CHAPTER NINETEEN
Marriage is a funny thing.
Some people marry for money and status. Some people marry the person their parents want them to. Others get married out of a sense of duty or commitment to their community. If you’re lucky enough to marry for real love—that unshakable, ever-expanding tenderness that knows no bounds, the kind of love that ages like wine—then you will eventually know what it means to suffer. With the exception of motherly love, nobody knows what real love feels like until it’s gone. You wake up one morning and you’ve got this hole in your heart that you can’t fill with anything but pain. It might not happen until your spouse dies at a ripe old age, but it’ll always get you in the end. In my case, Amira died when we were both forty. Seven years ago.
I’m not a pes
