My father exhales heavily. “My wife is dead, may God have mercy on her. She was a good woman and no matter how many kind words I tell myself, I will always bear the burden of her death for not sending her abroad for treatment.”

“Nonsense, Abu Jalal. It was God’s will that her time on this earth of His had ended.”

My father continues. “My failure is my son, Abu Mustafa. As you well know, my only son, Jalal, who from the day he was born has been the light of my eye, has just married a very distant relation on his mother’s side. This girl who, granted, seems like a good girl and has the stamp of approval from Huda’s sister, is a stranger to all of us. All his life he has been in Jordan. He only visited his mother’s village three times. Yet his allegiance is to Nawara, to Palestine, not here. How can this be when his father is Jordanian and he has always lived here? It should not be like this. He did not ask me, he informed me. ‘Father, I am going to marry a girl from Mama’s village. Auntie Sahar has already found someone.’ Can you imagine such a thing?”

“Times are changing, Abu Jalal.”

I hear my father get up and then settle into the leather couch with a weary sigh. “My failures are also my daughters, Abu Mustafa, my dearest friend. My eldest daughter, Latifa, is decaying and causing those around her to decay with each breath she takes, while she spends her days smoking and reading her future in the bottom of a coffee cup. My middle daughter, Tihani, is in the Gulf, married to a reasonable man who has not divorced her even though it has been five years and she has not borne him a child. And my youngest daughter, Hala, is a stranger to me. She has learned to live in another culture and I no longer know what to do with her.”

I feel my heart speed up when he says my name. Heavy words, decision words, are coming; I am sure of it.

“I saw Hala when she first came. She really is different from the rest! How does she like living with her uncle?”

“Very much, it seems, though she has not told me this. Two months she has been here and I really have no idea what to do with her, so I am going to put her on a plane back to the States. Hala is a kind girl and, you are right, very different from the others. She has her mother’s spirit. I was prepared to marry her to someone—a relative—a very good man who would have been a good match for her, but imagine this: he refused me.”

“What did he say was wrong with her?”