“You are a foolish girl,” says Latifa. “Without the belt around it you look fat or pregnant and sloppy.”

But my mother was several inches shorter than I am. If I wear the belt, the dress comes to the middle of my shin, which is impossibly short. I am not wearing the belt.

And so it went. Sharif came with a formal good-bye for me and a tiny envelope he stuck in my hand.

“Go off to your glittery America, rejoice in its prosperity, while our own country can be bought and sold,” he said with a wink.

I didn’t understand him until after he left and I opened the envelope: a gold charm of Palestine. I put it on my necklace. Now, on the plane, I run my fingers along the edges and wonder if he has already started making his wedding plans.

I am not at all nervous on this flight. There is no mystery and no worrying. No one is expecting a face I cannot offer. No, this flight is quiet. Two seats and no one to join me, to glare at me as I ache for Sharif. People do walk by and look at me strangely. Too young a girl with too short hair for that roza (a thobe, in their minds). I wonder if they think I am a foreigner.

I am starting over, starting over.

My mother is always with me. My father has not abandoned me, and Sharif has introduced my heart to something wonderful.

It is time to start something new, and something old, not to fix something unfinished. I will watch just the right way, to see the underside of things, the thinking things and the forgetting things, as my mother used to say. And then I will start university, and I will not come back in disgrace.

34 MAWAL Safe

34MAWAL Safe

A day like today is safe safe, like a mother’s hand when it’s not even considering slapping you even though you took some of her portion of the meat as well as your own. Gray enough you can’t look naked, loud enough that no one can hear your stomach rumble because you didn’t actually eat all that food but instead fed it to the stray dogs that hang around your house unless someone throws rocks at them.

Run your fingers against trees and bushes and grasses and fruits. They are like your neighbors, some prickly, some smooth, some little and hard, others soft and inviting.

“Everything has a corollary in nature,” one of my teachers, Mr. Fayiz, always said. I can’t see him running his fingers across tree trunks and through leaves, though one time I did see him run his fingers through Hiyam’s hair.