See prior disclaimers for that bunch of things that need be here. Other than that, there are a couple more words for the ol' glossary including the meaning of the chapter yourself warned that there's adescription ofthe mating rituals of the Homo sapiens a few paragraphs down so it'd be wise to get mum if you are in junior high, although PG-13 has gotten kinda lax lately.

Abaya: an over-garment worn by some Muslim women.

Boughasha: cigar shaped pastries made of phyllo pastry with a walnut filling.

Dhuhr: the 2nd of 5 daily prayers recited by practicing Muslims at true noon.

Thobe: ankle-length garment with long sleeves normally made of cotton and resembling a long robe. The name is often used intechangeably with dishdasha.

Zina: sexual activity outside of marriage (covering the English words adultery and fornication)

Jamila took the stairs three steps at a time. She went into her room without looking at the sewing loft where she whittled away entire weeks. The curious eyes of three other wives followed her until she disappeared behind the curtained French doors. Her unenviable position as favorite wife came with three quarters of the south wing to herself and she sat in front of a mirrored dresser unable to think through the menagerie of thoughts spinning like a mad carnival ride in her head.

She hung her headscarf on the drawer hardware and opened it. The ring came off first and she put it away with a clunk. It would be Mustafa's until he died like every item of clothing hanging in the closet and every piece of jewelry in the floor safe. Jamila peeled back the wax paper jacket on a stick of cocoa butter and coated her lips with it. She returned the lip balm to the bare make-up case where it lived in sin with a stubby kohl pencil and snapped the lid harder than necessary. She hurled her wedding picture at the wall and watched the heavy glass frame shatter into hundreds of pieces. This happened often enough to prompt her maid to keep spares in a drawer in the kitchen.

With her eyes closed, Jamila tried to recall the way Chris' arms had felt around her but only the cold unsettling fear of being found out was there along with Mustafa's fat sausage fingers digging into her sides leaving angry bruises that lingered in ugly shades of purple and green before finally fading away.

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Dhuhr came and went and Jamila prayed by force of habit. She picked at her food through the lunch hour when the maids and the wives all sat around the kitchen table for a no frills meal. Williams had asked for and taken two food trays and though they stole glances at one another for the brief minute he waited for the food, their gazes did not coincide. Soraya, a scullery maid, removed Jamila's plate and she left the table without regard to the protocol dictate that she get up last in deference to the higher status of the other wives. Raja's eyes were blind with cataracts and both Zukia and Fatima had long since learned to turn their heads the other way.

Jamila stood before the guestroom door with a plate in her hand.

"I bring boughasha," she said trying to smile though Williams was alone in the room. He took a handful of pastries from the plate.

"He's in the office," Williams said to the back of Jamila's scarf through a mouthful of pastry.

Zukia's maid passed her in the way and she paced the courtyard until the woman was out of view. Jamila sat in the empty first floor drawing room among baskets of unfinished needlework until the noise in the house had subsided to signal the end of lunch and start of the afternoon chores. This room; like every other in the house was a faithful copy of the Moroccan villa Mustafa had rented for their honeymoon four years earlier. He'd been a lowly captain then, buying prestige he had no other way to acquire and aping his betters' superior taste. Jamila heard Mustafa's chair squeak in the adjacent room and used the connecting door to enter his office. Silas was sitting in the dark with a slit of daylight from the narrow window cutting has left arm into thirds.

"I bring boughasha. I help make. Very good." She saw the outline of Chris' face then more detail as her eyes adapted to the semi-darkness.

"I'm sure it is," he said through clenched teeth.

"What is wrong?"

"That's a very good question Jamila." She moved as if to talk and thought better of it. "I was looking at some of these pictures," he added pointing at the frames facing him. "Here's Mustafa with the Prime Minister of Kuwait." Silas began turning the pictures on their faces. "This one is of Mustafa with the Crown Prince of Bahrain; and Mustafa at the inauguration of the Saudi embassy in Baghdad. I was there that day, for security. This is my favorite. See, in most of these it's just your hand or an unfocused face but this is of you and Mustafa in Ankara with the Prime Minister of Turkey. You are a very photogenic woman, but then I'm sure you know that."

"Thank you."

"The little orphan Annie acts is wearing thin don't you think?"

