In my room, I read and reread the part of Rachel’s diary about going back to the bled, the airport, the security guards staring at everyone, snapping their fingers and dragging anyone suspicious out of the line, the atmosphere in the streets of Algiers like a concentration camp, the undercover taxi drivers who dump you in the middle of nowhere, the fake roadblocks, the guards holed up in their blockhouses, the desolate, dying landscape. It was weird but the black picture he painted of it encouraged rather than discouraged me. I’d never thought that going back to the root of things would be easy. Everything has a price, and I was prepared to pay. Rachel says something about the road to Damascus, I don’t know what it means but I’m guessing that’s what the road to Algiers must be like.

Aunt Sakina didn’t get a wink of sleep that night. She didn’t move from the living room. She was turning things over in her mind. I’m the only child she’s got now, when Uncle Ali is gone, she’ll only have me. I have to come back.