Bilal began packing up. I had seen him go through these motions often, and my heart ached that this would be the last time. The way he contemplated the landscape as he performed banal tasks was a kind of ritualistic farewell. His eyes roamed the rocky hills, the construction in the distance, and he breathed deeply as he folded the blanket, wiped the kettle, and tamped the embers with fistfuls of dirt, watching their last gasps of smoke rise and dissipate.

The familiar feeling of being alone and lost in the world, unsure of the path forward, had returned to me since that day in the underground. Only bluster and pride concealed the loneliness expanding in me. But now I was overwhelmed by Bilal’s pain, the guilt he must have carried, the impotence I knew he felt seeing those settlements, the anguish over his brother, his mother, the years in prison, the torture, the inability to move, teach, or practice his profession. I wanted to take him in my arms and fix everything.

All I could do was help carry the tea glasses as we bade Jandal good night.

We didn’t speak further about Mhammad as we hiked home. Bilal instead gave his usual botanical instructions along the way: “… and this is wild Venus-hair, kuzbarat el ajooz,” he said.

“Yes, I know. I’ve helped you gather them! How quickly you deny my labor,” I quipped.

He laughed and turned to me. “Please don’t leave, Nahr.”

I didn’t respond, except to smile and keep walking.

“At least consider coming back. This is your country and you always have a home with our family.”

My decision to leave rested in a clear head. I needed some distance to make sense of events and revelations of the past days. I suppose I had always suspected that Mhammad was gay, but it was real now. What had never occurred to me was that he hadn’t actually killed those soldiers but had gone to prison to protect his younger brother. Again, I felt the ground shift beneath me. I needed the steadiness of something real and familiar. There was still more to this tale, but I needed to be with my family, to feel my mother’s embrace.

“I know you don’t want to hear this, but Jumana is truly sorry. She begged me to convince you to let her apologize in person,” Bilal said, interrupting my thoughts.

“No.”

“Okay. I’m not going to push it. But you are wanted, loved, and valued here. And that is not going to change.” Bilal brought me back with those words. I had laid it all out, and he still accepted me and, maybe, loved me. But that time in the underground and the truth about Mhammad had unhinged something between us. I had to leave, even though I knew there was no future for me in Amman.