I finally, reluctantly, said I would go. But the night before the trip, my grandmother visited me, wearing a stern, disturbed expression.

“Are you upset about Nadia?” I asked her. This was the first time she’d come to me since I’d heard the news.

She ignored me, ignored the question, and told me instead that I shouldn’t go on the trip with George. “You don’t know what could happen,” she said.

“Siti, George is a nice guy. Mama likes him—we might even get engaged soon.”

She didn’t reply, just shook her head and clicked her tongue.

I assured her that we were going with a group of friends, that we’d be safe, that she didn’t have to worry about a-naas. A-naas is a phrase that I had often heard her fret over: “What will a-naas say?” “What will a-naas think?” She always worked herself into a frenzy about the gossip circles created and perpetuated by a-naas, the small but organized network of Arab women and men in America who had the uncanny ability to transmit a single, juicy nugget of information about someone’s reputation across the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea to the corresponding family network back in the Middle East.

She left me that night, still agitated despite my reassurances. I told her, just before she faded, that my mother did not see a problem with the trip.

“She doesn’t think now,” she answered, “not clearly,” and was gone.

^“Mama, are you OK with the trip I’m going on tonight?”

“The trip with George?” she asked, leaning all her strength into scrubbing the large pot in the sink. She had made mansaff last night for some friends, and they’d all ooh-ed and aah-ed appreciatively as she’d laid the flat dish on the table, the mound of fluffy rice atop a foundation of shredded pita bread, quilted with roasted almond slivers and slabs of juicy lamb meat, all drenched in the milky laban. The guests had left late, so neither of us had done the dishes and now, the laban—everyone’s favorite part of the meal—had stuck to the side of the pot in flaky, cellulite-like ridges. My mother was on her second Brillo pad, pearls of sweat breaking through the defenses of her hairline.

“Yes, the one to the Poconos. We’re leaving early in the morning.”

“To the what?” She shut off the faucet and I realized how noisy the water had been—and how eerily quiet it was now. “Where is the trip?”

“To the Poconos. We’re going skiing with Hanan and John.”

“OK, habibti. That’s fine, as long as you and Hanan sleep in one room and you let George and the American boy stay in another room.” She resumed her scrubbing, water off, using a pool of water that had collected in the belly of the pot. “I told you that I like George.” She smiled at me, a sad, small smile. “I hope that you marry him someday—he’s a good man. He’d never leave you or … hurt you. Some men hurt the people they love without even knowing it, but not George. He’s different.”