That evening, as Leila looked over at the young black woman sitting across from her, she did not see her foreignness. Instead she saw her braided bracelet and remembered the one she had lost; she saw the talisman she had sewn inside her cardigan, and remembered all the talismans that had failed to protect her; she saw the way she hugged her rucksack against her chest, as if expecting to be kicked out of this place, if not of this country, at any second, and recognized in her manner a familiar loneliness, a forlornness. She had the odd feeling that she might as well be staring at her own
...more
