“Since we were kids. He proposed in first grade, actually.” She grinned. “But life happened, and when the time came, his family forbade it.” She paused again. “People blame my father for the murder of Ghassan’s father. Ghassan’s father was in hiding …” She looked at me. “… and my father led the military to him.”

I took the overly scrubbed pot from her to rinse. She needed say no more. Her father was a traitor who’d helped Israel assassinate Ghassan’s father. His family would never allow them to marry.

“Why is love always so tragic?” I put the pot down and hugged her. “So, who still has to die before the two of you can get married? I’m guessing it’s not hopeless, or you wouldn’t still be waiting.”

She laughed. “Oh, Nahr! You are wonderfully blunt.”

“Well?”

She looked away and back at me. “His uncle.”

“Just one uncle?”

“Yes. The patriarch. He said he would disown his nephew if he disgraced the family by marrying the daughter of the traitor responsible for his brother’s death.”

“Well, that’s a mouthful!” I said.

She chuckled. “Let’s join them,” she said, leading me to the terrace.

We sat in a half circle facing the valley. Jumana took the argileh pipe from Ghassan and exhaled smoke with a sigh. I was tuned to them now—the slight brush of their hands, sweet smiles and knowing glances at each other. How had I missed it before?

I caught Bilal watching me, smiling in a way that made my chest warm. I sat back in the chair, drawing the crisp air deep into my lungs. Vivid wild poppies dotted the landscape, announcing the coming of spring. In a few weeks, they would multiply to carpet the land in burgundy velvet. The sky was already streaked with the red and orange ushers of sunset. We took in the beauty of the land, a metastasizing settlement sprawling ever closer, threatening to swallow it all.

Samer sprang up excitedly. “There’s something we have to tell you,” he said. The others began laughing, checking their watches.

“I won,” Ghassan declared. They had taken bets on how long Samer would last without telling the news.

In my absence, they had hatched an elaborate scheme that did not include me as smuggler. “The original idea wasn’t good, because everything could unravel if you were caught,” Bilal said.

Instead, they set in motion a plot that sounded far more dangerous, with many moving parts and backup plans involving a Russian-Israeli gunrunner, drug dealers, and tourists.

A call to a computer phone—I had never heard of such a thing—from a tour guide in Nazareth would initiate the smuggling operation.