Outside the car, the air was greenhouse hot, the sun brighter than anything she’d seen.

Her father had a key to the front door of the building. The hallway leading upstairs smelled of cumin and onions and ground beef. Hannah’s grandmother waited at the door—she must have been peering out the window for the car’s arrival. She was a small woman with thinning black hair streaked with white, plaited and fastened to her head with U-shaped pins. Her cheeks, probably full and round when she was young, were wrinkled and flabby like deflated balloons.

She kissed Hannah enthusiastically on both cheeks. Her skin was soft and familiar against Hannah’s. Her scent was sautéed onions and what Hannah would later learn was mastic gum.

“Hanadi!” she said, and other things Hannah wanted to understand but couldn’t. It was strange to be called by that name, like she was being pulled into the alternate reality in which she’d lived here since her father returned from his studies in America.

“She’s happy to see you,” Hannah’s father said. “She says she wants to eat up your sweetness.”

“It’s nice to see you, too.” Tears blurred her vision.

Hannah’s grandmother nodded, as though she understood. But she didn’t, of course. She went on in Arabic. Her voice sounded like gum cracking in her cheek.

“She says, ‘God bless you.’ She says, ‘God has blessed us by bringing you back to us, like the Prophet Yusuf returned to his father.’”

“Yusuf?”

“Joseph. His brothers threw him down a well and pretended he’d been eaten by wolves. His father went blind with grief.”

“That sucks.”

“Later the father regains his sight. It’s a happy ending.”

“Tell her this is a happy ending. Meeting my grandmother.”

In the small living room, plastic had been laid out on the floor and covered with plates of meat pie and white cheese and sliced peppers and the hot pita bread her father had brought. It was four o’clock in the afternoon.

“Is it dinnertime?”

“No, but she’s been waiting to feed you. Fifteen years. Aren’t you hungry?”

When they left, Hannah’s grandmother hugged her tight. If she’d wanted to, Hannah could have rested her chin on her grandmother’s head. She kept her chin up, though, afraid her grandmother’s skull might have a soft spot, like a baby’s. The hug went on for a long time, till Hannah sought her father’s eyes, asking for help.

“Ummi,” he said.

Hannah’s grandmother stepped back and touched Hannah’s hair, petted it like she might pet the small round head of a parakeet.

“We’ll come back. Tell her that.” What Hannah almost said: “Tell her that, Dad.” But the word stayed inside her, between her ribs and beneath her heart.

TAIF