Free In the Kingdom of Men by Kim Barnes Page A

might be willing to make again.
    I twirled the umbrella like a parasol and strolled to the compound’s entrance, where I stood at the fence, peering into the distance while Habib peered back. As far as I could see, there was nothing but the golf course, where a Bedouin caddy,
thobe
fluttering, waited patiently while an American dressed in bermudas teed off. A turnstile at the fence led me to the narrow lane of
suqs
, the smell a mix of sour lanolin and cinnamon. Spun fleece, daggers, silver bracelets, camel bags, honey, bolts of bright cloth—each small store had its specialty. I chose a handful of thimble-size strawberries, which the Arab clerk weighed on a balance scale and poured into a twisted paper funnel. I ate them as I walked to the commissary, which was little more than a line shack built of cement blocks. Cases of soft drinks stacked one wall. Shelves along the center held canned goods and cleaning supplies. I inspected the long open freezer as the two Arabs manning the checkout watched. One cleared his throat.
    “Australian beef,” he said, his words heavily accented. “It is very good.”
    I nodded and moved to the produce, where I found several bunches of wilted green onions that might yet revive if planted, softening potatoes and yams sprouting eyes that I could quarter and bury, and a miraculous handful of okra pods. A deep freeze held frozen vegetables and fruit, including a battered bag of sliced peaches, good enough for a cobbler. In the back of the building, I saw a doorway leading to a smaller room, where an enormous Nubian man, his head wrapped in a turban, cut pork into chops. He smiled down at me when I requested a pound of bacon and wrapped it carefully in butcher paper as though diapering an infant. On the way back to the checkout, I stopped at the smallrack of used books and magazines and picked up a worn copy of
The Count of Monte Cristo
, censored but unabridged—a week of reading if I took it slow.
    The Arab clerk who tallied and bagged my few groceries fingered the book’s pages, brought it to his face, and sniffed. The novel felt like contraband, enough to convict me, but the man seemed patient, even kind. He bound the book in brown paper, tied it with twine, then pointed me down the street to a small bakery, its interior roaring with the heat of a wood-fired oven, where the baker, gesturing to caution me that it was hot, pulled out a puffed loaf of bread that quickly flattened. It was then that I realized what had struck me as odd: only men worked the shops, sold the groceries, fired the ovens. I stepped back out, the sun like a heat lamp, and retraced my steps home, my stride falling in time to the muezzin’s second call to prayer. The entire outing had taken less than an hour. Already, the day seemed like it had stretched on forever.
    Yash greeted me at the door, fretful as a brood hen. He approved of the bread and bacon, expressed surprise over the okra, and cut his eyes at the heavy paper package that I secreted to my room. I hid the book beneath the head of the bed, snugged against the wall—a childhood habit still familiar—before going back to the kitchen, where I found Yash considering the bag of thawing peaches.
    “I’m going to make a cobbler,” I said. I opened the drawer that held tea towels and found six of them, each embroidered with a day of the week and a little Indian child, buckskin dress or leggings and breechcloth, engaged in the day’s corresponding chore—Monday, Wash Day, Tuesday, Ironing … only Sunday was missing, but since Saturday was Baking Day, I pulled it out, touched the precise, even stitches—the work of a superior seamstress—then raised the towel to my face, breathed in the smell of clean cotton, and tucked it at my waist.
    Yash pursed his lips. “I will make you the perfect crust.”
    We considered each other a moment before he reached for the lard and I made a move for the sugar. We worked tentatively at first, careful not to brush a