Free The Ambassador's Wife by Jennifer Steil

(the city was eight thousand feet above sea level, so even minimal exertion resulted in panting), Miranda told her how to set the controls on her machine and introduced herself.
    â€œMadina,” the girl said. “As in the Arabic word for city.”
    She was nineteen and had arrived just nine days ago from her home in Kenya, where she lived with her Somali mother and Italian father. At the moment she was renting a room from a family in the Old City, but living with Mazrooqis was cramping her style. “I just want to have some fun,” she said. Which wasn’t the usual reason people come to Mazrooq. But, she quickly added, “I also came to learn a little more about Islam. Or at least that’s how I convinced my parents.” She had started attending classes at a local university, which already bored her. “The teachers are kind of a pain. So serious! And what’s with all the black? At least we African Muslims have a bit of style. As long as we cover our hair it doesn’t matter what color we wear.”
    She spoke like an American teenager, though she had never lived outside of Africa. She spoke Swahili, Somali, Italian, Arabic, and English, all fluently. Which made Miranda feel rather half-witted for knowing only English, French, and basic Arabic. Americans were so pathetic about languages.
    They left the gym together, Madina’s scandalous T-shirt now hidden under the voluminous folds of an
abaya
, and Miranda scribbled down her phone number and rough directions to her house. Without street names in the Old City, you had to use the ubiquitous mosques as guideposts.
    Two days later she came home from the swimming pool at the InterContinental to find a note from Mosi, a Kenyan friend who worked for the Ministry of Education and who had moved in soon after Vícenta left. “Just to let you know, we seem to have acquired a cat,” he wrote, “and a teenage daughter.”
    Madina had discovered the white fluff ball of a kitten limping on the streets outside of their house. “She’s little,” she pleaded toMiranda. “She won’t take up too much space.” The kitten was small enough to fit in the center of Madina’s dusky palm.
    â€œThat’s not what I’m worried about.” The Old City was crawling with stray cats, almost all of whom were mangy and riddled with disease. This innocent-looking kitten could be carrying enough bacteria and viruses to kill them all.
    â€œCould I at least fix her paw? I’ll give her a bath first!”
    Miranda thought about what would happen to the kitten back on the streets. Muslims do not keep household pets, which was one reason the country overflowed with stray animals. But it wasn’t just that the local children didn’t keep animals at home; they seemed to openly loathe them. How many times had she stopped to yell
“Ayb!”
(shame) at a boy throwing rocks at a cat or whipping a dog with a stick? Torturing animals was a popular local hobby. She often wondered what this suggested about how the children themselves were treated at home.
    Relenting, she watched as Madina tenderly lathered the mewling kitten in the kitchen sink with one of Miranda’s self-imported organic, nontoxic soaps. With its fur slicked down, it was hardly bigger than a mouse. After fluffing it dry with a spare washcloth, Madina held the kitten still while Miranda examined its back left paw. A shard of glass was wedged into it. Using her tweezers, she carefully extracted it and then rinsed the wound.
    â€œThat kitten still needs a vet,” she said. These were not easy to find. Once a year a man at the British embassy brought a vet in from Dubai to treat expat animals, as there were so few qualified locals. But she let the kitten—and the girl—stay.
    Madina, Mosi, and Qishr the cat (named after the Mazrooqi drink made from cardamom and the husks of coffee beans) were often joined by students, poets, and