A few weeks ago, a friend of Jameel’s younger brother Rami saw Saeedah and Hanadi in San Francisco. The friend-of-a-friend tip for once corresponds with something the PI sent: photos of a North Bay bungalow half hidden behind bougainvillea.

On the drive from the airport in Rami’s tan Chevy, there are yellow ribbons on trees and lampposts. On the radio, there is talk of Iran. Rami likes the oldies station. Elvis croons, I can’t help. … Muneer remembers the days of the oil embargo, how he’d hear the word A-rab floating in the air—at the grocery store, in the library, at the gas station and the playground—and wish he could shrink inside his clothes or hide behind a wool scarf.

“Americans don’t know the difference between Iranians and Arabs,” Rami says. “We’ve been keeping a low profile. But we don’t feel safe on campus.”

No one would bother a little girl? Would they?

At a red light, Rami maneuvers the slip of paper bearing the bungalow’s address out of his back pocket. He hands the address to Muneer, who locates it on the road atlas with his finger. With the windows rolled down, the wind musses the pages. He holds the book open with two hands. The air smells something like licorice. Rami drives with one hand on the wheel, the other arm resting on the open window.

The whole scene is too relaxing, Muneer thinks, too much like a road trip and not enough like a mission. He thinks, Inshallah, inshallah, inshallah, but something tells him before they arrive that there will be no cars in the driveway, the lawn will be overgrown, the house empty.

BENEATH THE MOTHERS’ FEET

Nearly ten years have passed without Hanadi when Imad hires two women to copy edit the paper. They have their own entrance through the back and their own office with two desks face-to-face, but they share the men’s assistant, who distributes morning tea and daily copies of al-Sharqiyah, al-Ahram, Asharq al-Awsat, and Jidda’s two English papers. Imad insists the women attend editorial meetings, and they choose to stand on the perimeter of the men’s space, taking notes. The men joke among themselves that Azizah must constantly chew luban gum; they hear the occasional smack of it under her molars at staff meetings. Her red pen is fierce, but her bangs are artfully arranged and curled onto her forehead, her scarf wrapped loosely. Lamees, on the other hand, has a smoker’s voice, but seems too pious to have ever lit a cigarette. Her edits are friendlier than Azizah’s, filled with queries, yet her headscarf is sharply creased down the middle and tightly wound, letting not a wisp of hair out of its grasp. The scarf’s dark outline accentuates her round cheeks and high forehead, the deep brown of her eyes.