Hamza’s got the opposite reason for not caring much for faith. He says he was suffocated by it growing up. After 9/11, he shaved his goatee and told her to call him Ham at the grocery store, the movie theater, the pool. “That’ll throw the Islamophobes off,” he said at the time.

Because Hannah’s a sleep-deprived mess, Hamza takes over planning her life. He buys tickets for her and Muneer to fly from Seattle to Miami.

In the airport, as expected, her father is pulled aside.

She waits while the TSA folks spend fifteen minutes patting him down and questioning him in a separate room. When he comes back she shoots him a question with her eyes.

“I’m taking my daughter to Miami on vacation,” he says. “That’s exactly what I told them.”

Thank God. He knew better than to say what they were up to.

When they arrive, she’s struck by how Miami light is so similar to Jidda light. Every scene is a paradise Hannah would like to paint. She’d create the bluest sky and most turquoise sea, the most graceful palm trunks and greenest fronds, the clearest light and the most distinct shadows, suggesting coolness and respite.

Muneer is calm through renting a car and driving to the detention center. As they approach the gatehouse, he loses it.

“Bismillah, bismillah. Allahu akbar.” And other words she can’t make out.

Hannah feels shitty for saying it, but he can’t talk that way here. “Dad,” she says sternly, hoping he will notice she is not calling him Baba. “You cannot speak Arabic here. You especially can’t say any religious stuff. OK?”

He cups his hands and mutters something under his breath, finishing with “Ameen.” Amen.

“I’m done,” he says. “No more religious stuff.”

At the gatehouse, the guards’ dark sunglasses cut their faces in two. They check IDs and point to a section of the parking lot.

Hannah backs into a space, pulls up hard on the parking brake, and leaves the engine running.

“Stay here. Keep the AC on.”

Inside, the guards tell her the facility holds no one by the name of Fouad Muneer or Fouad Muneer Abdullah or Fouad Abdullah or Fouad Al Shaykh or Fouad Muneer Al Shaykh.

“Are you sure?” she says.

On the way back to the car, she’s enveloped in humid heat and the sunlight no longer impresses her with its beauty. It attacks her, and a headache flares behind her temples.

“They’re effing lying to me,” she says. “He’s in there but they won’t say so.”

When they go inside together, she shows the guards the letter.

“We’ve got a couple Iraqi guys,” they say.