It was the trap door, so familiar to him. The door was from childhood, from the first time he had seen a stage in Algiers, at a play his mother had taken him to, one in which the ladies wore stiff gowns and the men wore velvet shorts and carried swords. At one point, one of the men, who was fencing fiercely with one of the other men, was gone. A trap door on the stage had opened, he had fallen through, the door had snapped back up, and everyone on the stage was looking around for him. No one seemed to have the presence of mind to look under the stage. No one knelt and said, Look at this, there’s a door here! Aziz remembered feeling his childlike sadness for the gone man, what it must have been like for his eyes to be locked with his adversary’s, to be thinking about where to put his foot next and his hand after, and—bang!—to be gone, down a chute, out of sight, unheard of, unasked for, without name, loves, hopes, or memory. It had suited everyone that the spirited swords-man had gone.

Aziz sat on the school table and chair to take a look at his feet. The bandages of the wife were white like the moon under his socks. She had put a sparkled salve on him they use for burns. You must get these looked at, she told him; this is not something that can heal on its own. He knew she wanted to ask how it came to be that his feet were like raw chops in the market. Why didn’t she? One thing he promised: He would hide his home from other Arabs. Or stay only with Algerians.

He must be awake to the Rafik situation. Perhaps he should sit here and think about what exactly could go wrong. First, Rafik was untrustworthy. That put everything on a provisional basis. Never believe anything he said; three-quarters was clearly not correct. Nothing, not one thing, could be trusted. The BMW, it would never ever turn out to be Heather’s. Here was a better way to think about it: He must always act as if Heather did not exist. This was a principle. A principle, he reminded himself. If she walked into the room and said she was Heather, reserve judgment. Wait, see, listen, observe, consider.

Second, Rafik should be in a Tunisian prison for embezzlement, serving an eighteen-year sentence. That meant he must be vigilant and reject Rafik’s deals, offers, opportunities, ideas, notions.

Third, Rafik would never change. This meant that Rafik was involved in some manner of wrongdoing this very moment. It was not conjecture, it was not possible, it was not probable, it was happening.