“Just eat, my granddaughter,” she said, putting more chicken on my plate, her ill-fitting dentures threatening to fall out as she chewed. Sitti Wasfiyeh had grown kinder since our time alone. Jehad smiled at me.

My brother’s new home was a small studio apartment on the ground floor of a five-story building in a wealthy Amman neighborhood. Unlike Kuwait, where neighborhoods were segregated by class and nationality, the rich and poor lived cheek-by-jowl in Jordan. Not for some egalitarian ideals, but for the convenience of the rich.

“So this way they have you at their beck and call?” I said, worried that these wealthy Jordanians were taking advantage of my brother.

“They’re fine people, Nahr.”

“Well, in my experience, the rich buy the poor and then throw them out when they’re done.”

“They’re not all like Kuwaitis, not that Kuwaitis are all the same either. You loved Um Buraq, didn’t you?” Jehad said.

“Enough of that. Let’s enjoy this meal together without mentioning Kuwait,” Mama said. “I am excited that you’re going to Palestine, Nahr.” She stroked my cheek. “But also eager for you to come back quickly.”

Palestine had begun to feel more real since Mama and Jehad had made their trip. Maybe it was the experience of war and exile, or just the passage of time; maybe it was my contemplation of Mama’s tatreez, or simply not wanting to be in Amman that made Palestine bloom in my imagination. It was no longer the lost home and heritage trapped in Mama’s tin box of old photos from her childhood in Haifa, my parents’ wedding, and their life in Ein el-Sultan. As I began planning my trip, I sifted through those pictures with Mama. In one, a ten-year-old version of my mother posed under a fig tree.

“That tree was planted by my grandfather the day my father was born. My grandparents planted a different kind of tree for each of my siblings, my cousins, and me,” Mama said. “We used to fight over whose tree was better. My siblings all carved their names on the tree trunks, but I carved mine on a high-up branch.” Mama stared at that picture, transported by the past. I was afraid to ask her if those trees were still there, or how she had felt upon seeing her home in Haifa. I listened instead.

“When I was very small, my father used to lift me on his shoulders so I could pluck my own figs.” In another photo, she and one of her sisters were teenagers standing in the Al Aqsa compound in front of the Dome of the Rock. “In those days, we could take a bus right to Jerusalem, or we could go by train straight to Beirut, or Damascus, or Cairo even. The world was open.” She stared a bit more. “If only we knew then.”