"Well, leapin' lizards!" Jamila exclaimed imitating the comic strip redhead, her thick accent replaced by subtler inflection.

The plate of boughasha went into the waste basket with balletic flair. She walked around the desk and chuckled disdainfully when Chris moved his chair away. She turned the key in the top desk drawer's lock and retrieved a silver hip flask engraved with her husband's name. She sat on the desk facing Silas and pulled the pin holding her scarf in place. Her long black hair tumbled down obscuring her face.

"There's something humanizing about prettiness and smarts in one package that makes your fellow soldiers uncomfortable. We had an eight man detail posted outside before the elections. They'd rather think of the locals as abstracts so I speak like a child and forego prepositions." She tipped the hip flask until the amber whisky in it flowed, careful not to put her lips to the neck. She swirled the liquor in her mouth and swallowed grimacing.

"Yes I'm whoring myself to a man who makes me want to vomit. My high bride price was the seed money for an export business that's feeding my entire family in Al-Basrah and the joke's on me because I never thought he'd actually live this long. Tell me, sergeant, Which one of me do you prefer?" They looked into each other's eyes for a minute that felt much longer and the hostility in her bearing softened. Jamila leaned into Chris' outstretched hand, aching to feel his fingers on her skin.

"There's only one." He whispered cradling the side of her face.

"I can't read English very well," she said holding his hand in hers.

"What…"

"Your dictionary is the best gift I've ever been given. I don't want you to think that was a lie." Jamila brought his hand to her lips and kissed the inside of Chris' wrist. "Come," she said.

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Some part of her brain had been telling Jamila that she should have been downstairs in the women's drawing room, listening to Raja's daily recount of the same uninteresting gossip making the rounds through the Al-Hadith's upper crust but she'd been busy ignoring the message. A minute earlier, in Mustafa's office she'd quickly returned the pictures to their appropriate order and replaced the hip flask in the top drawer. It was a moment of sheer bravery or perhaps stupidity when they'd climbed the stairs to her room together in the dead of day.

She made the first move, a baby move, kicking off her shoes in opposite directions. She made the second move too and stepped closer until she could smell the mint tea in his breath. Used to breaking down every action into separate steps to detach herself from the day around her, Jamila stood an inch from Silas' face unable to move further. She had no point of reference to work with and no previous experience with the mixture of panic and need that had replaced the absolute repulsion Mustafa never failed to rally in her.

Chris hugged Jamila to still her trembling and only then noticed how much he'd needed her touch. The kiss that followed was timid at first, until her lips parted for his and she reveled in the novel feeling of not wanting to throw up. Jamila unbuttoned the collar of his thobe with nimble fingers and the rest of the buttons gave way with a soft tug. The garment pooled around his feet and Chris stepped away in just the long underwear. His hands moved down Jamila's back over the stubborn fabric with no breaks to pull the dreadful tent away from her. He tried the front with similar results.

"This is easier," Jamila said pulling the abaya over her head and tossing aside the purple robe to reveal just underwear where a second layer of clothing should have been. "It's hot outside," she smiled shrugging. Chris recovered from the shock of so much skin after so much of it being covered as Jamila slithered out of her bra unceremoniously, yanking at the straps until it too was on the floor.

They backed onto the bed and tripped on the platform instead. He steadied Jamila with one hand and leaned on the mattress with the other. She fumbled with her hair and got most of it out of the way as Chris hovered above her on one elbow. Jamila bit her hand to quiet a low moan no one outside the room could have heard anyway.

She tensed under the light touch of his lips and fingers on her stomach and her legs simultaneously. She raised her hips as he pulled down her panties and she grabbed him by the long chain of the ID tags he'd flipped onto his back. Jamila opened her legs under his weight and looked enthralled at the tight, defined muscles of his arms and shoulders taking shorter, shallower breaths whenever his hands explored further.

He struggled with the drawstring in his pants and she wrapped her legs around his waist, pushed the pants down to his ankles and pulled him even closer. Chris kissed her slowly, enjoying the frustrated whimpers this produced.

"I need you. Please," she urged.

That's all for today then. I can't evade the housework any longer because we've actually run out of plates and someone whose name I won't mention doesn't know which button turns on the dishwasher after three years of the same model even though he can take apart an engine block just to see how it works.

Now somebody, someone, please tell me what you think!