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  “Just like your mother and her friends were then, these students are a new generation of immigrants hungry for a place to come together,” Giselle explained.

  “Arabs are always together,” Elias argued. “They don’t know how to be alone. The point is to bring them together to talk about something more important than their neighbors’ affairs.”

  “But we’re catching a trend,” Zade said.

  Catching a trend was exactly how Giselle had pitched to it to him the night before, when she had also defined commerce for him. They were walking home from an Arab-American Anti-Discrimination Committee gala dinner at which both Nadia and Elias were speakers.

  On the Key Bridge, Giselle took his hand. “I want to ask you something,” she said. “Something big.”

  “Me, too.” Zade smiled. “You first.”

  It was a beautiful full-moon night with a perfect view of the Capitol and the Washington Monument. In a setting like that, Zade was sure she was going to suggest that he move in with her, and so he asked a passerby to take their picture for posterity. The picture, it turned out, was poster-quality, and today hung above the Ali Baba Band-Its.

  “Would you like to go into business with me?” she asked. “I know a trend we can catch, a need we can meet. If we open at Christmas, we’ll capitalize on all the kids having nowhere to go at break.”

  Their relationship by that point was balanced enough that the question had been perfunctory. So while Giselle borrowed money from her brother, who had a booming engineering business in Saudi Arabia, Zade borrowed money from his twin sister’s husband, a wealthy Qatari she had met while working at Al Jazeera TV as a reporter. Nadia and Elias had been so proud of Lamya until her pretty face destined her to doing fluffy celebrity interviews.

  And now Zade had disappointed them, but he didn’t want to be without Giselle. Others—say, his parents—hadn’t heard the smart-ass comments she whispered to him during movies through a mouthful of popcorn, hadn’t felt the smallness of her waist when she reached up to kiss him, and couldn’t see that her face was always as luminescent as the moon on its fourteenth day, something his grandfather Ibrahim had murmured about his grandmother at her seventieth birthday party, an event Nadia had insisted on celebrating when she had taken Zade and his sister to Detroit years ago, with his grandmother protesting the whole time. Zade had heard Ibrahim’s words right after everyone sang “Happy Birthday” He wished other people had been listening because no one, least of all Nadia, believed him when he quoted Ibrahim. It was only when he met Giselle that he knew there were women worthy of such a description. He sprang the moon thing on Giselle the day their business became profitable, and she had gotten uncustomarily flustered, the way he always was in her presence. She was the first person, place, or thing that had ever motivated him to finish something he’d started. His family’s passions had had the opposite effect on him, making him shrink away from accomplishment, as if without their noble goals he couldn’t hold his own, so why even bother? He couldn’t equal Giselle, either, but just the scent of her inspired him to try, at least occasionally.

  A week after Zade and Giselle signed the café lease, taking over a doughnut shop that had become passé, the World Trade Center was hit. Zade then assumed that the planet was doomed—and that he and Giselle had a bad idea on their hands. But Giselle hired a security guard, and they opened to a packed house a few months later. Scheherazade’s Diwan Café was the envy of bar owners from Georgetown to Adams Morgan, and it didn’t even serve alcohol.

  September 11 had left Zade’s parents decidedly grayer and sadder. Perhaps that was why the success of Scheherazade’s Diwan Café touched them, and for a while, if not for the hookah smoke, they would have been almost proud of how Zade was fostering Arab understanding.

  One night, as the crowd began straggling home, Giselle grabbed Zade in a hug and they swayed to the Ali Baba Band-Its’ version of Fairuz’s “Habetuk bi Seif.”

  “I want people to be as happy as we are,” she whispered.

  “Me, too,” Zade said.

  “I was thinking about our future,” she hinted.

  “So was I,” he said. He already had the ring in his pocket. But before he could get on his knees, she took his hand and looked deep in his eyes.

  “I want to ask you something,” she said.

  “Me, too.” He smiled. “You first.”

  “Let’s let the world see our love.”

  “Just what I was thinking.”

