Intimacy with his sons was something Halim never had. One part of his story, the courage he had shown in life, he never told the twins. He revealed one thing one day, then another much later, in bits, “patches in a quilt.” I heard the patches, but the colorful, sturdy quilt itself gradually wore away into shreds.

He suffered, like many other immigrants who had come with nothing more than the clothes on their backs. Drunk with idealism, he believed in ecstatic, passionate love, with every metaphor under the sun—or the moon. He was a late-flowering Romantic, a little out of place and time, indifferent to the power of money, whether honestly or dishonestly come by. Perhaps he could have been a poet, a minor provincial flaneur; but all he was was a modest shopkeeper possessed by a consuming passion. That was his way, and that was the way I knew him, puffing away at his hookah, and ready to reveal moments of his life he would never tell his sons.

Soon everyone in the city knew: Halim was crazy for Zana. The women of the Maronite Christian community in Manaus, old and young, could not tolerate the notion of Zana marrying a Muslim. They held a vigil on the pavement outside the Biblos, and ordered novenas to be said so that she wouldn’t marry Halim. Anyone who cared to listen could hear all kinds of gossip: he was a mere tinker, a peddler, a roughneck, a Muslim from the mountains of southern Lebanon who dressed like a pauper and advertised his wares in the streets and squares of Manaus with a rattle. Galib went on the offensive, and shooed the fanatics off: “Leave my daughter in peace, this rubbish is bad for business.” Zana retired to her room. The customers wanted to see her, and the only topic at lunch was the girl’s withdrawal, and the Muslim’s mad love for her. They made up stories that Halim had offered the widower a dowry, and other slanderous concoctions; stories bounced back and forth all over the place. It was a plague: put two words together and everyone believes them.

Halim laughed: “That’s passion in the provinces,” he’d say. “It’s like being onstage, listening to the audience booing two actors playing two lovers. The more they booed, the more perfume I put on the marriage sheets.”

Zana listened neither to the booing nor the advice; she listened to her own voice reciting Abbas’s gazals. That was the way it stayed for two weeks: neither yes nor no. She was the light of her father’s eyes; he took her her meals, told her the latest gossip, the stories the customers recounted, or news of a murder that had shocked the city. He didn’t touch on Halim, and she, with her eyes, asked him to let her decide on her own.