I stayed behind, sitting quietly and breathing in the scent of musk. The room was enormous, and beautiful arabesques adorned the walls and interior Dome, whose golden exterior I had always seen crowning pictures of Jerusalem. Now I was here, finally inside the picture.

My finger rubbed the golden cross around my neck, and I couldn’t wait to tell Kareem about being here, about the uniform movements of the women prostrating themselves and touching their heads to the ground. Voices rose, synchronous, unified.

I closed my journal and lay on my bed, remembering that day in the mosque, the orderliness of the service and the unison of female prayer. There was a power there that I identified with—it had been the first time I felt comfortable in Palestine. But why had I felt like sharing that moment with Kareem? I don’t think I ever really did—what had stopped me? Maybe it should remain what it was already, closed off to some, only open to others who really wanted to enter.

It annoyed me that I had chosen to jump so quickly to immerse myself in Palestine, in him, in his environment. Had he ever really shown an enthusiasm for knowing where I came from, what motivated me? How would he have liked Philadelphia? I imagined him strolling down South Street with me, gasping at every Kool-Aid-blue-haired waif in a babydoll dress, biker shorts, and Doc Martens, walking with her tattooed and pierced boyfriend/girlfriend/partner. He would stand, shocked, before the window of CondomNation, peering in at the boxes of penis-shaped pasta, blushing furiously when he realized what it was. Sitting with my friends from the university, sipping black coffee and arguing about Derrida and Said, about Virginia Woolf’s suicide and Amiri Baraka’s politics, and about what “orientalism” really meant. He would have fallen asleep or become irritable and insisted on going home, and my friends would have shaken their heads sadly as we walked away, wondering, “How did Aliyah wind up with such an old-fashioned guy?”

The photograph stared up at me, my eyes closed and his dark ones open, his lips smiling for the faceless person behind the camera.

I called Nadia, ashamed of my earlier lie. “Kareem is getting married, to Fattin. I just found out a couple of hours ago. Can I still come over later for dinner?”

“You sound terrible. Why don’t you just come now?”

“You sure?” The car accident had happened in the winter, and her shattered legs had not quite healed.

“Just come, for Christ’s sake. We could both use the company.”

I stopped at D’Alessandro’s corner market and bought a bottle of nonalcoholic wine, for a laugh, but also because she was still on some painkillers.

Auntie Siham let me in, and I could tell right away that she knew about Kareem. “Didn’t take Nadia long to tell you, huh? I mean, come on, girl!” I yelled in the direction of her bedroom. “I only live ten minutes away. Does all of Palestine know, too?”