“We’ve talked about it.”

“She won’t be able to drive, or wear that cross.”

“It’s halal to marry a Christian, Muneer.”

“That’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about will your wife be depressed if you take her to Jidda.”

Jameel snaps the box shut and returns the ring to his pocket. “Let’s go.”

“Where you guys from?” the girl says when they pay.

“We’re Spanish,” says Jameel, laughing a little at his own lie.

“Beirut,” says Muneer.

“My father-in-law’s Moroccan,” the girl says.

“Merhebeh,” says Muneer, putting on a Lebanese accent, which is lost on the cashier. But Jameel laughs.

Free from work, they drive to the West Side to attend Friday prayer at a modest storefront mosque they’ve gone to once or twice before. The imam is an Indian South African, tall with broomstick limbs and a wispy-curly beard. Today’s sermon rouses Muneer from the everyday and reminds him there are people out to get him and all other Muslims. People, the imam says, who want to steer them from God and tie them to Satan: Zionists and Hollywood producers and starlets and congressmen and regular Americans who offer Believers bacon bits on their baked potatoes and wine with dinner and Oreos that harbor lard in them. Judging by the rigid faces of the other men in the room, Jameel included, they also feel the sermon beating against their insides like a drum. They nod and murmur at the imam’s aphorisms. Muneer leaves homesick and discontented and determined not to return to the mosque anytime soon.

Back at the house, he writes a ten-page letter to his father. He composes these letters weekly, folds them up and shoves them into envelopes. He addresses them before slipping the fat envelopes into a brown accordion folder he keeps on the top shelf of the bedroom closet.

Today, Muneer writes about the weather, Jameel’s engagement, God, preparations for the baby’s arrival (a classmate of his has offered them a crib, a stroller, boxes of baby clothes). He says Saeedah is in good health. He doesn’t mention how his world seems to shift daily under his feet, like sand. His professors decry any sort of censorship—that of the state, the editor, the journalist himself. But he knows self-editing is sometimes a survival tool when writing to the dead. Why worry his dead father who, in an imaginary aerogram delivered to Muneer’s mind, welcomed the news of Saeedah’s pregnancy with these words: “Daily, I ask God to keep the three of you safe. Remember to observe your five daily prayers.” Why admit to himself the five daily prayers have become 2.3 on average? That he can’t keep Saeedah warm, let alone safe. That this marriage is more difficult than anyone could have warned.