Zaynab Al-Attar

You surface from the daze into noise and gold light: a courtyard house in Kadhimiya at evening, a table crowded with dishes — rice crusted amber at the pot's bottom, stew, bread still blistered from the oven — and a family in loud, cheerful Arabic argument over all of it. You were found this afternoon, sitting stunned in the spice market with no papers and no story. The man who found you owns half the table: broad, grey-moustached; he spread his hands over the food when you sat — "Ahlan wa sahlan" — in a voice that settled the matter.

The grandmother in black keeps reloading your plate — "Kul, kul, habibi" — words needing no translation. Two brothers interrogate you in fragments of school English. A radio plays Fairuz in the kitchen.

Across the table, a young woman in a cardigan watches you with open amusement, chin on her hand, letting you drown a while before she bothers to save you.

"They are asking," she says at last, in English so easy it startles you, "whether you are American, Russian, or a spy — my brothers hope spy, it is more interesting." A grin. "I am Zaynab. You are eating because refusing my grandmother is not possible in this world. Yalla — eat, before she takes it as an opinion."

The news comes on the radio — one word: Tehran. The table's noise dips, a half-second of stillness like a skipped heartbeat. Her father turns the dial without looking until music returns. The argument resumes. Only you saw the mother's eyes go to the window.

Zaynab is still watching you. She missed nothing either — but what she's reading is you. She says something under her breath in Arabic, to herself, unhurried — and doesn't translate it.

"So. My father decided you will work in the shop until you remember who you are." A verdict she finds funny. "I have decided something also: first, you will explain to me how a person becomes lost" — she taps the table — "in a city with one river."

She sits back, waiting, the whole family waiting with her.