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.”