Strange things in a strange land.

• Author: Romano, Frank
• Position: Worldview - Love and Terror in the Middle East

I RETURNED to the Freedom Theater and walked through the sliding doors; Adnan was sitting on the couch smoking a cigarette. He turned to me. His red eyes peered through drooping eyelashes and, without saying anything, he handed me a set of keys on a metal clasp. He got up, motioned me to follow him to the main door, and inserted one of the keys in the keyhole. Turning to me, he asked me to lock it after him and said he would return later that night or in the early morning.

"Frank, when I leave, close and lock the door behind me. Oh, by the way, if you want Wi-Fi, you need to sit on the bench outside the main door or inside next to it. You may hear noises coming from people in the bordering apartments...."

He shrugged and looked at me strangely, as if searching my eyes for the signs of possible betrayal, looking for anything irregular indicating that I had come not as a freedom activist and friend of Juliano's, but as a spy to watch him for terrorist activity or clues to Juliano's murder. I looked back into his eyes, which had turned into cold crystals camouflaging his deepest thoughts, but unable to disguise his lingering bereavement and perhaps suspicions, I had to look away.

He nodded after a minute of silence and, turning to the door, walked out, shutting it behind him. I locked the door and went to where I had placed my computer. Carefully taking it out of its case, I renamed to the door and reopened it. After the familiar sliding door scraped open, I stepped out into a patio where I sat on a bench and opened my computer to access e-mails. While I was reading them, a group of inquisitive children appeared from all directions, flooding the patio. They asked me questions in broken English: "Do you believe in God?" "Are you Muslim?" "Can you say something in Arabic?"

Soon we were engaged in a full-blown discussion. A young girl wearing a green hijab sat on my lap, her cheeky smile flashing whenever she turned her head. Two young boys, one wearing a Palestinian black and white kheffiyah around his neck, the other with a Muslim skull cap, were slapping each other's hands away as they grasped to shake mine. They would sometimes touch my leg and sometimes I felt a hand surreptitiously slip into a pocket. Coming out empty, someone would say, "Money?" I would smile and say, "Bidoon [Without]." Their smiles did not cease and we continued to have a raucous time reciting a part of "Al Fatiha" [the most important prayer in Islam] added to my...