Aziz feared he could not hold his thoughts; they seemed to be so fired as to be visible in air. He longed, improvidently, to tell Sellami he was not Nazzar. The temptation to believe Sellami was a good man pulled at him. Rescue, Aziz thought, the rescue of being understood by Sellami, I could have it, if I just give up trying to understand, if I accept that there are no right sides, no wrong sides, no sides on any sides. What reality could any one person know? Stop thinking, he told himself, that you, the one small you who sees only from your own eyes, can know it.

Then he remembered the woman. She was one of many, but the first for him. Sellami had been the one with the shovel who finished her. An act of compassion. But the way he did it. He pulled her head from its roots into dirt. All merciful. Those words from her. Aziz felt the familiar sickness. He tried to swallow. Nothing gave. It was not an image; it was not anything he could push out of his mental pictures. He had trouble looking at her then, and he had no real face for her or any of the others now. But he had watched. He had done nothing.

He sometimes did as they did, but only when there was no other option. When his not participating would have looked suspicious. When they would have killed him if he had not. In his mind he could see his own pickpocket face, hear his sisters singing a mocking song. Stop doing that with your eyes, his father was saying. The roundel of his sisters teased him. Squinting, squinting, Aziz is always squinting.

“Shit, you need to puke,” Sellami said. He braked and lowered the window automatically from the driver’s side. Aziz pushed his head out but thought better of it and began crawling, as best he could, out the window.

“Nazzar, fuck,” Sellami said, trying to hold onto the wheel and Aziz’s drawstring waistband. “You’re delirious.” The Expedition bucked into a halt. With the jolt Aziz flew out the window; Sellami was left holding his pants. Sellami found him passed out a few yards behind the rear bumper.

Aziz awoke in Benane’s garage. It was a place of scrubbed concrete, orderliness, new aluminum ladders on new nails on just-cut lumber. It smelled of sawdust and gasoline and grass. There was a lawn mower large enough to sit on. Three brilliant bicycles stood in a line. The garage could fit six cars. Two were there, both white Mercedes-Benzes.

Aziz tried to open the Expedition’s door, but he couldn’t get out. Then Sellami clicked the locks and Aziz pushed onto the floor, banging his elbow on the running board. Sellami hit a button on his cell phone. “Send them. We’re here.”