Hannah half keeps an eye on Fadi circumambulating the store as she dials. She has to punch in the intricate combination of digits three times before she gets through to her mother’s answering machine. In her purse are the letters to her mother from her grandfather, along with his translations. They contain no key to the mystery of why her mother chose to disappear and not come back to Jidda. Instead, they are full of two decades of news about births and marriages and her grandfather’s newspaper, members of the Saudi royal family he’s interviewed, a meeting with Muhammad Ali.

She should be happy to have this family history, but instead she’s livid that she has to read it after the fact rather than experience it.

“Where the hell are you?” Hannah says into the handset while the message plays. It beeps over her words. She pulls her scarf closer to her hairline. The men stare. Have they never seen a woman before?

“It’s me. I wanted to let you know I’m in Jidda. Seeing the place you grew up.”

Hannah hasn’t seen or talked to her mother in three years, since she ran away to Toledo. She sets the handset into its cradle. Calling her mother seemed like something she should do until she did it. She regrets leaving her ghostly, metallic voice—a piece of herself—on the tape.

Fadi is going up and down the short aisles of the tiny store.

She calls W, leaves a short message about where she is, and apologizes for not calling in so long.

Dialing the United States is getting easier the more she does it. She calls her mother again. Why not?

“Mama. Sadie. If you’re there, pick up. Pick up, Mama.”

She hears herself gasp when the phone picks up, as though she were eavesdropping on her own conversation.

“What are you doing there?”

“I want to know why. Why we had to disappear.”

“You don’t understand. They wouldn’t have let me stay here with you. They would have taken you from me.”

“Who’s ‘they’? Dad?”

“Everyone. Why am I telling this to you? You don’t know.”

She doesn’t want to hear what her mother is saying, her side of the story. There should have been a better way, and why should she have to grapple with the choices her mother made?

One of the men stands near her, hand hovering, not wanting to tap her but wanting her attention. He speaks in Arabic, and she shakes her head. The other man tidies a display of Smarties and Chiclets.

“Miss. Your son?”

The door jingles shut.

“Fuck.”

She leaves the phone handset dangling and rushes outside. The street is as hushed as a sepia-tone photo. It smells of spit and sand and metal. Fadi is nowhere to be seen.