It rained continuously that night, its drumming like the underpinning of an overture, and people plunged headfirst into the gathering dark with their overcoats clamped against the gale and umbrellas open. They scurried back and forth as though they were being pushed or pulled by soft hands in the wind. Despite the crackling thunder and the banging rain I felt more content than I’d been since I was in my mother’s womb. This beautiful, blustery weather, I said to myself, is what built civilization here. Here, you have to work for your warmth. There’s no time to idle on the corner, to loiter around. No place for wolf whistles and catcalls down a block. Pause for a single second and the skies will drown you, the cold will freeze you solid.

People in winter clothes are always more beautiful, more elegant. Dark overcoats against white snow sharpens both extremes and makes both lovelier. There’s no sun to spoil the skin, no heat to squat on the chest and throttle your strength and energy and ambition. Cold here is a spur, and the pouring rains that join earth to heaven promote a perpetual verdure that the children of the desert can only picture as their paradise. Here, their heaven of green gardens and rain are as commonplace as the wind: perennial. Anything that can build with such beauty, that grows from this blessed rain: of course it turned out well.

And cold enjoins love: bodies warm each other in its embrace, kisses become hot drops for the soul. The desert, meanwhile, turns the same clinch into a hell. The heat dulls sex, turns all affection beyond mere talk and virginal flirting into a trial, and makes it hateful. Like harassment: speech or touch without the true care of the embrace. Harassment is our sex.

There hadn’t been a breath of wind that whole time, so who knows what made Bahr think of the cold. But the night I spent on the street with Alya, in the streetlight and laughter, it had been freezing. We dozed on the sidewalk as content as in our bed and were woken at dawn by the zealous at their morning drills. Alya looked tired. “Come on,” I said, “I’ll walk you to your friend’s place.” The friend lived close by and when we got to her door, Alya turned to me and said, “Are you going home? I’ll come with you.”

I said, “No. I’m going back to the square.”

And I did, going back through the intoxicated joy of the early morning streets. The crowds were already thinning, and the square seemed empty without Alya, so I told myself I would go home, go upstairs, eat, and rest for a while. I’d change my clothes and come back down.