The desert had claimed many acres of land since Rania’s last visit to Basil’s farmhouse. The wind was thick with its pearly grains. She took a step back when Basil pushed open the gate. He looked much older than she’d expected: nose drooping, philosopher’s forehead more prominent than ever, earlobes like deflated balloons. The two of them stood stock-still, eyes fumbling across the other’s face, trying to reconcile memories of smooth skin and plump lips. The wind whipped around them in tight circles, got tangled in Rania’s hair, and tossed it about like graying ribbons.

Always a gentleman, Basil recovered first.

“My old friend!” He grasped Rania’s hand, discreetly checked the road outside, and ushered her through the gate. “I am so pleased to see you. What an honor.”

Pebbles crunched beneath their feet as they followed a curving driveway to a large whitewashed home. Weeping gutters had left tear tracks down its peeling facade. Rania imagined if it was lined up beside her own house, they’d be diagnosed as two geriatric patients suffering the same skin disease.

At the far end of the property, a palm grove formed a dense green wall. Rania remembered when their serrated trunks seemed to stretch to eternity, when the Fertile Crescent still resembled its legend. But then the irrigation system fell into disrepair, and the government decided to break up big farms—at least those not owned by the president and his cronies. Basil’s family was left with just a couple of acres, and the desert crept in, with its sand and thorny scrub, turning freshwater to muddy salt flats.

Basil steered Rania through the front door and into a long, windowless hallway. After the bright sun outside, it was dark as a well.

“Let’s go into the drawing room. It’s coolest there.” Basil smiled crookedly. “I’m afraid the air conditioner performed its swan song some time ago, but we’ve got a fan running at least.”

He deposited her in the high-ceilinged room and went to find the cook and order tea. Rania ran her fingers along a couch of threadbare Persian damask. A bookcase stretched along one wall. The naked shelves reminded Rania of her father’s library, and the precious Koran she’d sold to the bookseller at Mutanabbi.

A sideboard held a collection of family photos, including a shot of Basil’s mother and a friend. They looked to be in their early twenties. Dressed in knee-length frocks, they smiled broadly and strode arm in arm past the colonnades of Rashid Street. Behind them, a man in a trilby hat and another in an ankle-length dishdasha waited at a bus stop. Neither paid any mind to the young women with their bare arms and hair falling past their shoulders, marching gaily toward the future.