“Listen to this, albi,” he says in Arabic, leaning in closer to the page. “This woman’s brother-in-law always brings these loose women to their holiday get-togethers, and it doesn’t bother anyone else in the family except for her. She wants to tell him to stop bringing these types, but she doesn’t want to upset her husband and her in-laws.” He chuckles and turns to catch my reaction. “Can you imagine someone back home doing that? It would keep the gossip lines in the village active for years! We’d even hear about it here, across the ocean.”

I laugh with him, trying to keep the mood light. I know that he has to leave for work in half an hour, where he’ll face lines of customers at the food cart. People in suits and ties and office heels, coming out of office buildings, demanding cheesesteaks with only a “smidgeon” of onions or a soda with “very little” ice. Asking whether or not the meat in the hamburgers is lean and low-fat. Does he have Sweet-n-Low instead of sugar for their coffee? I want to always make these mornings pleasant for him. Just for this small window we rarely have together, between Hanan’s departure for school and his own for work.

But he recognizes my uneasiness anyway. He studies my face as I pour the tea for him, the smell of peppermint rising on the clouds of steam, then he pinches my arm gently. “What?”

“Nothing.”

“Layla, I know when something is bothering you.”

“Hanan’s school has Parent’s Day today, when the mother or father spends the day with the kids, going to all their classes and meeting their friends and new teachers.” I sit down next to him at the table and stir sugar into our teacups. “And she asked me not to come.”

He waits for an explanation, so I add, “She’s embarrassed about my accent. I felt it from her before, but not like this.”

He doesn’t know what to say, so he doesn’t say anything. This is actually one of the things I love about him. He doesn’t prattle and spew empty words and phrases, he just smiles understandingly. Sympathetically. And he squeezes my hand.

But he doesn’t comprehend the details, the nuances of my feelings. He was born in the States, raised here, went to school here. He speaks English with a South Philadelphia accent, stretching the last word of every sentence, making it elastic. “Have a nice day now, awh-ight?” or “You want ketchup and muustaard? No praah-blem.” I stopped helping him in the cart when Hanan was born, but I still remember.