She was allowed one suitcase, twenty-three kilograms, and one carry-on bag. Whatever they would fit, she could take. She stared at the piles of clothes and books and letters on the bed, the chair, the floor, at the seventeen years of items and living she had gathered.

In the mirror on the wall, shy breasts and spindly legs, white shirtdress whose collar and skirt—pleat by careful pleat—Mama had ironed. And insisted she travel in, over Sama’s protests. She would freeze on the plane, the pleats were sure to crease, but Sama Zayat would be the best-dressed immigrant to land in the US.

Best dressed, wide, wild doe-eyed. For a year, her eyes had been filled with anticipation and wonder: Harvard! America! An ebullition of sounds, textures, and aromas coloring living snapshots of lecture halls and libraries, walls of books and skyscrapers and redbrick buildings. And she, in that vision, landing in a white dress…

“Yalla, Sama? Ready?” Baba called from the living room. She was not ready.

Her eyes were not filled with wonder now. They were taking in the reflection of Damascus behind her. Roofs of naked cement, wires, antennas, minarets, domes, and satellite dishes at precarious angles. Gray and blue, sometimes red reservoirs, hopeful for rain. Not a chance. Not a breeze. A patch of sky, clear, in the window frame. Not a sign of rain.

Not a sign, beyond the pallor of her face, her dilated pupils, of the storm beating inside her ribs. In the mirror, the roof of her school, the old khan, Najla’s bedroom across the street, on the second floor. By the bed, passport propped like a shrine; inside it, a visa.

No, she was not ready. She had said her goodbyes, had dinner, had not packed, had only a few hours until departure. She should not have waited till the last minute.

Mama had abruptly announced she couldn’t help her pack. There was too much to do in the kitchen, which was, presently, quiet. Mama, for dinner, had made every single one of Sama’s favorite dishes: labneh; mana’eesh, toasted on the gas stove, sesame sparkling in a glistening sea of zaatar and olive oil; tabbouleh; loubieh bi zeit; and gloriously creamy, syrupy, ashta-stuffed atayef. Sama had eaten four.

One loved as one knew how. Mama had offered food, and Sama, that night, had eaten plate after plate because she loved her mother. She had eaten to make amends to her mother for leaving, leaving so easily, leaving her in the kitchen to wash and dry the dishes. One could love endlessly, but one could also only love as one could; Sama could not stay, and Mama could no longer bring herself to enter the bedroom.

She wasn’t scared. She was not scared. She was simply not ready. She had simply eaten one too many ashta atayef.

Baba entered her room then, looking suspiciously meek, carrying a suspiciously heavy basket.

“What is that?” she asked sharply.

“Zaatar, dried figs, apricots,” he recited, looking in. Continued: “Nuts, rose water, two boxes of karabeej… Your mother knows how much you like them…”

The fear, just then, exploded into a tumultuous apogee.

“Baba! I have no room for all of this!”

“Take it up with your mother.”

“I hate dried fruit! She knows that!”

“Dried fruit is good for you! You need fruit.”

“They have fruit in America!”

But there was more! He unloaded the basket’s remaining contents: Mama’s cookbook, Mama’s rosary, Mama’s…

She burst into tears. She had only one suitcase. She was only seventeen. She had a terrible, paralyzing ache in her stomach. She had made a mistake. She could not stop crying, could not pack, could not go to America.

“There are rules, Baba! I only have twenty-three kilograms!”

It wouldn’t fit, her life: the books and dresses, scarves, diaries, faces that made up her past. Mama’s lapis earrings. Baba, how old would he be when she saw him next? The gaping, terrifying emptiness outside…

Without warning, Baba crossed the enormous space between them; a few steps, three at most, the length of outstretched arms. He took her in his, and she cried in his shirt, gulping in his cologne, lemon and verbena, memorizing it. Soaking up the heat emanating from his chest. He held her till her heartbeat paced itself to his, then pulled away and said:

“It’s okay, ya zghireh.”

Little one.

“It will fit.”

And to her surprise, everything did. All her seventeen years, and the karabeej and zaatar, the rosary. She left the rose water. She would wear the earrings. Baba zipped the suitcase shut. To be relieved or sad that this was all of it, her life in her homeland…

Mama said goodbye at the door, though she had her purse in her hands.

“I’ll miss you,” Sama cried.

“Do you have everything?”

“Yes, Mama.”

From her purse, she took a wad of dollar bills held together by a fraying green rubber band. She shoved it into her daughter’s hand. “Have something to eat when you arrive.” Then she turned away and left, remembering, suddenly, something she had left on the stove.

Pity the abandoned. To leave is to leave behind. Things and people. Take. Off. Baba carried the twenty-three kilograms. Sama followed.