The Ambassador's Wife by Jennifer Steil

crinkling with her smile.
    As she lifts the second forkful of pomegranate seeds to her lips, Miranda notices the shouting. Part of her mind had registered it moments earlier but dismissed it as insignificant. Men here were always yelling. They yelled their greetings, they yelled comments on the weather, they yelled in arguments. Miranda sometimes wondered if the entire country was hard of hearing. She had noticed several men approaching Mukhtar, who had wandered up the hill to inspect their surroundings, but again, this was not unusual. Mukhtar and the other guards often befriended the locals where they walked, talking and sharing their food.
    But suddenly something sounds wrong. They all notice it at once, a sharpness of tone. As they turn their faces toward the top of the hill, Miranda hears another familiar sound: the slide and click of arifle being cocked. A small, elderly man dressed in the standard white robe and twisted turban stands training an AK-47 on them. He waves it back and forth, screaming Arabic words that are lost to the wind, and then holds it steady. Behind him, several disciples fan out, raising their own weapons.
    Instantaneously the women scramble to their feet, stuffing everything haphazardly back into their packs without speaking. They have all made the same assumption; they are trespassing and the man and his posse want them off of his land. Miranda looks up for Mukhtar. He will know what to do. The others are starting down an incline to the dusty trail, moving as fast as they can. But Mukhtar is frantically waving her back.
    â€œWe can’t go,” Miranda calls, interpreting her bodyguard’s gestures. “They want us to go up there.” More men have appeared now, spreading across the ridge.
    The other women stare at her but quickly realize they have no choice. While it is counterintuitive to walk toward a group of men pointing guns to their heads, they cannot outrun bullets. Slowly, her heart shuddering through her rib cage with each beat, Miranda climbs toward the men. Perhaps Mukhtar has sorted something out. Some kind of agreement. They could just apologize and promise never to walk here again.
    But when they reach the group of men, it doesn’t look that way. Mukhtar is arguing with the turbaned man, who is the obvious leader of the group, and the others join in, everyone talking at once. The old man has seated himself on a rock, clutching his rifle with two hands like a walking stick. He is small, with a faceful of concentric wrinkles.
    â€œThey think you are all spies,” Mukhtar tells Miranda. “And that you are here to look for treasure on their land. To look for gold.”
    â€œGold?” echoes Miranda. “There is gold here?” Surely a country this poor didn’t have secret reserves of gold.
    â€œI told them you were all doctors,” Mukhtar continues. “French doctors. But they want to know why you have a guard. Doctors don’t usually have guards.”
    â€œWhat did you say?” Mukhtar would not have told them he was a guard. But it is fairly obvious. His fatigues, the heavy pack, the suspiciousbulges under his shirt. The fact that he is the only Mazrooqi man with a group of foreign women.
    â€œThat your company requires you to have a guard.”
    Miranda hardly has time to assess the situation before Mukhtar takes her arm and leads her directly toward the old man on the rock. “Mira, let me introduce you,” he says. Mukhtar is the only one of the guards who calls her Mira, mimicking Finn. He knows she speaks some Arabic. This is his attempt to humanize me, she thinks. She has no time to become nervous.
    â€œSalaam aleikum,”
she says, looking the old man in the eyes. He won’t look back at her. His greenish eyes are hard and remote, trained on the air above her right shoulder. He does not return her greeting. The silence closes cold fingers around her heart. Never, since she arrived in this country, has