in five weeks I will be in Paris. in three days I will be flying to LA. this morning I read about a plane that started to split open in midair. i can think of few worse ways to die than to be sucked from an alumnium tube into the atmosphere.

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ahmed smokes in the front seat. from duty free i buy him cigarettes. he slicks his thinning hair back with what appears to be olive oil. his forehead glistens. he has five children, from two different wives, both of whom he is still married to. there is a third wife, his first wife, who produced no children.

i sit in the passenger seat. when my mother rides with him, she sits in the back, for propriety's sake. i am young still, i feel strange sitting in the back, like I'm Miss Daisy or a typical Ammani girl. I sit beside him and try not to notice when he glances at my leg. he thinks of me as a friend, he tells me his dreams--literal ones, as in, last night i dreamt that another man came and stole my wife. Which one? I ask. The one I love, he tells me.