Sometimes when she lies awake her body feels as finely made as a tuning fork. She can hear and smell the most delicate things, the smell and music of thought itself.

He realizes finally that the boy he’s been watching snap his board into the air, then neatly touch down- long, black, gleaming hair, pale white skin- is Felice. He didn’t know she’d learned how to skateboard. He’s never seen her like this before- so intently focused and content- her beauty beside the point, merely part of the catalog of effects- speed, balance, daring. He admires her athletic form and feels moved in some unexpected way.

The loneliness of the arab is a terrible thing; it is all consuming. It is already present like a little shadow under the heart when he lays his head on his mother’s lap; it threatens to swallow him whole when he leaves his own country, even though he marries and travels and talks to friends twenty-four hours a day. That is the way Sirine suspects that Arabs feel everything – larger than life, feelings walking in the sky.

It’s a big formless, arctic night, the stars so bright they seem to hiss. I walk with my hands in pockets, arms pressed to my sides. Even in my down parka, the cold is still there. I feel as though my blood is crackling in it, my bones conducting cold like wires. My toes are curled in their boots.

On the cutting board there are two peanut butter and red currant jam sandwiches for Emerson and two Serrano ham, shaved cheddar, and apricot chutney sandwiches for Felice. Nieves wraps them smartly in waxed paper, tapes them, and puts them back in the fridge. There’s also a cooler Nieves opens: packed with trail mix, sliced pears and apples, and the lemon bars.

Let the beauty we love be what we do. There are a hundred ways to kneel and kiss the ground.

Love and prayer are intimately related.

For me, almost always, the answer was cake.

Li Pin Chu tells them that if he could eat one dish every day for the rest of his life it would be sliced pork and egg in palm sugar. Han says he would enjoy some chicken stewed in onion yogurt sauce. Sirine thinks she might like some reheated spaghetti and meatballs- a breakfast that her mother used to make from the previous night's dinner.

While Han sits and gazes into his private distance, she assembles a meal: chunks of lamb grilled directly over the gas flame, gleaming skewers of onion, tomato, zucchini, a scent of lavender in the oil. There is a bag of frekeh in one of the cabinets and she considers this for a moment but then shuts the door. The aroma of garlic, grilled lamb, and open fields fills the kitchen. She brings it to the table on a big plate with rice cooked with saffron and toasted pine nuts.