Chapter Ten — — First Seeing

Chapter Ten

First Seeing

He saw Hana for the first time on an ordinary Thursday evening.

He had come over for no particular reason — the kind of visit that established friendship makes possible, the arrival without agenda. Omar was on the phone when he arrived, gestured toward the living room.

Hana was in the living room, reading. She looked up when he came in. She had the family eyes — the same shape as Omar's, the same quality of direct attention — but in her they were doing something different. In Omar the directness was intellectual, the look of a person following a thought. In Hana it was something he did not immediately have a word for. Simply the look of a person who was fully in the room and did not bother to pretend otherwise.

"Zakariya," he said.

"I know," she said. "Omar has mentioned you."

"Good things, I hope."

She smiled without confirming or denying and went back to her book. He sat across from her and did not try to continue the conversation and felt, without being able to immediately account for the feeling, that this was the right approach.

Omar came in ten minutes later and the evening proceeded. They ate. They talked. Hana joined the conversation occasionally, with the specific quality of someone who speaks when they have something worth saying and does not speak to fill silence. Zakariya noted this without lingering on the noting.

When he walked home that night, he thought about something she had said during the meal — a comment about a book, a single sentence that had been precise and unexpected and had briefly derailed the conversation into territory none of them had anticipated. He thought about the sentence for longer than the sentence alone warranted.

He filed it. He went to sleep.