I feel scared. My cousin seems very big. I look back down to see the pretty shell under the water, but all I see is swirling.

“Hey! We can take those!” He points to the hotel next to ours. In front are orange, green, blue, and yellow dolphins pulled up on the hot sand. “Paddleboats. Come on, little girl, let’s go.”

Sharif pushes our dolphin away from the beach. We pedal slowly because I cannot move my legs as fast as he can. In front of us are two huge cargo ships, behind us is the beach, and to the right is Palestine. I think that Saudi Arabia is behind the ships.

I stop pedaling and look over the side. The water is deep but I can see the bottom clearly and there is a green and white soda can lying on the sand beneath. We pedal more and I feel very small. “Can we go look at those ships? Maybe they have treasures.”

“No, those are commercial ships.”

“What’s on them?”

“There could be anything. Like cars or canned food or refrigerators or even frozen Australian meat.”

The ships look huge and I want to be back in the water where I can stand up and see my toes.

“I suppose we could see what that beach over there is like.” He is looking to the left.

It looks the same as our beach but with more trees and no hotels. “Okay.” I am tired of pedaling.

“Why did the Hebronite leave the door to the bathroom open?” he asks.

“I don’t know,” I say, even though my brother has told this joke a hundred times.

“So no one would watch him through the keyhole.” He slaps his leg and throws back his head, like this is the funniest thing he ever heard. I feel happy to be in the middle of the sea with this big cousin of mine and his silly jokes.

He stops pedaling. “You know, little Hala, that coast looks the same except that there are more trees and the sand is whiter.”

“We could go to Saudi Arabia.”

“Too hot. Too conservative.”

“Let’s go in the other direction so our faces get warm,” I say. We turn around.

A motorboat zooms by and makes a big wave and I get scared because I think our orange dolphin will turn over. Just when the sea becomes like a sheet, another motorboat tries to scare the dolphin, only this one has guns and two soldiers. We don’t move until their wave is gone and the dolphin has stopped tipping from side to side. I want to cry, but I look at Sharif. He is sitting up very straight, as if he is challenging the sun.

He squints. “Do you still want to go home?”