The bride-to-be twirled before the mirror in her gorgeous new dress, saying, “You are a genius, Um Jehad! Better than all those fancy designers. Their gowns can’t hold a candle to this. My friends will die of envy when they see me at the wedding, and I know my groom will love it too.”

The fitting and sewing room doubled as our family room, which was also our bedroom by night. I had nowhere to escape that woman’s happiness. My heart ached as I watched the bride admire herself in the mirror. Mama had wanted to design my wedding gown, but I went shopping for “modernity.” I’m sure I said something insensitive to her about being stuck in the past; that thobes were for a bygone world. I’m sure it hurt her, although she never let on. This moment with a stranger twirling in the gorgeous gown my mother had created should have been mine to share with Mama. I had to become another person, someone at the other end of disgrace, rape, and exile, to fully appreciate that my mother, a simple widow with an elementary education, was an extraordinary artist. My mother was a maker of beauty, a brilliant custodian of culture and history. And I was the ungrateful daughter who had not understood until now.

“I’ll bet my friends are going to ask you to make their dresses for them too,” the woman said. “But no matter what, please don’t tell them what I paid. If they want you to make a dress, I suggest you charge them at least four times what you charged me.”

“If you think it’s worth it, why don’t you just pay that much for your own dress?” I said, but Mama’s look told me to mind my own business. She smiled at the woman, who pretended not to hear me, and I left them to answer the phone in the hallway.

“Um Buraq! Yis’ed soutik. Hello, my friend,” I said as soon as I heard her voice.

“Darling, listen. My phones are probably bugged so I’m calling from a public phone and don’t have much time,” she said, sounding out of breath.

“Kheir … ?”

“You-know-who called me a few days ago. He thinks you stole his bank card and withdrew money from his account. I told him you would never do such a thing,” she said, pausing to take a breath. “He tried to make me give him your address in Amman, but I told him I had no idea where you were. I don’t want to know. You need to watch your back. He said he will destroy you if it’s the last thing he ever does.”

“He can have at it, the whore son of a whore. Fuck his mother’s pussy,” I said. Um Buraq brought out the vulgarity in me, and I liked the way it sounded on my tongue.