<blockquote>Amir Tarabi is scrubbing himself down in the misting rooms the first time he meets Mani Rizk.
The mister in Beirut-4 is being upgraded, the zone’s residents using Beirut-3’s misting rooms on rotation, so it is especially crowded that day. Amir avoids making eye contact with the bathers in adjacent patches with rigorous politeness. At sixteen, he’s already spent a hundred personal growth hours thinking about civic decency, appreciates the role of uninterrupted private rituals in fostering social cohesion—</blockquote>
