This is the ninth house we have moved into, and we have a feeling that we never had in any of our previous homes. Amir is ashamed of feeling this way, let alone talking about it.

But I want to talk about our house because we are not the tenants of any landlords. Landlords are not evil, but they can possess your soul just the same!

Now we are free to move our furniture around without being afraid of banging the walls. The kids are free to talk out loud, play, scream, and even run. I can quit the poor person’s habit of constantly hushing the kids.

I feel a sense of freedom and talk about it, but Amir does not allow such an important word to be used for such a petty, ordinary feeling. Freedom has significance on a global level, and in a historical context, but in a shabby, fifty-square-meter house in a crowded neighborhood, in a third world country . . . oh my! How can I be so dumb?

As long as Amir is at home, I am not allowed to be ignorant, so I wait for him to leave.

The backyard is full of the smell of fenugreek. The upstairs neighbor has a grinder for chopping greens, and he chops kilos and kilos of them. It took several weeks to get used to this aroma. The curtains got used to it before I did; instead of cloth, they smell like fenugreek.

I sit on the kitchen chair and look at the backyard that is never quiet and is always full of smells, sounds, and mosquitoes. The walls are cement, with three identical windows above the glass kitchen door. Too bad the sky is so far away. The back of your neck gets wrinkled if you try to see a little bit of the sky. We have done many things to make the backyard look pretty. I have installed a small aluminum awning and mounted a fluorescent light above the glass door. I have put a few flower pots here and there, and the kids have hung many odds and ends on the walls.

I have to get up and turn the lights on. Light is distributed unevenly in this house. It is already night in the kitchen. But it is afternoon in the living room and daytime in the bedroom. I call Shadi and Shahin. Where did they disappear to? After the first few weeks of being beaten up and feeling like outsiders, now they can’t stay inside. With them gone, it feels like all the sounds are gone. It is rare to have no sound in the house at this time of the afternoon. This kind of solitude is not what I long for every day. This is more like having nobody! As if they have all gone and left me behind.