I kissed him gently on his lips. “Don’t do this to yourself.” I kissed the side of his face. “I love you, Bilal. People are complicated, you said that yourself. We’ll figure out what works for us, and we’ll do that as we go along.” I cupped his face in my hands. “For now, we have honesty, trust, and love.” I wanted to describe to him how the emotional intimacy growing between us was shattering my heart in the most life-affirming ways, but I didn’t have the right words, except to say that I loved him, which wasn’t nearly enough.

We spent that night, and every night together after, in a closeness I had never known, or even thought possible with another person. I was happy. Truly content.

Drifting to sleep in Bilal’s arms, I thought about the hills beyond the terrace. Soon wild plum, peach, pear, fig, medlar, mulberry, date, and almond trees would bloom. I would tend to Hajjeh Um Mhammad’s loquats and pomegranates in the summer.

Mama and Jehad had returned to Jordan just before Ariel Sharon ripped through the land and tore the sun apart, less than two months into our marriage. He bombed all of our major cities to push up his domestic approval ratings. He pulverized Gaza’s airport and tore up the runway, which had been a small symbol of Palestinian sovereignty. Their military executed our leaders, made rubble of schools and universities, stole population databases and student statistics, and put us all under months of curfew, during which we could not leave our homes at any time, for any reason, unless specifically announced by the military.

Bilal still wasn’t fully healed, and doctors thought he might never walk without a limp because some of the musculature in his groin and hip had also been removed to take out the infection. But he had regained weight and strength. He spoke infrequently on the phone because our calls were monitored, but he worked for hours from his computer. We were luckier than most to have a home computer. It kept us from dying of boredom inside the house twenty-four hours a day, with no relief in sight. Ours was called a Dell. I only used it to check e-mail once a week, but Bilal was on it daily researching chemistry topics I didn’t understand, and using chemistry software to do with the brews he cooked up in the kitchen sometimes.

“What are you making?” I asked him.

“Just tinkering to pass the time.”

But when I started to make a snack for us in the kitchen, he wouldn’t allow it until he had scrubbed, rinsed, and wiped the entire kitchen. “I need another space for this stuff,” he mumbled to himself.

“I’m guessing those aren’t new pastry recipes?”

He pulled me by the waist. “Your sarcasm is so sexy.”