“Three times,” Ghazi said. “Three times you tried to leave.”

“Yes.”

“Me, just once.”

“You never talk of why,” Aziz said.

“We are here,” Ghazi said. “That is what matters.”

Still the deflection.

“Could you marry an American girl?” Ghazi asked. More deflection.

“That is hard to know. I am alone.” Aziz paused. He was preoccupied with what he might safely say of Soumeya. To delay, he reached for any question. “Perhaps you will marry Carol?” Carol, the third girlfriend waitress.

“Carol? Goddamn. No.”

“Because she is American?”

“No. She is not enough. To me she is—”

“Ghazi. Have you ever loved a woman?” There, Aziz thought. That was the question he wanted to ask.

“No.”

“Never?”

“I hear in your voice that you have.”

Aziz had set the table. Yet still he hesitated to sit down. “Yes,” he said finally.

Ghazi turned. Aziz felt his eyes but could not look back. “There was never one for you at home.”

“There was,” Aziz said. “No one knew of her.”

“Who?”

Aziz thought he could feel Ghazi studying length of pauses, inflection, the muscle that betrayed or hesitated.

“You did not know her,” Aziz began.

Ghazi said nothing. Aziz felt him waiting.

“She is dead now,” Aziz finished.

Ghazi made a humming sound. A silence lasted until Aziz moved his foot against the sidewalk.

“I saw her killed,” he said, scraping his shoe on the concrete.

Ghazi, who had been sitting on the other end of the bus bench, moved toward Aziz and sat next to him. For a while, neither spoke. There were no cars, no highway noise, only the even call of crickets. The night air was cooling. Wind lifted a page and dropped it behind a fence. Aziz remembered the newspaper that had warmed him the day he swam. He was easily as lost now. But there was this: He had expected Ghazi’s shock. Ghazi’s quiet—that was ease.

Ghazi put his hand on Aziz’s shoulder. “I am sorry, uncle; I am sorry for this. You, your suffering—it is too much. Words for this”—Ghazi put his head against Aziz’s ear—“I have none.” They heard each other breathing. They stayed that way until the wheeze of the bus came down the street.

Ghazi took the jelly of chicken strips in handfuls and dropped them in the oil. Bubbles coated the strips. The sound was like roof rain. To his right were heads of lettuce. He took his knife and began: first in half, then in half again. The quarters made a long row. He began the slicing. Dominoes of lettuce tilted left. He looked at the chicken and stirred. With a strainer, he fished out meat and spread it on the grill. Up went the flame. In seconds it was time for paper towels. He spooned the lettuce into bowls, and bowls went in refrigerators. He palmed the cooling chicken and decided to dust it with salt.