Next to me a diabetic Syrian woman has talked nonstop since our Royal Jordanian flight left LAX. Her body fills her seat and creeps into mine as well. Hennaed tendrils sneak from beneath her flowered scarf. She has lived in Los Angeles for thirty years and says that she does not speak a word of English.

“Why should I bother?” she shouts, so close to me that I taste her egg breath.

“You might enjoy it more,” I suggest, trying not to inhale.

“Nothing to enjoy.”

“Then why do you stay?”

“My children and grandchildren are there.” She glares at me and clutches a cardboard box with pictures of hypodermic needles. “Can you please have a woman from the plane come here.”

I pull my scratchy, gray shoulders up so they almost reach my neck, stretch my arm up, and push the button for the stewardess.

A slender, manicured finger pushes the button off and green eyes peer into mine. “Yes?”

The Syrian woman sits silently.

“She wanted me to ring for you,” I say.

“What do you need, Auntie?” asks the stewardess, whose name tag reads “Nadia.”

“I want you to know that I have to take these every day,” she says, holding up the box of needles. “I don’t know how to do it, so could you please get the plane’s doctor to come and give me an injection.” She smiles, exposing two gold teeth.

We stare at her. Nadia looks at me.

“We just met now,” I say in English in case she thinks we are related.

“Let me see if I can find a doctor for you,” she says.

The Syrian woman faces forward and says in a loud voice to no one in particular, “I have to go to the bathroom.”

“Well, you should go then. They’re very close.” I point to the lavatories, just two rows away.

“I couldn’t set foot in such a place!”

“Why not?”

“They’re filled with the smell of dirty pigs.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“You would use the same toilet, breathe the same air, as a strange man? I’d prefer exploding.”

The Syrian woman stares at my scoops. I turn away.

It is early evening when the plane lands, the sun a dull orange on the runway. I stare out the window, brush my hair for the third time, and rub some of the shininess from my face.

I have come back to Jordan to visit my dying grandmother—my father’s mother—one last time. I have been living with my mother’s brother, Hamdi, and his American wife, Fay, in the United States for three years now.

“It’s time for you to see your father,” my uncle told me in the airport. “Stay with him for as long as you like and come back when you are ready. You are always welcome here.”