Like everyone, I loved him instantly. I don’t mean romantically, I was long since gay, but with a surge of affection, an urge to help him. At the bar of the only bar in town, Ilyas slid onto the stool next to mine, and though I never speak to men in bars, especially not when I’m alone, especially not when I’m holding a book, when he asked in that gently downturned accent what I was reading—no, he said he disliked the book but loved Elizabeth Hardwick’s way with a phrase, or no, he said that passage about misbelonging in your birthplace hit hard, that’s right—I engaged.
