“I cannot hear you.”

“Listen, something is wrong. You know the tall buildings.”

“Aziz, there are many tall buildings.”

“But when you are walking, first off the ship, after you swim.”

“Aziz, there are all different places—one place may not be the place you think it is. There is not one place with tall buildings.”

“There is not?”

“No!”

The man was coming back into the room, but this time his wife was with him.

“My wife wants to speak to your friend. Because of her work at the hospital, she will understand him.” A swooshing of reprieve went through Aziz. He smiled so largely that his eyes disappeared. He was goofy, eagerly handing the phone to her.

But the man’s expression, it was actually worse. He looked not just worried but in a great hurry. He was, Aziz saw, angry.

“Yes,” the wife was saying. “Yes.” She was serious.

This would not end with police, but it must end soon. He looked at the clock. It was almost seven-thirty.

“The mosque is in Everett. . . . Oh, you are in Everett. That is very good.”

She was speaking a Tunisian kind of Arabic. Rafik had spent time in Tunisia, time Rafik’s family knew nothing about. Aziz knew his own mother would not want him to be going to Rafik if she knew. But it had to be Rafik. He was the only one from Arzew who had done this before, and it was always somebody like Rafik who could do something like this that first time.

She was giving Rafik the address, but she was not smiling.

“In an hour,” she said. She looked at her husband, and for the first time Aziz saw she thought her husband was a fool. This, more than everything else that had changed since he called Rafik, stunned him. He must get out of the apartment. He was not sure he should accept the ride to the mosque with them. What if they did not take him to the mosque? What if they were planning to take him to the police?

She hung up and drew in a breath. He could see she would not by word belittle her husband in front of this problem he had brought home.

“Please wait,” she said to Aziz. She and the husband left the den and closed the door.

A cab. He had no money.

A bus. Less money, but still money.

Run out of the room, out of the apartment building, and find this Everett. How many mosques could there be in Everett?

But he remembered Rafik saying, “There are many tall buildings.” There might be dozens of mosques in Everett, and besides, he would never ever be able to walk there in an hour.

He could run out of the apartment and find a phone at a church, as he had planned.