Four o’clock rolls around, and no one comes out to tell them why they can’t see Fouad or why he’s being held. Phone already in hand, Hannah tells her father she’s going outside to call the lawyers again.

“Maybe they can tell me something about how this place works.”

“Don’t leave me,” he says.

“Come with me.”

“They’ll think we left.”

So they sit.

At five o’clock, a guard enters the room and Muneer stands immediately, ready to see his son.

“Time to go,” the guard says. “We’re closing up.”

Hannah stands up, too, but she is invisible to them. Her father and the guard size each other up. They are the same height, but one is thirty years younger, white, muscled, and in the place where he belongs. The other does not sense the differences between them. Later, Muneer tells Hannah that the day’s waiting suddenly overcame him and reminded him how hateful it felt to be held against his will. He didn’t tell her how those few hours of waiting felt as long and hard as waiting for her return. A day doesn’t compare in the slightest to fifteen years, of course, but losing a child for any amount of time is torture.

She sees a middle-aged man forgetting he is middle aged and foreign and not in charge, arguing and shouting, stupidly reaching for the guard’s throat—despite the man’s uniform and the gun in his holster, his broad shoulders, his crew cut, his fiercely square jaw. Before Muneer can touch the man, Hannah shoves herself between them, but the guard’s arms are long and muscular, and he grabs Hannah’s father by the scruff of the neck.

“He wants to see his son,” she yells, and her father is saying, “I’ll go, I’ll go! Let me go!”

“What the fuck are you doing?” says the guard. “Do you want me to lock you up with your terrorist son?”

“Whoa,” says Hannah. “You’ve got no proof of that. We’ve been told of no charges.” This is her brother the guard is talking about, but she’s going to keep it professional. She doesn’t want him to know Fouad is her brother, her baby brother who loves DC comics, Batman especially, and used to ask her to send issues back with their father whenever Muneer visited her.

“Get this old guy out of here. He’s not going to see his Al-Qaeda son today.”

Muneer mutters in Arabic, “Goddamn him to hell and make his teeth fall out.”

“What’s he saying?” Behind the guard, more men shaped like bears hover and growl.

Hannah tugs her father by the sleeve. “Don’t do that. Don’t talk in Arabic. You’re going to make things worse.”

The guards escort them out. One of them tells Hannah, “Don’t bring him back. His son is not here.”