Balmy sunlight is filtering through the eucalyptus leaves overhead, dappling onto the crushed rock and milky strips of fallen bark. I stick out a skinny leg and it dapples too, warm in sunny spots and cool in shady ones. My other foot is tucked beneath me, my usual sitting position. This is the best bench on campus, and I should know. I feel like I’ve visited them all today, exploring the buildings and winding trails and little forgotten corners of the University of California San Diego. The view from here is spectacular. Down this plunging slope is an emerald expanse of sporting fields with athletes moving like colorful regimented dolls. Beyond is a swath of arid hills carpeted in sagebrush and manzanita and yucca, receding across I-5 into the red tile roofs of University City and the stunning fairy-tale spires of the Mormon Temple, and finally the craggy mountains hemming in the eastern horizon.

But I’m not enjoying the view right now. I’m watching a maroon Saturn shudder up the curving hillside road towards me. The car is slowing for every cute coed, then speeding up again. A familiar jowly face appears and disappears and reappears behind the shifting reflections on the windshield. Farid, Nasrin’s husband. It takes him a long time to reach the parking lot behind me.

He’s been dropping me off every morning on his way to work, then picking me up in the afternoon on his way home. My private taxi service to places where I can pass the entire day. Yesterday it was Horton Plaza, the shopping mall that engulfs six city blocks in downtown. The day before it was the run-down museums and charming kitsch of Balboa Park.

Farid leans his bulk across the interior and opens the door with a meaty arm. “Salam, Nooshin!” Before I can reply, he hurriedly tosses an empty McDonald’s bag into the back. “You didn’t see that. Got it?”

So much for his 2,000 calories per day diet. I wonder if he eats the traditional lo-cal lunches Nasrin makes for him — tahdeeg and shirazi and khoresht — or if he just throws them away. Judging by his waistline, he probably eats both Nasrin’s lunches and Mickey D’s.

“What do you think of campus? Like it? Anything interesting happen?” he asks, running the questions together into a single interrogatory statement.

“I love it. It’s so beautiful here! But nothing really happened. I just…you know. Walked around.” Blending in like any other undergrad with a crooked eye and wedding ring.

Campus is filling the windows of the car. I point out sculptures from the world-famous Stuart Collection as we roll past them — talking and singing trees emplaced in a grove of eucalyptus, the giant red shoe loping through the woods, a Stonehenge-style assemblage of granite blocks. But Farid is more impressed with the library, which squats in the middle of campus like a gigantic spaceship ready for blastoff.

“She got Botox, you know,” he suddenly says.

“Who? Nasrin?” I ask in alarm.

“Nasrin? Who said anything about Nasrin? I’m talking about Googoosh!” Farid points at the stereo for emphasis. Googoosh is crooning in Farsi from the speakers, an old Persian torch song. “She got Botox for sure. Her forehead is smoother than a baby’s bottom! Have you seen her lately?”

I haven’t even heard her lately. I don’t really listen to anything Middle Eastern anymore. My musical tastes are thoroughly Americanized — gangster rap, Eurotrash techno, Japanese bubblegum pop, stuff like that.

Farid honks absentmindedly at a girl struggling across the street in balky platform boots. “My sales call today, you wouldn’t believe it. Way out in Kearney Mesa. Almost past the county line. And this is a big county! Does that make any sense to you? Only a single sales rep to cover a county this big?”

“No,” I agree, when he pauses to wait for my response.

“I drove out there and got lost. Kearney Mesa. I never go that far. To me it’s like…I forget what you call it. That thing on the map where explorers need to go.”

“Terra incognita?”

“Right! Terra incognita. So I’m driving around, trying to find this place, and then I see this certain building out in the middle of nowhere, and I thought to myself ‘That must be it!’ and sure enough, it was. Have you ever had that happen to you? Where you know something, but you don’t really know how you know it?”

“I guess so.”

“Where am I taking you tomorrow?” he asks breezily, changing the topic. “You want to visit La Jolla? It’s the richest zip code in the United States! Per capita, or however they figure that out. It’s like Beverly Hills with a beach. How does that sound?”

“Well….” I say, dragging out the word. “I was thinking Tijuana, actually. I’ve never been to Mexico before. If you dropped me off downtown I could take the trolley — ”

At first Farid is slack-jawed with dismay. Then his mouth starts working again, startling me. “Tijuana? There’s no way I’m letting you go down to Tijuana. Not even if I escorted you!”

“I’m not asking you to escort me to Tijuana. I couldn’t. That would be such a hassle for you.” I already feel guilty for inconveniencing him like this. I wanted to rent a car when I got here, but I used up my cash card on the airplane ticket.

He waves off my protestations. He’s a good Persian brother-in-law. Overprotective only when he thinks he needs to be. “There’s plenty of things for you to see in San Diego. Like SeaWorld, right over there. We could make a day of it, maybe on Sunday. You, me, Nasrin, the kids. What do you think? SeaWorld?”

Farid is pointing out the windshield at Mission Bay, a cobalt lagoon dotted with the white triangles of sailboats. Here and there a jetski carves a frothy wake across the waves. At the marshy edge I can see leggy white cranes, stepping delicately, occasionally snapping their bills into the water. Rising on the opposite shoreline is the unmistakable outline of SeaWorld, domed roofs and pedestrian esplanades that fan out from the towering sky needle.

“I’m fine by myself,” I say stubbornly.

“Don’t you get lonely? Spending all day by yourself like this?” He glances at my purse with the cellphone that never rings. “Don’t you miss Saman?”

I feel my face burst into a smile. Lonely? Here I’m languid and bright, not lonely! I love San Diego in my solitary state. Not because it’s a sleepy paradise folded between ocean and mountains, not even because my sister lives here. I could probably fall in love with anywhere right now. Anywhere with no Saman stalking the apartment, a scowl parked on his haughty face, impatient for his meals and ironed shirts and sparkling clean surfaces. No Saman pawing me in bed, or snoring in my direction afterward. No Saman for a thousand miles.