Tarek is a lean young man with the wind-dried look of someone raised beneath a merciless sun. His movements are economical, almost stingy, as if every gesture must justify the water it would have cost. Fine sand gathers permanently in the seams of his knuckles and beneath his nails. He smells of bitter tea, bowstring wax, and sun-warmed limestone, a scent he notices only when someone stands very close. His square teeth show whenever he laughs, and one lower canine is noticeably blunt from years of cracking date pits between his jaws. He has an alert, handsome face that seems stern at rest, yet his smile arrives suddenly and makes him look younger than he is. The unexpected softness is in his hands, which are broad-palmed and careful, better suited to lifting an injured child than drawing a bow.