"Youssef," I said warily.

"I just happened to be awake, and I heard you moving about. Is there something you need?'We continued walking toward the west wing. "No, not really, Youssef. Thank you. You just happened to be awake?"

He looked at me solemnly. "I'm a very light sleeper," he said.

"Ah. Well, I just had something I wanted to discuss with my wife."

"And did Umm Jirji satisfy you with her reply?"

I grunted. "Not exactly."

"Well then, maybe I could be of some help."

I started to decline his offer, but then I thought that maybe Youssef was the perfect person to talk to about my feelings. "Indihar mentioned that I've changed quite a bit in the last year or so."

"She is quite correct, Shaykh Marid."

"She is not altogether happy about what I seem to have become."

Youssef shrugged in the dim light. "I would not expect her to understand," he said. "It is a very complex situa-tion, one that only persons in administrative roles can un-derstand. That is, Friedlander Bey, you, Tariq, and myself. To everyone else, we are monsters." - "I am a monster in my own mind, Youssef," I said sadly. "I want my old liberty back.

I don't want to play an administrative role. I want to be young and poor and free and happy."

"That will never happen, my friend, so you must stop teasing your imagination with the possibility. You've been given the honor of caring for many people, and you owe them all your best efforts. That means concentration un-broken by self-doubt."

I shook my head. Youssef wasn't quite grasping my point. "I have a lot of power now," I said slowly. "How can I know if I'm using that power properly? For instance, I dispatched a young man to terminate a ruffian who bru-talized Friedlander Bey in Najran. Now, the holy Qur'an provides for revenge, but only at the same level as the original injury.

The sergeant could be severely beaten without feelings of guilt, but to end his life - "

Youssef raised a hand and cut me off. "Ah," he said, smiling, "you misunderstand both The Wise Mention of God and your own position. What you say about revenge is certainly true, for the average man who has only his own life and the lives of his immediate family to worry about. But just as they say that with privilege comes re-sponsibility, the opposite is also true. That is, with in-creased responsibility comes increased privilege. So we here in this house are above certain plain interpretations of Allah's commands. In order to maintain the peace of the Budayeen and the city, we must often act quickly and surely. If we are brutalized, as you put it, we don't have to wait for a death to occur before we end the threat against us. We maintain the well-being of our friends and associ-ates by prompt action, and we may go on from there secure in the knowledge that we have not transgressed the intent of the teachings of the Holy Prophet."

"May the blessings of Allah be on him and peace," I said. I kept my expression studiously blank, but I was howling on the inside. I hadn't heard such a ridiculous piece of sophistry since the days when the old shaykh who lived in a box in our alley in Algiers tried to prove that the entire Earth was flat because the city of Mecca was flat.

Which it isn't.

"I'm concerned that you're still showing such reluc-tance, Shaykh Marid," said" Youssef.

I waved my hand. "It's nothing. I've always dithered a little before doing what had to be done. But you and Friedlander Bey well know that I've always completed my tasks. Is it necessary that I relish them?"

Youssef gave a short laugh. "No, indeed. As a matter of fact, it is good that you don't. If you did, you'd run the risk of ending up like Shaykh Reda."

"Allah forbid," I murmured. We'd come to my door, and I left Youssef to seek out his own bed once again. I went inside, but I didn't feel like going to^leep. My mind was still unsettled. I paused only long enough to take an-other four Sonneine and a couple of tri-phets for energy. Then I slowly opened my door again, careful not to wake Kmuzu, and peered into the hall. I didn't see Youssef anywhere. I slipped out again, made my way downstairs, and sat behind the wheel of my electric sedan.

I needed a drink with a lot of laughing people around it. I drove myself to the Budayeen, indulging myself in the peculiar and pleasant loneliness you feel so early in the morning, with no one else on the road. Don't talk to me about driving under the influence-I know, it's stupid and I should be caught and made an example of. I just figured that with all the really terrible things hanging over my head, something like a traffic accident wouldn't dare hap-pen to me. That was the artificial confidence of the drugs again.

Anyway, I arrived outside the eastern gate without in-cident, and parked my car near the cab stand on the Bou-levard il-Jameel. My clmVwas: closed-had been for an hour or more-and many of the others were likewise dark. But there were plenty of after-hours bars and twenty-four-hour cafe's. A lot of the dancers went over to the Brig when they got off work. You'd think that after drinking with customers for eight hours, they'd have had .enough, but that wasn't the way it worked. They liked to sit together at the bar, throw back shots of schnapps, and talk-about the idiot guys they'd had to talk to all night.

The Brig was a dark, cool bar hard by the southern wall of the Budayeen on Seventh Street. I headed there. In the back of my mind was the faint hope that I'd run into someone. Someone like Yasmin.

