Summary

New cities, called the London Halo, are being built around London. When the summer comes, Saeed and Nadia find themselves in one of the worker camps constructing the Halo. In exchange for their labor they are promised “forty meters and a pipe” (170), meaning forty square meters of land and connection to modern, public utilities. One night, Nadia dreams of returning to the girl at Mykonos. Saeed hears from a cousin that his father has passed away from pneumonia, and Saeed begins to pray even more.

Meanwhile, in Amsterdam, an elderly man is sitting on his balcony when he spots a “wrinkled man with a squint and a cane and a Panama hat” (174) emerge from the courtyard shed. The same interaction occurs day in and day out, with the wrinkled man raising his hat in acknowledgment and the elderly man raising his glass in return...