“Toby,” she said.
He looked up. “Yeah, Ma?”
“You’re careful out there, aren’t you?”
He peered at her, and then said, “Yeah, Ma. I am.”
“Good.” She took a long sip of tea, swallowing hard past the lump in her throat.
For an hour they sat at the table together, while she ate and he worked. At last she stood, washed her dishes, and said, “Thank you for the supper, boychik. I’m off to bed. Good night.”
“Good night, Ma.”
She went to the bedroom, changed into her nightgown, and turned out the light, then sat waiting in the dark until Toby had rolled out his pallet. She cracked open her door, listened to his light snores—and then carefully crept to the kitchen and removed the trash-can from beneath the sink. The sweet smell grew as she opened the lid, but she saw only the usual remnants: soup cans, wet tea-leaves and greasy butcher paper, the slimy eyes of potatoes. Wincing, she reached into the can, down past the scraps, until her hand found something large and sharp-cornered.
Slowly she unearthed it. It was a bakery box, deeply dented to fit inside the can. Inside were tea cookies and macaroons and hamantaschen—a full dozen by the look of it, all mashed and broken from the rough treatment. The box bore no name or stamp, but Anna still knew a cookie from Radzin’s when she smelled it. She broke off a corner of a hamantaschen and tasted it, to remove any doubt. It was Radzin’s, all right. Thea always put too much lemon zest in the dough.
She replaced the box, heaped the peelings over it again, and went back to bed, wondering what had compelled her son to visit Radzin’s—and what, exactly, he’d learned there.
* * *
The window at the Hotel Earle was still open.
The jinniyeh flew inside, and surveyed the room. Nothing appeared to have been disturbed: there was the woman’s trunk and its spilled contents, and the cold metal teapot upon the desk. And Sophia, asleep in the bed, sunk inside the dream the jinniyeh had made for her.
The jinniyeh eyed the woman, and the smile that touched her mouth, and felt a stab of jealousy. She gathered herself, and went inside.
It was a perfectly warm afternoon in Jerusalem, as all the afternoons had been lately. Sophia and Daniel were strolling together through the Jewish Quarter, talking of history—when suddenly a naked woman appeared in the middle of the street.
Dima! Sophia called, and waved. We were just going to a café. Will you join us?
Thank you, I will, the woman said.
A waiter led them to a table in a sunny corner of the café, beside a potted palm. They ordered bread and za’atar, and sliced figs with honey. Sophia turned to Daniel to ask if he wanted coffee—but where was he? Oh, yes—he had that meeting, for his charity. She shook her head at herself for forgetting, then bit into a ripe, honey-drenched fig.
You seem happy, Dima said.
Sophia smiled. I am. I think I’m happier now than I’ve ever been in my life. Sometimes I think it can’t be real. I keep waiting for something bad to happen, for my luck to change. Is that ungrateful of me?
Perhaps, the woman said.
Sophia laughed. Oh, I’m talking nonsense. But how are you? The last time I saw you, you were looking for something—or someone . . . Sophia frowned, trying to jog the memory loose.
I found him, Dima said. But he isn’t what I expected.
How so? Sophia sat forward, listening.
I thought he would be stronger, Dima said. None of the stories said how changed he would be by his hiding. But then, maybe they thought it was too obvious to mention. Maybe I’m the only one who didn’t understand.
Oh, Dima, I’m sorry, Sophia said—but she was unnerved by something in her friend’s words, and the bitter tone in her voice. It would help if she could remember who they were talking about, but the name simply refused to come to her.
Dima said, And you misled me, too, though I realize now that you didn’t mean to.
Sophia frowned. I misled you? How?
I saw him, in your memories. And he was everything I wanted him to be—because he was everything that you had wanted him to be. I never saw how young you were then, how weak and trusting, the same way that I’d been myself once. And then you nearly destroyed your own mind trying to get rid of me—and I thought, she is only human, yet here is a strong and worthy enemy.
A creeping fear took hold of Sophia. Why was Dima talking like this, when they’d been friends for years? Or—wait. Had they been?
The words came to her as though whispered across an ocean: Jinn do not have friends. We may be allies, or enemies, or lovers, but not friends.
Sophia stood from the table. No, none of this was right—not the sunny day, or the ripe figs, or her friend Dima, beautiful and naked in a Jerusalem café. And Daniel—he’d married someone else, she’d seen them walking together in the marketplace . . . She wasn’t in Jerusalem at all.
You see? Dima was smiling. You fight me even now.
Let me out, Sophia said. You promised to cure me! You swore by—
Yes, by Mount Qaf, the jinniyeh said. But, Sophia, Mount Qaf is just an old children’s story. I never truly believed in it.
The café vanished—
The jinniyeh floated free, and took form. Sophia still lay asleep, but her expression was now deeply troubled. Her shaking, too, had returned.
The jinniyeh smoothed back a lock of the woman’s hair that had escaped its braid, and replaced the pin that held it. And still you fight, she thought. I only wish that you had been the one I was searching for.
* * *
In her bed on Washington Street, Maryam Faddoul, too, was dreaming.
She stood upon the pier at Beirut Harbor,
