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some inkling of what the world outside the small ugly
town might be like. Mrs. Warren's family, like my own,
had drifted there from a better past. Her parents were
English. They were the only people in the town who
spoke with a foreign accent.
That is not true. The Naifehs live across the street from Mrs. Warren's ghostly building. You could see them every day in the clothing store up the street, but no one I knew had ever been inside their house. I sometimes had glimpses of the Naifehs and their out - of - town visitors, Syrians like themselves, laughing and talking and eating. I used to long to share some of their exoticism, to wear their dusky skins, to have their languorous brown eyes. But now there is no one in either place. I know it. I could go to every store. I go to every store. Everything is as I remember it— but there are no people, no movement except that of a crumpled piece of paper moving in the gutter, pushed by the faint breeze.  7
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