Summary

Alma invited Owen to accompany her to DC “to visit her parents” (257). The plane tickets were too expensive for Owen. Alma insisted on buying Owen’s ticket, confessing that she loved him. Owen reciprocated the sentiment, but could not accept her offer. When he called his father for a loan, he said he could not keep “enabling” Owen “to fail” (261). Knowing he could not ask his mother, Owen sold Pop’s bayonet at a pawnshop. Instead of feeling guilty, Owen felt “freer” (267).

The night before leaving for DC, Owen and Alma got drunk, had sex, and talked. Alma told Owen about her mother Ajla and father Eldin. They talked about the ways in which despair might be ingrained in Owen (269). Owen said he was hopeful, not despairing. Alma continued pressing him about what he had inherited from his family (269).

“The neighborhood . . . where [Alma...