“Come. Tea first.” He pointed to his dented kettle warming over burning embers. From the looks of the fire, he’d been there for some time. He pulled a second tea glass from his knapsack, and we went through the motions performed millions of times through the centuries in this part of the world. Managing a hot kettle on an outdoor fire, adding tea and sage leaves, spooning honey or sugar, pouring, inhaling the warm air hovering over the glass, sipping, feeling hot liquid slide down the throat into one’s core. The sweet minted hot tea with sage warmed my insides. I was content to just sit there in the splendid silence of the hills, where the quiet amplified small sounds—the wind rustling trees; sheep chewing, roaming, bleating, breathing; the soft crackle of the fire; the purr of Bilal’s breathing. I realized how much I had come to love these hills; how profound was my link to this soil. The turmoil of the days past dissipated. Bilal had once again brought me to this special space where I could breathe deeply, lie on earth, let the crowded, chaotic thoughts colliding in my head recede.

He started to speak, struggling with words.

“Say whatever it is,” I said.

He cleared his throat. “I had an inkling of what Jumana was talking about. There had been rumors long before you came. But I want you to know that we never talked about you like that.”

I tried to say something, I don’t know what, to scramble the uneasiness of the conversation.

“Just let me finish,” he said, rubbing his brow, a habit of discomfort. “I haven’t stopped thinking about what you said to Jumana. It replays in my mind, and every time I admire you more. There’s so much I want to say to you, but now it’s all jumbled in my mouth. There are things I want you to know.” He looked away, sipped his tea, and began again.

“The way you live your life in our culture, without apology or shame, even if with sadness, makes you extraordinary and special, Nahr. You, more than any of us, are a revolutionary, and the irony is that you don’t even see it,” he said. The real irony, I thought, was that it was only in that moment with him, when I was truly seen and valued, that I did not feel shame.

“After Mhammad abandoned you, people started to talk. But our mother put a stop to it. I don’t know what was said in her presence, but she responded with rare fury and made it clear she would never enter a home where there was gossip about you, nor would those who spoke it enter hers. That was the last I ever heard such talk of you until Jumana …”