He came home for the first time a few years later. I remember that day very clearly. I was at the window when I saw a car driving slowly by with lots of people following it—like ants on a piece of raw meat—so I came down and joined the crowd to see who it was. I remember as if it was yesterday, when Karim stopped in front of the house and got out of the car in the finest clothes I have ever seen, as if to announce his prosperity to every one of us poor villagers he had left behind. I am ashamed to say that I, along with most of the village, was very impressed.

Well, it turned out he had come for a bride.

Karim has returned to Nawara almost every year since then, usually with Buthayna and his increasing lot of children in tow. Rumors preceded him about the source of his money, but no one said anything because he always appeared in a whirlwind of generosity. He and his wife carried expensive suitcases filled with the finest of America’s goods, bedspreads, deodorants, aspirin, and batteries, and his wallet was stuffed with dollars as fresh and green as the fields he had left. There was always enough to go around too, and it seemed that he was living up to his name.

Then Karim returned again, briefly, with a fat wad of bills with which he intended to endow a mosque. We were ecstatic, less for the mosque itself than for the evidence that once our men went to America, it did not mean that they left forever our humble village of Nawara. It was like proof to the Israelis that we could not be vanquished: we also had American dollars being channeled in to turn our dirt roads to tar and our rubble to mosques.

That spring morning just before dawn, most us were fast asleep, when suddenly “ALLAHU AKBAR” tore through the silent air once, and then again “ALLAHU AKBAR.”

It was indeed the mosque that Karim Sulayman had built, with its grand minaret and four speakers, that had wakened me.

That day, our village was bursting with chatter of the great mosque of Karim Sulayman. Everywhere I went, someone had something to say about it.

“Indeed he is a generous man. And he built the mosque so near the center of the village that we can all reach it without the strain of walking up hills and tripping over rocks. It is a mosque for the old as well as for the young ... truly a thoughtful man,” said one person.

“The minaret he built reaches up toward God. It is as impressive as if it were in one of our large and great cities, like Jerusalem or Cairo,” added another, smiling.

“He brought with him the technology of America and gave his minaret four large and powerful speakers to call the faithful from all corners of the village.”