She has never wanted to ask her grandfather if her mother spoke to him when they were hiding. She does not want to have to blame him. She will go visit him one last time, though it will be impossible to do that without telling her father she’s coming to Jidda.

Randah is intent on complicating her life further with a request that pulls Hannah’s heart up into her throat. She chokes a little when she hears it: “Can you convince your mother to come?”

Hannah swallows her heart into the pit of her stomach. “I don’t know where she is.”

It’s a way of not saying: If I thought I could persuade her, I wouldn’t want to.

Randah has a way of guilting her, though. “Please, habibti. It’s your grandfather’s last wish.”

At home, Hannah pulls the calendar down from the bulletin board in the kitchen to try to find a weeklong break in her schedule. Hamza is browning ground beef for tacos. She wishes Fareed were here to grate the cheese, but he won’t be home from University of Washington till the holidays.

“The family must be distraught to be losing their patriarch,” Hamza says.

In this kitchen smelling of hamburger and onions, cilantro and Colby-Jack, she feels trapped by Taco Tuesday, the Americanness of her existence.

RELICS

When they moved to Cambridge ten years ago, so Hamza could code for a genetics startup, Hannah told herself one of the benefits would be living closer to W. A long drive or a quick flight, and they are in Toledo. They see W at least once a year, at Thanksgiving or Christmas or spring break. She visits them or they visit her. She’s edging up on seventy, and her accent is as hard-edged and as distant from Hannah’s mother’s accent as ever.

Hannah hadn’t, at the time, thought about how Cleveland lay en route to Toledo, how her mother, as far as she knew, was a mile marker on the way to W. She’s never run into her accidentally at Hopkins Airport—the last place they met—but the possibility is a burden. Whenever she thinks of W, her brain has to pass through Sadie on the way there.

Telling Randah she doesn’t know Sadie’s whereabouts wasn’t a lie. Hannah doesn’t know her mother’s home address or her place of business. She doesn’t know if Sadie is dating anyone, or married, or what church—church!—she attends.