But I am not an old woman, said Farah to herself. I am barely forty. I could live to be twice this age. The thought made her heavy as she waited, waited with all the other women who were crossing the bridge, going home, envying the foreigners who could cross from another spot with nothing more than a stamped paper for their passports.

Farah said nothing, did not try to make conversation with anyone and resented those women who did. This was not the time for chatting, she thought to herself. For the sake of your dignity, please stop. She tried to make her thoughts envelop the three women in front of her, talking as though they were at a wedding. She tucked her pain deep inside so that no strip search, no matter how thorough, would ever find it.

As the long bundle of women moved, the body smells got heavier, and though Farah felt her head swoon with nausea, she did not flinch, showed no sign of her thoughts as she waited, waited, watching. Old women and young girls, and young girls with babies, and slap, it came back to her where she had just been and the awfulness of it and how there was no way to change it, just accept God’s will and teach yourself rigidity. Teach yourself to keep all of the pain in one small corner inside. Farah kept hers behind her right breast, thinking the kindness from her heart might sneak over and color the black and gray some gorgeous orange color.

They moved slowly, waiting as if to buy vegetables from the last stand in the village, but really waiting to spread their legs for the enemy, who though they are very polite think older ladies are the most dangerous because they wear the most clothes and have had the most children; they could hide an entire village between their legs if they wanted to.

Farah felt nothing as she took off her clothes all the way down to naked, avoiding looking at her body whose loose flesh she rarely inspected, almost as if it belonged to someone else. The women guards poked around with rubber gloves and Farah felt nothing—no anger, nothing more than tiredness. Such things were accepted as part of life, like that woman’s six miscarriages, and the one child who lived got polio and hobbled around on crutches, and that widow who had no nephews or uncles or cousins to help carry her groceries from the market—not pleasant, but unavoidable, God-given burdens.

And then it was done with and Farah was dressed and sweating now from the heat and looking for a service that would take her home. So many cabs and buses and services and hot people stuffing themselves inside.

“I’m going to the north, near Jenin,” she told a driver.

“Then you will come with me, sister. I am going to Jenin as soon as we get two more passengers.”