“I know.” I sat at the kitchen table and started to dry the water glasses that she’d just washed.

“Every woman needs a man to be with, not for money or anything, but for friendship. For love.”

“Yes, I know.”

“And I hope that you would never leave him or hurt him, like your aunt is doing to Kevin.” She wiped her forehead with the red sleeve of her housedress. Her elbow knocked the blue stone that dangled from the shelf above the sink, dropping it into the suds in the sink. She picked it up carefully and replaced it. “Good men are rare, Nadia.”

“I think Siti is not convinced of that,” I hazarded after a few moments.

“What did you say?” She interrupted her scrubbing once again to stare at me.

“Siti. She told me last night, in my dream,” I continued. “She doesn’t want me to go.” I pushed the dishcloth deep into the mouth of the glass, swiveling it around with my index and middle fingers, left then right, snatching up every drop of moisture. “I think she doesn’t trust him completely.”

Before I knew what was happening, before I could glimpse the metamorphosis of her expression, Mama snatched the glass out of my hand and smashed it against the blue and white tiles of the wall. Her black eyes were twin pools of fury, rippled with fear, I thought, as I sat stunned in my chair.

“Goddamnit, Nadia!” she shrieked. “Your grandmother is dead!”

I didn’t say a word as she stomped out of the kitchen, crushing the glass shards into powder underneath her wooden house sandals.

“Why do you keep torturing me like this, goddamnit!” she screamed from the hallway. After the door to her bedroom slammed shut, I swept up the glass, then finished scrubbing the pot.

I packed that night and then hung out in the kitchen, hoping Mama would come out of her room. Eventually, I gave up and slept for a few hours, and listened intently to any sounds from next door. I heard nothing. Early the next morning, she still hadn’t emerged, so I left for the trip without saying goodbye.

The last thing I remembered before we crashed was that George reached out for my hand, his other hand still on the wheel, and … yes, then Hanan and John screamed from the backseat. And then—or maybe it was before they screamed—the flash of headlights, of someone else’s headlights to my right, blinding me before it all went black.

I sank to the bottom of a dark blue ocean, the floor littered with thousands of eyes and lips, staring, speaking, confusing me. Blue eyes, brown eyes. Lips that spoke in Arabic and English. One mouth in particular intrigued me—a pair of bright, green lips that opened wide, large enough for me to swim through. Tired and too sleepy to think, I drifted toward it, not moving really, just floating and letting it pull me in.

And then a warm grip on my ankle and I was being pulled away, too weary to turn back and see who this other force was, pulling me up through miles and years of water, back to the surface. Only then, when the bright sky beckoned me to open my eyes and energized me, I saw Siti, cradling my head in her elbow and stroking my hair back, away from my eyes, from my cheeks and lips.