“It’s not that he thinks I should be 100 percent Arabic,” she’d said in one of her emails, “but he said he wants me to be less American. Whatever that means, right?”

And that was the problem, I knew. It was the same problem—the same sense of being uncomfortable—that I felt now with George. Of course, I was the one who had ended it, so I had no right to feel regret.

George first arrived in a dream one night, the way my grandmother used to. She appeared regularly, calming my fears and giving me advice about everything from upcoming exams to witnessing one of Mama’s crying jags. “Your mother is lonely,” she would explain to me soothingly, “and she just needs to release her stress. Let her do what she needs to do.”

For a long time, I didn’t tell anyone about those dreams, those midnight conversations with my grandmother. I wasn’t afraid that I’d be called crazy. Not at all. It was more like a cherished secret that I didn’t want to ruin by exposure.

And then when I was twenty-two, George appeared in a dream as well. Except that I didn’t know who he was, because I hadn’t actually met him yet. The circumstances that prompted the dream were still clear in my mind.

I had spent the summer after college graduation interviewing for jobs. Not everyone was eager to hire a business major, fresh out of college, and everyone was looking for experience, experience, experience. How was I to get experience, I complained to my mother and my friends, when nobody would give me a job?

By July I was hunting for internships. I could intern for a while, and continue looking for work in the meantime, so that even if I didn’t have a lot of experience, I could still say, “Well, I’m currently interning at …”

I came home one evening, after a long day: three interviews in a row, all in different parts of the city. Mama had made my favorite meal—malfoof, with steamed cabbage leaves. I tossed my briefcase onto the sofa, and plopped myself down at the kitchen table. “Mama, bless your hands,” I said. “This really looks good.”

She kissed my cheek, then sliced up two lemons. My favorite thing was to squeeze some juice on the rolled cabbage leaves, which would seep into the roll of rice and meat encased within each one, giving it a tart flavor.

“Good, habibti. I’m sorry you had a rough day.”

“Thanks … we’ll see what happens.”

We continued the meal in a pleasant silence. Later, as I washed the dishes, I suddenly had a horrible realization. I threw down the dish towel and hurried into the living room, where Mama sat embroidering a new pillow and watching the evening news.

“I feel like an idiot.”

“Why?” she asked, looking up, startled.

“I was just thinking that the last time you made malfoof was a year ago, and then it hit me that you only make it once a year on the day … for Baba.”