They all looked up. He did not care. Something had happened to Lahouari’s sister, and Lahouari was ashamed to tell it. “Answer me! Is your sister okay?” Aziz was louder. And still this Lahouari said nothing.

“Aziz,” Rafik said, pulling down Aziz’s right hand, which had flown up in the air.

“I just want to know if your sister is okay! Can you tell me that? Tell me!” Aziz was standing up. Rafik held Aziz’s hand to the table.

Lahouari raised his eyebrows, the rest of his face fixed. “Is there a problem?” he said, in formal Arabic. What, Aziz fumed, did he think he was in a classroom? No Arzew patois? This Lahouari was empty of feeling, a haughty baby. Or maybe, Aziz thought, this Lahouari had betrayed his own sister.

“Lahouari,” Rafik intervened. “I think Aziz is worried about your sister’s safety. Is she well?”

“My sister is safe.”

Rafik let go of Aziz’s hand, and as if on a spring, it went with the force of a gust to Lahouari’s left temple. Lahouari crumpled on the floor, along with most of his uneaten food. It smeared on his face and lap and chest. It was lamb, cardamom, raisins, and rice. It smelled unaccountably to Lahouari of women’s perfume. A pain in his head made him woozy, so confused he could see his mother screeching at his father in the garden back home, an embarrassment so acute he was crying himself to sleep, because no father allowed a mother to berate him out of doors where all the neighbors heard. “You let her,” Lahouari said hotly to his father. “You did not defend yourself.” He remembered his father’s reply: “As long as there are men and women, they will scream at one another. There is no disrespect. There is the flame of love.”

Then the past was gone and Lahouari was in Boston again, but the food was still sickly sweet to his nose. His tongue pushed some of it from his lips so he might speak, tell Aziz that he was sorry, there was no disrespect, and it was only then that the taste of stew betrayed how wrong he had been. It was savory lamb. It was the lamb of his grandmother’s house. His nose was not working correctly; he had been all wrong about this food, and this place, and this kitchen, and Aziz and his questions. Lahouari, right then, was hungry. More than hungry, famished.

Aziz was kneeling on the floor, watching Lahouari talking to someone who was not there, his eyes fluttering shut and open. Aziz’s knuckles ached. He had become Kamal, batting down a weakened one. Aziz tried to clean stew from Lahouari. His two brothers were cradling Lahouari’s head and shoulders. Rafik and Heather were about to get washcloths. But then Lahouari said, “This is delicious.”