The interview room seemed suddenly smaller to Sara, the walls close enough to touch. Shock pulled her out of her body, and for a moment she felt as if she were floating above, watching the back-and-forth with Segura. How did it take such a terrible turn? I have to stop this, she thought as she returned to herself. Sweat ran down her back in a continuous stream, pooling at the waist of her jeans.
“It’s your sleep data,” Segura said, peering at her with fresh suspicion. “And I can’t ignore that, not with the other flags I see in your file and your responses during this interview. I’m afraid I have to issue an order of retention.” He pulled an evidence bag from the bottom drawer and began writing her name in block letters on the label.
“Wait a minute,” Sara said, raising a hand. “Just wait. What are you talking about?” Her neuroprosthetic logged the time she went to sleep and the time she woke up, but that data could hardly mean anything. What did it matter to law enforcement if she went to sleep at eleven? Or that she woke up at four to feed the twins? Or even that she took occasional thirty-minute naps on the couch in her office? That was nobody’s business. “What does my sleep data have to do with crime?”
“Some entries showed a high risk of violence.”
“Entries? You mean dreams?” Sara’s mind reeled, thinking about the consent forms she signed the day she got the implant. They said nothing about the sale of dreams to a third party, much less a government entity. If they did, then the detail had been concealed in incomprehensible legalese.
“Yes, Ms. Hussein,” Segura replied, his voice dripping with condescension. “Dreams.”
All her life Sara had been a good sleeper, quickly falling into slumber and waking up eight or nine or sometimes ten hours later with no interruption in between. Even on long flights, when she was squeezed into a middle seat with no adjustable headrest, she always managed to get some shut-eye. Her pregnancy changed all that. She couldn’t get more than a few scattered hours of sleep each night because her back ached, or her legs cramped, or her feet swelled. Wrestling with her pillows to find a comfortable position made her heart race.
When she and Elias brought the twins home from the hospital, they agreed to take turns feeding them at night. But Elias had a Dreamsaver, so the minute he went to bed he fell asleep, and woke up from his four-hour nap as refreshed as if he had slept eight hours. Lucky bastard. He fed the babies all the milk she’d pumped, and cooed to them, and changed their diapers without ever losing his patience or good humor. Meanwhile, Sara lay awake, her nipples raw and painful, waiting for the next feeding or worrying about all the things she might’ve done wrong.
It was only then that she began to understand—no, to experience—sleep deprivation. She couldn’t keep her eyes open during the day, no matter how much coffee she consumed, and started to forget every little thing. The water on the stove. The clothes in the dryer. Where she put Mona’s pacifier, or Mohsin’s diaper-rash cream. Whether she ate the fenugreek seeds the lactation specialist had recommended. She gave up breastfeeding, which allowed her to regain a bit of her strength, though it did nothing to fix her sleeplessness.
What is happening to me, she wondered. She moved through the day as if in a trance. She quarreled with Elias over the smallest, most insignificant things. Once, she ordered takeout from an Indian place a couple of miles from their apartment and forgot to pick it up because she was arguing with Elias about who told Nimble to send ten cases of sparkling water to the door. Another time, she put Mohsin on her bed while she went to fetch a box of diapers, got distracted by Mona crying in the other room, and forgot all about Mohsin.
She couldn’t go on like this, she just couldn’t. She’d been reluctant to get a Dreamsaver because she was squeamish about the procedure, but when she scheduled the appointment, a brochure appeared in her inbox that put her fears to rest. The original device had been designed in the 2000s to treat sleep apnea, and was implanted in a delicate surgery that required several days of recovery. Back then the only patients who were willing to take the risk were acute sufferers, whose lives were in danger from interrupted breathing. But over the years, the procedure became safer, the recovery time shorter. Longitudinal studies of the earliest implantees showed that their sleep not only improved, but deepened, giving them longer REM cycles. They performed better on memory tests, healed faster from wounds and bone fractures, and felt more rested and energetic during the day.
These benefits attracted the attention of Eric Hollins, a Silicon Valley medical entrepreneur. His team developed a new version of the neuroprosthetic that turned the side effect of longer REM cycles into a raison d’être, producing a device that was small, inexpensive, and easy to implant. It could give you deeper sleep, and in fewer hours. On the brochure, Hollins posed in white pajamas, with a halo around his head, his palm turned up in offering. In it was a minuscule implant, which he called the Dreamsaver. Imagine what you could do with more time, he asked.
