Abu Nabeel was on the phone when I walked in, his oud lying on the carpet, face down, its bloated belly swelled in the air.

“Yes, yes, she just walked in. We’ll drive down and get you now, Siham.”

“Siham?” I tossed my purse on the table. “B’khair, insh’allah? I just came from their apartment.”

“The police called right after you left. Nader had a car accident on the way home from the coffee shop. She needs to get to St. Agnes on Broadway.”

I stood there dumbly as he put on his shoes and his cardigan and yelled for Aliyah to come downstairs. “We’ll take her to Huda’s; she can stay with Reema. I don’t want her at the hospital in case … you know what I’m saying.”

Still I did not move; I only stood, staring down at the oud on the floor. It had only been a five-minute walk back home. Why hadn’t I stayed with Siham? I imagined her getting that phone call, probably as I was walking home and regretting what I had done.

Aliyah raced down the steps, urged by the high pitch of her father’s voice. She slipped on her shoes without a word when he told her what happened, though I saw her face become pale. They both glanced at the front door, and then back at me impatiently. “Y’allah, ya Imm Nabeel! We don’t have a second to waste!” my husband called.

I pushed myself forward, walking toward them like a criminal going to the gallows, thoroughly ashamed and deeply afraid.

An Afternoon in Jerusalem

I wondered if I should do the melodramatic thing and burn Kareem’s picture. That’s what would happen in an Arabic soap opera, with an actress, her eyes lined Cleopatra-style (à la Liz Taylor) with kohl, sniffling as she set a match to the photo of her heartless lover, the flame reflecting dramatically against her hennaed hair. An American soap actress would do the same, tossing it into the fireplace and watching the flames lick and blacken his fair skin and blond hair. But my apartment didn’t have a fireplace, and besides, I needed to do something unscripted, hard, real, something that maybe hurt, like bursting a blister before the white liquid inside made it explode. It was still pain, but at least you held the pin.

My mother’s words still echoed in my mind, weaving their way from the telephone wires and carving themselves into the walls of my memory. It had been eight in the morning when Mama called, while I was slipping into my shoes, smudging on eyeshadow, and sipping my coffee. My routine abruptly stopped (though the Santa Claus mug did not dramatically crash to the floor) when she told me about Kareem.

I threw off my shoes, calmly rested the mug on my dresser, and sat on my bed as I listened. I’ve always been calm in a crisis, like the time my brother Nabeel broke his nose. Someone on Mifflin Street had called him a “dirty Arab” and smashed his face with a Wiffle ball bat. I had been reading Anne of Green Gables on my front step when Nicki Donato and a bunch of the other kids ran up and gasped out that Nabeel was bleeding. My friends usually tease me for being quiet, but something ruptured within me. I sprinted the six blocks to Mifflin Street, beat up the kid as well as his two cousins with the bat, marched Nabeel home, and called my mother at Auntie Siham’s house. Of course, the kid and his brother called me “crazy terrorist” for a while, but they stayed away from my family after that.