Shaygha’s groan reached me from the other room. It sounded like she was waking up from a deep sleep. Then the goon must have slapped her, for the groan changed into the screech of a cat being tortured. I shot Mr. Joe a glance, appealing to him, but the corners of his mouth curled up in a smile and he shook his head as though to say, “Just wait. You haven’t seen anything yet.” Fear struck me—the kind I don’t like, the kind I can’t stand, the kind I hate. It plunged into my belly like a dagger, and the more I thought about Shaygha or pictured her in the hands of this beast, the blade went deeper. Yes, they would hurt her. They would hurt me. They would cut off everything that connected us so that she would no longer be able to stand the sight of me, or I the sight of her. The hatred one victim feels for another would fill our hearts and attach her to the executioner.

When I was still a child and could not endure much pain, I would seek Mary’s lap whenever I felt afraid. She would overwhelm me, and I would feel her ample body folding around me and protecting me. When I got my first facial hair, I became too ashamed to go running to her, so I would lock myself in my room, neither coming out nor letting anyone in until my storm had passed and I became calm again. When the country settled into civil war, my fear changed and worsened. I could barely manage it until Neda suggested a solution she had once read in some magazine: “Imagine that the person frightening you is a child, and your fear will drain away.” Just like Thurayya, Neda was addicted to reading women’s magazines. She would send me out to buy them from the kiosks at all hours, day and night, come rain or come bombardment—Neda, whom I loved, whom I relied upon, and to whom I had delivered my soul, only for her to leave me suddenly because she was no longer able to bear me. “To bear you,” she had said. Yes, she chose her words precisely, insisting that her problem with me was a problem of weight, not a problem of energy or her capacity to endure. That killed me. It was just some stupid phrase she uttered, but it was all over for me. To this day, I do not understand how an educated and cultured woman like her could have used such a phrase, purposefully and by design, especially a woman addicted to foreign magazines, each issue of which contained prescriptions for understanding love and emotional relationships, and gave advice on “how to keep your man.”