Reluctant to part with more of her Saudi money for the food, Sora dug into the left pocket of her stolen trousers, which was sticky with a wad of dates taken from Ali’s generous trays. She allowed herself the luxury of one, and pried it from the clump and it dry. She had no idea how much money she actually had, what it was worth or when and if she could get more. She had American money and traveller’s checks, and gold credit card, which wouldn’t get too far from here. So she sat and sipped water from the last of the pop bottles she’d filched off the drink cart Ali had left in her room. She knew better than to risk drinking local water.

At first, the Arabs off the bus confused her. Gradually she began to make sense out of what she was watching.

The people from the north had suffered from some kind of ordeal to get this far in the desert. Many were angry. Their young children were greatly upset, she frightened and tearful. The teenagers were sullen and distrustful and volatile. Manu needed to see the medics in the tents. They had bloodstains on their clothes.

The last to get off the bus was a wailing, grief-stuck old man. He was unaccompanied, and no one paid him much attention as he pulled up bundles of money from the deep pockets in his robes. He waved the money in the soldiers’ faces, shook it under the noses of everyone who would listen to his plaintive harangue.

Nobody wanted the money. He couldn’t give it away. The old man tore the front of his ankle-length dolman apart and beat his , crying out his misery. Another refugee started arguing with him.

Officers came along and stopped the disturbance and sent both scurrying on the way. The hot wind caught the money and scooted it along underfoot. Still, nobody wanted the money. 

Curious, Sora got up and stretched her legs. She walked with her head down so as not to attract notice and picked up a paper bill. As he fastened onto a mille bank note, she dropped to her knees on the sand. A thousand Kuwaiti dollars! She was holding a thousand-dollar bill in Kuwaiti currency. That old man had just cast to the wind two fistfuls of thousand dollar bills.

Wait a minute, she slammed on her mental breaks and reminded herself that in Mexico one American dollar was worth three thousand pesos. But Kuwait was the riches country in the world! Stunned, Sora looked around at the money blowing across the desert.

“Look at the poor boy,” A Saudi medical technician pointed to the filthy boy kneeling in the dirt grabbing every bill that fluttered past him. “He’s probably never held so much money in his hands, and now it’s worthless.”

The doctor did not look up from the stitch he carefully knotted on the arm of an anesthetized Kuwaiti child. The boy slept in his mother’s arms. Oblivious to the troubles around him. The gunshot wound was clean and would heal. Pausing to look outside the tent, the Saudi doctor wondered how they were going to survive this latest tragedy. He saw the boy med tech spoke of beyond the lines of patients waiting to be treated.

“What’s wrong with him?” the doctor asked.

“Mouth’s all swollen. Probably an abscessed tooth.”

“Tell Hamil to get the boy over here. Maybe if he’s not in too bad shape, he can be taken into the army. Is he a village boy?”

“Not with that robe. From the looks of the cloths, he is Wadi Rumna.