“Yes. But they’re gone now.”

  Hiba’s mom’s mouth tightened. “Yes.”

  “But Aunt Etaf is still there.”

  “Yes.”

  “And I want to visit her. Really, I just want to visit the country. I want to learn more about it. Half of me is from there.”

  Her mom took a gulp of water. “Well, technically, all of you is from here, honey. You were born here.”

  Hiba looked at her mom. “You know what I mean.”

  Her mom adjusted her glasses. “I don’t know. We had plans for this summer. You have your SAT-prep class.”

  “I can do the workbooks in Jordan.”

  “I’m not sure I can get that much time off work.”

  “I—I want to go on my own.”

  A long silence filled up the kitchen. Dad had always been the loudest of the three of them, so they were used to silence now. But this one was different. It was a waiting silence. Hiba held her breath.

  “Hiba,” her mom started to say. “I’m not sure about that. You don’t know Aunt Etaf that well. And you don’t know...”

  “How to speak Arabic?”

  “Well, yeah.”

  “Or anything really about Jordan?”

  She took another gulp of water. “I’m not sure that’s true.”

  Hiba crossed her arms and put her elbows on the table. Her mom hated elbows on the table.

  “Hiba,” her mom said.

  Hiba took her elbows off the table. But she wasn’t going to concede the other point. “I want to go, Mom. I think it would be good for me.”

  Her mom wiped the corner of her eyes. There weren’t any tears there. Maybe there were no tears left. Maybe it was just a reflex. “You won’t find your father there, sweetie. He’s gone.”

  “I know that, Mom. I’m... I just want to know more about where he was from. About where I’m from.”

  “You’re from here.”

  “I don’t look like I’m from here.”

  “I’m not sure what that is supposed to mean.”

  Hiba got up from the table. She didn’t want to fight with her mom. She didn’t know how to explain to her what it was like not to look like she belonged in the place she was from. She knew there was something wrong with that. She knew she was supposed to be working to fix that. But she felt too tired to want to fix that. Instead, she wanted to go somewhere new. Somewhere that might have some answers.

  Days passed, and Hiba didn’t bring it up again. She watched as the calendar inched closer and closer to summer, filling up with things like SAT-prep classes, tennis lessons, and babysitting gigs.

  Finally, she brought it up again.

  “I messaged Aunt Etaf,” Hiba said. Her mom had made baked chicken and rice. Hiba wasn’t sure if she’d used the rice Hiba had bought from the Middle Eastern Grocery Mart. She closed her eyes and took a bite. She felt like she should know by the taste, but she didn’t. She took this as a personal failing.

  “Oh, yeah? How is she?” her mom answered.

  “The rice is good.”

  “Thanks, sweetie.”

  “Aunt Etaf said I can come stay with her this summer. She said she’d even buy my plane ticket.”

  “She doesn’t have to buy your plane ticket. We can pay for it.”

  “Does that mean I can go?”

  “I said she doesn’t have to buy it,” Mom said. “Not that you can go.”

  “But can I go?”

  “Hiba.”

  “Mom.”

  “I don’t know what you’re hoping to accomplish.”

  “Aren’t you curious about where Dad grew up?”

  “Of course I am, Hiba. And that’s why we took a family trip there.”

  Hiba felt an unanticipated burst of anger bubble up in her chest. “You think one trip is good enough for 50 percent of my DNA? You think one trip is going to answer all those questions?” She paused, and shook her head. “I’m sorry, Mom. What I mean is—what I’m trying to say—” Hiba paused again. She didn’t know how to say what she was trying to say. “One trip wasn’t enough. Do you understand? Does that make sense?” Hiba’s voice cracked a bit as she delivered the last question.

  Her mom sighed. Hiba watched as the edges of her mother’s mouth moved up and down. She was carefully weighing what she would say next.

  “If it means that much to you, you can go. But only for three weeks. I don’t want you to miss your whole summer here. You need to do—”

  “American things?”

  “Hiba, come on. That’s not what I’m saying. It’s not fair to make me into the enemy.”

