Whatever his intention, he failed in it: at the last split second, Laila turned her head as if searching for someone—Amira could swear she looked directly at Malik—and the stone struck a glancing blow.

Blood gushed. Laila sagged, straightened, shaking her head as if to clear it.

And then came a sound like the snarl of a vicious dog unchained.

The crowd surged forward, almost fighting one another to get at the rock pile. Suddenly, the stones were flying as thickly as a flock of frightened white birds in the square. To Amira’s horror, the women were the fiercest executioners, screaming curses as they threw, then scurrying to grab another stone.

For a few seconds, Laila twisted, first to one side, then the other, as if trying to avoid her unseen attackers; then she collapsed in her bindings, the rocks thudding into her body, knocking her head loosely, sickeningly, from side to side. It ended as abruptly as a desert thunderstorm, a last stray stone rattling across the baked earth.

A man came out of the prison. He applied a stethoscope to Laila’s battered chest and nodded to a group of guards. Quickly, they carried the body back into the prison, without even wrapping it. Somehow, that final indignity tore at Ami- ra’s heart. Was Laila not to have a decent burial?

The crowd melted away, the angry roar muted now. Still holding Malik’s hand, as young men often did, Amira led him away from the square. His eyes were blank, unseeing; he moved like an automaton. When they reached the car, she released him. Pressing her hands against her cold, clammy skin, she doubled over, vomiting into the dust.

Malik seemed not to notice. Staring straight ahead, he turned the key in the ignition; the car lurched forward, then careened into the road as Malik floored the accelerator. On the drive home, he spoke only once, his face sculpted in cold fury.

“Never again. I swear it.”

3. Malik

Malik

The plane banked, one wing pointing to pure blue sky, the other to khaki desert. Sky and desert. Al-Remal. One night in Marseilles—in a smoky cafe crowded with seamen and the occasional tourist in search of “atmosphere”—a business acquaintance of Malik’s, a middle-aged American well advanced in drink, had become sentimental and sententious. “I’m gonna tell you young fellas something,” he informed the group around the table. “You’re all away from home and think you’re going to make a pile of money and go back in style. But you can’t. You can’t go home again. A famous writer said that. I forget who, but truer words were never spoken.”

“What does it mean?” Malik asked. In all honesty, the remark made no sense to him.

“It means you can’t go home again, damn it, no matter how much you might want to.” The drinker reiterated that the quotation was from a famous writer, also an American apparently, and attempted to explain its meaning for himself, personally. It still made no sense.