unfamiliar, black and ruined, dreamlike. He felt slow and strange, as if he were extremely old.
“Majid!”
As soon as he spotted his friend lying on the floor, Henry understood everything. Then the office door opened, and without thinking Henry threw himself over Majid’s body.
He felt a pair of hands lifting him. It was Majid’s bodyguard.
“Your Highness!” the bodyguard cried. “Are you injured?”
The prince looked at the bodyguard in confusion and fumbled to sit up. When the bodyguard started to help him to his feet, Henry blocked him. “Don’t!” Henry cried. “He may have broken bones.”
Henry carefully moved Majid’s limbs to see that they were intact. “You’re bleeding,” he observed.
“You’re shouting,” said Majid.
“Am I? I can hardly hear you.” His own voice sounded as if it were coming from another room.
Majid turned to his bodyguard and got a report. A suicide bomber had approached the gate. He was young, with an accent of the Eastern Province. He said that Prince Majid had promised him charity. When the palace gatekeepers refused to let him in, he blew himself up. Now the gatekeepers were dead. Seeing that Majid was alive and intact, the bodyguard rushed off to protect the palace until the police arrived.
Majid and Henry sat on the floor, staring at each other in the dazed amazement that only survivors know, where every detail is newly crisp and each fresh moment is like a crust of ice on a pond, a thin tangible layer between life and death.
“Where is your medical bag?” Henry asked. “I need to attend to your wounds.”
“I must check on my staff,” the prince protested.
“First, we repair the damage to your face. You can’t go around bleeding, you’ll scare everyone to death.”
“Is it that bad?”
“It’s not disfiguring,” Henry assured him. “But I detect some puncture wounds near your eye. Let’s make sure they’re not near any nerves.”
Henry helped Majid to his feet. The prince looked at the damaged room in shock. The front of his palace was open to the city. He seemed paralyzed by the weird beauty of the scene. The night air invaded the room, the scent of explosives carried on the unfamiliar breeze singeing their nostrils. Both men jumped when the chandelier suddenly gave way. Majid was dazed and a little wobbly. Henry steered him to a more secure portion of the palace.
Fortunately the lights in the prince’s bedchamber were working. They examined themselves in the bathroom mirror. They were both coated in white dust, making them look like corpses. Henry noticed blood on his left shoulder and an ugly contusion on the side of his head.
“So,” Majid said, “we treat each other.”
While Majid cleaned himself, Henry sterilized a probe and tweezers, then examined the several small wounds around Majid’s temple and nostril, extracting small bits of glass only millimeters from his eye. “You were fortunate, habibi,” he said, using the Arab term of endearment.
It embarrassed Henry to remove his shirt. The signs of his childhood disease were obvious: the scoliosis that had left one shoulder higher than the other, the protruding breastplate, his swollen forearms. Henry never exposed himself in this way to anyone but Jill. Majid graciously pretended to focus only on the cut on his shoulder. “Ah,” said Majid, “you get to have stitches. And I haven’t done this since medical school.”
It was a strange interlude full of unexpected intimacy. They had already been through so many fateful moments together, but the still undigested experience of surviving what was meant to be their final moment made them aware that they would always be bonded to one another as they would never be to anyone else.
Majid said, “You saved my life.”
“I did nothing of the sort,” Henry protested.
“You attempted to do so. Maybe I would expect my bodyguard to do such a thing had he been present. You are under no obligation to me, and yet you are willing to sacrifice yourself. You are a better man than I. And much, much braver.”
“You give me too much credit.” Henry winced. “Although I don’t think I’ll want you to sew stitches in the future.”
“This is why I stay in the office and not in the hospital.”
As the shock wore off, both men began trembling. It was impossible to control. They laughed, giddily, still marveling at being alive. But it wasn’t safe to stay in the palace.
The kingdom had been struggling with an insurgency even before the hajj. “These are our own people, Shiites from the Eastern Province,” Majid confided. “They are being supported by the