But we were still different on many levels. Siham was a lady, the closest thing to the bourgeoisie we had in our South Philadelphia neighborhood. I wasn’t one of them, because my family were villagers, though at least—I feel guilty when I think about this, because I know it is wrong—we are not from the refugee camps like poor Layla. But living here in our neat row houses erases most of our differences. Siham and Nader lived in an apartment over the Italian Market, but since Nader split with Layla’s husband and bought his own vending cart, they have more money, and were planning to buy a house. I wondered if they would stay in the neighborhood or venture closer to Center City.

Our block sits behind the St. Nicholas of Tolentine Catholic Church and grade school, which all our kids attend, even Huda’s kids, though they are Muslims. Our religion doesn’t matter here, the way it used to not matter back home before everyone—Jew, Christian, Muslim—thought he had the answer to everything. Here, in America, our water comes in from the same pipe and our sewage exits from the same pipe—here, we are all the same.

At least, until Siham went and convinced Nader that she needed a dishwasher. None of us knew until she invited us to her apartment one afternoon for coffee and cake and a movie. That’s how we entertained ourselves in those days, when there was so little to distract us. I stayed at home to raise my four, and that was enough work, thank you. Siham sewed at home for a clothing manufacturer, Huda watched some of the neighbor’s children during the day for money, and Layla … well, Layla was too nervous and shell-shocked, too sensitive, to be much help to her husband, so she stayed home.

But Saturday afternoons, when our husbands took the boys and went to the Lebanese bookstore and coffee shop on 9th Street—this block of time, these precious few hours belonged to us. We had the girls, of course, but they never attached themselves to us for long. Nadia, Reema, Hanan, and my Aliyah went into a bedroom and shut the door, and soon, we could hear from downstairs the sound of Michael Jackson’s or Cyndi Lauper’s music. The ceiling above us would shake as they practiced dance steps and choreographed routines. They tore white paper from their notebooks and designed their own line of clothing that was full of bright pink scraps of fabric, zippers, mismatched socks, and big hats. I had pierced Aliyah’s ears myself when she was a baby, using a needle heated over the stove and an uncooked potato as its landing spot, but I warned her now that if she ever put a second earring hole in her ears, I would cut them off and leave her deaf. Of course, she just rolled her eyes as usual. Huda tells me that Reema reacts the same way when she tells her not to rip her jeans at the thigh—is it wrong for us to want our girls to look respectable, and not like they live on the streets?