At a late-night family gathering at Aunt Faizah’s house, he’d left the men’s salon to go to the bathroom and glimpsed her. The latticework screen between them turned her face into a beautiful jigsaw puzzle, challenging him to piece it together. She had little gold earrings like berries and her palms and fingernails were henna stained, rust red. When she moved her hands, it was like a flash of plumage from behind a bush. He thought of her as a bird, never still except in the pause before it flew from a branch.

Someone saw him, and the girls and women squawked and covered their heads and faces.

“God forgive you, go back to the salon,” Aunt Faizah said.

Before they whisked her off, Saeedah smirked at him, like she was having the last wordless word. She mouthed something: Cigarette? He didn’t smoke, but he slipped outside into the courtyard and waited. The dark sky was swirled with clouds, like foam on Turkish coffee. Servants had set out lengths of plastic cloth, little bowls of cucumbers and tomatoes, chopped cilantro with lime. Soon they would bring out the trays of lamb and rice, spiced with cardamom and cloves. He could already smell the food.

“What are you daydreaming about?” she said.

“God, you’re like a jinni, appearing out of nowhere.”

She wore a black dress with the neckline cut straight across from shoulder to shoulder and the hem at her knee, and a black leather headband. He had never noticed the mole exactly in the middle of her cheekbone before.

“You got cigarettes?”

He covered his mouth with his fingers and nodded toward the gateman and the cook, an Egyptian husband and wife, who were descending the steps burdened by an enormous tray of rice and lamb. It wouldn’t be proper for them to catch him and Saeedah flirting. She curtsied like a queen in a movie and disappeared into the house, leaving him to wish they’d had more time. The rest of the night was other men talking at him.

Muneer and Saeedah’s worlds were separated, but her face lived in his mind. He thought of her often in the weeks to come.

At first, he didn’t think of marrying her. His plans were nearly set: he had applied for a government scholarship to go to the States to study. His brother Bandar had gone to Germany and Belgium and Canada, staying long enough in each place to decide he wanted to study somewhere else. He’d come back from Toronto a few months before with a big, bushy head of hair that their father threatened to cut whenever he saw it. Midsentence while serving a customer he’d say, “Can you believe that’s my son? I’m going to cut his hair in the middle of the night.” Bandar scowled. Muneer marveled at his brother’s disrespect.