Insomniacs who turned to Dreamsavers wrote five-star reviews where they sounded like the apostles of a new religion, eager to tell everyone the good news. From ER nurses to security guards, night-shift workers were huge fans of the device, whose effects included improved productivity and a drop in workplace accidents. Elias had gotten one a couple of years earlier because he was taking evening courses to improve his certifications, and needed the extra hours for school. The Dreamsaver came in handy when the twins were born. It was time for Sara to get one, too.
Within two days of implantation, she started to sleep restfully and regularly. She was able to function again. She didn’t lose her patience when Mona refused to be put down in her crib, or when Mohsin soiled his diaper two minutes after she changed it. Each developmental stage became a cause for celebration, rather than relief. When she arrived at work in the morning, she was refreshed and ready for whatever the day held. In the evening, she was excited about playing with her children or catching up with her husband.
The Dreamsaver really did have a dramatic effect on her life—all of it positive.
“They’re just dreams,” she told Segura. It occurred to her that she might be hallucinating. Her mouth was so dry that she had trouble swallowing, and the hunger she felt was making her light-headed. “They’re not real.”
“Whether they’re real or not is above my pay grade, Ms. Hussein. That’s a philosophical question you can take up in your spare time. All I know is that they’re among the two hundred data sources used by the crime-prediction algorithm and they’ve raised your risk score above the acceptable threshold.” He slipped Sara’s passport into the labeled evidence bag. “You’ve left me no choice.”
Sara’s hands were so sweaty by now that her phone slipped from them and fell on the floor. The screen cracked anew, in a different place. “You can’t be serious,” she said, picking up the phone and stuffing it in her purse. The conversation was taking a turn she was desperate to correct. “Dreams are random.”
“Nothing is random,” he said with frightening conviction. Didn’t she know that dreams were windows into the subconscious? They showed connections between our thoughts and actions while remaining free of lies or justifications. They revealed our fears, desires, and petty jealousies with greater honesty than we would ever allow in our waking moments. They were valuable precisely because they exposed the most private parts of ourselves, from repressed memories to future plans.
“Okay, sure, but they’re not crimes.”
“They might turn into crimes. That’s the whole point.” The company that made the Dreamsaver had harvested data from millions of users, and trained an AI to look for patterns and make predictions. He cleared his throat. “Now, having reviewed the evidence, I’ve determined that you’re an immediate risk, which is why I’m referring you to Safe-X for an observation period of twenty-one days.”
“I’m a risk?” She wanted to scream. “To whom?”
“Elias Rosales,” he replied, with another glance at his screen. “Your husband.”
“My husband? That’s ridiculous. I love my husband. Why would I be a risk to him? As a matter of fact, he’s waiting for me downst—”
“—So you understand the urgency.” “What urgency? I would never hurt him.”
“Well, we need to make sure of that. That’s why you’re being retained, Ms. Hussein.”
“Retained?”
“Confined, isolated, quarantined. Whatever you want to call it.”
Officer Moss walked in again, as if Segura had summoned him from an unseen button. “Ms. Hussein,” he said, “come with me.”
Sara looked from one officer to the other. For a brief moment, she wondered if this was an elaborate prank, staged for the amusement of their colleagues in the RAA lounge, who were watching from the other side of the camera. But the look on Moss’s face crushed any hope of this possibility, however humiliating it would be in its own way. “You can’t do this,” she managed to say. To make it clear that she had no intention of going anywhere with Moss, she sat back in her chair and folded her arms. “I want to speak to a supervisor.”
“I am a supervisor,” Moss said with a little smile, his hand resting on his holster.
Sara realized then that she had misjudged him, that the softness in his features did not indicate compassion in his duties or reluctance around firearms. “Can you explain what’s happening, then? Why is he saying I have to be retained when my score is only 518?”
“See, you’ve answered your own question. Your score is above the legal limit. Now stand up and come with me. We have a lot of people to process today and we’re already running behind schedule.”
“Now you’re in a rush?” Sara asked, working and yet failing to keep her voice from rising. “I’ve waited more than an hour already. I’m not moving from here until I make a phone call. I need to speak to my husband. He’s waiting for me at Baggage Claim and has no idea where I am. Or better yet, call him yourself. He can tell you I’m not a risk to him, or to anyone else. Just call him. You can get this cleared up right now.”
