“How does a little girl get out the gate? And if she did, she’d never go very far,” Muneer’s mother said.

“Maybe her father left it open. He’s always doing things like that.”

“Say a prayer for the Prophet and go back inside. She’s not outside.”

“How do you know?”

Muneer sidled to the stairs and started to climb, dragging his arm along the wooden balustrade. No one followed him or seemed to notice. Upstairs, a series of narrow green hallways led past spacious, dark rooms with ceiling fans whirring. He stepped into the rooms one after the other and let the cool air ruffle his hair, until he found himself in a rose-colored room on the top floor. A gecko the size of his pinky basked in a single line of sunlight that slashed the wall. The lizard’s stringy tail flicked nervously; its pinpoint eyes were dreamy. Over the fan’s humming he faintly heard a girlish voice singing: “Wazaghah, wazaghah, wazaghah.”

There she was, in a built-in cupboard with a dark green slatted door, her fingertips poking through. He couldn’t possibly have seen her face through the wood and the shadows, but in his memory, he glimpses her gap-toothed smile, and he knows that she is calling, “Gecko, gecko, gecko.”

He thinks of that day in the morning when he finds Saeedah already in the kitchen eating saltines. She’s left the cupboard door wide open and the soup bowl empty in the sink. He can’t tell for sure if she ate the soup or dumped it, but hopefulness tugs at him.

“Let’s go to the beach,” he says.

The suggestion is surprising to him, and last-ditch, he admits. But why not? They spent the best day of last summer at the beach, after they learned she was pregnant. She had been sullen for weeks, ever since they’d decided they couldn’t afford to go home for the summer. Her father would have paid for it, but Muneer wouldn’t accept his offer. One day, he would work at his father-in-law’s newspaper, and he wanted it not to be a matter of wastah—connections—but rather of professional integrity.