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conversation was triggering a much more recent pain.
    He hadn’t spoken to Katya in eight months. At first, she had continued to call him every week or so, but each call seemed only to push him further into an association he couldn’t justify—a relationship with a woman who was neither his relative nor his wife. The investigation into Nouf Shrawi’s death was over; Katya’s engagement had been broken as a result. And he knew from experience that the pleasure of seeing Katya in person was offset horribly by the anxieties that invaded him whenever he was alone with her. Without the approval of her father, Nayir could not continue to see her, and winning genuine approval would have been impossible. Nayir could never admit that he had been seeing Katya alone, and yet not to admit it was the worst kind of lie. In either case he would be a blackguard in her father’s eyes, should the truth come out. And it
had
to have come out. Her escort knew they’d been seeing each other. He must have told her father.
    Given what had passed between him and Katya, any modest, concerned parent would dismiss Nayir at once. He was certain that that was the right thing to do, and he was equally certain that he couldn’t take the rejection. It would have made permanent the very separation Nayir had imposed upon himself, half in the hope that it wouldn’t last forever.
    But then Katya had stopped calling. She must have realized his position. She knew him, after all, and, more important, she knew her father.
    Or perhaps she’d simply stopped wanting to see him.
    “… so will you check it out?” Samir’s words brought Nayir back to the present.
    “What?” he asked with a note of alarm. “Check what out?”
    Samir looked exasperated. “I was hoping you would go to the coroner’s office and ask a few questions. You know people there.”
    “But I don’t.”
    “You’re going to tell me that you can solve a whole murder by yourself, and yet you can’t go down to ask a question about an old family friend for me?”
    Nayir was flabbergasted. He hadn’t solved Nouf’s murder on his own, he had solved it with Katya’s help. And he had never intended to get involved in the first place. He was a desert guide, he had only been investigating as a favor to his friend Othman.
    “The Shrawis,” he tried to explain to his uncle, “that was completely different.”
    “I know you’re concerned with seeing justice done. You’ve shown that you’re willing to work hard, even fight, to see that it’s accomplished. That is rare indeed. And now you’re acting like —”
    “It’s not rare,” he snapped, fighting to maintain control. “There are people who do it every day.”
    Samir took a bite of bread with dignity. He chewed slowly, watching Nayir, before saying, “I am very proud of what you’ve done.”
    Nayir, who was about to erupt for a tangled mass of reasons that he didn’t dare analyze, was suddenly cut short. His uncle had never said those words to him, at least never so directly, and although they had fallen on angry ears, this did not diminish their significance.
    Nayir abruptly stood up to refill the water pitcher and took his time before returning to the table. He had hardly touched his plate, and the lump of food now looked repulsive.
    “Of course I’ll go,” Nayir said gruffly. “I’ll see what the coroner has to say.”
    Samir nodded with satisfaction. Nayir began clearing off the table, taking away plates, even the one Samir was using. He busied himself with wrapping everything up and putting it in the refrigerator before it spoiled. It wouldn’t take long in the 45-degree heat.
    “You are getting thinner,” Samir observed from behind him, oblivious to his nephew’s anger. “You know, you don’t even look like yourself anymore.”
    Nayir didn’t respond, and that silenced Samir. But a little while later the words carried him out the door and into his car, where they echoed uncomfortably in the cramped