Sabah asked about Palestine. We had communicated a bit by phone while I was there and she knew enough to ask specifically about Bilal. Of course, I didn’t mention the underground cavern. But I did talk about the bakery, the land, the sheep and goats, Jandal, Jumana—who later sent me a long letter of apology while I was still in Amman—her salon and brothers, the water pipes, the settlements, checkpoints, daily humiliations and indignities. “Israel’s occupation is pretty much what you see on the news. But they don’t show our weddings, cafés, nightlife, shopping, art and music scenes, universities, landscape, farming, harvests. It’s not what I imagined. At the same time, it is everything I imagined.”

“Television makes it look like an endless war zone,” she said, pulling out a cigarette.

“Oh no. Not you too?” I pointed to the cigarette.

“Why don’t you just give in and smoke, Nahr? You’re probably the only adult in the country who doesn’t smoke.”

“I’m quite fond of my lungs and don’t appreciate everyone polluting them for me.” I yanked her cigarette away and stole the pack.

“Fine. Give them back. I won’t smoke,” she said.

“I’ll give them back before you leave.”

“You’re a bully!”

“Bilal is a chain-smoker, but he’s considerate around me.”

“Sounds like love,” she teased.

“We do love each other,” I said, listening to my own thoughts as I spoke them. “But not how you think. There’s no word for it. It’s romantic, but without a sexual impulse, at least not an overwhelming kind. It’s strangely familiar and comfortable, but not purely friendship either.”

“Sounds like you skipped right over the first twenty years of marriage and went straight to old married couple love,” she said. “Surely you’re going back?”