Neither of them knew how to cook, so they’d spent a month’s rent on phone calls to their mothers. To measure the rice, they’d need a jam jar, his mother had said. He and Saeedah hadn’t hesitated, emptying a whole jar of raspberry jam into the garbage disposal. Saeedah bent her ear to the phone, pulling the cord across the living room so she could relay their mothers’ recipes to Muneer in their kitchen, which was not much bigger than a bathroom. The Bukhari rice came out too moist, stewed with cinnamon sticks and cardamom pods that lay bloated and spent alongside the chunks of lamb. Later, they tried chicken and rice poached in milk. Saleeg was meant to be soggy, Muneer joked, so of course they mastered it easily.

Back home, each of these rice dishes was served on large round aluminum platters to dozens of guests. In Ohio, Muneer and Saeedah ate their Bukhari rice and saleeg straight from the pot. They discussed inviting friends over to share the food they cooked, but there wasn’t room, and truthfully, he didn’t want to share her. Her laughter, like the wind chimes tinkling on their neighbor’s porch. The sound of her voice reciting ingredients to him. The way her lip and eyebrow jutted up to the right as she concentrated on chopping onions and cilantro for hot sauce.

What he and Saeedah need, he decides, moving quickly from the beach idea, is people around them. People to eat their food. Muneer invites his best friend Jameel to come over Saturday evening after their shift at the pizza parlor, where they both earn a little extra to send home to their families while they live on student stipends from the Saudi government. He and Saeedah have Muneer’s small stipend. They have to stretch it further than a single guy like Jameel.

Jameel is studying to be a dentist. He drinks beer, smokes menthol Lucky Strikes, and dates American girls. His teeth are whitened and as startlingly bright as his patent leather loafers, while Muneer’s teeth are stained yellow from too much fluoride in the drinking water growing up in Jidda. The two of them went to the same public high school, and their fathers had neighboring dress shops in the Old City. Jameel’s father had the greater business acumen, opening stores in new parts of the city with the help of his other sons.

On Saturday morning, Muneer drives to Aladdin’s on Carnegie to stock up on ingredients for the feast. Saeedah has already left for a study group or the library—as usual, he doesn’t know where she’s gone.