“The CIA is everything. You have no idea what they are doing in the world. I swear, you cannot imagine. I tell you, everything you have seen is bullshit. There is nothing left. Nothing left. It is over. Didn’t they say that it will arise from the Arab Maghreb?”

“Yeah.”

“Know that it is coming from our area.”

“It is coming from the home country?”

“God willing, it is coming from there. Oh, my friend, I swear, it is coming from there.”

“If you die, you will die.”

“I tell you something. Death is inevitable. Right? That is it. I am going to die anyway. Are you going to the hellfire? Then go. There you will find a fear that is greater than this one. There you will see the truth in front of you. You will see the Most Gracious God and the Angels and everything. That is the real fear, there you will find out the truth and your destiny.”

“Ah-hah.”

“How about the hellfire? Will you be able to live there?”

The Depression set up a coffee shop, opened a car dealership. It colonized Ghazi’s brain. He couldn’t go to the library anymore, not after Megan. So he pretty much slept on the couch. He didn’t care if Heather or Mourad found him there in the morning. He thought about walking into traffic.

“So you can get me over there?” Ghazi said to Dhakir. He was talking on his cell phone on the front stoop at Brooks Street.

“Abu Belghazi, Mohammed—peace be upon him—may he strike me if I cannot.”

Now it was Mohammed. Ghazi sighed. It was hard to kill yourself, at least in a way that would show your father and dick-kissing brothers you were a man. Still, this way his mother would have no shame. Cutting himself, hanging himself—the picture of that would be the last thing she would see on her deathbed. But if she could think he died fighting for something bigger than him? He would begin working on a letter to her. He would mail it once Dhakir got the visa.

“So when do you see the guy?” Ghazi tried to keep Dhakir on track. He kept saying he would talk to someone at the British embassy, who would get Ghazi’s visa to Afghanistan.

“Please, from now on he is a woman.”

Ghazi shook his head. Code again. “Okay. When is she coming?”

“Allah has not meant for me to know. But when I marry her, there will be fires between us, God willing.”

He was lost. What was marrying supposed to be?

“Well, let me know.”

When they hung up, he turned to the Qur’an.