"Ohhhh!" Buzz moaned.  "That's good."

        "Do you like that?" Jenna smiled as she expertly massaged his aching back.

        "You bet...Don't go any lower," Buzz warned with a wince.  "It's too sore down there."

        "That's what you get for insisting we ride on those camels," Jenna gently admonished her aching husband as she continued to knead his knotted flesh.  Now little Rocky waddled over to the couch to comfort daddy by rubbing his scalp.

        "That's a good boy," Buzz patted his eager son on the head.  "Just don't pull any hair out, I don't have much to spare... I said I'm sore down there, Jenna!" Buzz had to warn again as Jenna's hands strayed too far south. 

        "Sorry," she grinned wickedly.  "Aren't you sore, Petula?" Buzz asked.  Where'd you learn how to ride a camel?"

        "Well, I am a little," Jenna admitted, shifting a bit in her perch on Buzz's thighs.  "But I'm not such a crybaby about it as you."

        "No, really," Buzz continued as his other son, Coop, raced around the couch in an apparent attempt to get absolutely nowhere fast. "Where did you learn how to ride a camel?"

        "I've never learned how to ride a camel," Jenna explained patiently.  "But I'm more experienced on horseback than you are."

        "Oh," said Buzz.  "So they had a lotta horses in Chelsea, did they?"

        "No-o...If you must know, a particularly lucrative professional opportunity once required me to ride the hounds at a fox hunt--"

        "Ix-nay on our infamous pasts," Buzz muttered, watching Coop now
pretending to be an airplane as he flew about the suite.  "Coop's already traumatized from finding out that all that fuss on December 25th isn't really for him.  Ow!" he cried as Jenna's hands again worked their way below the Mason-Dixon line.

        "Sorry," she apologized with a snicker.  "At least it's not as bad as the bloody nose you got when you insisted on boxing that kangaroo in the Outback."

        "Kanga-ROO!" Rocky cried, and started emulating the animal with various left and right hooks to daddy's proboscis.

        "Don't pummel your father, dear," Jenna said.  "It's very naughty."

        "If you think I was bad, you shoulda seen the kangaroo," Buzz bragged while warding off Rocky's blows.

        "We did see it, Buzz, and there was no reason to call the society for the Prevention of Cruely to Animals.  Coop," Jenna called to the son who was now rumbling about the couch making noises like a tank.  "Did you take a bath?"

        "Is there one missin'?" the boy replied.

        To Buzz's cackle of laughter, Jenna responded with a sharp smack to his backside.  "Hey!" Buzz cried as she hopped off him.  "Don't spank me, he said it!"

        "You encourage him!" Jenna snapped back.  "Now get up and give these two their baths." 

        "Food!" Rocky shook his head. 

        "Bath!"

        "Food!"

        "If you think," Jenna said sternly, "that I'm going to take two such smelly little boys as you out into public, you'd better think again."

        "C'mon, guys," Buzz asserted his paternal authority while pulling a robe about himself.  "Time to pay the piper... This is your fault, you little wisenheimer," he slyly accused Coop, and Rocky joined in the general admonishment of his brother by pushing him towards the bathroom door.  But Coop thought a successful quip worth the consequences of even this terrible fate.  Like father, like son.

        As Jenna began to leaf through a local map provided them by the hotel so as to locate a suitable eating establishment, the telephone rang. "Hello?  Dr. Karshish!  It's wonderful to hear from you, are you in Cairo?"

        "No, no," Dr. Karshish replied.  "I'm in my home in Kansas City.  Your son-in-law told me where I could reach you, so I thought I would call to say hello and ask how your trip is going?" 

        "That's very kind of you, Doctor!" Jenna cried, genuinely touched.  "Our trip is going splendidly, thank you, I couldn't ask for a better one, though at times it is a bit like travelling the world with the Three Stooges." 

        To the Doctor's response, a series of high-pitched, Curly-like "Woo woo
woo-woo's," Jenna simply rolled her eyes and looked to the heavens, convinced absolutely that no man ever really grows up.  "Yes," she continued gamely.  "We've literally been from here to Timbuktu, circumnavigating the globe from Borneo to Australia, Tokyo, India, Istanbul, until we've made our way to your native land.  It's been a dream come true."

        "And were you married as you planned?"

        "Yes!" Jenna gushed.  "We were wedded on the prow of a ship in the bluest Pacific.  It was the most extraordinary feeling, pledging one's troth in that vast expanse of nature.  Humbling in a way, yet concentrating the mind on the solemnity and dignity of a true union of willing souls....  On the other hand, there was the inescapable feeling that one had somehow wandered onto the set of 'Titanic'."

