“Ignore Ji,” the blacksmith said. “He’s good with metal but he lacks imagination. Forgive him. He is primitive.”

“Do you think I look evil?” I asked.

“You’re lovely,” he said smiling. “The way a child is conceived is not a child’s fault or burden.”

I didn’t know what conceived meant and I didn’t ask. He’d called me lovely and I didn’t want him to take his words back. Thankfully, Ji usually came late, during the cooler part of the day.

Soon I was telling the blacksmith about my life in the desert. I was too young to know to keep such sensitive things to myself. I didn’t understand that my past, my very existence, was sensitive. In turn, he taught me a few things about metal, like which types yielded to heat most easily and which didn’t.

“What was your wife like?” I asked one day. I was really just running my mouth. I was more interested in the small stack of bread he’d bought me.

“Njeri. She was black-skinned,” he said. He put both his big hands around one of his thighs. “And had very strong legs. She was a camel racer.”

I swallowed the bread I was chewing. “Really?” I exclaimed.

“People said that her legs were what kept her on the camels but I know better. She had some sort of gift, too.”

“Gift of what?” I asked, leaning forward. “Could she walk through walls? Fly? Eat glass? Change into a beetle?”

The blacksmith laughed. “You read a lot,” he said.

“I’ve read the Great Book twice!” I bragged.

“Impressive,” he said. “Well, my Njeri could speak to camels. Camel-talking is a man’s job, so she chose camel racing instead. And Njeri didn’t just race. She won races. We met when we were teenagers. We married when we were twenty.”

“What did her voice sound like?” I asked.

“Oh, her voice was aggravating and beautiful,” he said.