  “Really?” She blushed. “Oh, habibi, I should have known. Your mother told me that your grandmother always brags about your great-great-grandmother’s matchmaking skills. Guess what? I bet with my help, you’ll find out it’s genetic. We’re going to have one hell of a matchmaking service.”

  Zade let go of the ring in his pocket. They both borrowed more money from their siblings and started Aladdin and Jasmine, Inc.

  “How could you possibly know your clients are going to be a good match if they don’t sit down and hash it out first?” Elias asked.

  “Arguing about Middle East politics over dinner without actually listening to each other isn’t love for everyone,” Zade said, summing up the spice in his parents’ marriage.

  Within five months, Aladdin and Jasmine, Inc., had over a thousand people signed up. It was a ratio of four males for every female, but it was working. It went national within a year. Elias almost boasted that Zade was the owner when a student in his contemporary Middle Eastern politics seminar said that Arabs’ devotion to their heritage could be manifested in the popularity of Aladdin and Jasmine, Inc. “Love is very important in maintaining a culture,” Elias told his students. “Cultures without love die.”

  At the wedding reception for the first couple to meet and marry through Aladdin and Jasmine, Inc., Giselle sniffled and Zade took her hand.

  “Look at this beautiful thing we’ve created,” she gushed.

  “Sit down, Giselle,” he said. “I want to ask you something.”

  She sat down, big eyes aglow with tears. “We’ve had several successful engagements since we opened,” he began.

  “Twenty,” she confirmed. “We’re probably doing far better than Match.com and eHarmony, speaking per capita.”

  “Yes,” Zade said. “So I was thinking—”

  “So was I,” she interjected.

  “Okay, me first,” Zade said, drying off his palms on his suit jacket. “What if we took ourselves to the next level.”

  He pulled the ring out of his pocket.

  “So you want to go global, too?” she said, looking in his eyes and not seeing what was in his hand. “Think of all the Arab immigrants in Brazil, West Africa, and Canada and all the Lebanese, Egyptian, Iraqi, and Moroccan guest workers living in the Persian Gulf, all looking for true love. We can bring that to them, sweetie.”

  He put the ring back in his pocket. “Expansion is expensive,” he said. “We don’t even have people on the ground in those places.”

  “We can do it,” Giselle countered. “We’ll spend a month in each place. Hire a good part-time person to be in charge, work out the initial marketing. We’ll start in London. Guess what? There’s a restaurant there that makes the best kusa bi laban outside of Lebanon.”

  “What about here?” he pointed out. “This is where love cashes the checks.”

  “You’re right,” she conceded, momentarily as defeated as he was. “No, we have no choice. I’ll be the one that goes. You stay. Your mom would go all loco alone, with your dad away for the next two semesters.”

  “And you won’t go loco without me?”

  “I’ll be fine,” she answered too quickly. “And so will the business. Your mom can handle that end. She already does, even though she won’t admit it.”

  “You know who won’t be fine?” he said. “Remember me?”

  “You can live without me for a couple of months.” She grinned. “We’ve got the rest of our lives. And we’ll talk on the phone every day.”

  “If you
go, Giselle, then we’re over,” Zade decided aloud. He felt the pores on his underarms release significant amounts of sweat, as using ultimatums on her—or anyone—was not something he had ever tried before.

  “Why are you talking to me that way?” she said, taking a step back.

  “We know from our own website that three in four of our long-distance matches end in failure,” he said, pressing his feet into the ground to help keep his shoulders lifted.

  “What if I come back at least once a month?” she offered, but did not step forward.

  “Don’t bother,” Zade said with no threat implied this time. He let his gaze leave her moonlike face, focusing on the ground instead. “I don’t want to spend my whole life trying to make you happy by becoming the greatest entrepreneur love has ever known.”

  “God, you sound like our parents,” she said.

  He had no response to that. Giselle crossed her arms.

  “I love you,” she said. “But I don’t want to stand in the way of your happiness. If you want to find someone more socialist, then I won’t deprive you of that. We’ll just stay business partners.”

  It was not the answer he was hoping for, but it was the one he should have expected.