        "I can see your hair flying in the wind!" Dr. Karshish laughed.

        "And the best thing is, no icebergs yet," Jenna knocked on a wooden side table for luck.

        "And I'm sure there won't be," said the doctor.  "You're a wonderful couple."

        "Thank you."

        "Uhhh, Jenna," Dr. Karshish now began hesitantly.  "I wouldn't want to impose on you--"

        "Doctor, there is no way that we could ever repay you for what you've done for us."

        "I did nothing, really.  However, there is a favor I would like to ask of you."

        "If it's in our power to perform, you may consider it done."

        "Well, it's nothing too difficult.  You see, my native village lies not too far south of Cairo, and...Well, my sister runs a school there."

        "Yes...?"

        "Well, you see, she writes to me to keep me abreast of her situation, and..."

        "There's some trouble?" Jenna prompted her friend.

        "I don't know," Dr. Karshish frankly admitted.  "Sarwat says nothing explicitly, but reading between the lines... I get the distinct impression that she's very worried about something."

        "And you'd like us to find out what it is?"

        "To make certain that she's all right.  I'm sure there's nothing really wrong, but it would ease my mind...."

        "Consider it done, Doctor.  Just give me directions on where we're going and who we're going to see..."

        When Buzz returned with the now well-scrubbed children, Jenna was waiting with a surprise announcement.  "I called the front desk for information.  What say we go out for pizza?"

        "Pizza!  Pizza!" the delighted boys cried as their father did a double-take.

        "You're kidding!" Buzz eyed his wife suspiciously.

        "Why should I be kidding?" Jenna asked.

        "I don't know," he shrugged.  "Up till now you've always insisted on our sampling the 'native cuisine', that's all."

        "Yes, well... Change is good, change is something we should welcome, not fear."

        "Huh?" Buzz grunted, now completely confused.

        "Such as a change in our itinerary?"

        "Ohhh!  This is a bribe!"

        "Yes!" Jenna admitted gleefully, vigorously rubbing her two hands together before planting a pair of sunglasses on top of her head.  "Now let's get going.  I'll tell you all about it on the way." 

        Even in first class, the train was stuffy and crowded.  Within, the cell phones of the Egyptian middle-and-upper classes chirped with such a variety of ear-piercing melodies that Buzz felt like pulling the straw from Coop's water bottle and using it to conduct a cellular symphony; without, where Jenna was looking, their little Rocky asleep in her arms despite the din, barefoot Egyptian villagers tilled their fields with the same tools and water buffalo as in Pharaoh's time.  A pretty
conceit; but Buzz's eyes were only for his wife.

        He watched the tiny beads of perspiration form on her upper lip, her brow, the skin above her collarbone, and remembered Harley's saying to him once:  "Boy, does that woman sweat!  It's no wonder that England's so damp and clammy!"  The shade of her wide-brimmed white hat guarded the color of her eyes, always chameleon, changing literally with her moods, a source of mystery that he would never truly fathom.  Nose just a little turned-up, you could tell when her head tilted as it did now as she slowly blinked and stared at the ceiling, seeing what in her
mind?  Perhaps the joke that she'd played on him in Kyoto, when his friend Tanizaki had insisted on taking him to the Geisha's for a bath, and the scent of the lotion so familiar that he turned, and there was Jenna in a flowing kimono, having whipped up a batch of Leicester  Square Lotion for the occasion!  As Buzz laughed at the memory, Jenna smiled at him, looking like an angel in a white cotton dress, so practical for the heat, so ethereal to his soul.

        Suddenly Buzz shivered and jerked his head about.  "What is it?" Jenna asked, twisting to see while trying not to disturb Rocky.

        "Nothing," Buzz muttered, seeing nothing out of place behind them.  "Just that I had the feeling we were being watched."

        "You don't think that's Nola back there behind that veil," Jenna grinned, and Buzz laughed nervously, a bit perturbed that he'd also noticed the woman in the last row of the car, covered from head to foot in the Muslim way, and had found something about her disturbingly familiar.  When Buzz turned again to take another look, the woman was gone.

        As the train neared the town of Balat, the desert gradually grew populated with sparse trees shifting to ever more verdant vegetation.  First appeared gardens of grapevines, then date palms, wheat fields, figs, mulberry and citrus fruit trees.  Finally was revealed the Oasis of Dakhlah, and about it the blockhouses of the settlement.