  “I know, Mom.” Hiba stood up from her chair and walked over to her mother. She draped her arms around her mom’s shoulders. “But really? I can go?”

  “Three weeks,” her mom said.

  Three weeks it was. Three weeks would have to be enough.

  Hiba started making plans right away. She messaged with Aunt Etaf frequently through social media and email. Aunt Etaf didn’t always respond. Sometimes she just sent a smiley face back. But Hiba felt comforted by that smiley face. She understood it. It meant her aunt was happy, that her aunt was looking forward to her visit.

  The rest of the school year breezed by. The cold rains of spring gave way to warmer and warmer days, mornings thick with sweaty fog and sparkly dew on the grass. She started to tell her friends about her summer plans. She apologized for her upcoming absence at pool parties and library SAT study sessions.

  “Three weeks? Don’t you think you’ll be bored?” Priya said.

  “No, but seriously, what about the SATs?” Madeline said.

  “You sound like my mom,” Hiba said, and then they let her be. But she could tell they all thought it was weird. Totally strange that Hiba wanted to pack up and leave for three weeks. To go to a country where she hardly knew anyone.

  “I do know someone,” Hiba said. “My aunt. I have lots of family there.”

  “Right,” Priya and Madeline had said in unison.

  Hiba’s mom helped her to get ready for the trip. She made Hiba practice over and over again what she was supposed to do when she got to the airport.

  “I’m not eight years old,” Hiba said.

  “You don’t speak Arabic,” her mother responded.

  Hiba was quiet after that. She went back to meticulously packing her suitcase. She rolled her shirts, jeans, and dresses. She picked two practical pairs of shoes and one pair that wasn’t so practical.

  Finally, the day came. Her mom drove her to the airport. They rode mostly in silence. At the curb, her mom stepped out of the car to help Hiba with her suitcase. She gave her a long hug. “Your dad would be proud of you.”

  “Thanks, Mom.”

  “I hope—” her mom started but didn’t finish.

  “Me, too,” Hiba said and hugged her mom again.

  She ate a whole bag of potato chips while she waited for her flight to London. She ate two more while she waited in Heathrow Airport, jet-lagged and antsy. She also downed a bottle of orange juice, figuring she should have some kind of nutrient other than potato chips.

  On the flight to Amman, she was seated next to a man in a suit. She never understood people who dressed up for airplane rides. It seemed like a relic of a long-lost time. Hiba herself was in sweatpants and an old hoodie. She’d aimed to be as close to pajamas as possible without actually wearing pajamas.

  She and the man didn’t talk for a long stretch of time. But when the meal service came, they accidentally bumped elbows, and the man turned to her to apologize, and then say hello. A backward order of things, the social dynamics of an airplane.

  “You’re going to Amman?” the man asked.

  Hiba thought this was a strange question. She was on the plane, after all. “Yes.”

  The man chewed one of the lukewarm microwaved vegetables. Hiba stared down at her own tray and wished she had another bag of potato chips. When she looked up, the man was staring at her again.

  “I’m visiting family,” Hiba said, answering the question he hadn’t asked.

  “You’re Jordanian?”

  “Half,” Hiba said. She hated this part. The dividing up of her identity into neat fractions, the quantifying of how much this and how much that.

  “But you’re American,” the man pressed. It was not a question.

  Hiba answered, anyway. “Yes. Jordanian American. My father was born in Amman.”

  “What’s he do now?”

  Hiba couldn’t bring herself to answer that question honestly. “He’s an engineer,” she said. He had been an engineer. It wasn’t a complete lie.

  “Very nice.” The man nodded his approval. “He must be very proud of you. Good for you to be interested in your culture.”

  The conversation trailed off after that. The airline attendant collected the trays. Both the man and Hiba pretended to sleep, uncomfortably squirming around in the confines of their small seats, Hiba occasionally sneaking a glance over her shoulder, straining to try and see out the window.

