Excerpt from The Parisian by Isabella Hammad, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Midhat laughed, and Faruq gave him a look of surprise. Desiring at once to prove that he would not be shocked, Midhat took a sip from the other glass. It was like drinking perfume; he tasted it in his nose. He had tried whisky once when he was sixteen from an illicit bottle in his school dormitory. He had only wet his tongue, however, whereas the owner and his accomplice finished the bottle between them, and when in the morning the schoolmaster smelled it on their breath they were whipped and banned from class for three days.

"There are many things you will like. The way of thinking, the way of life, it's very refined. In this I feel there is some affinity between Damascus and Paris."

"And Nablus," said Midhat.

"Yes, Nablus is very nice." Faruq sipped and exhaled. "Where will you live in Montpellier?"

"At the house of Docteur Molineu. An academic."

"An academic! Ah, yes. You will like that."

Midhat did not mind being told what it was that he would like. He took it as a sign of kinship. He wanted to agree with everything Faruq said. He spent the remaining four days of the journey reading Faruq's books on the upper deck. Or, at least, holding the books open in his lap and looking out to sea, and occasionally pronouncing some sentence in French from one of the pages he had pressed down against the wind. His mind, newly relaxed, wheeled off into daydreams. He indulged three scenarios in particular. The first featured a thin-necked Parisian woman lost in Jerusalem, whom he directed in perfect French to Haram ash-Sharif. An onlooker, often a notable from Nablus, reported on the incident, rendering Midhat famous as a man of great kindness and linguistic skill. In the second fantasy, he sang a dal'ona—"ya tayrin taayir s-sama' al-aali; sallim al-hilu al-aziz al-ghali"—inspiring awe to the point of weeping in those who passed under his window and heard him mourn the distance between himself and his imagined lover. In the third fantasy he saved another passenger from falling overboard by catching him around the middle with the grace of a dancer. The onlookers applauded.

These daydreams were fortifying. They increased his sense of fluidity with his surroundings and gave him confidence when entering rooms. He took a dose at regular intervals like a draught of medicine and emerged from the dream after a few minutes' elapse renewed and refreshed. Thus he managed, more or less, to soothe the hard outline of his body—which still at times oppressed him with its stinging clasp.

Excerpted from The Parisian by Isabella Hammad. Copyright © 2019 by Isabella Hammad. Excerpted by permission of Grove Press. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.