The doorbell lit up when he pressed it. He heard a chime like tolling from old bells.

The door opened and there was Heather, a smaller Heather, but very much Heather. “Ghazi!” she screamed. “Ghazi! It’s Aziz!”

Aziz was a tambourine. “Heather! You are here! I am so happy to see you!”

There was Ghazi. He picked Aziz off his feet.

Chapter 29

29

Aziz’s unit never missed him. So he learned when he sailed into Arzew’s harbor on the boat of his father’s old friend. The procession of family on the beach came to the marina; they greeted him as honored son. His brothers—Latif and Bilal, even Mourad— carried him on their shoulders to their father’s hotel. His weeping mother held on to his hand on the walk along the shore, and his sisters, Hazar and Anissa, singsonged, “Our pigeon has flown home!”

Aziz should have felt relief. His time with Antar and Sellami— nine months—was equal to the time left on his two-year tour of duty. To his parents, he had come home on schedule. No one had knocked on their door and told them their son was a deserter. No one had visited with rehearsed respect to report him dead.

Aziz felt crabbed. His arm was partly to blame. Arzew’s one doctor said it had fractured in three places, and near his wrist the bone had broken in two. His father set up a hotel bed on the peeling veranda to save him from sleeping on a couch. “The harbor air will do you good,” his mother told him, smiling. Rest, they said, you need rest.

He became a sleepwalker. One morning they found him under the kitchen table. One night he climbed a neighbor’s roof and slept by their chimney. He crawled under his parents’ bed, but not entirely. His foot tripped his mother when she rose at dawn. Soon they were afraid he would walk to the bluff and teeter to the rocks below. His mother wanted his brothers to fasten him to his bed, but please, she begged, not with ropes. So they looped him to the mattress with cleaning rags and much-mended scarves, all of which came in with the tide by morning. They found Aziz under a wet sheet in the sun.

They had no choice; he had to sleep on the sagging couch with doors locked, windows boarded. Even then they could hear him pace the room, come up against doors, test windows, overturn a stool. Many nights he scraped back and forth, pushing a chair like a baby carriage on the uneven floor.

His mother made his favorites: lahm lhalou, chorba, berkukes, chlada fakya. They made him queasy. “Just chicken,” he told her. “Plain good chicken is all I want.” This hurt her, he knew it, but apologies came hard to him. Paying mind to her feelings was a draining slog, her dear understanding a burden.