“Shoo. Shoo.”

With the AC off, the car heats up. Mama fans herself with a tissue box.

Muneer takes off his ghutrah, iqal, and kufiyyah, and rolls his sleeves up. He gets the spare tire and jack out of the back.

“You have to get out, Mama,” he says.

She doesn’t want to stand by the side of the road, so he brings her a suitcase to sit on. She fans herself with the box, stops to pull a tissue out and wipe her forehead. Cars pass so close she can feel the hot air on her face. She flips the edge of her scarf across her face; through the cloth, she keeps her eyes on the monkeys. They make her nervous with their sharp teeth and big yawns. The monkeys gaze at her, wagging their chins and cheeping disapprovingly, as though they are telling her to climb back in the car.

When Mama and Muneer arrive in al-Madinah, the Asr call to prayer is sounding. They pass near the Prophet’s Mosque. The green dome looks like something a child might paint. She remembers once that Saeedah got lost at the mosque—that child was always getting lost. Faizah found her at the prophet’s grave, praying with worry beads she claimed to have found lying on the ground. Mama tells Muneer the story as they inch along in traffic.

“I always knew she stole those beads.”

“I don’t want to hear about her, Mama,” he says. “I’m tired.”

“That girl was trouble, I always thought so. She wasn’t praying. She was pretending so her mother wouldn’t spank her in front of the world. You never should have married her.”

“You never objected.”

“I did, I did object. I said marrying a cousin is a bad idea. I said find a girl with good manners.”

“You must have said that to someone else.”

They sit idling at a red light. He can tell she’s offended by his comment from the way her silence sits between them, but she quickly becomes distracted by a little girl approaching on the median. The girl wears a headscarf gray with dirt and a long dress with ruffles at the wrists, a flounce at the hem. She doesn’t smile; beggar children never do. She starts to wipe the windshield with a brownish rag. Muneer waves—“Go on, go on”—but she keeps wiping as though the car belongs to her.

That child could be Hanadi, Mama says. The girl’s chin is dimpled, the little bulblike tip of her nose is sprinkled with perfectly formed droplets of sweat. The dark brown birthmark on her forehead looks soft as felt. Mama convinces herself that Hanadi had such a birthmark, though Muneer swears otherwise and reminds her that Hanadi is fifteen, much older than this girl.

Mama doesn’t listen. She lowers her window and sticks her hand out with a riyal.

“What’s your name?”