“There’s a phone downstairs,” Moss replied. “We’ll send him an official notice as well. Now bring your bag and come with me.”
“Why can’t you call him from here?”
Moss heaved a sigh. “This isn’t a good start to your retention, Ms. Hussein. Like I said, you can make a phone call from downstairs.
But behaving like this isn’t going to help your case. Right now, it’s doing the opposite. Think of your score.”
On the other side of the glass, the other travelers seemed riveted by the conversation. The woman in the blue shalwar kameez had her hand on her cheek and the teenager was leaning forward, resting his elbows on his knees, staring at her. Sara wondered whether they could tell what was happening. She wasn’t sure herself.
“Come on. Let’s go,” Moss said.
Carrying her bag, Sara followed him through the waiting area, noticing along the way the concerned looks of the other travelers, united in their fear of ending up like her. Moss took her downstairs on the elevator, leading her to a small, white room where two hostile Safe-X employees immediately took away her phone, wallet, and keys, placing them in labeled envelopes. “I need to make a call,” she said to one of them.
“This the correct name?” he replied, showing her the label on one of the envelopes.
“Yes, but I need to make a call.” “In a minute.”
Only after her luggage was searched, and each item catalogued and stored in a Safe-X bin, did Moss walk her to a phone. The device was in a booth in the hallway, where RAA employees and Safe-X agents who were passing by could hear her. She dialed her husband, but after a few rings the call went to voicemail. She dialed a second time, but again he didn’t pick up. “He’s not answering,” she told Moss. “Maybe he doesn’t have cell reception.”
“Is there anyone else you can call?” he said. For the first time, he sounded like he was trying to help. “We have a couple more minutes.”
Sara wanted to try her father, but he had upgraded his phone and, although she had saved the new number on her mobile, she didn’t know it by heart. She could summon the area code and the prefix, but try as she might she couldn’t remember the last four digits. Now she pleaded with Moss. “Isn’t there something you can do?” she asked. “My score is barely above the limit. I mean, your friend upstairs was going to stamp my passport before he was called away. Can’t you just give me a warning or something?”
“I’m sorry,” Moss said. “I don’t review risk reports.”
“Right, you already said.” Don’t cry, she told herself. Whatever you do, don’t cry. “But you’re the supervisor, aren’t you?”
“It’s just twenty-one days,” he said, touching her elbow as if to console her. “And it’s a retention center for dreamers, it’s almost like summer camp. You go in, they watch you to make sure you don’t do anything, and then you come out three weeks later. It’s really not that bad. Some people might even think of it as a vacation. I mean, if it were me, I wouldn’t mind getting a break from the old ball and chain, you know what I’m saying?”
“I just ” Sara said, swallowing hard. Then she turned to the dial once more. “I’ll try my husband again.”
“Too late,” Moss said, looking beyond her at the double doors. “Transport is here.”
the bus thAt pulled up to the curb seemed to hAve been bought at a salvage sale, hastily painted black, and imprinted with the logo of Safe-X. Through the barred windows, the other retainees watched as Sara was brought on board. As soon as she took her seat, a message played on the stereo, announcing that Safe-X was acting in loco magistratus; it was allowed to conduct a forensic observation of retainees and, if necessary, to discipline them on behalf of the government. There will be multiple stops, the disembodied voice continued. Your name will be called when we arrive at your designated facility. There will be no talking on the bus. If you have questions about your file, you can ask your case manager after you’ve been processed.
Sara was the last drop-off, in Ellis. By the time she walked into Madison, her legs could hardly carry her. Sitting in what she later learned was the gym, she had trouble following the orders that were lobbied at her by the nurse, the intake clerk, and the attendants who were in charge of orientation. They wanted her to submit blood, urine, and hair samples, wash with a medicated shampoo, and squat and cough while they watched, whereas she wanted to find out why she was here and when she could make a call. They recorded her weight, her blood pressure, and the date of her last menstrual period, while she kept asking why she had to stay three whole weeks.
It was as if the agents were speaking a foreign tongue, in which the only mood was the imperative, the subject never stated. She couldn’t speak this language; she could only obey it.
Oh, but everything was so clear to her now. She should’ve been patient with Segura and Moss; instead, she’d been in a rush. Should’ve been quiet; she’d talked back. Should’ve followed directions; she’d resisted. She’d passed up so many chances to demonstrate her docility that she had only herself to blame for what happened. But still, it made no sense that her score was above the legal limit. Didn’t Segura say that the algorithm used data from two hundred sources? She’d already corrected the information about the police encounter at Heathrow. Surely there was a mistake somewhere else. There was no other explanation.
