Soon the men, these uncles and cousins, both close and distant, are digging and digging, their thawbs hiked up around their waists and tucked into their boxer briefs, their mishlahs and headdresses thrown into a big pile on the sand. Behind the men are waves, and there is sound: a whoosh and crash and someone cussing, and though Hannah doesn’t understand the Arabic words, she recognizes the tone of frustration, like someone stubbing a toe or jolting an elbow.

Meanwhile, the men dig and dig and the sand won’t stop filling in, and the cussing continues, and the waves crash.

One of the men realizes they forgot to say God’s name before they started. That part Hannah understands—a miracle of dream-translation.

The men put down their shovels. Together, their voices singsong and thrumming, they say,

Bismillah-ir-rahman-ir-raheem.

In the name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate.

OUT OF THE LAKE

1970

BUQJAH

In weekly letters to his family in Jidda, Muneer will not write about coming back to the Cleveland Heights rental house after his journalism class and driving up the dark, half-shoveled driveway, his headlights illuminating Saeedah in a bank of snow up to her knees. She wears jeans and a turtleneck stretched tight across her belly, which is as round and hard as if she’d tucked a football under her top. No coat. Her lips are darkened with cold, her hair bright and glistening with flakes. She holds a metal shovel above her head, as though she wants to thwack someone.

He won’t write that he’s surprised she’s home. She never tells him how she spends her time or who she’s with, or asks him to drop her off or says she needs the car, or answers with more than “class” or “study group” or “the library” when he asks where she’s going with the classmates who come to pick her up.

She is nineteen. He is twenty-three. They have been married for a year and a half and their first child will be born soon. And the word divorce is whispering in his ear, a secret no one else knows.

Muneer does not want to hear it. “God forgive me,” he says, yanking up the parking brake and leaping out of the car without cutting the engine. “For God’s sake, what are you doing?” he yells, his voice harsh against the night’s snowy hush. He grabs Saeedah’s arm, and she wrenches it back.

“Come inside,” he whispers. “It’s too cold.”

“I’m sweating.” She leans on the shovel. “Leave me alone.”

“Let me finish the shoveling,” he says. “It’s better for the baby.”

“I can do it.”