Lots of things don’t make sense. First, Suad says she was sitting on the stoop outside when Sameer came. She would never sit outside for no reason, and she wasn’t waiting for him because she didn’t know he was coming home that early. Second, if you were a mugger and saw a girl sitting on a stoop wearing gold bracelets up to her elbows, wouldn’t you choose her to rob before you robbed some guy who didn’t look like he had a lot of money? Besides, the police say that most muggers are drug addicts. If Suad couldn’t see his face because of the hood, chances are neither could Sameer, since he came behind him, so why would a mugger murder someone who couldn’t identify him? Stab him fourteen times? In broad daylight? The guy must have been covered in blood and someone would have had to notice. Third: Sameer would not argue; Sameer would hand over the money. Maybe if Suad had said that the mugger got mad because Sameer only had ten dollars, maybe then I wouldn’t think it so weird. He was so crazy over her that he would have cut off his hand and given it to the guy before he risked her safety.

Ma thinks I’m crazy, but I’m sure she had a lover. That would explain her sexy nightgown that night. Maybe she really had been “entertaining.” And maybe she was entertaining the day Sameer was killed—maybe Sameer caught them. She had nothing to keep her in the house. No children, no tough husband, no close relatives. Just Suad and this sleazy city. She could have been doing anything.

After Sameer’s body was sent home, Suad sold the house and moved in with her aunt and uncle in Las Vegas, of all places. She refused to go home—not even for the burial of her husband. Haram. What could be more shameful than that?

So that is what you get for Working Your Ass Off and then trying to be traditional.

13 MAWAL America

13MAWALAmerica

You would think our village was in love with America with all the people who have left, like America is the best relative in the world that everyone has to visit. America is more like a greedy neighbor who takes the best out of you and leaves you feeling empty.

After what happened to Auntie Huda, Sitti hated America, even as she watched all her other children go off and live there.

“No matter what our difficulties, it is better here,” she would always say. No one would disagree either, except maybe Uncle Hamdi, “who can’t sit still when he comes home. Walks around like he has worms in his toes.”

Sitti would always take the worst stories and make them true for everyone. “Are we to mourn the death of our children in America just like Um Radwan? God keep such hardships far from us.”