The sun is now just barely visible behind the mountains. A few taxis idle in the parking lot. I get into one and head toward Jerusalem, where I’ll catch a bus with specially designated license plates that will take me to the West Bank.

•

I see everyone during the four days of Azza. On the final day, we pile into cars and drive from Ramallah to Nablus. As we sit in mourning and receive guests who’ve traveled through numerous checkpoints to pay their respects to my grandmother, laughter fills the air. We tell stories about the time she thought she’d gone blind while driving, only to realize she’d entered a tunnel with her sunglasses on; the time she stayed up all night playing the slots in Atlantic City, then slept on the floor of our shared hotel room to avoid waking us; the time she bought six-inch patent leather heels at age seventy-three. My mother and I grow close again, we fall into old patterns, we choose to momentarily forget the tensions between us. What does any of it matter in the face of nonexistence? Both Karim and I have come from New York to be with her, and it feels good to reestablish intimacy. It feels good to be a family.

Two months later, I take a bus from New York to Washington to see my mother, who’s just returned from overseas after settling all of Teta’s affairs. Anouk and I plan to move in together soon, and it’s time to tell my mother about her, as much as I’ve resisted doing so.

I pick up the photos from the trip, and as I look through them later that afternoon, it takes me a moment to remember how shots of ceiling pipes and cinder block have ended up among them. Then I come to her photo. I can only discern a vague figure and the outline of sunglasses resting atop her head. But her face has been obscured by the flash, rendering her indistinguishable from any other.

MY MOTHER RUNS OUT OF THE LIVING ROOM OF HER apartment and returns with a Qur’an. She sits down beside me on the couch and holds the book close to her face, almost touching her cheekbone. Her mid-calf-length nightgown is bunched up around her thighs, unintentionally tucked into her underwear. She breathes deeply. Sweat drips from her temples.

“I am a conservative, religious woman,” she says. She has never shown signs of being one.

I’ve just told her the truth about Anouk. Until now, I’ve called her Adam.

“How many people know?” My mother’s voice gets increasingly louder and more adamant, her body quivering. “How many people are laughing at me right now?”

Everyone knows. “Mom, I—”