Jameel and Diane are married in early March in the basement of the mosque—not a courthouse—and her uncle throws a small celebration in his living room. Diane wears a white lace minidress and a veil grazes her ankles. About two dozen people sit at card tables set up in the living room: Diane’s aunt and uncle and cousins and a few close friends, Jameel’s buddies from school, Muneer and Saeedah. Neither the bride’s nor the groom’s parents attend. Her mother and father will take several years—until the first grandchild’s birth—to accept her marriage to a Muslim. His family will learn about the wedding in a letter accompanied by a green-tinged Polaroid of Jameel in his suit and tie and Diane in her minidress. For the intimate group assembled on this day, there is roast chicken and wine and the entertainment of Jameel getting a little sloppy. The bride’s uncle makes a toast, and people clink their glasses, and Diane whispers loudly to Jameel that this means they are supposed to kiss. The clinking recurs half a dozen times, and Muneer is convinced there is one person at the other table responsible for instigating. He and Saeedah alone have water in their wineglasses.

After dinner, Muneer sits next to Saeedah on a rickety love seat with wooden legs and leans over to kiss her cheek. It is cold, and her fingers, which he takes in his hand, are icy.

“Do you want me to find you a sweater or a blanket?”

She squeezes his hand, braces her legs, and pushes up from the seat with both hands.

“I don’t think Jameel knows what he’s doing,” she says. “This marriage is a bad idea.”

“You don’t know that,” he says, though he thought close to the same thing when Jameel showed him the engagement ring. Though he, too, doubted this match, he doesn’t want to agree with Saeedah. What is done is done. Jameel and Diane are married.

“She’s Christian. He’s Muslim. What will the children be?”

“They’ll be Muslim, like their father, of course.”

She holds her hair up in the back, twists it around and lets it fall back to her shoulders. “You should have told him not to marry her.”

The girl’s family drinks and gossips and dances. None of them speak Muneer and Saeedah’s language. He is alone with her words.

Snow falls the next week. Muneer is tiring of this white stuff, and March snow seems worse to him than any other kind. It makes him yearn for spring, whereas April snow—that would seem like a fluke. Maybe it’s the cold or the stone-colored sky, some weather-related discontent makes it hard for him to be alone in his annoyance with Saeedah any longer. He makes the mistake of telling Jameel what she said.