Soon I was not the only one who doubted her motives. Rumors started, started small and harmless and grew until they were like a boulder ready to flatten her. Someone saw Um Lubna batting her eyes at this one’s eighteen-year-old son. Someone else saw her lift her dress all the way up to her knees in the middle of the market. And someone else heard her singing a love song at the butcher’s, of all places.

Everyone began running around with trying-to-be-discreet questions and comments rolling off their tongues: I don’t understand what Um Lubna is up to; it’s like all of her sadness from before is now over, and I don’t know what to say to her. Do you think she has seen a ghost? Maybe the evil eye has struck her.

If anyone asked me one of these imbecilic questions, I spoke my mind: What do you think a woman is up to when she goes around dressed like that, winking at young boys and humming love songs?

Thick-headed village.

Then I had that awful sickness for two long and completely lonely months. I put Um Lubna at the back of my mind where she belongs, did not even think about her until one afternoon I was sitting in the garden, savoring the last of the day’s sun, and I saw my neighbor coming toward me with her thick lips pushing out a naughty smile.

“Um Radwan, you are not going to believe what I heard. I was at the butcher’s and he asked if I had any news and I said no, only that I was so happy to see Um Lubna acting normal again, and he started laughing. I asked him why he was laughing like that and wasn’t he glad to see her shed her cloak of mourning and he laughed again. Then he told me not to tell anyone, but said that Abu Khuder went to Um Lubna’s house to repair a window and finished his business.”

“What does that mean?”

“I mean, he finished his business,” she said, gesturing with her hand in such a way that there was no mistaking her meaning.

“You see. Didn’t I tell you that she was up to something?” Whose lies are these?

The next day—it was high time I got out of my sickbed—I went to the butcher’s. “You know,” I said to him, “it’s been a while since I last saw Um Lubna. I hope she is all right. Have you seen her lately?” See what a clever way I have to ask him. As though I had no idea of what he knows.

A disgusting smile came to his face as his knife cut through a leg of lamb, and I figured he was the one starting such stories.

“I haven’t seen her personally, but you might ask Abu Khuder.”

“Why Abu Khuder?” I asked.