It was smoky and loud in the Brig, and they'd covered the lights with blue gels, so everyone looked dead. There wasn't an open stool along the bar, so I sat in a booth against the opposite wall. Kamal ibn ash-Shaalan, the owner, who also worked behind the bar, saw me and came over. He made a couple of feeble swipes at the tabletop with a rag soaked in stale beer. "Where y'at tonight, Marid?" he said in his hoarse voice.

"Aw right," I said. "Gin and bingara with a little Rose's lime juice in it, okay?"

"You bet. You lookin' for company this evening?""I'll find it for myself, Kamal." He shrugged and walked away to make my drink.

Maybe ten seconds later, a drunk pre-op deb sat down across from me. The name she'd chosen for herself was Tansy, but at work everyone was supposed to call her Nafka. Nobody wanted to tell her what "nafka" meant in Yiddish. "Buy me a drink, mister?" she said. "I could come sit beside you and start your day off with a bang."

She didn't remember who I was. She thought I was just any old mark. "Not tonight, honey," I said. "I'm wait-ing for someone."

She smiled crookedly, her eyelids half-closed. "You'd be surprised what I could accomplish, While-U-Wait."

"No, I don't think I'd be surprised. I'm just not inter-ested. Sorry."

Tansy stood up and wobbled a little. She closed one eye in a slow wink. "I know what your problem is, mis-ter." She giggled to herself and headed back to the bar.

Well, no, she didn't know what my problem was. I didn't have much time to think about it, though, because I s'aw Yasmin stagger out of the ladies' room in the dark recesses of the club. She looked like she'd downed plenty of drinks at work, and then had a few here, too. I stood up and called her name. Her head swung around in slow motion, like an apatosaurus searching for another clump of weeds to munch.

"Whozat?" she said. She lurched toward me.

"It's Marid."

"Marid!" She grinned sloppily and dropped into the booth like a sack of onions. She reached under the table and fiddled under my gallebeya. "I've missed you, Marid! You still got that thing under there?"

"Yasmin, listen - "

"I'm real tired tonight, Marid. Would you take me back to my apartment? I'm land of drunk."

"I noticed. Look, I really just wanted to talk with you about - "

She got up again and stood beside me, bending down to wrap her arms around my neck. She started tickling my ear with her tongue. "You used to like this, Marid, re-member?"

"I never liked that. You're thinking of someone else."

Yasmin slid her hand down my chest. "C'mon, Marid, I want to go home. I live back on Fourteenth Street now."

"All right," I said. When Yasmin got drunk and got an idea in her head, there was no way you could talk your way out of doing what she wanted. I got up, put my arm around her shoulders, made sure she had her purse, and half-led, half-dragged her out of the Brig. It took us half an hour to walk the seven blocks back on the Street.

We finally reached her building and I found her keys in her purse. I opened her front door and led her over to her bed. "Thanks, Marid," she said in a singsong voice. I took her shoes off for her and then turned to go. "Marid?"

"What is it?" I was getting sleepy again. I wanted to get home and sneak back into my apartment before Yous-sef or Tariq or Kmuzu found out I was gone, and in-formed Friedlander Bey.

Yasmin called me again. "Rub my neck a little?"

I sighed. "All right, but just a little." Well, I started rubbing her neck, and while I was doing that she was slipping down her short black skirt. Then she reached up and tried to throw my gallebeya over my head. "Yasmin, you're drunk," I said.

"Do it to me, will ya?" she said. "I don't get a hang-* over that way." It wasn't the most sensual invitation I'd ever had. She kissed me deep and long, and she hadn't lost any speed in that department. And she knew what to do with her hands, too. In a little while, we were jamming hard and hungry. I think she was asleep before I finished. Then I had a weary climax and crashed right beside her.

How do I describe the beginning of the new day? I slept fitfully, half on and half off Yasmin's bare mattress. I dreamed vivid, crazy dreams as the remainders of the opiates and the speed disappeared from my bloodstream. I woke up once about ten o'clock in the morning, a foul taste in my mouth, a dull throbbing behind my forehead. I couldn't remember where I was, and I gazed around Yas-min's apartment, hopeful of finding a clue. Finally, I ex-amined her graceful back, slender waist, and luscious hips. What was I doing in bed with Yasmin? She hated me.

Then I recalled the end of the night before. I yawned and turned away from her, and was almost instantly asleep again.

I dreamed that my mother was shouting at me. I dream that a lot. On the surface, my mom and I have patched up all our differences, and the guilts and resent-ments have been put away forever. The dreams told me :hat most of that progress had been only cosmetic, and ;hat deep within, I still had awkward, unsettled emotions where my mother was concerned.

My mother's voice rose in both pitch and volume, but I couldn't quite make out what she was mad about this time. I saw her face turn red and ugly, and she shook her fist at me. With her harsh words echoing painfully in my ears, I ducked as she began beating my head and shoul-ders.

I woke up. It was Yasmin who was screaming, and who was also punching me in my sleep. Yasmin had started out ds a rather large and well-built young man, so that even after her sexchange operation, she was still a formidable opponent. In addition, she had the element of surprise on her side.

