Summary

As Aaliya continues to walk home, she thinks of Ahmad when she hears the sound of the commercial airplanes brining emigrants home for the holidays. The last news she’d had of him came in the form of a newspaper clipping where he and other exiles were lined up to board a ship to Tunis. He did not hide his face like the others. In the present, as rain continues to come down, Aaliya thinks of the writer Pavase who worked for Einaudi, a leftist publisher. When that publishing company was sold to a right wing prime minister a pipe burst in Pavase’s house, destroying all of his work. Aaliya believed it was Pavase from his grave keeping the right winged politician from making any money off his work.

Aaliya admitted the year Hannah died was horrible and became impossible to understand...