Mama looked up at her, as if not recognizing her. Then she said, her voice vibrating with tiny tremors, “I thought I would be safe here. He promised I would. Don’t you see? He promised.”

Things changed quickly after the robbery. Nobody told me why, except that we needed to be more careful in general. I no longer went over my friends’ houses, and could only play with the other Arab and Palestinian girls in the neighborhood. Nadia introduced me to Reema and Aliyah, who lived only a few blocks away with their families. The three of them became my only friends. Almost every day after school and almost certainly on the weekends, I would pack my music cassettes in a grocery store bag and visit one of them, usually Nadia, the only one of us with a cassette player in her room.

We would shut the door, pick a tape, assign roles, and design a routine. Reema was usually the lead, because she had the best twists and turns, and the rest of us were back-up dancers. I tried to convince them that we should hit the road after high school and join the Solid Gold dancers. “We’d show them some real moves,” I claimed one afternoon at Aliyah’s house, as we took a break from our routine. We’d kicked her brothers out of the room they all shared, but they’d stationed themselves outside her door with waterguns, ready to jump at us as soon as we ventured out. Nadia’s portable cassette player was on the dresser, and the three beds pushed up against the wall. The room was toward the back of the row house, looking over the back alley of her block.

“I won’t be allowed to do that,” Aliyah said, sucking on a bottle of lemon Gatorade. “I have to go to college—that’s what my mom said.”

“My mom too,” said Reema, undoing and rebraiding her long, thick hair. Her mother has never allowed Reema’s hair to be cut since she was born, and it hangs below her hips now. It’s the reason why her turns are the best, because her long hair trails after her, dramatizing her moves. “I have to get a scholarship, “she said, “or else.”

“Or else what?” I asked.

Reema paused, thinking. “I’m not sure.”

“What about you?” I asked Nadia. “Do you need to go to college?”

“Yeah. I have to be a doctor like my grandfather. Or I could marry one—my mom said either one is fine.”

“That totally sucks ass,” I blurted out. “Why the hell do we spend all our time practicing if we’re not going to do anything with it?”

They all stared at me, their mouths gaping.

“Hanan, you’re gonna get us in trouble,” Aliyah whispered fiercely, pressing her ear to the door. “What if my brothers heard you? They’ll tell my mom.”

“Yeah, Hanan,” agreed Reema.