Jumana helped spice the rest of the lamb while I beat the cardamom to powder with the mortar and pestle. Then Hajjeh Um Mhammad added the lamb to the pot of boiling water and poured in the cardamom, bay leaves, mistika, salt, black pepper, and cloves. The smells of a loving home waiting for its son wafted through the house. When the meat was cooked almost to perfect tenderness, we set up another vat to cook the sauce. Jumana and I took turns continuously stirring the jameed yogurt as Hajjeh Um Mhammad slowly added the pieces of cooked meat. She pinched turmeric and sprinkled it onto the white sauce. “It needs a bit more salt,” or a bit more of this or that, she’d say, tasting her work. “Are the almonds roasted?” she asked.

“Yes. And the parsley is chopped,” I answered.

“You’re such good girls, you two. God has given me the daughters I never had. Praise Him. Praise His wisdom and His mercy.” She looked up at the clock on the wall. “O Lord in your infinite mercy, bring my son home soon. O my God and my Master, please clear his path of the evil and malice of those people.”

Jumana and I looked at each other. Bilal should have been home by now. We continued helping with the cooking and cleaning. Several people arrived to check in and wish us blessings. Most stayed, and when it looked like Bilal might not be coming home, more visitors, including Hajjeh Um Mhammad’s sisters and friends, returned to help bear the disappointment.

“He’s coming today. By the Almighty’s will, he is coming home,” Hajjeh Um Mhammad insisted, refusing to accept anything less. She asked us to fetch her motor chair. As we did so, we heard the roar of a crowd, then saw a group of thirty or forty men hurrying up the walkway, carrying Bilal on their shoulders. He was smiling, but I knew it embarrassed him to be the focus of such adoration, and I could see weariness beneath the smile. He went first to his mother, kneeling to kiss her feet as she struggled to pull him to her face. He kissed her hands, then her forehead, then her cheeks. He pulled his aunts and others into an embrace. Then Jumana and me. It didn’t matter that we weren’t related; people accepted the physical affection as if we were his sisters. Before anything else, we were the dearest of friends, and his homecoming filled me with a happiness not unlike the day Jehad was returned to us from a Kuwaiti prison.

I heard him whisper to Jumana, “Ghassan sends his love.”