I would like to speak with you. I fear you have made some false assumptions. It pains me that you will carry them with you. For the sake of our friendship, will you please allow time for me before you go? There are some things you have a right to know, secrets I’ve carried for too long. I will be in the hills with the flock until sundown. I’ll wait in our spot, hoping you will come.

Love, B.

I lingered on the words our spot. Now, in this Cube, this chamber of timeless nontime, I ponder why those words touched me as they did. Was I so starved for a place? For a physical and emotional ground that included me? Or maybe what moved me most was to know there was a little clearing on this planet just for Bilal and me, for “love.” Love, B.

I walked in my green-and-white sneakers—now dirty and worn from months of walking this terrain—toward the clearing where Bilal and I first shared tea and bizir when I had trekked in heels. We had spent many hours together here since—hiking, picking wild thyme, napping. The quiet of that first day was already a distant memory, gradually replaced by the thuds of jackhammers, the screech of churning cement and drills in the expanding settlement nearby. But Israelis didn’t work on the Jewish Shabbat, and the hills were unmolested on that day. I saw Bilal ahead, reading under that old olive tree, resting his head on the belly of a sleeping sheep, man and beast completing each other in perfect laziness.

The sheep heard me first and a few rose to their feet. Bilal closed his book and stood. Jandal, the kind shepherd, was on the other side of the tree. He greeted me: “Salaam, Sitt Yaqoot! You honor me. The land is brighter with your presence.”

I didn’t correct the name, especially when the flattery continued: “Your name, Yaqoot, is a testament to your precious rarity.”

“May God keep you always well, Brother Jandal. You are classy and kind,” I replied, and he excused himself, walking farther up the hillside. Bilal had spread a blanket on the ground beside him.

“I’m glad you came.” Here was Bilal the Awkward Lover of Life. The Quiet Reader. The Lie-with-Sheep-in-Laziness Bilal.

“Thank you for the papers,” I said.

“We’re still family, divorce or not. Please sit with me.” He motioned to the blanket.

“What did you want to talk about?” I lowered myself beside him.