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grabbed my arm to prevent me.
    Finally I heard a man’s voice. I stiffened, and Dalia knew that someone had answered. I couldn’t just hang up. I froze, unable to speak, until Dalia nudged me and I managed to say the opening words of my script, but so formally that it must have sounded like a recorded message.
    “Hello, I’m calling from ND’s Salon. May I please speak to Jehan?” I asked, and held my breath.
    “Dalia, is that you?” The voice sounded nervous.
    “No, it’s Norma. Is this Michael?” I asked before I realized what I was saying. Then I felt my panic starting to mount.
    “Yes, it is. Norma, where’s Dalia? How is she? Can I speak with her?” he asked in one breath, before I cut in, feeling my courage increasing.
    Why should I tell you how she is? Or where she is?” I said,
    astonished to hear the words coming out of my mouth. After all, I had never been so direct, or frank, with a man before.
    “Norma, please, I’m begging you, put her on the phone. I haven’t been able to forget the look she gave me the last time I was at the salon. I can’t sleep. I can’t even work. I called in sick today, that’s why I’m here. Don’t worry, I’m alone. My mother went to the supermarket with my uncle. If Dalia’s there, just let me hear her voice.” Michael said. This was the sort of outpouring I could never, before then, have imagined being spoken by a man.
     
    “What about your wife?” I asked, bracing myself for his reply.
    “My what? I’m not married. Who said I was married?” He sounded genuinely shocked.
    “Well, no one, but if you’re not, then who is Jehan?”
    “Jehan’s my baby sister. You thought she was my wife?” He began to laugh, though it was a relieved and lovely rather than mocking laugh.
    “Well, what was I supposed to think? It was quite late when you came in and I assumed that your family, like mine, doesn’t let your sisters out at that hour.”
    “Oh, that is so funny. She’s not my wife. Now, please, where’s Dalia?”
    “She’s here next to me. We don’t have any appointments for the next hour, so I can put her on.”
    “Please, please do,” he urged.
    I tried to hand Dalia the phone, but she pushed it away, her face turning beet red. I covered the mouthpiece and whispered, “What are you doing? It’s Michael. He’s home alone and wants to talk to you.”
    “I can’t, Norma. I want to, but I can’t. You talk to him,” she said and moved out of the cord’s reach. I tried everything, even tossing a magazine at her from the counter in an attempt to get
    her to come to the phone, but she wouldn’t budge. I was trapped.
    \020”Michael, Dalia’s in the back doing something that really can’t wait. She should be done soon, though,” I said as I narrowed my eyes and curled my lips at her. “She asked me to talk to you until she’s finished. You don’t mind, do you?”
    “No, of course not. Norma, does Dalia say anything about me? I mean, I know we don’t know each very well, but has she ever even mentioned me?”
    “She’s mentioned you.”
    “What does she say? I mean … I really like her. I feel as if I’ve known her for a long time. I just want to talk to her, be with her, you know what I mean. It’s strange, I’ve seen thousands of women, but I’ve never felt anything like the emotions I felt when I first saw her three months ago.”
    Though I had no experience with romantic relationships, his clarity about his feelings didn’t strike me as unusual. Arab culture is so structured and formal, that men often choose their partners based on a glance. Michael’s instant attraction to Dalia seemed normal, even if this confessional flood did not. Could my brothers have said these things so freely? And it still nagged in my mind that he had waited three weeks. Why? Yet I knew that if Michael and Dalia had shared the same religion, his next step would have been to ask her father for her hand in marriage. They would then have had the