The day came when he did know some of the dead. It was almost exactly a year after he had first arrived in Boston. His father called on a cold January morning before work, and through the stumble of sleep he listened to the story of his cousin Fouzia. She was from the side of his father’s family that was odd, and so in some sense he was able to make what happened into a little less, a little more distant, than what it was, which was 98 dead and 120 injured, as the government had it, but from a friend at the hospital, whom his father trusted, it was 400, all dead. By his father’s telling, the terrorists spared the old mother of Fouzia’s husband, and from her Aziz’s father learned how the terrorists slit the throats of the others, since the bomb they had thrown into the house had not worked. Fouzia was dead, her husband Ali was dead, so also Ali’s sister Fatima, and her son Moussa, only seven, and daughter Nadia, only twelve; though it was a mercy she died, since Fouzia’s daughter Amina, also twelve, the killers took with them. All of the furniture in the house burned to nothing; a car and a truck were stolen, jewelry too. They had been a not-poor family, and while Fouzia was excitable and had ideas about raising children that included nursing them until they were three, it could not be said that she or her husband were anything other than what they were: a plumber and his wife who kept a household of mother and sister and three children in a good part of Raïs.

His father was stricken. “Perhaps she died, mercifully, and the burning meant they could not find her,” Aziz offered.

His father made a sound of doubt. “No, because her grand-mother saw them take her.”

There was a pause because of the phones. The echo adjusted into a loud click and then was gone.

“Her mama was so old. Maybe—”

“True. But not blind. She saw,” his father said.

“Amina, had I ever met her?” Aziz got this said, but too fast. If only Rafik would call for him, so he could beg off the phone. But Rafik this early was asleep.

“No. We did not see them. We”—his father’s mouth moved away from the phone but then was back—“Fouzia married into this family, and he, your uncle Chadli, he felt it was not the best. So I respected his thinking. I never saw Amina.”

“Does anyone know of this besides you?”

“Your mother.”

“You told her.”

“I could not not tell her. It has been news here. They could not make this quiet. It was—so many.”

“And how is gemmi Chadli?” It was the natural question.

“He says he is going to kill himself.”

“He says that all the time.”

“Yes, he does. This is his way.”