But she insists: Of her seven children, he is the one she stays up at night worrying about. Him, and the missing piece of him, Hanadi, she says.

No matter how often he tells her to stop this litany, she never does.

“I might go,” she says, returning to the topic of the wedding. He sees on her face that an idea has come to her, and she clings to it, like Umm Kulthum clutching her famous handkerchief. If he will not marry any of their friends’ or relations’ daughters in Jidda, she will seek suitable girls elsewhere. Why didn’t God give her the idea sooner? she says. There will be many girls at the wedding.

“That’s not necessary, Mama,” he says. “But go to the wedding if you want to.”

The next day, while Muneer works at the newspaper office, Mama has their maid, Sara, find the little red address book filled with relatives’ phone numbers. Sara is Indonesian and reads enough Arabic to look up the number and dial it. Mama herself is as illiterate as the Prophet.

When Muneer comes home for lunch, she tells him about the conversation with Lama.

“I had to make sure that awful person”—her sister Faizah—“will not be there.”

“Will she, Mama?” He eats her green bean stew with a piece of bread.

“No. Lama told me, ‘Darling Haleemah. I promise, we understand the situation. You’re my favorite cousin. Who else from Jidda would I want to be at my daughter’s wedding?’”

Mama appreciates that her cousin sees things her way. And if her sister were invited, Mama is certain Faizah would not make the trip to al-Madinah, where their relatives refuse to allow musical instruments at weddings—no lute, no dancing, no “Ya Layla Dana,” no stereo, no songs by Amr Diab or Ragheb Alama. Only drumming and human voices, songs about God and the Prophet. Nothing about love, about eyes like a gazelle’s, about longing for the stars.

“You should stop talking, old lady, and eat. God bless your hands that made this food.”

“‘Who has time for such boring people and their boring weddings?’ Faizah would say.”

Mama keeps going: She will attend her cousin’s daughter’s wedding because her son needs a pious, old-fashioned girl. Yes, let Muneer’s bride be one of those women who wears a coat instead of an abayah, who covers her hair in front of other women. Let her raise daughters who cover their faces when they go out and never listen to music. The more religious, the better.

“Mama, be patient. God rewards the patient.”

But Muneer is the one who must be patient, as Mama rails about her sister, a familiar monologue she trots out to prove to him that Hanadi’s disappearance has affected her as much as it has him.

He listens because, as the Prophet said, “Paradise is beneath the mothers’ feet.”