“His eyes are dark like ours. And his fingers are shaped like mine, I think.” Baba picked up Michael’s left hand and studied it. I moved closer to see. He was right—Michael’s fingers were long, but wider at the base and then tapering down to the fingernails. Baba’s hands were the same, like isosceles triangles.

“You know my father’s hands were like this too.”

I looked at my own fingers, which were shorter and slim, the fingertips squared. Like my mother’s.

“I wish I’d known him,” I said. “And Siti too.”

“Well, he died in ’74, not long after your grandmother.” Baba settled into his chair and leaned his head back. “The men overseas—they depend so much on their wives. If the woman dies first, everyone says the husband will follow soon. And he usually does.”

“Really?” I asked skeptically, thinking that of all the couples I knew, most of the men seemed like they would live longer if their wives went first. The quality of life might improve drastically.

“Oh, the women are the strong ones,” he said, nodding. “They keep the house together, the family together. My parents came to America in 1944, but then they went back in the 1960s—once I was eighteen, actually.”

“Why didn’t they stay?”

“They had land they wanted to protect—it was a bad time. Land was being snatched, and everyone was worried that if they stayed away, they’d have nothing left when they went home.”

He took a sip of his iced tea, then added, “Home is everything.” I looked down, away from his eyes.

“Did I ever tell you about when your grandfather was kidnapped by the Ottomans?” he asked brightly, deliberately changing the subject. I shook my head.

“During World War I, the Ottomans were under attack by the British, the French, everyone,” he began. “And their army was losing so they used to come to the villages and take the young men, draft them into the army, and make them fight. Usually those men died or they were just never seen again.”

“When they came to our village, they kidnapped over two hundred boys and men. My grandmother tried to hide my father, in the wheat stacks under the farmhouse. But they knew a young man lived in that house, and they threatened to kill the whole family if they didn’t produce him. My father gave himself up.”

“They tied his hands to a long rope, to the back of a horse, with others, like a chain of prisoners, and dragged him off. He ended up in Damascus, in a battle camp, training to fight. He learned to engage in combat, ride a horse, handle a sword. But then the war ended—it was over, and he was stranded in Syria, alone.”

He paused a few moments. “Do you know what he did?”

I waited intently.