After your world ended for the third time, you walked. The gold ring on your right hand heavy and the blue band around your left wrist even heavier. ‘Rip-off fitbits’ was how Intisar had described them three years ago, as the two of you sat on the couch in the living room of your then new apartment, staring down at your clasped black hands. You had made a joke about fashionable shackles then, because that’s what you both did, joked and laughed when the reality became just a bit too much. Ten years ago you were both in your final year of high school, and the nation had voted on the humanity of people who loved like you—but these shackles came without a plebiscite.

All your life, no matter which continent you were living on, you have never lived far from a great river. Something is comforting about being near a source of water. You were born an ocean away from here, next to Al-Neel, the river of kings: a force of nature rises and falls with the seasons and is still unbending to the whims of the world in which you exist.