The map of Syria took up almost the entire table, so Rasha had put the bread on the windowsill.
She had printed the map at work, on a sheet too large for the printer at home, and its folds formed pale ridges between Homs, Damascus, and the Turkish border. Beside it, the blue Bundesamt folder had already absorbed a coffee stain. Rasha was irritated every time she saw it. Nadim thought it looked like an island.
“You can’t say ‘I don’t remember’ to everything,” she said.
She spoke quietly because Nour was still asleep in the little bedroom on the other side of the partition. The radiator clicked at regular intervals. In the courtyard, someone was dragging a garbage can over wet cobblestones.
Nadim rested his index finger on the northern part of the map, then took it away. His sister had circled four cities in pen and drawn a line slanting down toward the Turkish coast.
“I’m not saying I don’t remember.”
“You just said it three times.”
“I’m saying that’s not how I remember it.”
Rasha straightened. She was still in her night-shift uniform, dark pants and a burgundy top, her hair tied with an elastic she bit when she was working. She got home from the clinic at six twenty, made coffee, woke Nour at seven, then slept until noon. Since Nadim had moved in, that schedule had lost its edges. There was always a paper to sign, an appointment to track down, an envelope he had not opened.
“All right. Then tell me how you remember it.”
He stared at the word HOMS. The black ink had bled around the H.
The first image that came to him was their mother slicing tomatoes on the balcony, a dish towel over her shoulder. Nothing useful. Then the sound of a drill in the apartment below. Then Nour’s laughter at eight years old, at the airport, when she had refused to let her bag go onto the belt because it contained a jar of apricot jam wrapped in two socks.
“We were at home,” he said.
Rasha closed her eyes.
“Nadim.”
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