        "Wow!" Buzz exclaimed upon disembarking from the train.  "You see an oasis in the movies, it's like a little puddle.  This is practically a whole lake!"

        And a town of about twenty thousand people, with no very clear addresses.  Sarwat, Dr. Karshish's sister, lived in the schoolhouse hat she ran, in the district of Jehan.  The doctor's instructions were for them to take a taxi there from the station; and, indeed, Buzz was in the process of procuring one as Jenna sat down with the children to watch. 

        "Now you two pay attention to your father," Jenna directed their gazes.  "Do you know what he's doing?" 

        "No," Coop said.  "He's haggling over the price for our ride.  Do you know what 'haggle' means?" 

        "No."

        "That means he's bargaining to see what we'll pay.  Back home these prices are set, they're the same for everyone, but in many places you have to negotiate the best price that you can.  Fortunately, your father is an excellent negotiator."

        As the two boys beamed with pride over their father's alleged skill, the voices of the two men kept getting louder, and their gestures broader, with, Jenna hoped, the latter action being less futile than the former, as the cabby's English was proving no better than a match for Buzz's nonexistent Arabic.  Happily, though the two of them continually howled in disbelief, the number of fingers they were flashing in each other's faces was gradually converging.  What had started on the cabby's
side with all ten had now fallen to six, though for his part, Buzz seemed stubbornly stuck on four.  After five minutes with no further movement on either side, Buzz threw up his hands and marched back to his family.

        "Well, is it settled?" Jenna asked.

        "It will be in a minute," Buzz said cooly, though the sweat was pouring down his cheeks.

        "You got him down from ten pounds to six, what's the problem?"

        "Your Ma really did just fall off the turnip truck, didn't she?" Buzz chuckled to Coop and Rocky.  "The bargaining doesn't really begin until the price is cut in half."

        As if in confirmation of this sagacious principle of trucking, the cabby now walked over to them with a particularly frustrated scowl on his face.  As Buzz looked up nonchalantly, the man flashed a mere five fingers at him. Buzz just shook his head, again holding up four.  One more repetition of this digital dance had Jenna raising her own eyebrows almost as impatiently as the cab driver was raising his, but finally Buzz launched into his ultimate compromise.  To the fabulous four, he
added, as on an invisible blackboard, the fraction '1/2'.  Miraculously (or maybe not so miraculously, our numeric system having originated with the Arabs), the cabby understood, and agreed, repeating Buzz's gestures back to him exactly.

        "Agreed?" Buzz asked.  "To the schoolhouse in Jehan?" 

        "Jehan," the man nodded vigorously again.  "Jehan."

        "There it is," Buzz smugly snapped his fingers to Jenna.  "Let's load up the car."

        The driver tossed their last suitcase down to the dusty road as Buzz yelled:  "This isn't a schoolhouse!"

        "Jehan!" the man shouted back, pointing in the direction of a narrow street.  "Jehan!"

        "I believe our four pounds, fifty piasters gets us to the District of Jehan, dear," Jenna suggested to her irate husband as she paid their increasingly belligerent cabby his fare, thus preventing a more serious international incident.  The man snatched the money from her hand and with one more wild wave in the direction of the narrow street, leaped into his car and was gone.

        "What did you pay him for?" Buzz cried in exasperation.

        "I didn't want you to kill him!" Jenna cried right back at him while snatching up Rocky.  "Foreign prisons tend to be highly inhospitable!"

        Seeing that the boys were becoming upset at the hubbub, Buzz dropped his voice to say: "You think he meant that Sarwat's school is somewhere down this street?"

        "I certainly hope so," Jenna replied, passing out water bottles to the children.  "At least it's so narrow that we'll be in the shade walking.  It's about 100 degrees out here."

        "Well," Buzz said with brave joviality.  "Only mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun.  You're English, they're half-English, and I'm a mad dog, so we got it made!"  To his wife's look from hell, Buzz responded by scurrying to pick up their suitcases, taking Coop's hand, and leading the way on their journey into the heart of Balat.
 

        There did seem to be something about that old saw, as people were scarce in the noonday heat, and those few that the Coopers did encounter proved entirely unfamiliar with English.  Then, as they turned a corner, the violent clatter of youthful voices assaulted their ears.

        Trapped against a crumbling wall, a young woman in ragged clothing, sans the traditional Muslim headdress, was desperately dodging a fusillade of rocks and stones being hurled at her by a mob of screaming boys, perhaps averaging ten years of age.  Hunched over, jerking spasmodically, her frantic wailing pierced the assailants' shouts as they played with their victim as does a cat with its mouse,
steering her first one way and then the other with their calculated aims.  As Buzz and Jenna took in the scene, they saw that the woman held a baby in her arms.

