“She wept as if she was a widow,” Halim told me. “She rubbed herself against her father’s clothes, smelled everything that had belonged to Galib. She would cling to things, and I tried to tell her that mere things have no flesh or soul. Things are empty … but she didn’t hear what I said.”

Halim breathed in, blew smoke out through his nostrils, and coughed noisily. Again, he went silent, and this time I didn’t know if it was forgetfulness or a pause for meditating. That was the way he was: he was never in a hurry, not even to speak. He must have made love that way, morsel by morsel, with no urgency, as if taking his time to enjoy every bit.

How was he going to get rich? He never saved a penny, not stinting on food, on presents for Zana, on things the children asked for. He invited friends over for games of taule, and it was a real feast, nights that went on into the early morning, with endless food.

“Imagine going back to your homeland and dying,” Halim sighed. “You’re better off staying put, keeping quiet where you’ve made up your mind to live.”

She was two weeks shut in her room, two weeks without sleeping with Halim. She shouted out her father’s name, dazed, out of her mind, completely unapproachable. The neighbors heard her and tried to bring comfort, but it was no use.

“The ocean, the crossing … How far away everything was!” Halim lamented. “When someone dies on the other side of the world, it’s as if he’s been killed in a war or a shipwreck. Our eyes couldn’t see the dead man; there was no funeral. Nothing. Just a telegram, a letter … My biggest mistake was to send Yaqub alone to my family’s village,” he said to me in a whisper. “But Zana wanted it that way … she decided.”

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