“Habibti, in America, that’s what they do. These telephone people, they don’t use ‘Mr.’ and ‘Mrs.’ anymore. You’ll get used to these little cultural things. It’s how they get you not to hang up right away.” He laughed nervously, and she knew it wasn’t.

She looked up a new word in her dictionary that night, one that contained a “p,” and she practiced it a few times. Suspect. I suspect. You suspect. He /she / it suspects.

Siham enjoyed exploring their new neighborhood, taking long, early afternoon walks through South Philadelphia. The streets were perfectly arranged, organized, like a grid. Numbers ran north and south, names ran east and west. Or was it the other way around? She and Nader lived on 9th and Passyunk, in what they called the Italian Market, but Siham felt it was an island, lonely, despite the flow of people. Layla rarely visited because the crowds were too much for her to handle her young daughter. The positive aspect of it was that Siham found everything at the Italian Market, from tomatoes to fresh coffee beans to bath towels, sold by everyone from leathery Vietnamese women to Sicilian men with mustaches like Nader’s to young Irish women with green eyes and red curls scooped back into bandannas. Some of these Philadelphia people were immigrants like her, and others were the children of immigrants, having had an entire generation to adjust.

Sometimes, the Italian Market reminded her of the Old City quarter of Jerusalem, full of men yelling out the prices of vegetables and women peddling their crafts, their embroidered pillowcases and blouses. They even targeted tourists with photo frames and wall hangings that said in embroidered English, “God Bless Our Home” or “Home Is Where the Heart Is.” In Jerusalem, she could bargain with the peddlers. In fact, they were insulted if you did not engage them in some level of negotiations. But in the Italian Market, the price was set. She knew because she’d once tried to talk the fruit man down two dollars. “Hey lady, no bargaining! This is already a bargain, ahw-ight?” Even this talent was taken from her here, rendered null. Nader claimed that her ability to bring prices down in the Khan al-Zeit bazaar was what had won his heart.

She was examining the leather wallets at the stand next to the entrance to the Dome of the Rock when he approached. They each bought a wallet, although she paid eight shekels and he paid fourteen. As Siham walked away, Nader called after her, “How did you do that?”

She did not answer. So he asked, “Can you come shopping with me? I have a few more things to buy today and I could use your help.”

Siham took one look at his pleated trousers, linen blazer and shiny, lace-up shoes and kept walking. Ignored him, who was so obviously, as she’d thought, one of these returning American Arab nouveau riche. He probably sold bananas on the city streets in America but made himself look rich when he returned home to visit the “Old Country.” Sickening. Especially when the richest man in the “Old Country” only made about $400 in American dollars a month. Her own father, a doctor, made a mere $250.