We straightened in our seats. I saw Bilal and Ghassan on opposite sides of the room giving a good impression of enjoying the party. About thirty people were dancing to an ‘Amr Diab song; others sat around tables, talking, eating, and watching the dancing. There was nothing more we could do that night. I started toward Bilal, but was pulled to the dance floor just as the DJ slowed the evening with the music of Fairooz. The first notes of her song “Ya Tayr” always move me. They are simple melodies played on the flute. But they sound like time. Like all that was good and lost. Others on the dance floor linked their arms and began to sway and sing the lyrics. I closed my eyes, the better to soak in the music. Fairooz has the kind of voice that gathers up the heart and takes you somewhere else. I was transported to another time, where I sat on the shores of Kuwait, my bare toes digging in the wet sand of the Arabian Gulf, the tide coming and receding at my feet, hundreds of periwinkle snails burrowing around them. I cruised el-Bahr Street in Salmiya with my friends, flirting with boys, prancing in our newly curved bodies. Silent smiling images of Mama, Sitti Wasfiyeh, Jehad, Sabah, and Baba framed in song lyrics floated gently by. Mhammad’s solitude and dishonesty, Um Buraq’s cunning and generosity, Deepa and Ajay, Saddam Hussein, American bombs, and finally back to Palestine, to sweet Jandal and baby goats. My hips swirled a spiral of memories that climbed through me into the ether until the song began to subside. I opened my eyes and saw Bilal watching me.

Back at our table, Jumana leaned toward my ear. “I’m pretty sure you just gave every man on this side of the room a hard-on and raised the blood pressure of every woman. We should probably go.”

I glanced again at Bilal. He was still watching me. Months later, he would tell me, “Seeing you dance, lost in the music, paralyzed me. I couldn’t move or pull my eyes away.”

In the end, the planning, risks, fear, and backbreaking work we’d undertaken had been for two useful rifles, one 9 mm pistol, and plenty of ammunition from a Russian-Israeli gangster and a Palestinian dope smuggler. Bilal had spent nearly all his savings to acquire what turned out to be a predominantly useless cache of Cold War–era Russian and American small weaponry. There was nothing we could do about it. Although Bilal and Ghassan were angry initially at having been cheated, by the time we all met again their outlook had changed to optimism. I suppose that’s what made them revolutionaries. They were all-in, with everything they had, and that meant rummaging through defeat and disappointment to find a new plan and cause for hope.