Through the several hours that Hannah and her father wait, the minutes are punctuated by the hummm-kachunk of the vending machine in the waiting room. Hannah wonders if coming to this place reminds Muneer of his own detention in a different country a dozen years ago. He has fully recovered his composure and kept himself busy reading a Miami Herald that someone left behind on a chair.

As lunchtime rolls around, the room smells like Cup-a-Soup and microwaved pizza, probably coming from the guards’ lunchroom. Hannah buys two bags of Cheetos.

“I would rather have that other kind—Doritos,” Muneer says.

He eats a whole bag of Cheetos. After finishing, he holds his orange-crusted fingers up to the ceiling, almost in the position of supplication.

“It’s time for prayer,” he says to her quietly.

“Keep a low profile,” she says. “Wait till we’re at the hotel.”

Despite her warning, he disappears to the bathroom and comes back with water-slicked hair. If some guard had seen him washing his feet in the sink, she doesn’t know what would’ve happened. He asks for the car keys.

“I will sit in the car,” he says. “There are ways for travelers to—do it.”

“Can you make it look like you’re, I don’t know, on the phone?” she says. “And turn on the air conditioner or you’ll roast.”

He nods. While he’s gone, she talks to the guards again.

They swear Fouad’s not here. Perhaps, they suggest, he’s at another detention center.

In the parking lot, she calls the other lawyers on her cell.

“He’s there,” they say on speakerphone. “Our client told us he’s there.”

Her father is creakily letting himself out of the car. He seems to have weakened in this short passage of time, but he waves her away when she offers him a hand.

The guards snicker when they see her.

“This man is waiting to see his son,” she says. “Do you have kids?”

One of the guards looks sheepish. Hannah tries to imagine his life. Maybe he coaches his kids’ sports teams. Maybe he’s a former military guy. Maybe he’s the child of immigrants.

“Four o’clock,” he says.

It’s two o’clock.

Hannah and Muneer share sections of the paper. She reads sports, he reads style. She can’t bear to read about the war.

Baba pulls out a notebook. Over his shoulder, she sees he’s making notes in English for his memoir. Or maybe not. He writes:

This room. This waiting for my son, which is like waiting for my heart to be replaced in my chest.

She told him to cool it with the Arabic, but she wishes he were writing in Arabic so she wouldn’t understand.

She reads a thick stack of papers for a case she is handling at work. Every few minutes, she checks her silenced phone in case someone is trying to reach her.