The world has changed. The realization exhausts me. I want to sleep. The next hours are marked by interminable waiting. We arrive at the Jordanian embassy, an ugly, checkered building called Oz, where different people in the same suits and uniforms scurry about as I am led from one room to the next. Fashion has changed. Men’s suits are tighter, their ties narrower. Lipstick colors are muted, skirts shorter. The guards unshackle my legs, but I do not move. People come in and out and look at me. They want to see Bilal Jalal AbuJabal’s wife. The only prisoner released to Jordan. The whore hero terrorist. I lift my legs onto the sofa and lie down, missing the Cube.

Week Two

WEEK TWO

I AM IN Jordan now. Time here moves along a calendar, and I calculate having been in the Cube for sixteen years. They take me to a government ministry, where my picture is snapped with more suited men and women. On the way out, exhausting hours later, a crowd meets me with shouts. They are divided between those who see a hero and those who see a whore. Their calls ring in my head. A blinding sun bears down on my shoulders. I faint. At my family’s home—a contemporary stone house with large windows and modern furnishings—I am told my brother carried me away. “Thank you,” I tell him, studying the large framed photo of Sitti Wasfiyeh hanging on the wall next to the framed photo of my father that used to hang on our wall in Kuwait. I don’t ask when or how she died. I know this is the house she built for my mother.

The noise is unbearable. Cars, horns, sirens, doors opening and closing, people talking to each other, and worse, to me. Even the hum of the refrigerator and air conditioner vibrate my brain. Mama looks old. She learns to leave me alone to lie on my side. I cannot convince her that I am not depressed. I can see in the eyes of those around me that I am not the person they remember. I have no feelings on that or any other matter.

Week Three

WEEK THREE

DAYS ARE MORE of the same. So much noise. The best time is when my mother leaves for her job. Well-wishers come to welcome me back, but I pretend no one is home and don’t answer the door. I thought by now they would stop coming. But they are relentless. It is hell in the evenings when Mama is home. She opens the door for them. They arrive in droves with sweets and smiles and kisses and so much goddamn chatter. But I put up with it because my mother is doing the best she knows how.