I know she made Sameer happy. He would say that he knew God had granted him a lot and he knew there was hard work ahead of him, but he also knew he was going in the right direction, which I guess is how it was that he managed to ignore the signs of disaster that wandered in front of him.

Sameer and Suad had been married for three years—he had been in this country for eight—when he really began talking to my mother, and sometimes me when Dad was not around. I think he thought my dad would think it was unmanly that he was asking a woman how he should deal with his wife.

He talked about everything, like how they hardly ever had sex and that’s why there were no children on the way. Of course, she cooked his meals, but usually she wouldn’t wait up for him anymore and he ate alone.

Sometimes he would come to our house just to ask my mother for advice. He worried that Suad was unhappy because she still had not gotten pregnant. He thought that perhaps this was why she was so distant. He tried to comfort her, but it seemed that whatever he did irritated her, and so he tried to keep quiet, to leave her alone if that’s what she wanted. From everything I heard him say, I figured that Suad was making fun of him, like she had a private joke going.

One night, he came home after they closed the grocery. (Sameer and Tariq would stand guard for Dad while he carried out the day’s cash. They brought the cars right up to the front door and stood facing the street, their hands on their guns, until Hussein was safely in his Cutlass and drove away. They have to do that every night. If someone were to come along and rob them, they would get thousands of dollars.)

So he’s telling Ma how every once in a while Suad waited up for him, maybe hoping for some affection, maybe just wanting a little company. Sameer tried to be chatty with her on these occasions, but usually he had eyes for nothing except dinner and bed. Sometimes if Suad was awake when he came home, she would rub his feet or his back.

So that night he walked through the door at 10:45 just like always. He was tired and had an odd, empty feeling, like at the store after all those people have left and there’s no one left to thank you for being the only ones brave enough to open a grocery store in that neighborhood. Poor guy, he was probably starting to see life for what it was and to realize that no grand prizes were around the corner waiting for him.