We weren't broke. We were just done talking about it.

Omar and Rand sat in the car outside her parents' building for twenty minutes before they went up. They were arguing about 1,200 dinars — a deposit for their daughter's school, due in nine days. Neither of them had set it aside. Each had assumed the other one had. Rand didn't want her mother hearing it through the door.

They were not broke. He is 36, an engineer. She is 33, a pharmacist, working four days a week since their daughter was born. Between them they bring home about 2,150 dinars a month. They were 9,800 dinars into two credit cards and a car loan, and they went overdrawn most months around the 22nd.

The fights were never about big things. A grocery run meant to be 40 dinars that came to 90. His work lunches. Once, for two days, a 25-dinar top. Then three weeks of not mentioning money at all, until the next receipt set it off again.

Rand had started deleting the bank texts off her phone before Omar could see them. Nothing large — a coffee, a top. Things she didn't want to have to defend.

“I thought he was judging every dinar I spent. Turns out he had no idea what I spent. He'd just decided I was the problem.”

— Rand

In their second session, Ali had them write down separately what they thought the other one spent each month on themselves. Omar guessed Rand spent 300 dinars. She spent 110. Rand guessed Omar spent 80. He was spending 260. Both of them had been quietly angry for years at a story they had made up about the other one.

It nearly fell apart in week four. The weekly money conversation was on Sunday nights, and Rand said it felt like an audit — being asked to account for herself after a full day. They skipped three weeks. So they moved it. Saturday morning, at a café, twenty minutes, and no decisions in the first ten: you read the numbers out loud, and that's all you're allowed to do.

They have now done it 31 of the last 34 weeks.

The rest was plumbing. Omar did argue about one thing — he wanted to overpay the car loan because it annoyed him. Ali talked him out of it: lower rate, and they needed to finish something. They closed the first card in month five.

“He didn't fix our budget. We could do the maths. He made us say the numbers out loud to each other every week until it stopped being frightening.”

— Omar

They still have 3,900 dinars to clear. They know roughly which month it lands in. When you ask them what changed, neither of them leads with the number.