He came when he was nineteen or twenty, or something, and he went to work during the day and part of the evening, and he slept in our house. That was his life. Boring. I liked having him around, because he was so normal and nice and not gossipy or obnoxious like some of our relatives. Sometimes he would give money to my mother to help out with the household expenses, which of course she loved—even though we were not suffering for money. She would save it for him and buy him clothes, or cologne, or things she thought he needed, because he would never buy anything for himself. (“That’s because his mother spoiled him so much, he didn’t know how to buy himself anything,” my mother explained.) Sometimes he would make the biggest fuss, like if my mother got him some fancy shirt or something, and she would have to lie and say she got it for Dad or for Tariq on sale, that it didn’t fit them, and that she couldn’t return it. He was so weird about money. My mother used to beg me to be like him, even if it was just for a week.

Every week when he was paid, he put all but twenty dollars into a bank account. “This is for the future,” he would tell us.

My dad would argue constantly with Sameer. “Supposing you die tomorrow?” he would say.

“Only God knows what is in store for us. I am making the best effort I can for the sake of my future. Besides, I don’t plan to live like this until I’m eighty, just until I have enough saved up to go home and marry.”

Everyone teased him about his saving, and about his trusting banks to keep his money, and for being so serious, but really everyone liked Sameer and respected him for his determination—especially my dad, which meant a lot to him since his own dad died when he was young. My dad is a really hard worker, in a kind of different way, but they respected each other.

Five years after he started working in the grocery store and in Dad’s businesses, Sameer moved out of our house, put a down payment on a house—a house here in Los Angeles!—and returned to Nawara with his savings to look for a bride.

Wild. Some men can’t do that even if they have been working here all their lives.