“I wasn’t trying to—” I start, but she looks back at me in a way that tells me the conversation is over. “Fine, fine.”

Amina’s family is already gathered around their kitchen table, which is this gorgeous piece of furniture. Everything in here feels older than me, and it’s as though the sentimentality of every object is just pulsing in waves. There’s history laced into every object. A cabinet with large glass doors, full of little pieces of kitsch. Couches covered in sheets of plastic, like they’re too valuable to sit on. Paintings on the wall that are actual paintings, not prints.

“So . . . this is Michael,” Amina says, and I turn back to the kitchen table and watch as several conversations in progress stop, multiple sets of eyes looking at me expectantly.

“Hi,” I say, waving awkwardly. There are two seats next to each other at a corner of the large dining table, and we walk over there. I sit, and the plate in front of me looks like it’s seen some things, old with a few chips here and there, a fading illustration of some birds in the center.

“They were my great-grandmother’s.” I glance back up at . . . Amina’s mother, I think, across the table, who nods at my plate and then looks around the table. “We bring them out for holidays and family gatherings.”

“That’s amazing,” I say, looking back at the dish. “I don’t think anything in our house isn’t from Target or Ikea.” There’s some . . . strange swirling feeling inside my chest that I can’t quite pin down. I shake it off.

“This is my mother,” Amina says, my assumption correct, and then she gestures around the rest of the table. “My father, my sister Nalia, my uncle . . .” She continues talking, nodding to everyone, and I just can’t help it.

This. This is the sort of family people expect me to have when they meet me. The sort I sometimes think about, when I’m alone and everything is quiet. Long bus rides. When I can’t sleep at night or wake up too early, staring at the ceiling. And it’s not that I want this. It’s that I feel like I’m supposed to have it. And I don’t. And it’s a weird, impossible emotion to pin down.

Now I recognize that strange swirling feeling.

And why me and Amina keep having the same conversation.

And I really want to get out of here.

“So, Michael, where are you from?” one of Amina’s aunts asks.

I glance over at Amina, and she immediately looks embarrassed.

“I mean, I’m from here. I was born in Philadelphia,” I start, but I know what she’s asking. And it’s not like this is a bad thing; it’s just hard sometimes. “But I’m Palestinian.”