Eagle

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Yusuf sat in the saddle, his olive-skinned face mottled red and his chest heaving as he struggled to catch his breath. He was having one of his fits, during which the devil himself seemed to grip his lungs and squeeze out all the air. And the faster he breathed, the more elusive the air became. His horse had already recovered from the sprint and was tugging at one of the rare clumps of spring grass that managed to grow on the dusty polo field. On the far side of the pitch, two-dozen boys continued the match without him, the hooves of their horses stirring up a cloud of dust as they swarmed around the kura, a wooden ball made from willow root. Their long mallets waved above the dust, rising and falling as the boys swung at the kura, trying to drive it through the far goal, two half-toppled Roman columns, remnants from some long-vanished structure. A hundred yards past the columns stood the thick city walls of Baalbek, and past them dozens of pale, sandstone buildings clustered around an ancient Roman temple whose tall columns dwarfed the city around it. Over it all loomed the craggy, snow-capped peak of Mount Tallat al Jawzani.

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