I didn’t respond, but she must have seen something in my face that made her add, “No, I mean … I’m not with him. Not like that.”

There was only one other customer, reading a magazine as her hair marinated in foil wraps. Jumana craned her head toward her. “Your hair has to sit twenty more minutes. I’m going to get this lady washed.”

She put her hand on my arm, gently trying to nudge me to the back of the salon, but I didn’t move. “Look. Bilal trusts you, and I trust Bilal. He asked me to show you something,” she said.

Jumana was slender and angular, with a bold face, generous eyes, full brown lips, and a prominent Semitic nose. I had thought her pretty the first time I saw her weeks before. She came from one of the wealthy Palestinian families who had been humbled by the occupation, though she still smelled of money.

“I don’t really give a damn what Bilal thinks right now,” I said, rolling my eyes dramatically toward my arm. “And you need to remove your hand.”

“Sorry.” She withdrew it. “But please, can I show you something?”

Conquered by curiosity, I followed her into the bathroom. She closed the door, drew out a key, and pulled away a shelving unit by the toilet, revealing a hollow space behind, then nodded toward the void. I craned my neck and saw a knotted rope hanging from the floor into a darkness below. I understood and started to leave.

“Wait!”

She touched my arm again.

“What’d I say about touching me?” My eyes were mean and my fists clenched.

She stepped back, apologizing, and said, “Bilal would like you to join us on Saturday.”

“‘Us’?”

“A small group,” she said, paused, then added, “Down there.”

I studied her face, reminding myself that this woman had spied on me, that she was much smarter than me. I turned around and left.

I confronted Bilal that evening. “You can’t ask me yourself?” I was still wallowing in the moral superiority of the spied-upon.

“Enough, Nahr! This is not a game.” Bilal looked at me with steely eyes. There was more than one Bilal. There was the Bilal of the hills, who would sit alone or lie in the grass for hours with a book, with God, a tree, silence. The Bilal who was a baker, toiling by a hot stone oven. Bilal the Pastry Maker. Bilal the Chemist and Quiet Intellectual. Bilal the Prisoner and National Hero, son of his mother and his country. Bilal the Charmer. This Bilal was a Hard Fighter. A commander who spoke with a deep, meditative resolve.