“Good-bye,” said a man’s voice from below and my eyes popped open. Am I dreaming, or do I see Abu Khuder walking down the path toward the village? And the sun is just barely up. I fold myself so no one will see me.

And then Lubna standing with her same purple flower, plucking off the petals; at the last one, she pulled it off and shoved it in her mouth. After a moment, she spat it on the ground and started yelling, “Poison, he hates you! Poison!”

Her mother ran outside and yelled and cursed. “Shame on you! Shame, shame on you!”

Dumb girl doesn’t even struggle, just falls into her mother’s arms. I am so sleepy and I have seen too much and now we have this kind of woman in Nawara. It is too much ugliness, but I am too old to get involved in these scandals. Do you know that she ruined that walk for me—how can I look for lovely views when I have to worry I may see a scandal occurring in front of my very eyes?

My mother says that talking about Lubna is like stopping to stare when you go by an accident. I see that more with Um Radwan and her fantasy world where her kids are perfect. When people talk to her, they beg for stories of her kids, just so they can laugh at the lies she believes. Soraya says that Radwan, the oldest, has a tiny jewelry booth in another store on the beach where crazy men and naked women spend their time, and that he lifts weights all day to make his muscles big. She says that Walid, the next son, tries so hard to be a white man that she can’t talk to him anymore. The next son is dead, and the youngest ... no one knows how he will turn out.

But people don’t laugh too loud, because they know somewhere in her has to be grief as large as anyone’s, and one day it is likely to come out.

9 KHADIJA School

9KHADIJASchool

I am the only one of my cousins who has year-round school.

Mr. Napolitano, my social studies teacher, makes fun of everyone’s name. He calls me DJ. It makes me laugh. He expects me to know more than the other kids because my parents are not American, though there are lots of other kids in the class who aren’t American themselves. I want to scream at him that I am just as American as anyone here.

Ma and I have the same argument, only she gets really mad: “You are Palestinian,” she says in Arabic.

“You are Palestinian,” I tell her in English. “I am American.”

“You are Palestinian and you should be proud of that.”