  “I might become a member of Aladdin and Jasmine, Inc., myself,” he declared.

  Giselle teared up but did not protest. She hugged him tight. “Bye, baby,” she whispered, and walked out right past their poster.

  It had been four months since they had decided to expand their business and break up. He had not seen her since. Nor had he joined Aladdin and Jasmine, Inc. He hadn’t even filled out the questionnaire. But he had added to it: “Please note that there is a 20% surcharge for clients in Latin America, West Africa, and Canada.”

  He looked at the clock. He still talked to Giselle every day, mostly about the sales figures Nadia put together. Today he couldn’t wait to tell her about the Qatari who had just left.

  The phone rang, as it did every night at eight-thirty A nine-hour time difference necessitated planned, rather than off-the-cuff, communication. As a result, business was at a peak, and he often wondered what heights their personal relationship would have reached with more scheduled talking.

  “Hi, sweet … I mean Zade,” Giselle said from Dubai. “I signed up twenty new clients at a mixer we cohosted with a local radio station at the Jumeirah Beach Club. I wish you could have seen the crowd. It rocked.”

  “That’s great,” Zade said. “But check this out: Today a Qatari guy came in looking for an American second wife. He’s some business associate of my sister’s husband, so I had to listen to him talk about olives in Jordan.”

  “Hey, we should get your sister to find him some American woman working in Qatar,” she screamed over the buzz on the line. It was not the outrage or laughter he had sought. “I’m flying to Qatar tomorrow, anyway. Your sister’s going to interview me about the business on TV Cool, huh?”

  “Okay, then I should give the Qatari dude the five stages of love the next time I see him,” he said.

  “Attraction, uncertainty, exclusivity, intimacy, and engagement,” she responded, quoting one of the dating tips she, with his help, had spent a day acquiring from the back covers of relationship books. Then she got quiet. “Oh, and guess what. I met the most amazing guy today.”

  He had practiced various reactions to this inevitability many times. “Hey, cool,” he began, forgetting all the more sophisticated words he had planned for this moment.

  “This guy is handsome, rich, and talented, and guess what?”

  “What?” he answered, starting to sweat.

  “He so wants to meet your gay actor cousin,” Giselle shouted from Dubai. “Maybe if your Tayta Fatima saw how handsome this guy was— and an Arab guy, no less—she’d accept the whole gay thing. Or at least your mom wouldn’t be so angry at me for going all global because I’m doing her mom a good one.”

  “Huh,” he responded. It wasn’t his mom who was truly angry. But just as with the Qatari and his money, just when he was hoping he could learn to despise Giselle, she was reminding him of why he couldn’t help loving her.

  “And I think I found someone for your Aunt Lena,” she went on. “He’s divorced, but I think divorced is better for her than never married. At her age, it’s better to be with a guy who has some experience with the long run.”

  It wasn’t easy to stop loving someone who still loved you, even if it wasn’t the way you’d like to be loved. Suddenly, he wanted to compliment her on how good she was with other people’s relationships, and that made him laugh uncontrollably. Nadia walked out of the back room just as Zade’s laughter climaxed.

  “Giselle, I got to go,” he said. “My mom’s here.”

  He hung up, and Nadia crossed her arms.

  “You know what they say in Middle East negotiations when no happy solution can be found?” Nadia said. She pointed to the Aladdin and Jasmine, Inc., poster and pantomimed ripping it off the wall. “They say let’s tear down those old maps and look at the world anew.”

  “Giselle found an Arab guy for Amir,” he announced, and waited while she thought up a diplomatic response to Giselle’s overture.

  “What the hell is wrong with Giselle?” Nadia screamed instead. “We’re only pretending to look for someone. For my mother’s happiness, not his. And we’re pretending to look for a woman. If Giselle loved your family, she’d find someone for Lena, not Amir.”

  “She did,” he said, glowering. “Without us even asking her to.”

  But Nadia had no gratitude. “Then why don’t you let her help you? She has signed up at least thirty-eight new women you could date since she left. Perhaps, just perhaps, you could stop being so lazy and make an effort to date some of them.”

