Summary

Chapter 5 opens in 2002 in Beirut, where Rita, who has become a foreign correspondent, now lives. She hangs out with her expat and returned bourgeois Lebanese friends in a bar called the Barometre. Murphy depicts Beirut as “clambering back to life” (123) after the civil war. In Beirut, Rita is working hard on stories about the impending invasion of Iraq by the United States. She befriends Salma, a Lebanese journalist who writes about arts and culture. Salma introduces Rita to Sami, the Palestinian man who becomes Rita’s boyfriend, in a bar. Sami says he is going to start graduate classes at AUB, but Salma reports he has been saying this for several years. Rita enjoys Sami’s dark sense of humor, his handsomeness and his politics. Sami walks Rita home and kisses her, making her realize how much she has longed for physical contact. They...