Laila, decked in silk and dripping with gold, everything about her done to perfection, looked as beautiful as one of the virgins promised to the faithful in paradise.

Her groom was far from the elderly gentleman Amira had made him in her mind. Mahmoud Sadek was as handsome as everyone said, and though not a large man, had something about him that made him seem so. Even Omar Badir and Abdullah Sibai had the aspect of younger brothers in his presence. Then it was over, and Laila was gone. The couple would honeymoon in Istanbul. For a few days, Amira lived on the remembered glory of the wedding.

Then a gray despondency descended on her. She was lonely.

She tried to spend time with her mother, but Jihan seemed to be in her own world these days. Even Miss Vanderbeek was gone, taking her annual vacation somewhere in the south of France. On top of it all, Amira’s body was changing; she had not bled yet, but things were happening within her that sometimes seemed like torment.

It helped when Laila’s letters began to arrive, a new one every day. She raved about the luxuriousness of her honeymoon hotel, the beauty of the Bosporus, the treasures of the Topkapi museum.

You should see the jewels, Amira, the fabulous diamonds and rubies and sapphires that the sultans gave to their wives. They must have loved them very much indeed. I miss you very much and wish you were here to share all these wonders with me. But I don’t think Mahmoud would like that. Never mind, I will soon be home—and I will be your friend always and forever.

Amira read and reread these sentiments, silently affirming her friendship “always and forever.”

In the third week of Laila’s honeymoon came a note in her exuberant hand warning, “State secret! Hide this away! Aren’t they cute?” and a postcard-sized photograph of The Beatles. Amira was vaguely disappointed. The musicians looked rather like oil-company foreigners wearing strange wigs. But, in tribute to the shared memories the picture represented, she slipped it between the pages of one of the textbooks Malik had left her. Every night, she took it out and wondered what Istanbul was like, and Cairo, and London, and all the other places she might never see.

One midmorning, at an hour when Omar was always in town on business, Amira’s loneliness and the urgings of her body made her do a crazy thing. She went into her father’s study and turned on the radio. It took her a while to find the Cairo station, but at last there it was, a Western song playing, rock and roll; it wasn’t The Beatles, but the music was similar. She lifted her skirt and danced, watching her own long legs as she twirled, trying to regain that feeling almost forgotten, that brief sunburst of freedom.