THE TABLE WAS set with his grandmother’s old silver, which Jeppe knew his mother usually kept stored in her safe-deposit box. A candlestick gleamed in the middle of the table. There were single-serving portions of dessert on individual plates, surely store-bought and then arranged at the last minute. His mother had pulled out all the stops. Jeppe just wished that she had put a little more thought into the fact that 50 percent of the guests were children instead of so obviously trying to impress the grown-ups.

She started the evening off by asking Sara enthusiastically about her upbringing in Tunisia, only to hijack the conversation with a monologue about Carthage, the Phoenicians, and the ethnic minority of the Berbers. After that she moved on to her favorite topic, culture, and started fishing to see if Sara was more interested in theater or opera, art or literature. Sara admitted without batting an eye that she didn’t really have time for any of it, a confession that Jeppe knew automatically placed her in his mother’s blind spot.

“Oh, but you absolutely must read out loud to your daughters! Otherwise they’ll end up being cultural illiterates. Choose one of the classics, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, for example, or its sequel, Through the Looking-Glass. That’s a wonderful choice for that age group. I have a copy you can borrow. I think it might even be Jeppe’s from when he was a boy.”

Sara smiled and drank a sip of water without making any move to continue the conversation. Jeppe felt a drop of sweat trickle down his spine. There was a crash as Meriem accidentally knocked over a glass with one of her Transformers action figures.

“Maybe we should excuse the girls from the table while the rest of us have dessert,” his mother suggested.

“It’s just water.” Jeppe gave her a warning look.

“We don’t like the cake anyway,” Amina said, her arms crossed. She looked like she had spent the last hour being subjected to Chinese water torture.

“Okay.” Jeppe ignored his mother’s raised eyebrow and stood up. “Come on, girls. Let’s go in the living room. Meriem, bring your toys along!”

“Can I watch YouTube?” Amina directed the question at her mother.

Sara nodded, and Amina leaped up and retrieved her phone from her jacket out in the hall. She came into the living room with her nose glued to the screen and plopped down onto the sofa, immersed in the K-pop music videos she was into at the moment.

Jeppe helped Meriem set her action figures up on the carpet and then returned to the table, where the conversation had stalled. He felt briefly irritated at the women in his life, who only really tolerated people who were like themselves.