The butcher stopped a moment.

“Has Abu Khuder seen her?” I asked.

“Well, I am only repeating what he told me. He said that she came to him at his shop with that retarded girl of hers and told him that she had a window that got broken and needed repairing and asked if he could come and do it. He told her he would come at lunchtime when the shop was closed.” He paused a moment to sneeze. He is a disgusting man and the spray from his sneeze showered the leg of lamb he was cutting. “So Abu Khuder went that day to repair the window and finished his business.”

I looked at him, at his disgusting smile and his puffy red face and waited for him to continue. “I bet he goes back again tomorrow to see what other windows need fixing!” Laughter louder than his sneeze exploded from the depths of his stomach.

“May God punish you for speaking this way,” I said, and left the store, without taking the lamb I had asked him to prepare for me.

My heart often aches, though whether it is because of my dead son, may God have mercy on him, because of my other sons who all live in the United States, because of my difficult daughter, or because of sickness, I don’t know. I am an old woman with no children or grandchildren here to care for or who will care for me. One afternoon my heart ached so much that my daughter took me to a European doctor in the city and he told me that I needed to walk.

“But I do walk, doctor. I walk everywhere.” Did he think we are so modern we drive down the road to buy vegetables?

“I mean you must walk for exercise.”

I laughed at him, but my daughter agreed. “If he tells you that you should walk for exercise, then I think you should listen to him because it is dangerous for the body to get lazy. It’s not such a strange thing to do. There are many people here who walk for exercise.”

My daughter is very modern. She and her husband have an apartment in the city, she works, and she wears western clothing. I objected to all of these decisions, but eventually became used to them—what choice did I have?—just as I eventually became used to the idea of walking.