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particularly offensive friends, other adulterous men, looking for loose women to fill their insatiable sexual appetites. 
    Suha had spent her younger years in fear of Iraqi men that were outside of her community, as her father, a well-respected physician, had warned her of the demeaning, discriminatory lifestyle some led and the all-too-often harsh treatments some women, Iraqi and otherwise, endured at their hands. He did not agree with the humiliating lifestyle enforced upon those ill-fated women. Suha knew this was a gross generalization, but she’d seen it far too many times to chance her own future.
    Years of witnessing this disrespect and disregard had led Suha to realize that the kindness and generosity her father displayed toward women was rare. She thought her mother, Farrah, had been a very lucky woman indeed. She had been a joyful person. Suha had fond memories of her mother’s contagious smile, the way she’d touch her father’s shoulder, and the way he would look at her with adoring eyes. She remembered her mother’s long hair, let loose in the evening and combed all the way to the tips, which fell just below her waist. She used to long to be just like her and was disappointed in herself when she had become coarse, guarded. Her mother did not show that tension in the easy, loving way she spoke to Suha, and Suha felt the difference.
    When she’d lost her mother to pneumonia at the tender age of seven, she’d had no time to mourn her loss. Her father had been devastated, taking to his room for the first month after her death. Suha had cared for him as best she knew how, and eventually he found his feet again. As the years progressed, she and her father became very close, sharing their time and discussing her father’s patients well into the evenings. Even as a young girl, Suha had understood the importance of her father’s profession and had longed to follow in his footsteps. She’d pored over his medical textbooks, asking in-depth questions that had caused her father to sometimes raise his eyebrows, but he took the time to answer, and his answers carried not just explanations, but lessons, as well.
    Suha contributed the fact that she was never pushed to marry to not only her father’s respect for her desire to be something more than a house maiden, but also to their long conversations and the camaraderie that they shared. She could never replace her mother, but she knew her father saw her mother somewhere inside her, and she also knew that he would never want that likeness far away. She had readily stepped into her mother’s shoes, cooking their meals, cleaning the house, and shopping for necessities. She did all that a daughter could do in such a situation. Her father was a man of loyalty. He’d missed her mother terribly, and as far as she’d known, he’d never longed for another. There was no need to marry Suha off, no need for extra money. The inheritance his father, and his father before him, had left him had been ample for the simple lifestyle they had chosen. As Suha grew to a young woman, her father had asked her often if she wished to be married. Suha had never longed for a different life. With her education ensured and supported by her father, and his ability and desire to protect her, as fathers (and brothers) should, she’d been happy. Eventually, her father had stopped inquiring.
    She’d enjoyed many years by her father’s side, studying, listening to the cases he shared with her, and, she realized now, learning how to be a good person. Suha’s world came shattering down around her when she lost her father in the third year of the war. He’d been eighty-six years old and taking the short walk from the hospital to their home, as he had done for all of the years Suha could remember. He’d taken that short journey so often that he’d worn a literal path in the ground. He’d insisted on walking, even after the war began and the streets had become unsafe. He’d insisted as vehemently