Aliyah cannot believe I used to be a history teacher before I had her and her brothers. I tell her that I left that career for her sake, and the child shrugs like it’s not a big deal. My life is no big deal to her. I tell myself that I am pretty smart for learning English so fast when I came here, for finishing college, and for marrying a man who owned a grocery store with four solid walls and a real door, not an aluminum cart on the sidewalk. I tell myself that she will mature soon and see all of this.

We sit in Siham’s living room, while the girls are upstairs listening to the crazy Cyndi or to Michael Jackson, who wears one glove for fashion. Back home, during the war, as Huda puts it, we had one glove because we either couldn’t afford the other one or had to share a pair with a sibling. We put on a videotape. The Lebanese grocery store rents these out, but Siham and I are the only ones who have VCRs—I bought mine the week after she did, but I paid much less for it. All she had to do, I told her, was to wait for the sales, and not be too hurried to spend. That day, we watched Aqud al-Lulu (The Pearl Necklace), starring Ghawar and Sabah. Sabah played a village girl whom Ghawar loves, but she doesn’t take him seriously. Of course, Sabah’s role features many songs, so that her voice can hit its unbelievably high notes.

“Do you know she must be about fifty in this film?” Siham said.

“No!” cried Layla.

“Yes.” She nodded knowingly as she bit into her honey cake, then set it down delicately on its pink plate.

“Can it be possible?” I asked. “Look how smooth her skin is.”

“Face pulls,” Siham said, almost in a whisper.

“NO!” the three of us exclaimed.

“Disgusting,” said Huda. “What is so wrong with a few wrinkles? We’re not meant to live forever. Is there shame in showing in it?”

“Speak for yourself,” I said, touching my fingertips to my cheeks. “In college, the only thing it was fashionable to put on your face was moisturizing cream, because it keeps you young, or whitening cream, so you don’t get dark. I still don’t wear makeup to this day, except for parties.”

“You don’t need it, Imm Nabeel,” they all reassured me quickly. “Any man would die for those lovely green eyes of yours,” Huda added, and the others agreed vehemently and finished off their sweets. After we drained our coffee cups and let the grounds dry inside, Huda read our fortunes for us. She’s an expert in this, once predicting when my youngest son would be born. I don’t know why I semi-believe in these little superstitious rituals, but maybe it’s because I was raised breathing it, accepting it like air in my lungs.

Huda saw a man in Layla’s cup—“Not for you, for your daughter, insh’allah”—and we all giggled to see how feverishly Layla blushed. She saw windows in my cup—“Symbols of opportunity ahead,” she explained—and oval shapes in Siham’s. “I’m not too sure about those,” she said hesitatingly, holding it out for us to see. The entire inside of the cup was dotted with these ovals, some long and some short, filling the belly of the tiny cup like a rainstorm.