mountainside, a little hollow of a cave. The wind chilled Midhat through his shirt. Over Jamil’s calm face, a lock of hair flew to the wrong side.
“I can’t believe you could be so unsympathetic.”
Jamil’s bony arms jerked upward. “Sympathy!” he said.
Midhat pivoted away and started walking in the other direction, back down the hill. God bless gravity: if not for gravity, his body would have stopped and fallen. All he wanted was to disappear, to go back in time. The present was a bare rock without shelter. In the past all pain was finished, everything was known, nothing could hurt him any longer.
“Midhat!”
He kept going. The sun shone down with terrible clarity. There was no safety.
When he regained the path he saw that Jamil had not followed. By his foot, a lizard tongued over a rock and vanished. Then, as he faced the empty stretch ahead, it came back to him: that searing sensation he used to long for, safe in his dormitory in Constantinople. It was far stronger now. The outline of his body clamped down, burning his skin. The only way to relieve it was to run.
Fatima unpacked her clothes into the cupboard, and dragged Midhat’s trunk down the steps to the bedroom. When the lid fell open, she laughed. This man had far more clothes than she had. She touched the first layer; something soft, a kind of house gown, it was thick and the lining was a deep maroon. Shirts, ties, satin and patterned cotton. She reached for the lid to close it, and as her right arm lifted, a sharp twinge in her neck forced her to drop it again. She rubbed the spot and stood looking at her reflection. One of her shoulders was noticeably higher than the other. She needed fenugreek.
The pantry was stocked with trays of food prepared by their relatives. Dishes of rice lay atop bowls of mulukhiyyeh and kusa and maqluba, and there were two bags of fresh tomatoes and cucumbers, and two bowls of fruit. No sign of fenugreek. She did find a bag of dried grape leaves. With the arm that didn’t hurt she brought out the fruit, and set it on the table. The guavas were small and hard. Oranges, white dirt in the craters of their skin. She put a pan of water to boil, and reached for an onion and a large knife. On the table she halved the bulb, then sliced it crossways so it fell apart in glassy shards. She sang. When the steam filled the room she opened the window to the garden, where the iron chairs looked poorly with tarnish in the daylight. She plied her fingers into her neck.
The rice was cooling when the front door made a noise. She did not turn as Midhat entered; she set the naked leaves in a pile and released a pool of olive oil into a bowl. After a moment he walked out. She folded the first parcels, listening hard for anything else that might situate him in the house, any creaks or footfalls. But the next noise came from right behind her again, from the hall just beyond the kitchen. She was quick to hide her surprise.
“May I have coffee?” he said.
She wiped her hands on the dishcloth tucked into her belt, and opened a cupboard. Stacks of plates. “It’s in this one, here.”
“And the pot?”
“This one—no, this one. You have … everything you need?”
“Fenugreek. We don’t have.” She untwisted the coffee jar. “But yes, I have everything. Oh, except …” She turned.
“Except what?”
“Who will fetch the water? At our house we had a well.”
“The water carrier will come here,” said Midhat. “We aren’t so far. But will you be all right, I mean, will you be needing a maid?”
“Oh. I don’t think so. At least, not for now.”
The coffee was foaming. He accepted the cup she poured but did not, at first, drink from it. He sat at the table and looked at the opened window as Fatima’s fingers worked. She set four vine leaf parcels on the plate with the others.
“What are you thinking about?” she said.
Midhat looked up at her. She wondered if he was affronted by her question. But in a moment he said: “I was thinking … about something that happened to me in France.”
“It makes you sad?”
“Not particularly. It was—I had a friend who died. He was a very intelligent man. He had this idea about life. That it was all one thing, with death in