“Ugh. You two are ridiculous.” I rolled my eyes. “We should be talking about your wedding.”

Ghassan leaned in. “Looks like we have extra ears,” he said, motioning to a group of young men sitting at a table across the room. They were the only remaining customers, and we spoke superficially until they left.

Ghassan got up to lock the door after them.

“Do you think they’re spies?” Jumana asked.

“Who knows anymore. They’re from the village, but they don’t come here often,” he said. “Listen, we have some inventory. We need to move it tomorrow,” Ghassan added. “Two women are going to come to your salon in the late afternoon to get their hair fixed. Make sure your parking spot is available. And get rid of other customers when they arrive. We’ll take care of everything else.”

I looked at Jumana. Neither of us knew what to say. Ghassan admonished us. “Try to seem as if we’re just having a friendly conversation. Anyone walking by can see us.” We complied, adjusting our expressions for the large storefront window.

We had not been back to the underground for more than two years, although Ghassan might have come and gone on his own a few times. Samer was home from Moscow on break from university. With more to lose, he had grown paranoid that his mother or one of his snoopy nephews would find the passage to the underground.

Wadee told Jumana and me, “Samer thinks he’s putting his family at risk for some delusion that we can actually mount a resistance because we found a hole in the ground.”

Jumana examined her brother’s face. “Is that Samer or you speaking?”

Wadee looked away nervously, then turned back to us. “No one except Ghassan has been there in years. We have to forget about it.”

Jumana began pacing. “All right. Listen, we don’t have to make any decisions right now. We only have to ensure that the passage-ways are well concealed, even if the military raid our homes. I think it would give Samer some assurance to somehow fortify the passage in his basement.”

“How about if he built a wardrobe over the space, with a false floor like the one at the salon?” I said.

“Soldiers usually just knock those over,” Wadee said.

Annoyed, Jumana threw her hands up. “Then he builds it into the room, with plastered walls, like a closet! Why are you complicating matters unnecessarily?”

The closet idea proved to be the right solution for Samer. He, Faisal, and Wadee spent a few days building a wardrobe with a complicated floor that could be opened and closed from both above- and belowground. “It’s amazing. You have to know what you’re looking for to figure it out,” Faisal told us proudly.

Around the same time, the negotiated terms of Bilal’s release were made public. He would serve only five more weeks.