Credit due to Bryan Elsley, then, for ending the first of Dates, a series of dramas about modern relationships, with an ambiguity.
These days, Hard Rock Café, which hosts gigs every Tuesday and Thursday night, sticks mostly to cover bands, with a couple of dates a month spared for indie groups.
The Muslim holy month of Ramadan began here at a lonely outpost on the front lines, as rebel forces broke their daylight fast with a handful of dates, a glass of milk and a couple of rocket launches.
The tighter embargo has been so effective that it has even halted much of Iraq's export of dates, a valued gulf commodity that pound for pound fetches a higher price than oil.
In one of Salih's best-known short stories, A Handful of Dates, a young boy comes to realise that the idyllic world he lives in is ruled by tensions of which he is unaware.
There was a small sliding window in the upper left corner, four filthy foam mattresses on the floor, a box of dates, a giant bottle of drinking water with some plastic cups and, in the corner by the door, a bottle to urinate in.
