I hadn’t tried taking the metro since.

“You look like you are sweating, Saleh.”

I breathed. “Please go on. Your marriage.”

“It was a good one. Nevertheless, the devil of infidelity was with me.”

“You’re a Frenchman.”

“Oh please, Saleh! Let’s throw away the clichés. I’ve come here to die, don’t forget. I was not unfaithful because I’m a Frenchman. That is ridiculous. I was unfaithful because it was there like a fruit, and I was often away, and in a sense it came with the job.”

“So you’ve come here to die because you were unfaithful? This seems like a heavy price to want to pay for something not that uncommon.”

“No. On the contrary. I am here because on one of my trips home I found that my wife had also lied, cheated if you will. But before you imagine that I am here because my wife was not faithful, let me tell you that that was not it either. In fact, when I realized she was being unfaithful, it was as if I had been released from all manner of responsibility. I was suddenly free.”

I thought of Atia telling me she was going to marry Mafiha. It wasn’t the same thing. Not at all. But later on when I’d thought about it, I realized there was some form of twisted freedom in hearing the person you love tell you they will marry someone else. Once the dark cloud passes, you can settle inside your misery and let it rock you to desolate sleep.

“What did you do?” I asked.

“The man she was seeing had twin sons the same age as my own boy. He had been divorced for some time and owned a large home in the countryside where his former wife also lived nearby. The boys all went to the same school in the big city. It would have been a clean arrangement for all, except that the man’s former wife seemed unhappy about a married woman playing mother to her sons. I could understand this, and I suppose so could my wife. Therefore, one day my wife insisted that I come to that big, beautiful American country house for a weekend visit. I was, in other words, a decoy, a distraction. I already knew that I was being part of a deceit and yet I did not mind. Because all these years I had been the one to be deceitful. It was a settling of scores and I was fine with it. You could say that in order to make my own deceit acceptable to myself, I engaged in another deceit, this time in collaboration with my own wife.”

He sighed.

I did not like where this was going. Yet Abu Faranci seemed intent on telling his story and I was not going to get in his way—not so late in the game for us.