Iberis

Suhail

Suhail is named after the star the Gulf has watched for centuries — the one whose rising means the heat is finally breaking. Our Suhail is a very small owl in very round spectacles who takes this responsibility extremely seriously. He does not hoot. He does not need to.

For forty nights, the small owl counted.

This is what owls are for, in this part of the world. Somewhere below the horizon there is a star, and when it finally clears the edge of the desert the heat breaks and the year turns over. The Gulf has watched for it for a very long time. Someone has to keep count.

Suhail — the owl, not the star; he was named after it and has never once found this confusing — sat on the same stone every night of that last, unbearable summer. He did not call. He did not move. He counted.

On the fortieth night the star came up, small and white and completely unremarkable, and the temperature did not drop at all. Nothing happened. The desert stayed exactly as hot as it had been an hour before.

Then the wind turned, and the whole orchard on the other side of the dune arrived at once — orange blossom, warm resin, something soft and powdery underneath it that stayed in the air long after the wind had gone.

The heat had not broken. But you could smell that it was going to.