The Bug swerved, though there was nothing to steer clear of, and I nearly fell off the seat.
“We’re here,” you said. “Look.”
I sat up and fingered my cheek, where the seat cushion’s patterned vinyl had left an imprint. I knelt at the window and pressed five fingertips against the glass. In the distance, Lake Erie shook its brown-gray fists against the color-leeched sky. We sputtered to the front gate.
You parked across two parking spaces, turned the ignition off, and got out, letting a frigid draft into the warm bubble of the car.
I put my whole face against the glass, felt the pressure against the bones of my nose and forehead. You walked past the ticket booths and up to a big gray gate. You shook the padlock and grabbed the bars of the gate, like a prisoner trying to break out. You walked back to the car, your mouth a straight line, your face a locked gate. Your hair had frizzed, and you held it behind your head with one hand. You wore jeans and a denim shirt buttoned to your neck, and sneakers that slid along the icy ground. You righted yourself, bent your knees, and held your arms like a surfer, gliding till you hit the car with your hip to stop yourself. You laughed, like you couldn’t help yourself—it was funny, and you were going to laugh.
The laugh made me feel safe, and the memory of that feeling makes me realize how scared I was, how I must have known something was wrong.
You got inside the car, bringing the cold air with you. I crossed my arms tightly for warmth. You chewed your thumbnail for a minute, put both hands on the steering wheel. You didn’t start the car.
“We can’t have the heater, Mama?”
You faced the gates, relaxed and patient. As though you expected someone to come out at any minute and invite us in.
“I guess it’s closed,” you said.
You rested your forehead against the steering wheel, like you were so, so tired.
“I’m hungry, Mama.”
My words animated you. You lifted your head slowly, at the same time reaching into a paper shopping bag on the passenger seat and taking out a plastic baggie of Fritos.
Accepting that bag meant giving up on my birthday. I didn’t want to. I put as much perkiness into my voice as I could. “I know! Let’s go to McDonald’s.”
You put the Fritos back and rummaged around for another baggie. “Grapes?” Like you’d prepared for a picnic.
You put the car into gear and swung back the way we had come. I climbed into the passenger seat, and you didn’t stop me. Tapping the window with four fingers, I mouthed “Goodbye” to the roller coasters’ prehistoric skeletons, the giant eye of the Ferris wheel, and the rocky shores of the lake.
The wooded back road leading from the amusement park was dark with mist, which hung like a curtain dividing where we’d been from where we were going.
“When are we home?” I said. And when you didn’t reply, “When are we home, Mama?” As though the addition of that one word might make you answer.
Somewhere in your silence, I must have heard how alone we were.
“How will Baba know what number to call us?”
“Your father is dead,” you said.
That was the first of many times you told me that lie. You insisted, many years later, that you never told me he was dead. But you did. You tried to kill my memory of him.
Of course, I believed you.
SUITABLE GIRLS
1975–1985
YA‘QUB’S BLINDNESS
From the first Saturday afternoon Muneer hears “This number is no longer in service,” it takes months to understand Hanadi is truly missing. Still, he knows something is different, wronger than usual. Saeedah has ignored his calls for weeks, and whenever he dials, his stomach clenches tighter with each ring. Now, Saeedah and Hanadi aren’t there. His stomach has twisted so tight, he could pull it through a ring. Kneeling in his mother’s sitting room after lunch has been cleared from the floor, with the ceiling fan spinning overhead, he swallows the bile in his throat and calls Saeedah’s sister Randah.
Groggy from her afternoon nap, Randah swears to God she knows of no other number and asks if he’s sure.
“Try it.” His voice leaves his body calmer than he expects.
She calls him back.
“Wallahi, you’re right. I’ll try again tomorrow.”
In a week, the number remains disconnected, and Randah has not heard from Saeedah.
“I’m sure they will call soon.” She sounds uncertain.
“Has she called your parents?”
“No, they’re worried. We’re worried.”
Muneer is holding the handset up for Bandar to hear. They huddle close and strain to listen to the tinny voice. He needs his brother as his witness.
“She’s lying,” Bandar says when the call is done. “How could Saeedah’s father not know where they are? Go see him.”
Muneer slams his fist into a cushion. How does a father lose his daughter as though she were a pair of socks under a bed, a toothbrush left behind in a hotel? No one asks the question out loud, but Muneer knows they think it, too. When his mother rails against Saeedah—“God damn that girl to hell”—and frets about her granddaughter surrounded by unbelievers in an unbelieving country and wonders why Saeedah would not want to come home where Hanadi could be near her father until she is old enough to live with him at age seven, he hears unspoken criticism of his own actions. Everything is in God’s hands, but Muneer did not do enough to bring his daughter home.
Hanadi could be anywhere—anywhere in the States, anywhere in the world. She might be here in Jidda, hidden by her other family behind the mirrored windows of an apartment, though he doubts Aunt Faizah would be that bold.
Soon, his family’s advice descends on him like Jidda rain—always a downpour.
Bandar wants to interrogate Saeedah’s parents and her sisters until they confess to knowing where she is.
Salem offers to call the minister of the exterior. “I gave him the answers to our mathematics final in high school,” Salem says. “He owes me a favor.”
But what can the minister of the exterior do, says Lujayn. “You’re better off calling the American Embassy. It’s America’s fault a mother and daughter can disappear. Why would a Jidda girl do such a thing?”
Bandar, on thinking longer, advises Muneer to hire an American lawyer and a private investigator. A few days later, he tells Muneer to fly to the States to look for Hanadi himself.
Mama says simply, “Make your family whole.”
So much advice from so many people. It will be a full-time job to find his daughter. It will be expensive. His journalist’s wages at Akhbar al-’Urus, the paper his high school friend Imad started to rival al-Sharqiyah and other bastions of Saudi journalism, are good but not lavish. Like his brothers, he helps support their mother. It was his idea to pay a double share on her rent because he lives with her. His brothers agreed reluctantly, and he has to insist monthly when the rent is due. The building is new, but the gated lift is rickety and smells like stray cats. His sisters sew curtains for the flat on their foot-powered sewing machine. On Fridays, he goes to prayer with his brothers and to the halaqah afterward for cartons of fruits and vegetables. They split up the contents in his mother’s small tiled kitchen, a share for each sibling with a family, a share for Muneer and Mama and Lujayn, the last unmarried sister. His brothers refuse to take his money, insisting on paying for him and the women. Accepting gifts hurts his pride, but he’s not the oldest brother, so his pride can withstand a little pain. He saves his money at the national bank, for a future trip to find his daughter in America.