“Go back,” she said. “Don’t come here yet.”

I opened my mouth to speak, but no sound pierced the still, quiet air. Mute and suddenly scared, I stared at her.

“Tell your aunt to be a mother. Tell her to be a loyal wife.” She paused. “And say that Kevin is good.”

I nodded, clutching my throat. Her words, her tone, the rhythm of her voice, resounded in my skull, sticking to it like the dried ridges of laban to the pot.

“And your mother must forgive your aunt. Help her to be happy.” She called me habibti and stared into my face, as if assigning me to a mission, putting her trust in me. “Help her because I cannot.”

She pressed my cheeks together between her warm palms and kissed my eyes, saying “Go back,” then sank below the blue waters.

When I awoke, I was lying in a white bed, surrounded by the anxious faces of George, my mother, my friends and their mothers, and Nadia the Elder, who sat in a corner, clutching Patrick in her lap. Hanan’s mother stood clutching the crucifix around her neck, mumbling, “He’s brought them back, He’s brought them back.” My mother said nothing, but she held my hand so tightly and kissed my forehead so fervently that I thought perhaps she understood or, at least now, she would be willing to listen.

The New World

It was a small apartment, comprising the second and third stories of the row house; the first level was a flower shop, run by an Italian widow and her spinster daughter. On Siham’s first day in the apartment, they had brought up a coconut custard pie, slightly browned on top. It had also been her first week in America, so they gave her a red rose as well. Mrs. Donato spoke with a heavy accent, which reassured Siham about her own. But Carla, the daughter with the bullish, round eyes and the penciled eyebrows, emitted negative vibes that Siham could not explain.

The floors of the apartment were what Nader called “hardwood”—dark, polished slats of wood, side by side like slumbering children. She’d never seen floors like this; her parents’ home had marble floors in every room. In Jerusalem, all the homes, even those of the very poor, were made of stone, the most democratic of building supplies because there was plenty of it. People only used wood to create heat and build furniture. Whenever Nader was at work, Siham liked to put on her socks and slide across her new “hardwood” floors like an ice skater. She hoped Philadelphia had a real ice rink, because she’d never seen one of those either, except on TV.

Nader worked all day, five days a week, with his friend Michel, who owned a food truck and catered to the businesspeople in the city. They stood at 16th and Market Streets, crammed together in a metal cart, one frying the steaks and the other bagging the soft pretzels, from 6 A.M. until late in the evening. Nader always came home, smelling like grease, his thick mustache limp with the steam that filled up their cart. She missed him terribly during the day and offered to work with them, like Michel’s wife had done before their daughter Hanan had been born. But Nader had said that his wife was a lady and he didn’t want her to get dirty. “What about Michel’s wife?” she asked, but Nader said that she had lived in a refugee camp and was used to the dirt. “Plus she’s a little loose in her head,” he added.