On the way home, Tarek is mistakenly charged with subway turnstile jumping, arrested for "failing" to pay his fare (although he actually had), and taken to a detention center for illegal immigrants in Queens. Tarek teaches Walter to play the drum, and the two men join a group of others at a regular drum circle in Central Park. Over the next few days, a friendship slowly develops. Although they have no place to go, they hastily pack and leave, but Walter decides to let them stay. He later discovers both are illegal immigrants. Tarek is an immigrant from Syria, a Palestinian- Syrian djembe player, and Zainab is a Senegalese designer of ethnic jewelry. When he arrives in his old apartment in Manhattan, Walter is startled to find a young unmarried couple living there, having rented it from a swindler who claimed it was his. Charles, his department head, insists and Walter is forced to attend. When he is asked to present a paper at an academic conference at New York University, he is not enthusiastic to make the trip, given he is only the nominal co-author and has never even read the complete work. He fills his days by sometimes taking piano lessons in an effort to emulate his late wife, a classical concert pianist, and infrequently works on a new book. Walter Vale is a widowed Connecticut College economics professor who lives a fairly solitary existence.
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