From Sister Europe, which was published last month by Knopf.

Demian was among the first guests to arrive, taking a taxi. He had intended to get through the evening by being buzzed, though he managed only one glass of wine at home. He had to arrive early if he were to have a fighting chance of drinking two aperitifs before dinner without looking like a lush.

The hotel had been updated in the Seventies, but the original building was vintage 1958, and the décor suggested a more prosperous USSR, where El Lissitzky could work in gold leaf. The reception desk faced the entrance, quite close to it, with the lobby stretching sideways, long and narrow.

Before he could even say hello, he heard Masud’s voice from behind him. The writer was seated in a group of four that occupied two upholstered sofas and two chairs, half hidden by a Mondrianesque screen fashioned from dully gleaming brass rods and large oblongs of polished agate. He beckoned with an expansive gesture for Demian to approach.

“Good evening!” Demian said.

Masud stood to embrace him lightly and trade air-kisses.

Demian knew him well. Masud was celebrated as the literary voice of greater Arabia’s nomadic herdsmen—proud sons of the desert, a noble caste of unhurried sybarites not known for their religious orthodoxy. He had fled the Sinai for Norway at the age of eleven, but wrote with unabated, prolific intensity about his youth and had never attained literary competence in a second language.

Masud introduced the woman seated next to him as his wife, Ibtisam. She wore a short black cape (Demian guessed Chloé) over a long black gown, with coral jewelry and lipstick, counteracting her petite stature with vertiginous Louboutins. A black scarf framed her small white face. She said good evening to Demian without extending her hand to be shaken. Her modest attire was very much at odds with her husband’s avowed secularism.

The roly-poly ambassador stood for a handshake. They had met several times before, and Demian remembered to address him as “Excellency.” The diplomat—a former compressed-natural-gas sales rep, from an excellent family—radiated self-satisfied prosperity, not least in his lavishly wavy, gloriously auburn choice of toupee.

The fourth, a younger man, leaned back in his seat and lifted his highball glass, saying in greeting, “You’ll have some whiskey?”

It was a jarringly blasé, almost rude command. Demian resolved to gloss over the awkwardness by asking whether the princess had come down yet.

“She’s at home,” the young man said. “I’m her grandson, Radi.”

“Enchanté!” he said, surprised. “I mean, I’m very sorry to hear it. I hope she gets well soon.” They shook hands, and he took a seat on Masud’s sofa.

The ambassador diverted his friends from the odd scene by telling a joke. “A Bedouin and a Chinese walk into a bar,” he said. “The Chinese orders nothing. The Bedouin says that nothing is good enough. The bartender gives the Bedouin a triple of single malt on the house, and he slaps the Chinese in the face.”

Masud and Ibtisam laughed. Radi groaned. Demian, unsure what he had just heard and who had slapped the Chinese person, said, somewhat tentatively, “And then the Chinese does what?”

Still laughing, Masud said, “It’s a fable. The Chinese has been to this bar many times, but he never orders anything.”

“I’m sorry,” Demian said. “I thought it was meant to be a joke.”

His implication that he had taken the joke seriously occasioned general hilarity.

The ambassador, once he was done laughing, explained himself with the air of a man condescending to a woman. “The Chinese are generous investors, but they import workers who are not well paid. I much prefer the German.”

Leaning back, Masud declaimed in tones of dulcet sagacity, “It’s best when builders are not creative.”

There was a moment of silence. Demian wondered whether he was making an ethnic joke about Germans or recalling the earthquake that had devastated Turkey and Syria two weeks before. Ibtisam clarified the issue by looking down mournfully, although she said not a word.

The lull allowed the ambassador to change the subject. He asked Masud what he was working on.

“A feminist story,” the great writer replied.

“Wonderful!” the ambassador cried, as though in transports.

“How does it go?”

“A sheikh’s son by a slave woman”—the writer looked around meaningfully, lowering his voice as though the son in question were there in the lobby, and leaned toward the others so that they leaned in as well—“was walking home from delivering a message, following the shore of the sea, when he saw a young woman lying naked on the sand. He approached and saw that she had come from the sea dead, but very beautiful, not swollen and torn.”

It was apparent that he intended to tell the entire story. Demian liked it already, because the drowned woman had remained beautiful. So much of life was ugly and cruel; why shouldn’t stories be different? He would find other opportunities to talk to Radi about architecture.

