She finished the boots, then moved on to emptying the water-buckets that sat beneath the bags of rock salt. The buckets were heavy, and the water stank of sweat and mildew; she struggled to keep from spilling as she carried them to the laundry room and tipped them into a drain. All around her, the older boys worked the drums and mangles in their undershirts, the grayish cotton plastered to their backs. One of them saw her watching, and grinned. She left hurriedly, eyes averted. It frustrated her how easily a boy’s grin could make her blush. No matter how carefully the Asylum separated the sexes, the boys seemed to lurk constantly on the periphery of the girls’ lives, watching, looming, smiling whenever Kreindel dared to look. She couldn’t understand why some girls seemed to relish drawing their attention. One might as well call out to a wolf, and offer it one’s throat.
* * *
“If I am trapped on a ship with you for much longer,” said Dima, “I’ll go insane.”
Sophia said nothing, only lay curled beneath her rough woolen blanket, too drained to argue. They were aboard the S.S. Kansan, a merchant steamship bound for Baltimore. On the morning they’d left England the ship had sailed into a line of thunderstorms, and Sophia had spent the journey since then in abject wretchedness. As the only woman on the ship, she’d been assigned a private cabin with a sink and toilet, so at least she could be sick out of the crew’s sight, if not the jinniyeh’s. There’d been no sign of U-boats, though it had occurred to her that the Germans might at least put her out of her misery.
The Kansan struck a swell, the bow lurching. Sophia flinched, teeth chattering, and eyed the toilet in the corner.
“Do you intend to vomit again?” asked the jinniyeh.
“Not if—I can help it.”
The days since their departure from Egypt had gone by in a tense and sleepless blur. They’d sailed from Port Said on the S.S. Persia, a cramped if elegant passenger ship, where she’d been forced to choose between staying in her tiny cabin with the restless jinniyeh or enduring the small talk in the salon. Then, the Tilbury docks, where most of the American merchant captains had refused to take her, unhappy at the thought of a woman aboard in dangerous seas. In fact, when the Kansan’s captain had at last agreed, she’d wondered if it was a sign that she’d be preyed upon, and had resolved to keep her pistol within reach. Thankfully the crew had their hands full with managing the cargo and watching for submarines, and had left her entirely alone.
It now seemed an age since Cairo, when she’d left Dima in their room at the Grand Continental and run into Ned Lawrence in the street. She’d been startled to see the change in him. Much of his boyishness had disappeared, though not his restless energy; in truth he’d seemed as much a pent-up spirit as the one she’d just left behind at the hotel. He’d said little of his work at the War Office—a few vague mentions of mapmaking, and of serving as a tribal liaison—and had talked of Carchemish as though it had all happened long ago, in a golden youth. And she, in turn, had recounted a deeply edited version of her own hasty departure from Syria, painting herself as the heedless adventuress who hadn’t realized the danger she was in until it was nearly too late. She’d known full well the impression she was making, and hated it; hated, too, that she hadn’t been able to refuse his discreet offer of folded British pounds. Were he a different man, she would’ve wondered what he’d expected in return—but on that matter, she had her own suspicions about Ned Lawrence.
After he’d left Shepheard’s, she’d gone to the bar, elbowing her way through the drunken soldiers to ask the barkeeper if they had anything like a New York City directory. He’d pointed her to the sitting room, and a dusty shelf that held a handful of tourists’ guides and street atlases—and, among them, a copy of the 1909 Manhattan Trow’s. She’d flipped through it and found the Metalsmithing section, and the advertisement had jumped out at once:
Arbeely & Ahmad
Fences and Gates, Railings and Balustrades.
Vestibule Doors, Grills and Artistic Work.
116 Washington Street at Carlisle
She’d copied the pertinent information onto a napkin and tucked it into her folded passport, resolving not to say a word of it to the jinniyeh. All it proved was that he’d been in Little Syria in 1909—and much could happen in six years.
Her final stop in Cairo, after purchasing a cheap but serviceable assortment of Western women’s clothing and a new trunk to put them in, had been at a druggist’s for a bottle of laudanum, the largest that the man would sell her. To help me sleep at sea, she’d told him, which was the truth. He’d stared a moment at her shaking hands, but then sold it to her anyway. She had no wish to become an opium fiend, but she’d forgotten how difficult it was to sleep without Umm Sahir’s medicine, and pride had prevented her from asking Dima to repeat the trick that had revived her at Jaffa. She wondered what had happened to Umm Sahir. Ought she have tried to find her? And Abu Alim—had his sons been conscripted? Were they already at the Black Sea, the Dardanelles? Tears welled in her eyes at the thought.
Dima appeared out of the air. “You’re dripping water,” she said, her tone somewhere between alarm and accusation.
Sophia sighed, and wiped at her eyes. “I didn’t mean to.”
The ship rocked. Sophia closed her eyes, and had half fallen into a queasy slumber when Dima said suddenly, “What is he
