Dina arrived at family gatherings prepared to move a refrigerator. She competed in weightlifting, so her relatives considered her strength communal property. As soon as she removed her jacket, somebody mentioned a wardrobe needing to go upstairs. They joked they needed no movers while they had her. Dina laughed with them, although sometimes she wanted to arrive empty-handed and remain that way.
She met Emir in a bus queue. A ball of yarn fell from his bag and rolled beneath a bench. She retrieved it, and he thanked her as though she had saved him much more than a little bending. He asked whether she minded the fibers sticking to her sleeve. She said her sleeve had survived worse things, and they began talking.
He knitted when he wanted to rest his thoughts. For the first time, Dina heard an adult man say this without making a joke at his own expense. She told him what she did after work. Emir did not ask her to flex a muscle or whether she could lift him. He wanted to know whether she liked competitions or training itself. Her answer took longer than she expected.
They began meeting at a small place beside the station. Once he brought her a scarf, just wide enough to wrap twice around her neck. He chose green because he had noticed her often looking toward green objects in shop windows. Dina did not know how to respond. People mostly gave her useful training equipment, as though the rest of her body and day did not exist.
She wore the scarf to her sister's birthday and brought Emir. Her brother-in-law immediately asked her to help move an old sofa before cake. Emir did not intervene as her protector. He simply looked at her, waiting to hear what she would say. For the first time, Dina answered that she would not do it today. A brief silence followed, then her sister called her husband to cut the cake. The sofa stayed where it was.
Dina brought Emir to her next competition for the first time. While she competed, he sat among the others and cheered. She did not win. On the way back she was angry about a missed attempt and made no effort to appear cheerful for him. Emir listened, then asked whether she wanted dinner. She agreed. At the restaurant entrance he took the scarf from her shoulders, carefully to avoid snagging it. She had never felt weaker because of someone's attention, or less strong because she enjoyed it.