Now, in the burnished gold light of late afternoon, as Amira’s precious hours of freedom drifted away, they talked fitfully and in murmurs, trying to postpone parting. Philippe broke the mood. “I was in a store the other day,” he said with a smile, “and I saw a black silk scarf, very sheer. I picked it up and held it over my face and walked around—you could see through it well enough. The saleswoman was in a fine state of alarm. She certainly thought I was mad, and if I hadn’t bought the thing, she probably would have summoned the paramedics.” He shook his head and looked out at the boulevard, the slanting light accentuating the smile wrinkles around his eyes. “I wanted to see what it was like—the veil.”

Amira leaned toward him, and suddenly they were kissing, a long, deep, deeply shared kiss that she wanted never to end.

When he drew away, the look in his eyes was almost more than she could bear. “My apartment isn’t far from here,” he said quietly. “Will you come with me?”

Her body screamed yes, but she looked down and mutely shook her head, a little gesture that might mean almost anything.

Against the dark screen of her closed eyelids, she saw Laila’s body twitching to the blows of countless stones.

When she still said nothing, Philippe touched her hand. “It’s all right. I understand.”

They had approached a threshold and drawn back, as if they’d opened a door, seen a beautiful but dangerous garden, and closed the door again.

“We’re still friends,” Philippe said.

“Always.” More than friends. Matched souls, Amira imagined, an inseparable pair broken apart long ago in some cosmic accident, perhaps in one of those black holes in space the Sorbonne astronomy students spoke of with the icy passion of their science.

17. A Man in The Night

A Man in the Night

When she first returned to al-Remal, Amira could not stop thinking about Paris and Philippe. Everything in her daily life—everything except her child—seemed stifling. But daily life weaves a strong web, and within a few weeks, it had entangled her; nothing she could do pre- vented the time with Philippe from losing its urgent reality, becoming a kind of keepsake, a photograph in the locket of her memory, something to be opened to view only once in a while, tenderly and secretly.

Yet, she had changed; she could feel it. The small taste of love she had experienced was like the scent of food to someone starving. She wanted more—far more.

It was a desire she tried to suppress. Time and again she told herself that even if her husband was almost a stranger to her, her life still was one that many women would envy. The women’s wing of the royal palace might be a cloister, but it was a luxurious one.