“Hanan, where you go? Why you walk away?” her mother asked in an irritated tone. “I turn, you disappear.”

Hanan wished she could.

“This is your cousin, Rola.”

That was how Rola entered their lives, gracefully, beautifully, everyone’s delight, the princess presiding over her court at the dinner Mama held for her that same night. The family—everyone from the frail Uncle Ibrahim to her cousin Lana, her German husband, and their three black-haired, hazel-eyed children—flocked to their house and were served up a huge dinner and equal portions of Rola’s words.

“I finished my bachelor’s degree in Amman,” she chatted easily, “and I used to go home to Ramallah for the summers. But now I want a master’s and I want to do the program here in the States.” Her Arabic was beautiful, unstilted, and dropped from her lips softly and demurely, in that Audrey Hepburn-goes-Arabic tone. Hanan told herself not to be silly, because Rola had grown up speaking Arabic and hadn’t tried, futilely, to learn it at Sunday afternoon language classes at the local mosque in North Philadelphia, where they taught you to recite the Qur’an even though you were Christian. She didn’t mind because the teacher was nice to her and gave her supplemental readings, and the other kids in the class treated her like everyone else. They all had parents who, like her mother, were forcing Arabic down their throats. But the words were too hard and the grammar too complicated and, one week, after a snowstorm stopped her from going to class, she never returned. The teacher called her parents to see what was wrong, and they feebly lied, claiming that she was so busy with other activities. Her mother had been furious because Mr. Ahmad was “such a nice, nice man” and Hanan was “so, so selfish,” but she remained stubborn and the subject eventually faded. Sure, she could sometimes understand a lot of it, when people spoke slowly, but it wasn’t the same as wearing it like a second skin.

When dinner was over and the family had relocated to the living room, Hanan stayed in the kitchen with Mama to help prepare the tea. She infused the boiling tea with peppermint leaves, wiped down her mother’s best silver-plated tray, then arranged the short tea glasses on it. Her mother was busy putting the leftover food into Tupperware containers and didn’t pay her any attention. Through the door to the living room, Hanan heard Uncle Ibrahim telling a joke in Arabic and then a burst of laughter from the family. She thought to herself that she’d never felt so alone in the midst of so many people.

The aroma of the tea surged up at her and she poured it into the cups, one by one. “I’ll take this in, Mama.”

Just then, Rola strolled into the kitchen, her face a rosy red and her black eyes bright. “Need any help, Auntie? Hanan?”

“No,” Hanan responded. “I’m just going to take this tea in.”