“In Persia we call the meeting of two opposites bar-khord. Bar-khord happens when two strong elements touch and something new forms at their point of intersection. It is not a clash of opposites—not like flesh on the metal of a car—more like an intermingling. Do you understand? This in-between state is in constant flux. It doesn’t set opposites against each other; it is the source of a third element, something completely new that draws on the opposites and bears no major similarities to either one or the other. It’s like a child that grows into something very different from its mother or its father, you see?”

I nodded.

“Bar-khord is this tea—hot water and mint combining to create poetry and comfort. Bar-khord is when blood mingles with blood, when migrants find a home and love in a new country. It’s a new life. Not war, not peace, but a fresh start.” He sipped his tea. “And the highest form of bar-khord is dying. When death and life meet in dying, they create . . .” Here he paused. “What do you think, effendi? What is created between being and nonbeing?”

I answered, “Fear.”

Bar-khord. Between being and nonbeing. I’m at the spot where life and death create something. It sounds like a riddle to me, but if I solve it, will I be saved? What is born when dying begins?

THEN THE MIRACLE happens. I sense her presence before she has crossed the ward, even as she’s still passing the “watchers.” Some of the others say, “Hey, here she is again.”

I’m filled with gratitude and anticipation. I can smell her—oh, her fragrance!—and it brings everything flooding back. She approaches and then . . . the long, gray day is finally over. “Eddie, my love,” I whisper.

She looks at me, and nothing in her beautiful, proud face suggests that she has heard me. Or did she hear me and is now tormenting me with silence? Is she even real? My sense of salvation is soon chased away by doubt and panic.

She sits down and it is as if the shape of the air has changed, becoming more supple and warm. A sense of enormous well-being flows through me. Yes, she is real. Eddie is reality.

“Hello, Henri,” she says, her voice dark and gentle.

“Hello, my darling,” I reply.

I want to lift both my hands to draw her face to my burning, frozen heart. I want to feel her and watch her bold lips as she speaks and laughs and demands to be kissed. I want her eyes to rest in mine, as they often did—so fiery and good, knowing and inviting, tender and grand. Nothing about her was ever hard, neither toward me nor toward anyone else, even when she flew into a rage.

Her anger was only ever directed at herself. Apart from that one, fatal time when nothing could pierce her armor.