Two years ago, there were many more figures in black and more wailing. It was my mother’s death then that was being mourned, and, like today, people spoke of God and it being her time.

I was in my English class at my high school in Tucson and was called down to the principal’s office. It was spring and it smelled of orange blossoms. When I saw Uncle Hamdi waiting there, I knew before he spoke that my mother was dead, though it was not until much later that I learned it was a death predicted, a death that was slow and painful in coming. Later, I pieced it all together and could understand Aunt Fay’s hugging me some mornings and my mother’s long phone calls that had seemed so extravagant. No one told me how serious her condition was. Toward the end, I didn’t know that it was days, not years, she was seeing ahead of her, and so I did not go home, did not say good-bye properly.

Hamdi and Fay and I flew home to Jordan. That’s when I learned that this last bout with cancer had been diagnosed as fatal shortly before I came to America. My mother knew that she would die, and the only request she made of my father was that I be allowed to go to America.

While she was alive, my father respected her wishes, but not even two days into my mourning her death, he made it clear that he was going to be the one to make the decisions about my life from then on.

“Hala, it is time for you to be with your family, for you to finish your studies here,” he told me. I didn’t respond. I could not think of anything beyond my emptiness and aching. For days all I did was lie in bed and cry and think about my mother.

Just before Hamdi and Fay were to go back, my father came to me again. “Hala, it is time for you to be with your family. I’m sure you understand. You must think about your life now, and plan to put your roots here as a woman.”

A screen lifted from my eyes. I was to replace my mother with a husband. I was to stay in Jordan forever. Marry—engaged even before high school was over. Have children. Be someone else’s burden.

Maybe I spoke because I had learned how to move my tongue like an American. Maybe it was just my grief that made me lose control. Or anger.

“I am going back with Hamdi and Fay.”

“You will stay here. You have no more need for them.”