Soon after Muneer’s visit—the last time the two men will speak—Fareed begins sending a courier to the four-room offices of Akhbar al-’Urus to deliver a PI’s reports, monthly at first, then quarterly. The packets of typed records of the American’s comings and goings across the United States come stuffed in heavy manila envelopes, the pages butterfly-clipped and accompanied by fuzzy photographs. Muneer carries the envelopes home in his briefcase.

“If that’s a tip, I hope you’re going to share it with me,” Imad says the first few times.

Muneer wonders if Imad knows the envelopes contain something personal. They never talk about the contents, though sometimes Muneer thinks he would like to. Imad is a good guy. He shaves his face clean, unlike most of the other men Muneer knows, and keeps a fountain pen and a Bic in the chest pocket of his thawb, a pack of cigarettes in his deep side pocket. He speaks English, French, Spanish, and, as more guest workers arrive in Jidda over the years, picks up a little Urdu, Bengali, Tagalog. Sometimes Muneer thinks he catches a whiff of alcohol on Imad’s breath, but he’s never sure. Regardless, Imad talks to people easily, as a reporter should, while Muneer must bolster himself whenever he picks up his reporter’s notebook.

At first, Muneer is jealous that the PI, a man he’s never met, is doing the searching he daydreams about. He’s ashamed to delegate this duty and not pay for it. Months later, he is angry: Hanadi’s been gone for more than a year. The daughter in his memory and in the few photos of her he possesses stays four, while Hanadi, he knows, is growing older, taller, more out of reach.

Two years pass. Three years. Muneer waits and waits for real news, true news of his daughter. He would like to shrink, limit himself to his mother’s two-bedroom apartment; his desk at Akhbar al-’Urus; and the fifteen-minute drive between home and work, past the green neon shop fronts of Tahliyah Street. Instead, in these early years of the separation, he wraps himself in other people’s stories.

Assigned to cover the mayor of Jidda and the growth of the city, he files stories on high-rise apartments going up, the city’s first department store, first shopping mall, first Safeway, first pizza parlor, first hamburger shop, first Henry Moore sculpture on the Corniche, first hotel buffet, first cappuccino.

Ikea, McDonald’s, and Coca-Cola are years away.

He haunts the Old City, the gold souk, the perfume souk, the miswak vendors, the new discount souk with concrete stalls and no soul. He writes about a historic rainstorm that doesn’t let up for half a day. The city floods, and al-Sharqiyah respectfully calls for King Khalid to remove the mayor. He simply covers the damage, naming no names.