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Nora had earned a bachelor’s degree at a small university in the United States, and she filled my ears with stories about the professors she missed, nights out trolling the clubs, her visits to New York City. She had an imprint of America on her—not the menacing America in fatigues and boots, but the America that Americans know instinctively, the open, eager, optimistic one.

Nora was in her mid-twenties then but she seemed even younger. She moved slowly, looking and listening and drawing everything in to someplace deep and out of reach. She seemed to have no convictions, but in a good way, in a young, deciding way, and she met all people and scenes with flat frankness, dutifully picking up more material to put on her scales, to weigh out her beliefs, as if this were a lifelong project, as if it might take decades. She asked questions about everything, and she read religiously, especially American coverage of the Middle East. She was always dressed expensively, her makeup carefully done. Her family had money.

“Okay, where do you want to go?” Very serious all of a sudden, fiddling with the radio. Businesslike. That made me laugh. Whenever I laughed, she laughed. I could feel the weight slipping off—the airports and strangers and long, sleepless nights. I was so often with people who made me nervous, and now I laughed with relief, she laughed for company, we’d laugh constantly. We’d trade stories about what we’d been up to. Telling Nora about things, they didn’t seem so bad.

“What are the choices?”

“Maybe Italian. There’s a new place. Or the Blue Fig, you know that. Or we can have sushi.”

“Is the sushi good?”

“Yes, it’s very good.”

“Then I say sushi.”

“There’s one thing, though, Megan. You might think it’s strange.”

“What?” I was laughing already.

“It’s at the Best Western!”

“The Best Western!”

“But I swear, it’s good, you’ll see. If you think it’s bad we’ll leave.”

“I’m sure it’s great.” Laughing from low in my seat.

Through the yellow light of a cramped lobby to a creaking elevator that pushes us up. The doors open and we hear tinkling china, braided voices. Every wall is a great window. Amman is spread at our feet, a winking, bejeweled carpet. Fish gleams under glass.

“What do you think, is it all right?”

“It’s all right.”

Late one sticky summer night, Nora and I walked through Abdoun Circle, looking for ice cream. At this hour the shops and cafés were crammed with Kuwaitis, Emiratis, and Saudis. They shrank from the heat of day; it was never too late for them to pace the streets, thobes swishing around their legs, fidgeting endlessly with their red-checked headdresses and unfathomable cell phones. They rented luxury cars and choked the roads with late-night traffic. Cigarettes dangled into the dark; hubcaps gleamed wicked under the streetlights; 50 Cent and Amr Diab churned in the desert air. Some of them drove all the way here from Saudi Arabia or Qatar. These were not the richest Gulf Arabs, because if they had serious oil money, or the kind of influence known as wasta, they’d be in Europe. But they were plenty rich all the same, and they came every year to hide from the Persian Gulf summer in the cooler places—Cairo, Damascus, Beirut, or Amman. They are an invasion and the locals complain, but only behind their backs, because you can’t insult their cash. In Egypt I’d had my ass squeezed in an elevator, with a hissed “What are you doing tonight?” I’d watched a drunken Saudi yank sadistically on the testicles of the emaciated and crumbling singer at a cheap, smoky bellydance club, and the guy was so broke and beholden he just doubled over and smiled, sickly, as his cracked voice creaked on. They sat in horse-drawn carriages and threw firecrackers at the poor Egyptian kids who hung out on the bridges over the Nile, watching them scatter and screaming with laughter.

We passed a pair of twenty-something Saudi guys, wandering along in their robes. As soon as we were out of earshot, Nora turned her face to me in astonishment.

“Do you know what they