They giggled like schoolgirls again for a long time, enjoying their togetherness. The last time they had been close, acting like silly teenagers, was years ago, when Aliyah had moved out of her parents’ house and needed help decorating—the result had been lilac walls, sofas with originally designed and stitched flowered slipcovers, and a kitchen table painted in a black and white checkerboard pattern. All their mothers had collectively frowned, worrying that Aliyah’s show of independence would have a domino effect. On Reema, it had.

On her first date with Alex, they met at the Lebanese café on 9th Street, managed by an elderly, slim man, his sons, and their wives for as long as Reema could remember. Over hummus and lemon chicken kabobs, Reema told Alex how she’d been pulled into sociology. “I want to study the culture created by war, and examine how victims cope in new worlds. My interest is really coming out of the fact that my parents are refugees of war and immigrants to the States—I have no doubt about that.”

“I just sell antiques,” he said as he walked her home later than night. “That’s all I could find with an art history degree.”

“You don’t enjoy it?”

“I love antiques and old things, but the job basically sucks.” Then he kissed her, right there at the front door of her building. Tenderly. Sweetly. She called Aliyah that night for the first time in months, and they stayed on the phone until 2 A.M.

She continued to see Alex, almost every night of the week, and they quickly fell into a routine: He walked over to her apartment after work, where they ate dinner (he insisted that she cook Middle Eastern food, so rolling grape leaves, not her thesis, occupied the daytime hours). After dinner, they watched one of the prime-time sitcoms, usually Seinfeld or Frasier, or the reruns of Cheers if they were so lucky. Then they’d take a walk for at least an hour, strolling through the marvellously organized grid of streets that defined Philadelphia. Numbers running north and south; names going east and west. Oneway streets, no deviations. It was comforting for the same reason that arithmetic always appealed to her in school—there was only one answer, just waiting to be discovered.

She loved the way he spoke, the way that he compressed his lips after making a point. “I’m a film buff,” he said once, a few weeks after the disturbing polygamy question. “I collect old movies. I think you’d like them,” his mouth engulfing the final “m” and sealing it in.

“What’s the oldest movie you own?” she asked.

“The Sheik, made in 1921.” He grinned. “You’d love that one.”

“What’s it about?”