The center was gray, cramped. Tareq looked thinner. His eyes still held the lake, but now with a hard shore around them.
Tareq laughed bitterly. "At least your father is alive. Mine is in Damascus. I don’t know if he breathes."
"I’m not trying to save you. I’m trying to be with you."
One year after that Finnish summer, Leevi sat alone in his Helsinki apartment. The reeds outside his window had turned brown and brittle under snow. His father’s farm was sold. His mother had stopped asking about Tareq.
Not a happy ending. But a true one.