Noura and I spoke several times.
She did not become my closest friend overnight. We were two women with painful histories, not characters who suddenly understood everything about one another.
Sometimes we discussed documents and practical matters. Sometimes we talked about ordinary things—work, family, the books we had stopped reading, the places we wanted to visit.
She told me that she had once believed leaving a marriage meant she had failed.
“I thought I had to prove I could make it work,” she said. “I didn’t understand that a marriage cannot be repaired by one person accepting all the pain.”
I thought about that for days.
Meanwhile, Khalid’s family began confronting questions they had avoided for years.
His mother, Fatimah, called me one evening.
Her voice was unsteady.
“I want to apologize,” she said.
I did not answer immediately.
“I told you to be patient. I thought I was protecting Lina. I thought that if you kept the family together, things might improve.”
