“Bilal, why don’t you come with us?” Ghassan’s sister added. We all looked at each other. Obviously her suggestion was a way to keep me honest. Maybe she thought I might rape her brother on the way home. I let it pass out of sympathy for her loss.

The formal forty days of mourning had passed, but Ghassan’s mother was still steeped in grief. Jandal had been her baby, the youngest of seven, and utterly devoted to his mother. But life has a way of renewing itself. Not long after Jandal passed, a baby boy was born into the family, and Ghassan’s mother spent my visit in conversation and in crooning lullabies to the swaddled infant. I didn’t stay long. Ghassan’s family acknowledged the respect I had shown by visiting immediately upon returning to Palestine.

“Aseeleh, ya Nahr,” his mother said. “You are your country’s daughter. Times like this reveal the true dignity of people.” There were layers of meaning in what she said. I felt it an implicit acceptance of me.

Hajjeh Um Mhammad and her sisters were gone by the time we got back to the house.

“She has her weekly Women’s Association meeting,” Bilal said.

“What’s that?”

“Something they set up in the Intifada back in the eighties. They picked it up again a month ago. They call it Aisha’s Army. As far as I know, they help organize and support prison visitation trips for women around the country. But knowing our mother, she could be organizing a revolution herself,” Bilal said, smiling so beautifully I felt my face flush.

Faisal and Samer gathered what they needed to make tea on the coals outside, where Ghassan and Bilal were preparing a few argilehs, while Jumana and I washed the dishes. I held no grudge against Jumana, another way I had changed; my former self would have carried the offense until I got sweet revenge.

“Why aren’t they doing the dishes?” Jumana joked, nodding toward the men.

“Because we don’t trust them to clean what we eat off of,” I said.

“Smart girl.”

We chatted about her salon and some of the regular customers I knew. The business was growing and she asked if I would be interested in helping her. “You keep eighty percent of whatever you bring in,” she offered. It was perfect, as I had actually planned to ask if she needed help at the salon.

When we were finishing the last of the pots, I asked, “What was the thing you could only tell me in person?”

She paused, turned to me, then went back to scrubbing. “When we first met, you were surprised I hadn’t already been married at my age. The truth is … I never married for the same reason that Ghassan never married.”

“You and Ghassan!”