Beyond the world—the suspicions, the delegations, the breaking camp—was beside the point. It was all white noise to the background noise that had dominated Dawud's life from birth: the cough.
This was different. It was not the dry, relentless hack of the dry air. It was a wet, racking, deep-chested spasm that occurred in the curtained-off area of the clinic where his little brother, Tariq, was. It was the same cough that had swept through their childhood household during the final months of their mother's life, a sound that could promise but one conclusion.
Dawud was frozen above a basin of stagnant water, his arms raised, listening. Each spasm was a hook in his own lungs pulling him back to a past he couldn't escape. He heard his mother, Nour, not the radiant woman of his memory, but as
