“I thought I was in love with him. But then, when we found Kamal, and then Rafik, and we realized there was no Hank Bridges anymore, he changed. He had to find Aziz. It wasn’t anything I could reason with him about. He had ideas that scared me. Like going to New York and walking around asking people where Algerians lived. At first I went along with it. But when I said it was a bad idea, he got angry. Really angry. And one day, I came home from work, and he was gone and a note on the table said something about he’d be back in a few days. That was last month.”

“It is his brother.”

“Do you have a brother?”

“I have one.”

“Would you do something like that for him?”

“It’s not the same.”

“So you wouldn’t.”

“My brother, it is a long story. It’s not like Aziz and Mourad.”

“What were they like, in Arzew?”

“Who?”

“Their family. Aziz as a kid. Mourad too.”

“I wanted to be in that family.”

“You did?”

“There is great love in that family. Their father is not hard. His mother, she”—Ghazi shook his head—“she is best friend with my mother. She is—how do you say in English that she is—oh, large inside?”

“Bighearted.”

“Something like that.”

“Their father, he has a hotel. On the sea. It is small, not expensive. Not cheap, but good for people who like something sweet. There was music, because his father pays people to come in, maybe just a small drum, or a flute—gasba we call it—a gasba flute. There was a flute player there when I was young. Do you know the clementine mandarin? It first grew in the garden of an orphanage near Oran. It is seedless, so perfect. He had these clementine trees. And the hotel, and their house on the side of the hotel, it smelled like them.”

“Why didn’t they go into the business? With their dad. Run the hotel with him.”

“Not enough guests anymore.”

“But why?”

“Algeria is fucked. The people at the top who run things are living well, and the rest—nothing.”

“It’s better here,” she said.

“For citizen, maybe. But outside the house, you feel the cold.”

They went to bed after midnight. She was tired. She was a little anxious, too. How would it be with Mourad and Ghazi and her? When she and Rafik had been together and then Aziz, and then the Three, and then Mourad and Ghazi—somehow that was fine. Maybe the Three could come back. But Lahouari and his brothers sleeping on the floor—it didn’t fit anymore. Ghazi with his money wouldn’t sleep there again either. He would probably get his own place.