Hannah had hoped her mother would easily say no. She’d asked to please Randah.

Her mother’s response sets her ears buzzing. Why, after more than forty years, does her mother want to go home? It’s a betrayal. If Sadie goes back, why did Hannah go through everything she went through as a child?

“Do you want me to come?” Sadie says.

Hamza pours tea into glasses.

“OK, Mama, come.” She doesn’t mean it, but she doesn’t want to be the person she is, the person who wants to say no, who wants to keep Sadie from seeing her own father.

PASSPORT

Hannah waits to meet her mother outside a café in Foggy Bottom, blocks from the Washington, DC, consulate, where her mother has gone to renew her Saudi passport. She and Hannah are US citizens, but they never gave up their Saudi citizenship.

Hannah is of two minds about waiting outside the café. Her skin is warmed by the late autumn sun, her bones are chilled by a brisk breeze. She’d rather wait outside though, not be trapped indoors for their first interaction. Washington is ten degrees warmer, at least, than Cambridge, and she’s dressed too warmly. She removes her jacket and hangs it over one elbow.

She has been mentally preparing for this reunion ever since they got off the phone, and the result is a raging headache, constant acid reflux though she eats very little, and ragged nails bitten in private.

Sadie is with a man, a tall redhead. Hannah had worried she might not recognize her own mother. But age hasn’t changed Sadie that much. Gray hair doesn’t change who you are.

“Good to finally meet you,” the man says.

Finally, as though they are a normal family. Hannah wonders what he knows. Her mother leans in to kiss her, and Hannah steps back.

“Were you able to get the passport?”

“They told her to come back tomorrow,” the man says. His name is Glenn.

“I’m leaving tonight,” Hannah says. She can recognize the tourists passing by their look of glazed wonderment. You can see things from far away in this city. The Washington Monument. The Capitol. Virginia.

There’s time to kill before Hannah leaves. They buy cups of coffee and walk to the Potomac, up along the trail to Georgetown, up a hill to the chichi shops. They’re not talking much. The wind has died down and Hannah starts to feel hot in her wool sweater. Sadie mentions church and Hannah realizes she had forgotten the last time she saw her mother, in the airport, how Hannah convinced Hamza they shouldn’t go to the baptism. They turned around and got on the next flight. It had to be true love for him to listen when she asked for crazy things like that.

Hannah’s a more experienced mother now. But she doesn’t understand her own mother better.