The Wanting by Michael Lavigne

moved off in the direction of the goats without any real plan in mind. As always in the desert, the horizon seemed to flee before me. Blades of hot air, rising like serpents, resolved into amusing images: a hat, a man on a bicycle, a three-legged camel, a caravan of shoes. But what was that? Blacker than the stream of mirages, something quite solid. Ah! The tip of a Bedouin tent peeking over the edge of the hill. It flapped silently in the burning wind. I admired it for its forlorn shape, how it sagged bowlegged like an old beggar. And yet, you outlived the golden palaces of emirs and caliphs, I thought, and even the great temples of Pharaoh.
    I stepped over the border of poppies they’d planted along the edge of the parking lot and felt the desert floor crunch beneath my sneakers. The wind picked up, and the tent bent with it willingly, and I thought of all the things I had ever built and wondered, what creature has ever built a nest better than this? I was determined to take a closer look, but as I approached, a young man came rushing toward me, cursing and waving me away. His brother was beside him, holding up a fist. “Private land! Private land!” they cried. “No pictures! Get out!” Maybe they thought I was a government agent trying to serve them orders to move. The thing everyone says about Bedouins is that since they stay in no place in particular, everywhere they are is home. But it’s not true. They mark out their territory just like anyone else, and within their boundaries they are just as lost as the rest of us.
    I turned around and made my way back to the guard. He looked up warily from his magazine.
    “Nobody trusts anybody anymore,” I said.
    “What do you want?”
    “Come on. I’m just here to see this girl.”
    “Sorry, I can’t do that.”
    “I don’t want you to do anything. I want you to not do anything.”
    He laughed. “You were really in a bombing?”
    “It’s nothing. Just a few bruises.”
    “Yeah, well, you’re going to have some beautiful scars. You want a Coke?”
    I squatted down beside him. He reached into his cooler and handed me a can. I opened it beneath my nose so I could feel the spritz.
    “I could get you a chair,” he said.
    “No, I’m good.”
    “You’re not on the list, my friend,” he said.
    “I understand that. Really, it was just some sort of miscommunication. Is this not how we do things in the Middle East?”
    He laughed. “I can’t place the accent.”
    “International.”
    He laughed again. “You’re still not on the list.”
    “Actually, I’m closely related to your patient, Dasha Cohen.”
    “Really?”
    “Absolutely. I’m not lying to you.”
    “How can you prove that?”
    “I can take off the last of these bandages.”
    “She was in the same event?”
    “Yes.”
    “And if you took off those bandages, I would see what that I haven’t seen before?”
    “Not a goddamned thing. What’s your name?”
    “Carmi.”
    “Nothing you’ve not seen before, Carmi.”
    He clicked his tongue. “You don’t want to tell me the particulars.”
    “No.”
    “You want an ice cream? I’ve got some Eskimos.”
    “Take pity on me, Carmi.”
    “I do pity you,” he said.
    “Then be a friend.”
    We finished our Cokes in silence. Then he got up and said, “You have to avoid the nurses. If anyone is there, you have to come back.”
    “I promise,” I said, and he unlocked the side door.
    I felt like I had stumbled into one of those abandoned churches in Moscow, all cobwebs and echoes and ghosts, although without the cobwebs, since the floors were sparkling with wax and the walls had been freshly scrubbed with disinfectant, but the halls were empty and there was not even the hum of a water cooler. I made my way down the corridor, scanning the name tags on the doors. MEYER, BEN YONA, NAPHTALI, TARPIS , and, finally, COHEN . Below her name the inevitable notation, DO NOT RESUSCITATE .
Lamed. Hey
. Two letters, that would be the end of her. Each door