EVERY JUNE THROUGHOUT OUR CHILDHOOD, KARIM AND I were loaded onto a plane, our mother seated between us, our suitcases stowed in the plane’s underbelly, and hauled across the Atlantic Ocean to Jordan, not to return to the States until Labor Day weekend. We’d arrive exhausted at Queen Alia Airport, named after King Hussein’s third wife, who was, ironically, killed in a helicopter crash. We’d hire a taxi and ride along the airport road, past Bedouin tents and the occasional herd of goats, to Teta’s home in the Shmeisani neighborhood of Amman. Just like Karim and me, my cousin Reema and her sisters were hauled to Amman at the end of every school year. Reema had light brown hair and green eyes, and was five years older than me. She lived in Paris during the year and spoke with a French accent, which I and Karim both deemed to be exaggerated. One particular summer, her parents got two suites at the InterContinental, one for themselves and the other for Reema and her sisters. We spent all of June at the hotel pool; me, Reema, and our other cousin, Nour, occasionally allowing Karim to hang out with us. Everything I did was designed to win Reema’s approval. I drove the bumper car out of the ring and around the lobby at the hotel’s fun fair, until the manager dragged me back in by my ear. I knocked on room doors on every floor and ran away. When one door that I kept knocking on opened and a woman’s hand emerged, promptly smacking me across the face, the game ended. I tortured the pool staff; Reema bought itching powder and I was tasked with slipping it down the lifeguard’s shirt, which angered him so much that he beat me with a flip-flop. That time I cried and threatened to call child services, to which Nour, who lived in Amman year-round and was my main competitor for Reema’s attention, smirked and said, “Do you really think we have such things here?”