But it was still America.

Hassan didn’t tell Sara that every time she got her period he felt a small, tugging sense of relief.

That doesn’t seem likely,” Hina said, crinkling up her nose. “The State Department has a Travel Warning for Pakistan now. My father says that we’re much better off here.

Hina told him that she was from Albany but her parents were from Gujranwala, Pakistan. She had travelled to her ancestral home only once, as a teen-ager. Gujranwala struck Hassan as the kind of second-tier industrial city you visited only if you had a specific reason. He had gone there once for a cricket match with his college team. “What did you think of it?” Hassan asked, amused at the thought of Hina attempting to navigate Gujranwala’s crowded streets. She seemed to shiver slightly at the memory, as if trying to shake off the dust even now

Hina had an accounting degree from SUNY Albany, a fact that he learned from the diploma she hung on the wall next to her computer, tapping a tiny nail into the plaster with a miniature, purse-size hammer. On her desk she arranged a tissue box with a crocheted cover, a small, iridescent vase with three silk flowers, and a sturdy, expensive-looking ballpoint pen.

Why on earth were they sharing a desk?

Hassan had been at the bank eight weeks. Long enough to know that there was a slow way he could take from the men’s room back to his cubicle, a route that killed off three minutes of the work day.

Hina nodded at Hassan in greeting and then took a brass-colored nameplate out of her purse, placing it carefully on her side of the desk. It was the kind of thing you might order from a mall kiosk that specialized in monogrammed gifts.

In Connecticut, Hassan shared a desk with a woman—a girl, really. Later, this would be what he remembered most about the job, long after the inconvenience of his morning commute, the banality of his days spent making spreadsheets, and the mediocrity of the cafeteria had faded from memory. He would remember Hina the way he saw her on her first day. The crunched, focussed expression on her small, sharp face as she claimed her half of the desk, a purse over one arm and a duffelbag over the other, a light sheen of perspiration on her upper lip, a dark-gray head scarf wound tightly around her head and fixed above her right ear with a long, silver pin.