Nada brought the radio wrapped in a kitchen towel. She said it sometimes lost stations. In the Saturday repair workshop, held in the community center's basement, Omer plugged it in and immediately found music. He turned the dial, moved the antenna, and waited for the fault to appear. Nada sat opposite him without taking off her coat. "It sounds different at home," she said when he looked at her.
Omer was a retired electrician whose fingers shook more when someone hurried him. Nada had once worked in a flower shop. Her husband had died three years earlier, and her last close friend had moved away to live with her daughter. The radio filled the kitchen but couldn't answer her remarks. Omer couldn't fix that with a screwdriver, so he offered to listen to another program together while the tea water boiled.
The next Saturday, Nada brought an extension cord. Then came a lamp whose bulb merely needed tightening. Omer checked each object properly, without charging. They discussed songs that irritated them and vegetables they would never enjoy. Nada asked why he wore light-colored sweaters in a workshop. He said he had spent his entire working life in gray and didn't intend to finish that way. She liked this decision more than she expected.
On the fourth Saturday, she brought a brand-new iron. Omer didn't open the box. "If I take this apart, I'll break something that works," he said. Nada blushed and began explaining that the sales assistant might have made a mistake. Omer rested his hand on the box. He added that she could come empty-handed. Someone in the basement switched on a vacuum cleaner, so he had to repeat his next question: would she walk with him after closing?
Nada agreed, then called her adult son to cancel their usual five-o'clock conversation. He asked whether everything was all right. She said she was going for a walk and realized she didn't immediately need to explain with whom. Omer closed the workshop on time rather than accepting one more small repair. They walked slowly because his knee hurt. Nada neither hurried him nor offered to cure him with advice.
At the bridge, they stopped to let a cyclist pass. Omer asked whether he could link arms with her. Nada said yes, provided he didn't pretend that she needed support. He laughed and admitted that he liked it better that way. At home, she switched on the radio and heard the same station as before. The sound was perfectly good. For the following Saturday, she prepared two sandwiches, without a single appliance in her bag.