  “Dating is a numbers game, Mom,” Zade said, quoting from Aladdin and Jasmine, Inc.’s, online dating tips. “Love is not.”

  “Then why does your business—Giselle’s business—avow that there are infinite opportunities?” she said. “Take one of them.”

  “Giselle’s going to see Lamya tomorrow,” he answered. “Lamya’s going to interview her on Al Jazeera.”

  He wasn’t sure if Nadia’s sigh was out of longing for his twin sister or from disapproval of Giselle being in the same room with her other child.

  She placed Aladdin and Jasmine, Inc.’s tax returns in front of him. “I’m done. If I were a greedy corporate monster, I would say that Giselle’s expansion idea has made sense,” she admitted. “During her travels, she has increased membership 50 percent, and the costs of running the business in Europe and South America have not even come close to the contingency figure.”

  “See?” Zade said.

  “See what?” she asked. “Perhaps it would be advisable to not confuse her commitment to the business with—well, anything else. We all have different things we can commit to. Love isn’t one of them for her.”

  “I’m the one that broke up with her,” Zade said.

  “Then act like it,” his mother snapped. “I filled out the questionnaire for you and added your profile to the database. We’ll find a good match for you. I’m going home to call your dad and find out how his lecture on Middle East civil disobedience in the British and French colonial era went. And before I forget, there’s a girl waiting outside to see you.”

  Nadia said the last part as if it were an afterthought, which it most certainly wasn’t.

  “Remember who introduced me to Giselle,” he warned.

  “I don’t know this girl,” Nadia said rather convincingly. “See you tomorrow.”

  Zade was sure she would tell his father how she wanted to drown Giselle in the Qatari’s Jordanian olive oil. Elias would calm her down, as he always did. His mother and father certainly could be on a poster for Aladdin and Jasmine, Inc.

  When the girl walked in, Zade didn’t recognize her from the database, but he didn’t pay as much attention to the photos as his mother did. She shook his hand. There was a slight awkwardness to her confi
dence, as if it had come with much practice rather than naturally. But his mother did have a good eye. “Cute with kick,” he might have written for her profile. The girl sat down on the ottoman. Her skin was very white and was framed by very black hair that fell down her back in thick, straight strands.

  “Hi, I’m Mina Parstabar,” she said.

  “I’m sorry to put you through this, but I’m not looking for anyone right now,” he apologized.

  “How do you know that if you don’t know what I have to offer?” she replied. “Offer you exclusively.”

  He sat up straighter, almost rising out of his lethargy. She was bold.

  “So, Mina, what are you offering?” he said, and arched an eyebrow. “Exclusively.”

  She returned his gesture with an eyebrow raise of her own. “What do you think?” she said. “A partnership.”

  “Like I advise my clients, let’s start slow,” he said. “Partnership is a big word.”

  “Do you think I’m going to let you run the show?” she said. “Fifty-fifty. I already get more marriage proposals than you.”

  “Oh, yeah?” Zade said. He leaned in without meaning to. “What’s your secret?”

  She leaned back and pulled out a photo album. “I can claim to have nearly 1001 marriages under my belt,” she announced, and handed him her card. Then she flipped through the brides and grooms, photo after photo. She was not the bride in any of them.

  Zade looked at her card: “The First 1001 Nights to Forever. Iranian singles no more. Mina Parstabar, CEO.”

  “Look, I know you already have a partner,” she continued, and pointed at the poster. “You guys got your little Arab-on-Arab business going, like I got my Iranian thing going. But I’m thinking bigger. Big Middle East and Muslim lovers plan. I’ve already been to see an Afghani matchmaker and another one well entrenched in the South Asian community in New York. I’ve also been in touch with the Black Muslim Alliance. I’m going to see a Turkish dating service based in New York tomorrow and a Bosnian one later this week. I got a lot of people that come to me that aren’t necessarily Iranian but are looking for a Muslim. I also got a lot of Armenians. Word has it you’ve got a few Lebanese and Syrian Armenians signed up. We combine databases and there will be no end to what we can do.”