“It could only be a work of witchcraft,” Masud said. “He gathered acacia wood to build a fire to burn her, but when he put her on the fire, she reawakened to life. Her body burned away. There was no skeleton or meat inside, only a beautiful woman made of flame. She sat upright and spoke with him. She told stories of her homeland, a forested place of great fertility, where cows graze on a green savanna and the faithful live in bliss. The flames began to die down, and she grew smaller. He did not want to part with her, so he added wood to the fire. He went into the wadi and cut down trees to burn. In the end he stayed awake for ten nights, talking to her, until there was no tree left in all the surrounding wadis. He burned thornbushes, and he gathered every herb that grew, to burn it. Then he burned his cloak, and his shirt, and his head covering. He cut off his hair to burn it. There was nothing left, and the woman began to fade. She said, ‘There is only one way to keep me, and that is to join me in the fire.’ Naked, just like her, with only his dagger, he stepped into the fire and closed his eyes. The fire was so small that the sweat of his fear put it out. When he opened his eyes, the woman stood by him. She took his hand and they began to walk toward his home. When they arrived, he asked his mother for clothing for himself and the woman. ‘What woman?’ his mother said. She could not see her. But he saw her clearly and heard her speaking, telling of paradise. He sat in his mother’s tent all day, listening to her. He stopped speaking to other people, always listening to her. His parents were troubled that their son had been driven mad by a witch. His father invited all the nobility of the region to a large festival to take place for three days, during which there would be much loud music and shouting. He forced his son to come with him to the center of the crowd, by the fire, where he could not hear the woman if she spoke, or see her because it was so bright, and he said to him, ‘Your witch is dead. We have killed her!’ The boy looked to the fire, knowing that his love could not die. He saw her standing in the flames. He ran to her. Because he was not naked, his clothes caught fire and burned his skin terribly. The woman of flame cried out, but quickly she put on his clothing of flame and seized his dagger, and when she stepped out of the fire, she was dressed as a young man. All who saw this happen were frozen with amazement, and she melted away into the crowd, invisible to all because she did not speak. A woman is visible only when she speaks.”

Masud gave a little bow, acknowledging the others’ appreciative nods. Demian decided, after brief consideration, that the last bit might be feminist.

Radi prompted Masud. “So what happens next?”

“Dressed as a man, armed with a dagger, she approached her lover’s father in his tent and said, ‘Now that I possess human life and strength, you must die for the crime of murdering my lover.’ He asked, ‘Who are you?’ ‘I am an emir’s daughter,’ she said, ‘sold as a slave. From the traders’ ship, I threw myself into the sea, filling my lungs with water so that I fell straight to the bottom of the sea. I found that I could live there, but I was alone. I walked slowly along the bottom of the sea, where it was dark, calling out, but no one answered me. After a time I came to a reef, and I walked upward through the corals. There were enormous sponges and urchins with long spines. Fish shaped like barrels, and fish shaped like ropes, in all colors. It was very beautiful, but there were no people in the sea and I was alone there. I came out to lie down on the shore. But there were no people on the land, and I could no longer breathe air. I had lost my life of air and my life of water. I could breathe only earth and fire. I was very close to death when your son found me. He could have buried me, letting me breathe earth, but he chose fire. I owe him both my lives.’ ‘Very well,’ the sheikh said. ‘I still have all my four lives, so kill me if you can.’ He felt no fear, because he wore an enchanted robe that would turn back steel. But her lover had told her his father’s secret, so she plunged the dagger into his eye. He fell down on his back and died.”

Masud paused for effect.

“She removed her slave boy’s clothes and put on the enchanted robe that would turn back steel. She walked away through the camp, with the swords of all the tribesmen bouncing off her arms and legs. Her dead lover’s brother, a boy of four years old, saw the many spears bouncing off her back as he left the camp, and he wanted to play as well. He had a little bow and some arrows tipped with thorns and fish bones. He took aim at the center of her back, and hit her there, a slight wound, enough to drive one thread of the enchanted cloak into her skin. Invulnerability spread from the wounds for a hand’s span in all directions, an unaccustomed condition for human flesh, causing a burning pain. She reached back to feel the arrow lodged in her clothing. She turned around and the little boy fired another arrow that hit her in the heart. She started to run. When she came to a wadi, she tripped and fell, and her mouth filled with dust. Without fire for her to breathe, she died.”

Radi said, “Seriously?”

“Her evil was ended through the wisdom of a child,” Masud confirmed. “She would have been a good match for her lover, who required an organ donation. But the surgeons were unable to acquire tissue, because even her epidermis was invulnerable to steel. When the surgeons finally opened her with a piece of broken glass, the putrefaction was as warm as life. Because she was an evil demon, they threw her into the sea. Dying taught her how to be quiet. When she arrived at the bottom of the sea, she did not feel alone anymore, because she had learned to make herself invisible and to listen.”

Deciding that the story was definitely not feminist, Demian looked at his watch. Only a few minutes had passed, but somehow his drink was empty. He didn’t remember drinking it.

“That story doesn’t sound Bedouin to me,” Radi said to Masud. “It reminds me of Vikings, especially the misogyny and the burial by fire—like Ibn Fadlan’s account of the Kievan Rus. Didn’t you grow up in Norway?”