Summary

In “The Old Woman’s Theory of Loss” (203), Mazen and Mina encountered the old woman who had stolen the volunteer’s phone. When Mazen asked her if she needed anything, she called him stupid, asking how anyone could have everything they needed in the camp. She said that everything she had grown up with was gone but that the regime could not hurt her, because she had already lost everything.

In “Loss of the Loss That Was” (208), Mina tells the story of a refugee the writer interviewed, Miriam, who had lost her family and her home. A few years later, she said that her grief had vanished from the hole left in her heart from what she had lost, and now she only had the hole.

In “My Theory of Loss” (209), Mina describes Lubna, a Syrian woman friend of hers and Francine’s...