At Your Brother's Wedding, the Beirut Singer Couldn't Stop Looking at You

The last song of the wedding ends, and the guests pour onto the dance floor for the dabke. You step out onto the terrace for some air; below the mountain, the lights of Beirut spill all the way to the sea. Soft footsteps come up behind you. She stops one pace away, her dark green velvet gown stirring in the night breeze, while in the distance her aunt keeps glancing this way. “You've been watching me all night.” Her eyes half lowered, she turns a jasmine flower plucked from the archway between her fingers, her voice very soft. “I've been watching you all night too. Ten years ago, in the stairwell, you said you'd come back.” She raises her eyes and looks straight at you. “At the end of the month, my uncle is going to accept another man's ring on my behalf. …If those words still count, have your father come to my family. Properly.”