Strings - Capstone Amal Al Shamsi (1)

Dice
He got a call from the woman at the embassy and picked up by accident. Reem, on the
other end, seemed as composed as ever, not giving anything away.
They were to meet in Midtown at three. As he approached the building, he watched the
flag waver as it caught a sliver of sunlight. The red seemed to turn scarlet and bleed into the
white stripe in the middle. He could see Reem behind the glass doors, lingering as she stopped
to respond to someone far behind her. She was laughing as she walked out onto the street but
her face quickly fell when she spotted Hamza. His eyes fell onto the file in the crook of her arm.
“Salam alaykum,” she said, coming across the courtyard. She was dressed in navy blue up
to her sheila, which hung loosely around her face.
He returned the greeting before smiling at her, uneasy and wanting to stall. “Nice spot
for your office, isn’t it?”
She glanced behind her. The building seemed to shrink back, not knowing what to boast
about. “I enjoy it.” She was smiling when she turned back to him. “Do you want to talk as we
walk?”
“Lead the way,” he said, nodding his head. She skirted around him, pointing with the
envelope back towards downtown. “Where are we going?”
“Oh, I thought I asked,” Reem said, beckoning him as she crossed the street. A bike
pulled to a halt beside her. “It’s my lunch break and I was hoping you wouldn’t mind us going to
that cafe by the park?”
Hamza did not. They walked alongside one another for the four blocks, in which time she
slipped into Arabic on occasion as she talked about how she used to get lost in her first few
weeks, and the one cafe she came across once but never found again. Hamza stumbled a little
with the switch in language, but reciprocated, it had been a while. Perhaps she noticed and
changed direction, asking about his brother and family back home. They spoke a bit about this
until it seemed there was nothing left to say.
He held open the door to the cafe, instead of a name, it boasted a large blue spiral that
was plastered over the glass door. She walked through, stopping at a small table by the window.
“Is this all right?” she asked him.
Hamza moved to pull out a seat for her but she shook her head.
“I’ll go order something. But in the meantime, I want you to take a look at this,” Reem
told him, setting the envelope on the table. She moved a hand across it as if smoothing it down
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