Chapter Two
I remembered everything clearly and described it all in detail in my novel. But now I felt I’d made the matter into a melodrama fatuous on more than a few levels. Sumaya was, of course, a beautiful young woman: Does a young woman not leave an everlasting impression in the mind of a man if he considers her the most beautiful of God’s creatures?
We first met in a forest about fifteen kilometers from the city, on one of those mercurial March days that begins clear and warm and ends thunderous and stormy. I’d ridden my bicycle to the village, my birthplace and childhood stomping ground. In the course of my return, the sky darkened suddenly, winds raged, and rain poured. As soon as I neared the forest, I took shelter under the trees while the storm abated. There was a young woman
