I’d long for nights on Teta’s veranda, watching her lay out Arabic newspapers and roll grape leaves, the combination of watermelon and halloumi cheese, fried falafel balls poking out of oil-soaked paper bags, roadside fruit tents with peaches spilling off the display and onto the earth, the sound of the three-stringed oud coming from the wedding at the nearby hotel, the sight of the green-lit minarets and the muezzin’s lyric voice calling everyone to prayer. Above all, I longed for the smell of the jasmine flowers that were outside every apartment building, though curiously I hardly noticed
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