a child in your sleep, however this turns out I will never disavow the purity of your conviction, your vision, and I will never dissociate myself from your acts; what happens to you happens to me.” The plane which had flown mostly empty from Paris to Amman was going on to Baghdad, its destination. Regretfully for a moment, thinking about a place of miracles and wonders she might never see, Alia disembarked along with Adam and a handful of passengers, unconcerned, whatever lay before them was no longer in their hands. Adam was feeling quite ill by now, but still strong enough to ignore the fever, presenting instead confidence and ease even though his palms were damp with sweat. At the immigration desk the uniformed officials, military personnel without question, quickly scanned their passports; in acceptable English one of them asked, “Do you have visas?” “No, not yet,” Adam answered evenly, “Ah, over there then,” pointing to another desk marked Visas, exactly as the man at the Embassy had said. Another soldier inspected their passports one at a time, stamped them, smiled and sent them back to immigration, more smiles, a little polite conversation for no apparent reason, then ahlan wa sahlan, the traditional words of welcome. Later Adam said the last exchange might have been an extra check, they had looked hard at Alia’s passport, her name perhaps, did they want to hear her accent? One more hitch before they were on their way, the airline had marked Alia’s Sportsac for Baghdad instead of Amman, it was not with the other luggage. Since the only things that really mattered to her were the notebooks in her shoulder bag filled with poems and a record of their days, she filled out the lost luggage form without anxiety, while Adam in his clear wisdom had someone sent to the runway to see if the plane had taken off. At the last possible moment a mechanic in overalls came running up to them bearing the lost bag. Like most airports this one was a good distance from the city itself, they had no way of knowing taxis were standard transportation, cheap and almost always available except in the outermost parts of town. When they came upon an old bus marked Amman they decided to take it, sat shivering in the unheated, shabby interior as the driver waited despondently for other passengers who failed to materialize. Adam was coughing steadily in the cold night air, but spontaneous thanks to God for bringing them this far rose again and again in his heart as he observed his wife’s enthusiastic examination of their new world. It was a cold night in mid-January, thin mist dissipating the clarity of a full moon in the sky above, the white diffusion painting everything below with a still, iridescent shimmer, a miracle Alia was ready for, perhaps even longing for. They both peered out through the windows, through the interior images of the bus duplicating themselves on the panes of glass, to see what they could of the

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