You have seven days to return it.” “I’d have to sell my warehouse.” “Then sell it.” “That warehouse is my children’s future.” Amina looked at him without any warmth at all.

“Your children’s future was built out of the present you stole from ours.” In the end Kiran sold the warehouse and the truck and signed to return one hundred and twenty thousand dollars.

I noticed, sitting in that office, that Kiran never once said he was sorry.

None of them ever did, across all seven days — not Kiran selling his warehouse, not Reem selling her jewelry, not my mother draining her savings.

They wept, and they bargained, and they accused, and they pleaded the future of their children, but not one of them ever said the words I was wrong or forgive me or I should not have done this to you. And I came to understand that this was not an oversight but the deepest truth about them, the thing that had made the whole seven years possible.

They did not believe they had done anything wrong.