Her body jostles him awake at two in the morning. They lie under the electric blanket, back to back, an inch of hot, staticky air between them like an unbridgeable river.

He says in English, “You have to bundle up before you go outside.” Bundle. Is there an equivalent verb in Arabic? There is a noun: buqjah.

She fidgets against him, her feet still ice cold. He shifts his legs up toward his chest and tries again, in Arabic: “We’re not in Jidda.”

“You’ve said that before. We’re not in Jidda. I say, I’m not a child.” Her voice is as icy as her feet. “Maybe you think I should go home to my mother. Maybe I will.”

She’s threatened to go home before. He knows better than to believe her. He knows how she feels about her mother.

He yearns to feel what they share, to reach around her and touch her belly. The child growing. Something stops him, a lack of courage, as though he were eight years old and staring at a villa’s wall. Wanting to climb it, knowing he can get up but not get down. He was that kind of child, one who stopped himself from doing things, who would rather observe. She was the kind of girl who scrambled up and didn’t think twice. No risk seemed to scare her; nothing changed her mind.

Who will the baby take after? He prays for an answer. He prays to strike the hidden word divorce from his head.

GECKOS AND JAM JARS

First cousins by their mothers, Muneer and Saeedah grew up together. When he was six or seven and she was a toddler with springy hair, gazelle’s eyes, and teeny fingernails like colorless pomegranate seeds, she went missing in her family’s three-story villa, in the middle of an evening gathering. Aunt Faizah, Saeedah’s mother, had invited her six sisters and their families for dinner. Before the meal, the children played in the courtyard. When they were called inside, someone noticed that Saeedah had gone missing. For half an hour, they scoured the house. The aroma of roasted lamb followed them everywhere, and Muneer became so overcome with hunger he could barely remember why they were tromping up and down the stairs. Unable to find the girl, the aunties herded the children back outside. The women stood in the walled courtyard and whistled, as though they could call a little girl like a falcon.

Muneer’s mother narrowed her eyes till they were the tiniest bit ajar, like the eyes of the sleepy alley cats they’d passed on their walk to Aunt Faizah’s villa. “Clearly, the girl’s not out here.”

“She’s not inside,” Aunt Faizah said. She held her little twins, one in the crook of each arm, like two melons. Her features were stretched with worry, her gaze tethered to the gate.