You're so good to me."  He paused.  "I'm sorry you were scared today.  You know, I was thinking about things for you to do next week.  You should go to the beauty salon here.  You could get your hands and feet decorated with henna."

Ali had a secretary at work make all the arrangements.   That morning, the driver took Elizabeth to the salon, because her hands and feet would be wet for a couple of hours after the henna application, and she wouldn't be able to drive herself home.

The salon was tucked into a typical flat-roofed concrete house on a winding residential street that had been newly paved with concrete.   It was distinguishable as a salon only by an illuminated sign shaped like the palm of a hand, decorated in red henna, that hung outside the second story window.  Inside the salon, there were hair styling stations and a large tiled area with embroidered pillows scattered on the floor.  The beautician gave Elizabeth a three-ring binder of laminated pages with photos of hands and feet with different henna designs -- birds and flowers and vines and dots.  The beautician wore a design of a soaring falcon surrounded by flames on her hands.

Elizabeth looked around at the other women.  They were eyeing her warily.  Elizabeth knew the look; it reminded her of how locals examined strangers who ventured into the bakery on Water Street in her hometown.  The Iowa Falls locals, sitting on naugahyde-covered chairs at round wooden tables, would look up from their coffee and krullers to size up the situation.  In a glance they would know:  It's a visitor from Illinois, or that's Roy's son, the one with a couple of kids who lives in St. Louis.

One woman sat at the center of a group, drying her hands, ankles and feet, which were covered with winding vines and blossoms.  Dark-haired and olive-skinned with almond-shaped brown eyes, the women were beautiful.  The women wore tunics over their pants, the bottoms embroidered in intricate fuschias, yellows and purples.  She wondered how strange she must look them. She felt acutely that she was an outsider.

"I want that one," Elizabeth said, nodding toward the woman in the center.

"Oh, but that's for brides.  She is a bride and this is her party.  That is a bridal pattern you choose."

"It's OK if it's for brides," she said.  "It doesn't bother me."  The woman's lips were pursed.  "Is there some law against it?" she said, trying to make a joke.

"It's traditional . . . ."

Elizabeth stopped for a second.  Sometimes she needed to curb her New York-learned assertiveness.  "I never leave the house, hardly, anyway.  No one will see it so it doesn't matter."

The woman could see that Elizabeth wasn't going to budge.

"Are you getting married?"

"Yes.  No.  Well, yes, but not now."  Elizabeth forgot that she shouldn't assume people would know she was going to be married by her engagement ring.  Omanis didn't wear wedding rings.

"Yes, of course, you can have it, ma'am.  Whatever you wish."

The woman disappeared into a back room and emerged with several pastry tubes filled with henna mash, a dark reddish brown paste.  She sat on a pillow in front of Elizabeth and asked her to roll up the legs of her khakis.  Freehand, she began to draw, and Elizabeth's feet and ankles were transformed with scrolls and zigzags, the patterns punctuated by fat dots.  Elizabeth thought the decoration made her feet look elegant.  Regal, almost.  Then came her hands and wrists.  Twisting vines crawled up her thumbs and wound around her wrists.

"Are you staying at the home of Mr. Kamal Banikarim?" the woman said in a low voice, not looking up from her work.

That's strange, Elizabeth thought.  The beautician must know that because Ali's secretary had called to make the reservation.

"Yes."  She hesitated to say more.  Maybe there was a reason she shouldn't say where she was staying.

"You are the only woman in the house?"

Elizabeth's stomach tightened.

"Other than the servants."

"Hmmm . . . ."  The woman continued working.  "Mrs. Banikarim is no longer there."

"No, she passed away a long time ago."  Elizabeth thought everyone knew Ali's mom had been gone for years.  Ali's family was prominent.

"Allah yahfadak," the woman said, almost to herself.

Arabs have so many blessings, Elizabeth thought.  Every other word seemed to be "Allah" something.  She figured that this must be what you say about someone who is dead.  She didn't ask, because the other women were watching her.   The beautician didn't ask any more questions.  When the painting was done, Elizabeth sat on the cushion for 10 minutes until the driver appeared in the doorway.  She picked up her shoes and carried them with her, tipping the woman what she hoped was a generous 10 Omani rials, the equivalent of five dollars.

Back at the house, Elizabeth sat on the family room couch with her feet up on the coffee table and her hands flat in her lap.  After the henna dried for several hours, the paste would form a crust, and could be washed off.   Thank goodness, because the smell was not pleasant.  The henna stain would remain for about three weeks.

Ali, Mr. Banikarim and Nabil walked in the front door, home for lunch.  They wore long dishdashas in white, pale blue and grey, embroidered kumas on their heads and leather sandals.  Elizabeth wondered if she'd ever get used to seeing Ali in this garb.

"Who farted?" Mr. Banikarim said.

Elizabeth laughed.

"What have you done?  Henna?  I knew it," he said.

"Do you like the design?"

Mr. Banikarim sat in front of her on the edge of the coffee table and smiled.  Elizabeth had figured out where Ali got his charm.  When he turned it on, Kamal could make anyone feel like the most important person in the room.

"It's nice," Ali said.  He leaned over the back of the couch and whispered to her:  "I dig the flowers."  Elizabeth grinned.  Men were so unbothered with things like wedding designs and non-wedding designs.  Besides, in a household of men, how would they know these things?

"You know, when my wife and I got married, she had her hands and feet done with henna for our wedding night," Mr. Banikarim said.  "We didn't really know each other well.  So when we were alone together for the first time, I said, `you smell like farts.'  And she started laughing.  It broke the ice."

Ali plopped down next to Elizabeth on the couch, feigning wooziness from the smell.  She asked him if there was something wrong with her staying in a house full of men.  No, he said.  This is a decent family in a good neighborhood, well respected by everyone.

Elizabeth wondered, if that was the case, why the beautician had made a special point about asking about the Banikarim household.

"What does `Allah ya dock' mean?"  she asked.

"`Allah' what?"

"It sounded like `Allah ya dock.'  Some sort of blessing."

"Allah akbar?" he said.  "Was that it?"

"No . . . ."

Ali thought for a moment, mumbling to himself.  "Allah ya dock ... ya dock."  Suddenly his eyes lit up.

"Was it `Allah yahfaduk?"

"Yes, that's it!"

"It means, `may God protect you,'" he said.  "How did you learn that?"

Which animal would I be?  A bird.  Probably a parakeet.  I had a blue parakeet named Louie who lived 13 years and knew how to say "here comes the judge . . . here comes the judge" when my dad walked in the room.  (He's a lawyer so -- not too far off).

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