On Christmas, my uncle Zaid and aunt Alia came over with their four girls, who, lined up in their matching red hijabs, looked like a set of Russian dolls. Ten years earlier, the oldest, Rania, had held my diapered bottom in her lap and fed me one by one the rubylike seeds of a pomegranate. She was older now, too pretty to look at directly, as one strains to look at the sun. On entering the kitchen she went straight over to my brother and said: BeAmrika el dunya maqluba! Amrika is America. Maqluba means upside down, and for this reason is also the name of a meat-and-rice dish that’s baked in a
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