“Please, Hajjeh. I’ve been making your eggs for at least thirty-five years,” Mama said.

Sitti raised her brows, signaling a thought she wanted to share. She shuffled toward me, the curve in her back pushing her head downward. “I forgot to tell you about your friend. Did you hear?” she said.

“What friend, Sitti? Hear what?”

“The crazy one that almost killed us with her driving when we left Kuwait.”

“Um Buraq?”

“How should I know her name? She’s your friend!”

I laughed. “What about her?”

“I forget. Ask your mother. Something happened in the newspaper.”

I looked at Mama, who was frying garlic and tomatoes. “I don’t know much, habibti. The article said she might be released soon on humanitarian grounds.” Apparently, Um Buraq had cancer, and Kuwaiti officials were urging the justice department to release her on the condition she relinquish her Kuwaiti citizenship and be deported to Iraq, where she had family ties. It distressed me to think of my old friend like that, sick and penniless at the doorstep of distant relatives in Iraq, asking for charity. I remembered her parting words to me in Kuwait: Whatever happens in this ungenerous world, we will meet again, my sister.

The five of us ate breakfast on the terrace—Sitti Wasfiyeh, Mama, Jehad, Bilal, and me together in Palestine. The winter rains of December and January had been heavier than usual, ushering in a dense and diverse cover of wildflowers across the hillside. Red, white, and purple anemones and pink and white cyclamen carpeted the eastern hills rolling around us. Poppies, buttercups, and red everlastings overlapped in random pockets. Rare wild tulips rose here and there. Bull mallow, Jerusalem sage, mustard, and thyme found their places around rocks and boulders.

Soon the blue lupine and yellow corn marigold would replace the anemones. The crocuses and squill were waiting dormant in their bulbs to bloom in summer. The honeysuckle had already begun creeping over the bushes and trees, and the hyacinths, daisies, and narcissus bloomed on the higher ground.

Mama and Jehad were impressed that I knew so much about the local flora. Hajjeh Um Mhammad, God rest her soul, had taught me the names of plants and their medicinal values. I couldn’t remember everything she’d imparted and wished I had written it all down, though Bilal also had much indigenous knowledge of our botanical heritage. Hajjeh Um Mhammad used to say there was no illness on this earth for which God had not also given us a medicine.

“Palestine suits you,” Jehad whispered. “You look the most radiant and alive I’ve ever seen you.”

“More than when we were in Kuwait?” I asked.

“Kuwait was another lifetime. We were too young. Too different.”

It was true. Jehad had changed. We both had. There was a gravity to his presence, a kind of solid, sturdy thing I could depend on. He and Bilal were similar in that way.