So in ten or fifteen minutes the cab driver let us out at the library. I felt a peculiar nervous excitement, although I didn’t understand why. All I was doing was climbing the granite steps of a public building; why should I be so wound up? I tried to occupy my mind with more pleasant thoughts.

Inside, there were a number of terminals vacant. I sat down at the gray screen of a battered Bab el-Marifi. It asked me what sort of search I wanted to conduct. The machine’s voice synthesizer had been designed in one of the North American republics, and it was having a lot of trouble pronouncing Arabic. I said, “Name,” then “Enter.” When the cursor appeared again, I said, “Monroe comma Angel.” The data deck thought about that for a while, then white letters began flicking across its bright face:

Angel Monroe

16, Rue du Sahara

(Upper) Kasbah

Algiers

Mauretania

04-B-28

I had the machine print out the address. The Half-Hajj raised his eyebrows at me and I nodded. “Looks like I’m gonna get some answers.”

“Inshallah,” murmured Saied. If God wills.

We went back out into the hot, steamy morning to find another taxi. It didn’t take long to get from the library to the Kasbah. There wasn’t as much traffic as I remembered from my childhood — not vehicular traffic, anyway; but there was still the slow, unavoidable battalions of heavily laden donkeys being cajoled through the narrow streets.

The Rue du Sahara is a mistake. I remember someone telling me long ago that the true name of the street was actually the Rue N’sara, or Street of the Christians. I don’t know how it got corrupted. Very little of Algiers has any real connection to the Sahara. After all, it’s a hell of a long hike from the Mediterranean port to the desert. It doesn’t make any difference these days, though; the new name is the only one anyone ever uses. It’s even found its way onto all the official maps, so that closes the matter.