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173 A I’m sure the four of us still read everything, follow all the news. I rely on this thought, I think of what I might say to them after I read anything: an article about the president’s most recent speech. An interview with veterans. Debates on whether one should use the term civil war. An article on windmills, an article on centrifuges. On the screen the president gesturing, the assembly hall in Cairo packed full. The camera surveys: who cheers, who doesn’t. But I also know that human progress cannot be denied, he was saying. You could call that love, Sara would have said. • In the newspapers a man walks out of the scene of the blast, a kerchief tied around his forehead and already bloodied, his face unrecognizable, if I had known him. 174 • Love? I fear that I don’t have it in me, to love in the right ways, the hardest ways. I would leave the doors open, let the children play wherever they wanted, on the side of whatever road. I wouldn’t stop them, the teenagers, I’d let them go to any club, no matter the bombings in the news. • Did you know I’ve never been in love? Sara said once. What people would call in love. What do they know? F said. Any of them. • If we had been there, after the blast, among the fragments of glass, looking around for each other. ...
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