His mother, Kadijah, was like another person out here under the sky, in the freedom of the orchard. She laughed and sang, and she was in a good humor from morning till night. This year Abdul Aziz noticed it, and one afternoon when they were resting a little, standing looking out across the red earth, under the rustling trees, to the sea which lay like a deep blue carpet in the distance, he asked her about it.

“I was not born in the village, like the other women here. I am a Bedouin, and I was born in a tent, far I away on the great desert to the south. The Bedouins, my people, live a free, roving life, under the stars, and I under the hot sun of the desert. I was free, too. My face was not veiled. I was free to come and go as I liked in the hills and the wide air.