“I drive fast,” he says. “Faster than Americans.”

“It’s a long drive,” she says. “I don’t know you.”

“I’m your father.”

She closes the car door. He comes closer and bends a little, like he would have done to talk to her when she was little, but he doesn’t have to bend far.

An American girl in a white polo shirt and khakis gets out of the car, leaving it idling.

“Hannah, what’re you doing? We’re gonna be late.”

“I’m going to ride with him,” she says. “I’ll see you there.”

He puts his hand out to shake the American girl’s hand. She has green eyes and freckles, feathered sand-colored hair.

“Hello. I’m Hanadi’s father.”

Hanadi’s mouth twists, and she seems to be biting her own tongue to keep the words inside. He keeps himself from telling her not to do that. She relaxes her mouth and breathes loudly, a swimmer coming up for air.

The American girl holds her car key between two fingers, like a dagger. Her face is doubtful.

“Nice to meet you?” She shakes Muneer’s hand, but doesn’t squeeze back, and turns her head toward Hanadi. “I thought you said your father … I mean, you probably shouldn’t—” As though suddenly remembering he’s standing there, she says to Muneer, “I’m sorry, sir. I’m sure you’re not some kind of murderer.”

Hanadi does a half shrug, rolls her shoulders forward. Muneer is surprised at how attuned he is to the two girls’ movements, the way he pays attention to his sons’ pouts and stomps, their smiles and quietudes, the tiniest signals they give of distress or contentment.

The American girl stands with one hip out, rolls her eyes at Hanadi. “So, like, I came over here to pick you up for no reason?”

“Buy you a Coke?” Hanadi seems ready to hug her friend, but instead she stuffs her hands into her pockets.

“Never mind,” the friend says. “See you there.” She stands straighter, puts her keys in her pocket, takes them out again as she gets into her car.

On the drive, he has so much to say that there is nothing to say. Hannah—she asks him to call her that—directs him to drive north, through Little Italy, out of the city, farther than he expects, though she warned him it would be a long drive. She turns on the radio, as though they were cruising together in their own family car, and expertly tunes it to something loud and thrashy, adjusting the balance for maximum thump. The whole routine involves her for a minute or two.

“Could you turn it down?” he says.

She turns the music off, and the silence is worse than the noise was. He keeps waiting for words to come out of his mouth, but he feels like the Prophet Zakariya, ordered by God not to speak for three nights.