“We have clubs in Jordan too, and I went once with my college roommate and her sister. It was fun. Good way to relax before the examinations.” She sipped her water. As the light flashed on her thin face, Hanan saw that she was pale and a thin layer of sweat glistened on her upper lip. She looked around nervously, then nearly jumped out of her skin when a young blond man bumped into her. Even Hanan, standing further away, could smell the acrid odor of beer on his breath. He looked at both Rola and Hanan appraisingly, then smiled broadly. Before he could say anything, Hanan said, “Keep moving, pal.” He shrugged and, grabbing another beer, moved off into the crowd.

“So you fight with your mother, it seems,” said Rola, moving closer to her. Hanan felt suddenly protective of her. “Does it happen very much?”

“Once in a while,” said Hanan. “She thinks I should be some perfect Arabic girl, you know, that I should enjoy making cookies and looking for a husband.” Like you, she thought.

“I know,” Rola said sympathetically. “My mother is the same way. Everything I do is wrong, and I don’t act the way she wants. I always have to be polite and sweet, even to people I can’t stand. Like Uncle Ibrahim.” She glanced at Hanan. “You know, of course, he embezzled from the bank he used to manage in Jerusalem? That is why he came to America. He cannot return back!”

“No way! Well, you wanna know what I did to him?” Hanan confessed her story about sticking the bottom of her foot in their uncle’s face.

Rola laughed silently, shoulders quivering, then sighed and said, “They are very much a different generation, I am guessing. I should say to you,” Rola added in a quiet voice, so soft that Hanan could barely hear her. “I came here thinking that my aunt—your mother—would be different than mine, because she lived here in America. I had hoped …” She paused, then shook her head and smiled. “Well, she’s more like my own mother than I thought … but they are sisters, so it makes sense, of course.”

Hanan didn’t respond. She felt she needed to sort out this new information. John walked up to them just then, looking weary as usual. “Hello, ladies.”

Hanan introduced him to Rola, and before she knew what was happening, John had pulled her surprised cousin onto the dance floor. Shit, she thought. This had been their plan, but it just wasn’t right anymore. She slammed her glass down onto the bar and hurried after them, cutting through the mass of people like a diver scissoring the water. Rola was trying politely to extricate herself from John, who was pulling her deeper and deeper into the center of the dance floor, like a small ship being sucked into the eye of a swirling, deafening whirlpool.