“And the girl was wearing what? … How many times did you see her? … And the mother?”

He hears hope in his own voice. Yet he doesn’t believe in hope anymore, God forgive him. The phone calls come in strings, and always the story is the same: a friend of a friend has seen Saeedah and Hanadi—or so they think. When he can afford to go, he goes. When he can’t, guilt wakes him up at night.

He changes into a white T-shirt and a green waistcloth. The front door slams, and he hears puttering sounds: Mama taking her shoes off, Mama putting her abayah in the hall wardrobe. He opens the door, and, yes, there is Mama.

“You look like a Yemeni gateman,” she says.

He rubs his face, runs a hand through the triangle of hair on his head. She tells him the skin under his eyes is dark and he looks weary.

“What do you want, old lady of mine?”

He calls her old as an endearment, but today he can tell it bothers her by the way she strings her fingers together and squeezes, a sign of annoyance from a woman whose face remains ever tranquil.

“Who were you talking to?”

“No one, old lady.”

He kisses her on the forehead and slips into the bathroom. He senses she wants to fix whatever has gotten into him, the jinni that eats at him from inside.

When Muneer returns from his latest failed trip, there is a wedding invitation from his mother’s cousin Lama in the post office box. He opens the envelope with a fingernail and reads to Mama from the pink and gold card without a hint of jealousy in his voice.

She has not stopped encouraging him to get married, but according to her he has been picky—no girl in Jidda has pleased him. Four—was it five?—years ago, she reminds him, there was an engagement to his father’s sister’s daughter. He phoned Mama from America to tell her to call it off. She did as he asked, but he suspected her anger boiled in her belly like coffee brewed in a metal pot. When he came home again, she had gathered his brothers, who told him, “You can’t wait till you find Hanadi before you marry again. God willing, you’ll be blessed with other children. Please do this for your mother’s sake.”

He never listened.

He laughs. “I thought marriage was for my sake. What about this invitation? Will you go four hours to Madinah for a wedding?”

He’s a young man, but she tells him often that he is growing older than his years in front of her: his eyes sinking into his face like seeds in bread, his mouth collapsing, his cheeks drawing in between his teeth. He laughs her worries off.

“I can’t possibly look as old as you say I do.”