It was the display of the pomegranates that left me breathless. Row upon row of them was stacked with meticulous care, but the reason I stopped and stared was because every single one had been sliced in half. Hundreds of seeds, called arils, seemed to burst from their shells in three-dimensional splendor, as if they were calling to me: “I am packed to the brim. Let me out of here!” The arils were the color of deep rubies, reminding me of my mother’s precious gemstone that once fell from its setting onto the streets of Vienna when she was a young mother. I gazed at those edible, glistening jewels for what must have been two or three minutes before I realized that my husband had disappeared. On a Friday morning, the market is packed with shoppers,........

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