Some of the women who had heard his words continued dancing, pretending nothing had happened, but others stopped. Esmerelda cursed Khadija’s father in Arabic and said he was an old shoe with a hole in his head as well as one in his ass.

“Don’t pay any attention to him,” Esmerelda told Ginna. “He is crazy.”

“Ignore him,” cried Um Ghazi from the other side of the circle. “He treats his children worse than stray dogs, how can you take seriously the words of a man like that?”

Still, Ginna was furious. “What an asshole. How can he talk like that and no one says anything?”

Her curse words sounded very loud and naked and bad in front of those old ladies. “He is like that,” I told her. “Everyone is used to his outbursts. There’s nothing you can do, and it’s better to stay out of his way.”

“How can he be so horrible to that little girl?” she said, still talking loudly as we walked back to our table. “Soraya, I don’t want to be rude or to insult you, but I would like to leave. I am not comfortable here.”

Suddenly the humiliation that Khadija had on her face drenched me. I felt dirty, as if I was walking naked and people were throwing mud at me.

“Why did you stop dancing so soon?” my mother asked when we got to our table. “And what happened to Khadija? I saw her father dragging her off like a criminal.”

“He’s an asshole,” I told her.

“Haram alayki,” she spat. I knew she was thinking that I did something wrong again.

“Ginna and I are going home.”

“You don’t have to go,” Ginna said to me, and then turned to my mother. “I’m not feeling well, but you should stay and enjoy yourselves. I’ll get a cab.”

“Scandalous daughter,” my mother said to me in Arabic as Ginna picked up her purse and jacket. “You even manage to offend your own friends.” She got up and walked to another table.

I wanted to shout something at her, but I didn’t have the energy, so I said good-bye to Ginna and sat down in my mother’s seat, feeling as though someone had poured acid into my belly. All those ladies heard my uncle’s stupid words, but no one stopped him, like a wild dog allowed to bite everyone. The worst burn was Ginna and all those things she must be thinking about me.

I sat at the table for the rest of the evening, numb and burning first with anger then with an awful kind of dirty embarrassment. I hated my uncle more in that moment than I have ever hated anyone. I couldn’t think up words ugly enough to describe him. I hated my mother for blaming me and I hated Ginna for not staying.