He wrote his father letters, and the responses arrived weekly on tissue-thin airmail paper that crackled between his fingers.

I thank God you are learning everything you can, his father wrote. If I were a young man, I would want to be in your place.

In December, no letters arrived. Muneer didn’t dwell on the absence. With exams pressing on his brain, he hadn’t had time to write his father, and so his father had had nothing to respond to. On December 24, Muneer flew home for winter break, his suitcases full of Fruit of the Loom T-shirts for his brothers and Chanel No. 5 for his mother and sisters. When he landed at the Jidda airport and climbed down the jet’s rickety stairs to the desert scrub of the landing pad, Bandar was waiting for him, the ends of his red-and-white shimagh folded over his head casually, as though everything were the same. When they hugged and kissed on both cheeks, the cloth of Bandar’s headdress grazed Muneer’s skin.

“Why are you home?” Muneer said. Bandar’s midyear break fell in January, and Muneer hadn’t expected to see him for more than a few days.

“Baba passed away,” Bandar said in Muneer’s ear. “God have mercy on him.”

The words made no sense. Bandar’s hot breath tickled and smelled of frankincense gum. Muneer couldn’t suppress a giggle. His brother pinched him, hard, on the forearm. It hurt like hell.

“He had a stroke,” Bandar said. “Two weeks ago.”

“Don’t lie.”

But it was true. Muneer’s father was dead and the past two weeks of Muneer’s life had been the lie. The meals Muneer had eaten, the TV shows he’d watched, the thoughts he’d had—wrong, wrong, wrong. Every small happiness he’d experienced—a free pizza his boss had given him, an A he’d gotten on a quiz—was a deception. He’d been wrong to look forward to going home and seeing his father, kissing his father’s round cheeks; watching his bent, turbaned head as he cleaned his fingernails, one by one, with the cap of a ballpoint pen; listening to him talk about the young Arab generals and the new unity and how their country should be part of that, not leave it to Egypt and Iraq.

Instead, Muneer should have been rubbing his fists into his eyes to stop crying. He should have been helping wash his father, wrap him, and bury him. He should have been looking at his father’s face one last time.