"Get out of here! Get out of here!" she cried.

I rolled off the mattress onto the cold floor. I glanced at my watch: it was now about noon. I didn't understand what Yasmin's problem was.

"You're slime, Audran!" she shouted. "You're slug vomit, taking advantage of me in the shape I was in!"

Despite all the many times we'd made love in the past, however long we'd actually lived together, I feltembar-rassed to be naked in her presence. I dodged out of range of her fists, then stood kind of hunched over, trying to hide my nude vulnerability. "I didn't take advantage of you, Yasmin," I said. The throbbing behind my forehead started up again, but worse this time. "I ran into you a few hours ago at the Brig. You begged me to make sure you got home all right. I was trying to leave when you started begging me to jam you. You climbed all over me. You wouldn't let me leave."

She held her forehead and winced. "I don't remember anything like that at all."

I shrugged, grabbing my underwear and gallebeya. "What can I say? I'm not responsible for what you can or can't remember."

"How do I know you didn't bring me home passed out, and then raped me when I was at your mercy?"

I pulled the gallebeya over my head. "Yasmin," I said sadly, "don't you know me better than that? Have I ever done anything that would make you think I was capable of rape?"

"You've killed people," she said, but the steam had gone out of her argument.

I balanced on one foot and slipped on a sandal. "I didn't rape you, Yasrnin," I said.

She relaxed a little more. "Yeah?" she said. "How was it?"

I tugged on the other sandal. "It was great, Yasmin. We've always been great together. I've missed you."

"Yeah? Really, Marid?"

I knelt beside the mattress. "Look," I said, staring into her dark eyes, "just because I'm married to Indihar-"

"I won't let you cheat on her with me, Marid. Indihar and I been friends for a long time."

I closed my eyes and rubbed them. Then I gazed back at Yasmin. "Even Prophet Muhammad-"

"May the blessings of Allah be on him and peace," she murmured.

"Even the Prophet had more than one wife. I'm enti-tled to four, if I can support them all equally and treat them all with fairness."

Yasmin's eyes grew larger. "What are you telling me, Marid?"

I shrugged. "I don't know, honey. Indihar and I are married in name only. We're good friends, but I think she -esents me a little. And I really meant what I said about :nissing you."

"Would you really marry me? And what would Indihar say about that? And how-"

I raised a hand. "I've got 'a lot to work out in my n'lind," I said. "And we'd all have to get together and talk about this. And Papa might not approve. Anyway, I hav in appointment with the imam of the Shimaal Mosque in two hours. I've got to go get cleaned up."

Yasmin nodded, but she stared at me with her head rilted to one side. I made sure I had my keys and every-thing else I'd come in with-particularly my essential pill-case. I went to her front door.

"Marid?" she called.

I turned and looked at her.

"I wouldn't be just your Number Two wife. I won't be a servant to Indihar and her kids. I'd expect to be treated equally, just like the noble Qur'an says."

I nodded. "We've got plenty of time," I said. I crossed the room and knelt to kiss her good-bye. It was a soft, lingering kiss, and I was sorry to end it. Then I stood up, sighed, and closed her door behind me. Yaa Allah, what had those drugs gotten me into this time?

Outside on the street, it was a gray and drizzly morn-ing. It fit my mood perfectly, but that didn't make it any more enjoyable. I had a long walk along the Street from Fourteenth to the eastern gate. I lowered my head and strode along close to the storefronts, hoping no one would recognize me. I wasn't in the mood for a reunion with Saied the Half-Hajj or Jacques or any of my other old pals. Besides, I barely had time to get home and shower and change clothes for my appointment with Abd ar-Raz-zaq.

Of course, as usual, what I wanted didn't seem to mat-ter to the cosmos. I'd gone only about a block and a half, when a high-pitched voice called out "Al-Amin! O Great One!"

I shuddered and looked behind me. There was a scrawny boy about fifteen years old, taller than me, dressed in a torn, dirty white shirt and white trousers. His filthy feet looked as if they'd never seen shoes or sandals. He had a purple and white checked keffiya knotted around his grimy neck. "Morning of light, O Shaykh," he said happily.

"Right," I said. "How much do you need?" I reached into my pocket and pulled out a roll of bills.

He looked astonished, then glanced around in all di-rections. "I didn't mean to ask you for money, Shaykh Marid,"

he said. "I wanted to tell you something. You're being followed."

"What?" I was honestly startled by the news, and very unhappy. I wondered who'd set the tail on me, Hajjar or Abd ar-Razzaq or Abu Adil.

"It's true, O Shaykh," said the boy. "Let's walk to-gether. On the other side of the Street, about a block behind us, is a fat kaffir in a sky-blue gallebeya. Don't look for him."

I nodded. "I wonder if he sat outside Yasmin's apart-ment all night, waiting for me."

The boy laughed. "My friends told me he