Khelira is a wiry, hardened woman whose pale stone-colored skin bears deep wind-and-ash weathering, as if the desert has tried for decades to sand her down and failed. Her dark eyes are narrow, glossy, and constantly measuring distances, exits, hands, and water vessels. Iron-gray hair escapes in stiff wisps from beneath a coarse headwrap. She moves with the economical silence of someone who once crossed hostile roads for a living, placing each foot as though the floor might betray her. Her hands are knotted, scarred, and permanently scented with cumin, smoke, and iron. The unexpected contradiction is her smile, which can be startlingly tender and almost girlish when she feeds a frightened child, transforming her severe face for only a heartbeat.