“This means Hanan will be married very soon,” my mother said, laughing. “Before she knows what she can do with her freedom.”

It’s funny to think about this memory now. Hanan moved back to the States not long after that. She hasn’t gotten married yet, but she is very religious and serious now. Maybe because of what happened, maybe because of her visions, or maybe that’s the only way she can keep who she is in big, greedy America. As for Uncle Hamdi, maybe it’s just as well he isn’t coming. Too bad for Sitti, though. It would have been nice to have her excited by a scrubbed house and a visiting son.

23 KHADIJA Traditions

23KHADIJATraditions

My father is a traditional man, my mother says. That’s why he is so strict and why I’m not allowed to talk to boys and why he wants to have more children, even though we are already four—six, if you include Mina and Monia—and my mother can barely manage us as is.

“Like wild dogs,” she screams, when we are driving her more crazy than usual. “Like wild dogs with ticks in your asses.”

She doesn’t say this around my father, though, because he doesn’t think women should swear and he’ll slap her if she does.

Patsy came for dinner yesterday. Ma cooked musakhan, which is my very favorite so I couldn’t get mad. She made French fries too, which Patsy couldn’t believe.

“You actually made these French fries? They’re not frozen? You cut them up and everything?”

Ma smiled and nodded, though I didn’t think she understood what Patsy said. I started to explain in Arabic, but she interrupted me.

“I understand,” she said in English.

Patsy even liked the musakhan, though she didn’t eat that much, which is probably good because all of the olive oil and onions would give her a stomachache and then she’d hate me.

Then Patsy asked me over for dinner.

“No way,” my mother said.

“Why not?”

“I don’t know these people, that’s why not.”

I told Patsy what Ma had said and she suggested that Ma have her whole family over for dinner. Ma liked that idea. “We’ll have a barbecue, for the sake of their blue eyes.”

Her parents and brother came. Fortunately Auntie Maysoun came too. She speaks English fine and is very good at small talk. Baba was even cheerful.

Finally Ma let me go to Patsy’s house for dinner. It was like walking into a TV show.

They have a room where there’s a huge television and her father sat in front of it the whole time I was there. He barely said hi or anything, just sat in front of the huge screen and stared.