A LITTLE MORE than four months after Hajjeh Um Mhammad passed away, Bilal and I got married in a memorable fallahi wedding. We had wanted only a small celebration with family and friends. In part, it was all we could afford, but mostly it didn’t seem proper to have a wedding at that time; the Second Intifada was in its second year and Israelis had elected Ariel Sharon, the Butcher of Beirut, as their prime minister, and his brutal legacy was already being felt. But my mother and Bilal’s aunts would have none of that.

“Exactly the opposite. We show those monsters how we will continue to live and love on our land, no matter what they do to us,” Ghassan said to Bilal.

Mama, Jehad, and Sitti Wasfiyeh made the journey from Jordan. “I agreed to get a visa from the sons of Satan at their godforsaken embassy just for you,” Sitti said. “Your mother tried to make me miss the wedding on account of the doctor claiming my heart is too weak. But my heart feels fine.” Then she turned to Bilal. “Nahr’s mother gets jealous because my son’s children love me more than her. You’re a good man for marrying my granddaughter, even though she was married before and couldn’t keep her husband very long.”

“He already knows, Sitti,” I assured her. “Mhammad is his brother, remember?”

“Yeah, that’s right,” she said. “I forgot.”

She turned again to Bilal. “Nothing is the same without her. I wish we were all still in Kuwait with my son. Or how about if we could all be here forever again?” She wiped tears away with her hijab. Mama consoled her. Sitti was losing her mind and these reveries happened often, Mama had told me.

Mama had been trying to pull me away all day. When I finally had a moment, she made me close my eyes and guided me into the guest bedroom.

“Open your eyes,” she said.

What I saw took my breath away. I flung my arms around my mother’s neck and began sobbing. “Habibti, Mama. May God keep you always. May He extend your life and presence in mine for all our days. This is the best present I have received from anyone, ever. Thank you, Mama.”

Laid out on the bed was a stunning, elegant embroidered wedding thobe, and an equally striking headpiece.

“Come, let’s try it on,” she said. As I moved to pick it up, Mama explained her creation. “I thought a lot about this and decided to use the basic patterns of a Jerusalem thobe, because we’re being erased from her story and her stone,” she said. Even the way she described her embroidery was poetic.