        "Hey!" Buzz cried, handing Coop over to Jenna.  "Stop that!"

        Seeing an angry adult taking a few steps towards them, the half-pint mob immediately disintegrated, dispersing in every direction. As Buzz and Jenna ran to see if the woman and child were all right, the girl stared dazedly at them, then raced toward the nearest road.

        "Wait!" Jenna called to her, pulling herself and her husband up short.  At the sound of another woman's voice, the girl turned, fear and panic so painting her face that it could be seen from 100 paces off; but at the sight of the baby on Jenna's arm, panic, if not the fear, seemed to melt away from her.  She looked with a glance of something like longing into Jenna's deeply set, brilliantly blue eyes, for Jenna's sunglasses had fallen from her nose during her sprint; but at the sound
of Buzz's, "Are you all right?", the girl again broke eye contact and disappeared with her child through a hole in the tattered wall.

        "The place must be abandoned," Buzz said upon reaching the spot. "Hello?" he cried through the hole into the darkened building. "You don't have to be afraid," Jenna called from behind him, but to no avail.

        "You think she's okay?" Buzz asked, turning back to his wife. "Think I should go in after her?"

        After a moment's hesitation, Jenna replied: "She seems to know where she's going...and we don't.  I don't think the boys actually hit them with those rocks, they were just playing a cruel game.  Perhaps we should just move on."

        Blindly, the Coopers staggered to a tiny inn where they took lodgings for the night, as by this time they were too tired and sweaty and dirty to properly present themselves to Sarwat Karshish and her school.  Happily, the school's location, divulged to them by the inn's proprietor, was not too far away, a convenient walking distance; so the next morning, after a bath and breakfast, they set off, reaching the nondescript concrete building without further incident.

        An elderly man with a two day growth of beard answered the door. "Hello.  Is this the school of Sarwat Karshish?" Buzz inquired.  "Do you speak English?"

        "Yes," the man responded, presumably to both questions, with a thick accent.  He grinned down at the impatiently squirming Coop, who was tugging restlessly at his father's sleeve.  "May I help you?"

        "We're here to see Ms. Karshish."
]
        "We're friends of her brother's," Jenna added while putting Rocky down and taking the boy's hand.  "From America."

        "The doctor, yes!" the old man smiled.  "Please come inside and follow me."  They entered a small vestibule which opened out into a wide, rather dark corridor, tiled in speckled linoleum, with children's drawings lining its walls.  The man, somewhat stoop-shouldered, led them on with a stately gait, so that Buzz and Jenna had a chance to glance inside several rooms as they passed by, all of them brightly illuminated by natural light, in contrast to the rather gloomy corridor, with one of the rooms sporting row upon row of blond wooden school desks, obviously
meant for classes, but now deserted.  At last they came to a closed door before which the man requested them to wait.  As he opened it, the muffled sound of children's voices could be heard.

        "This is a school, guys," Buzz explained to his kids.  "When we get back home, you're gonna be going to one of these."  As Coop vigorously shook his head, 'No!', Jenna stooped to straighten the boys' hair, disheveled from the wind.  "Now you boys be good and make us proud, okay?" she whispered as the old man returned with a woman in tow.

        "Are you Mr. and Mrs. Cooper?" the lady smiled, offering her hand to them.  "Hasan sent me an email that you were coming."  Her grip was firm, her brown eyes steady and clear as she greeted them.  Of about Jenna's height and age, Sarwat Karshish's build was strong and sturdy, her face rather long, her nose prominent, with shortcut hair and flawless bronze-colored skin.  She was a woman to like immediately, and not so reserved as her 'American' brother.

        "And who are you two?" Sarwat knelt down to take a closer look at the little boys.

        "Salamu-Alaikum," Coop pronounced distinctly, and gave a solemn little bow, creatively combining the greetings he'd learned in Cairo and Kyoto.  "My name is Henry Bradshaw Cooper."

        "Peace be with you, Henry," Sarwat smiled, giving the English translation of Henry's Egyptian salutation.  As Buzz and Jenna beamed, she turned to Rocky.  "And who might you be?"

        "Ian GRA-dy!" Rocky shouted out enthusiastically as he clumsily shook Sarwat's proffered hand.

        "I think they'd much prefer you call them Coop and Rocky!" Jenna laughed, reaching down to scoop up her youngest child.  "And we are Buzz and Jenna."

        "And I am Sarwat.  Welcome to Balat."