  By the time the plane landed, Hiba really had to pee. She hadn’t calculated how long the descent would be as they had to stay seated the entire time the plane was over Israeli airspace. She danced in place as she waited her turn to disembark and then rushed to the restroom. As she washed her hands, she stared at herself in the mirror and felt oddly pleased that at least she’d been able to find the bathroom. She imagined bragging about that to her dad, and then she started to laugh, which eventually gave way to tears. She splashed cold water on her face and headed to the carousel to pick up her suitcase.

  Once she had her suitcase, she followed the directions to the entry point where they’d check her visa. This was easy enough, since the signs were in Arabic as well as English. There was probably something wrong about that—colonialism and all—but she didn’t want to dwell on it too long because at this current moment, it was very opportune for her that the signs were, indeed, in English.

  When it was her turn, she stepped up to the counter and handed over her passport. Her heart rattled in her chest as she replayed the instructions her mother gave her. She felt like she should be hearing her father’s voice instead of her mother’s right then—and the guilt and confusion of that only made her heart rattle more.

  The man at the counter spoke to her in rapid Arabic.

  “I’m sorry,” Hiba said. “I don’t understand. I only speak English.”

  “But your name is Hiba Ahmed.”

  “Yes.”

  “Hiba Ahmed does not speak Arabic?”

  It’s only after the man smiled that she realized he was joking. He stamped her passport and handed it back. Her hands trembled a little as she put the passport back into her bag.

  “My dad never taught me,” she said. She did not wait for the man’s response. There was nothing he could possibly say.

  When she came down the escalator and moved into the public atrium of the airport, she was relieved to see her aunt’s face. The relief was more palpable than she’d anticipated. An anxiety she hadn’t realized was there began to uncoil inside of her.

  Her aunt smiled warmly as she caught sight of Hiba. She stretched her arms out wide in anticipation of a hug. When Hiba reached Aunt Etaf, she tumbled into the embrace. Aunt Etaf smelled like rosewater and sandalwood. She was dressed in nice dark jeans and a flowy blouse, her dark hair falling down her back in a braid.

  “It’s so good to see you, sweetheart,” Aunt Etaf said, releasing Hiba from the hug and kissing the top of her head. “I’m so glad you came.”

  So was a word that Aunt Etaf kept using. On the drive to her apartment, she remarked that it had been so hot lately, that there had been so much traffic. That work was so busy. That the city of Amman was changing so much.

  “You won’t believe it,” Aunt Etaf said. “We even have Dunkin’ Donuts now.” When Hiba didn’t respond immediately, Aunt Etaf repeated, “Dunkin’ Donuts,” sounding out each syllable like it would unlock something. It didn’t.

  Aunt Etaf did not use the word so when it came to talking about Hiba’s dad, though. She did not mention him at all. Hiba waited and waited. She waited during the car ride home from the airport, she waited during their first dinner together—a meal of carryout American pizza where Hiba awkwardly explained that she was happy to eat Arabic food and her aunt didn’t need to cater to American tastes. Hiba waited during their second meal, and third, and so on—meals of carryout, of shawarma sandwiches, or once, when Aunt Etaf got off early, she grilled up a fish and it was one of the most delicious things Hiba had ever tasted, the lemon juice that had been squeezed on top lingering in her mouth for the rest of the night. Hiba waited in the early hours of the morning when Aunt Etaf made them both tea before she left for work at her job in the marketing department of a real estate development firm, and Hiba waited when they sat together in her apartment’s garden and looked out over the twinkling hills of Amman.

  “Why do you think my dad left?” Hiba finally said one evening when she was tired of waiting—waiting for the so, waiting for anything, for everything.

  “Left?” Aunt Etaf took a long drag of her cigarette. They were both sitting on wrought-iron patio furniture. Hiba had a woven blanket wrapped around her shoulders. She still wasn’t used to how cool it got at night.

