“Maybe next summer, inshallah.” Saeedah is finishing her psychology degree, paying for Hanadi’s day care with money her father sends. After her long maternity leave, her grade point average suffered from the everyday skirmishes with Muneer in the final days of their marriage. She has had to retake courses and endure endless conversations with her advisor, Dr. O’Rourke, an Irishman with six children, a penchant for mixing plaid and tweed, and hair like streaks of rust combed over his bald head. He seems befuddled that a woman of her nationality could ever sit alone in a room with him and often wonders aloud if she might be more comfortable studying in her home country.

“Hanadi should be here,” Mama says. “In her country, with both her parents.”

Saeedah’s temples throb because she knows she should agree with the divorce, but Hanadi’s seventh birthday lies two and a half years away, a sinister finish line when Saeedah will be expected, by religious custom, to hand Hanadi over to her father.

“A mother is the best to raise a young child,” Mama says. “Her father should finish raising her so he can fulfill his duty to find her the best match.”

“Khalas.” Stop. “She’s four. Why are we talking about her marriage?”

“God protect her and bless her and shower her with goodness,” Mama says.

Two and a half years will be gone in an instant.

Coming back to reality—the hum of the window air conditioner; the phone cord twisted round her finger; the neighbors’ footsteps creaking above her, their rock music thumping—does not ease her anxiety. In a few weeks, Muneer is coming to see his daughter. Saeedah hangs up the phone and retches into the toilet.

She calls her friend Weronika, who’s recently moved to Toledo for a nursing job. Having grown up in the Soviet Union, W gets the kinds of fear you can’t explain to Americans.

“Just because you’re paranoid, doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you,” W says.

DRAEGER’S

Saeedah lets the doorbell ring and ring. She tells Hanadi not to answer it, though the four-year-old knows her Baba is at the door.

The ringer loses patience and presses the bell relentlessly; the rings jumble into one sound.

“It’s too loud,” Hanadi says. “Why won’t you let Baba in?”

“OK, OK.” Saeedah yells a lie as she rushes to the door. “We were in the bathroom.”

Framed by the doorway, Muneer’s younger sister Lujayn wears a fringed T-shirt and bell-bottoms, and her hair swirls in hot-curled, inky ringlets past her shoulders. Her face is frozen in annoyance—eyes squeezed, jawline tight. She kisses Saeedah on the cheeks and lifts Hanadi onto one hip.

Behind them, Muneer paces on the front porch. “Where were you?”

“I told you,” Saeedah says. She’s angry that he won’t believe her lie.