  “Left here. For America,” Hiba clarified. She felt a hunger rumble inside of her. Asking the one very small question had revved the appetite of curiosity that she had tried to keep in check. She didn’t want to be an annoying guest. She made her bed every day. She helped her aunt with the dishes. She entertained herself by walking the streets of her aunt’s neighborhood, smiling at strangers, hoping they would recognize her as a local and also terrified that they would, and then she would be revealed to be an American who didn’t speak a word of Arabic. She’d found comfort in seeing faces that looked like hers. Back home, she was a dot of brown in a sea of white.

  But there hadn’t been much to discover about her father in her aunt’s neighborhood. Her father hadn’t grown up in this fancy part of Amman. When her dad was little, the family had lived in a tiny apartment in downtown Amman on the east side of the city. Her aunt now lived on the fashionable west side. The buildings in this neighborhood made of slick white sandstone. The gardens curated, despite the lack of water. The streets freshly paved, new construction everywhere you turned. Street signs that no one local used but signified wealth and someone’s idea of progress.

  And no matter how many times Hiba took the same walk, no one ever talked to her. Part of her was relieved, of course, not to have to explain her lack of Arabic. But the other half couldn’t stop wondering why. What marked her so clearly as an outsider? Could they tell from the shape of her lips that she didn’t speak Arabic? Or was it her American sneakers? She kept walking, though, looking for an answer that she wasn’t sure could be found.

  When her aunt was in the apartment, Hiba studied what she could about her. Noticing the slow and steady way her aunt filled the teakettle each morning, the rhythmic way she wiped down the counter, the old Arabic song she hummed under her breath while pulling off her shoes that seemed both practical and stylish. Hiba wondered if her father had known that song. She couldn’t remember him ever humming it. She tried to imagine it coming out of his mouth, and then, sometimes, she would try to imagine it coming out of her mouth—her lips curling around those Arabic words.

  “Ah,” Aunt Etaf said. She considered Hiba’s question, the one about why her father had left Jordan for America. She twirled her cigarette between her fingers. Hiba had been subjected to a relentless education about the dangers of smoking and constantly resisted the urge to knock the cigarette out of her aunt’s hands. “I guess he was drawn there. He was searching for something, I think.”

  “Searching?” Hiba’s voice was soft. She could feel the explosion of questions erupting inside of her, a slight giddiness at getting close to something, and a fear of messing it all up by pushing her aunt too hard.

  “Yes.” Her aunt gestured at the air. “Searching. Looking? Isn’t that the right English word?”

  Aunt Etaf’s English was nearly perfect, but she frequently asked Hiba if she was using the right word. Hiba always reassured her that her vocabulary choices were correct.

  “Yes. I think it is. I was just wondering what he was searching for.”

  Her aunt smiled a little, traces of sadness in the corner of her eyes. “Ah. That’s the question.”

  “Do you mean like...money?”

  Aunt Etaf laughed, a sharp sound that made Hiba sit up straighter.

  “Like success? In America?” Hiba tried to explain what she meant, but the more she talked, the more her face warmed.

  “Do you think of America as success?”

  Hiba felt her face warm some more. “No. That’s not what I meant—I—”

  “I’m only kidding,” her aunt said, and laughed again, this time it was a more gentle sound. “It’s just very American, right? To think of America as success?” Aunt Etaf tipped her head back and laughed again. “But it’s also very Jordanian. We, too, think of America as success.”

  Hiba squirmed in her chair. “I just meant—my dad, it always seemed like he wanted, I don’t know—”

  “A big house?” Aunt Etaf offered. Another laugh.

  “Yes. And—”

  “He was searching, habibti. Like I said. Aren’t we all searching?”

  “But he’s gone now. Do you think he found it?”

  “Ah, ah, ah,” Aunt Etaf said. She made a clicking sound with her tongue. She leaned over and cupped Hiba’s face in her hands and kissed her forehead.

  Hiba wasn’t sure what to do. That didn’t feel like an answer. But her aunt didn’t say anything else. A silence settled around them. In the far distance, Hiba looked out over the hills of Amman, all the faint lights, twinkling in and out. She imagined all the people. She wondered about them, if they were searching for something, if they’d found it.

 

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