It came to her then that she should never have taken Moss at his word and allowed herself to be escorted out of the interview room. Now she was in the custody of private contractors, who were totally uninterested in her legal case; all they cared about were the rules of retention, which had to be followed to the letter. Then, after the orientation was completed, they said it was too late to make a phone call and she had to wait until morning.
They escorted her to 208 instead, and told her to go to dinner.
But she’d lost her appetite, and the smell of the floor cleaner made her feel ill. She wrestled with the window for a while, then gave up and lay on her cot, covered with the thin blanket they gave her. How was it possible that so much could change in a single day? It felt like months since she’d woken up in London.
Try to stay calm, she told herself, even as fear whispered into her ear one horrific scenario after another. Try not to panic. Her experience as an archivist had taught her that human error was an inescapable part of any record-keeping program and that it could lead to misunderstandings, some trivial and others tragic. That had to be what had happened here. Time was not on her side, though. Unless the information was corrected quickly, it could become legitimate by virtue of its presence in the records.
By now Elias must have found out what happened to her. Would he believe their ridiculous claims about her? No, he loved her; he knew she would never hurt him. He would treat the RAA’s retention order as the misunderstanding that it was and hire a lawyer to get her out as soon as possible. With the help of a good attorney, her case would be dismissed. She had done nothing wrong—a fact that would be easy enough to establish.
A short, stocky woman walked into the room just then, and sat on the opposite cot. Her neck was raw from scratching and on her right bicep was a tattoo of a firefighter in a helmet. “What’s your name?” she asked in a whisper. “I’m Emily. Emily Robbins.”
Sara turned to the wall. She couldn’t bring herself to make small talk. All she could think about was how to secure her release from this terrible place, filled with people who might be dangerous. She tried to still her frenetic thoughts; the sooner she fell asleep, the sooner morning would come. Then she could speak to a lawyer, find out what happened, and petition for her immediate release.
But she was afraid to surrender to sleep. How could she be sure that her dreams wouldn’t incriminate her further? The uniform shirt she had been issued was a size too small, making her so uncomfortable that she had to take it off and layer it over herself for added warmth. She should never have gone to that conference in London; if she’d stayed home with her children, none of this would’ve happened. She lay on her cot for hours, eyes wide open, until the lights went out. Later she couldn’t remember what she dreamed; she had yet to keep a notebook. All she remembered was waking up in terror at the sound of the six o’clock bell.
Emily was already up, washing her face at the sink, splashing water all over the floor. “You’ll get used it,” she said when the bell stopped ringing.
Well, Sara had no intention of getting used to it; she didn’t belong in this place. Sleep had revived her, and now she was even more determined to untangle the mess she’d landed herself in and get out of here. She put on her shirt and followed her roommate into the hallway.
Emily stood at attention. “Whatever you do, don’t piss off Hinton.” Sara turned her gaze on the handsome guy coming down the hall. He was a little older than the two attendants who had conducted orientation, and carried himself with a gravitas that the three gold stripes on his sleeve appeared to corroborate. He seemed to be getting over a cold, because he coughed into his elbow a couple of times as he moved from one room to the next, telling the woman at 203 that she had a visit this afternoon, and the one at 205 that her petition to start a zine was denied. When he finally got to 208, he scanned the back of Emily’s skull with a device that looked like an ear thermometer. As soon as it flashed green, she went back inside the room.
Then Hinton nodded at Sara. “Dr. Hussein, I presume.” He looked beyond her at the cell, where Emily was already making her cot. “208 is very nice, you get a window.”
“There’s been a mistake,” she began. “Oh, there’s no mistake.”
“But I would never—”
“—The algorithm knows what you’re thinking of doing, before even you know it. That’s a scientific fact. A forensic hold is for your own good, it prevents you from acting on your impulses.” Hinton pointed his scanner at the back of her skull, as he continued his little speech. She had to stay here until her behavioral observation was complete. Her lawyer, if she had one, would be able to meet with her in the cafeteria during regular business hours, but otherwise she was not allowed any visitors until after seven days.
“This can’t be legal.”
“Sure it is.” The scanner gave a beep, and he stepped back. “Look it up, Doc.”
“But you can’t keep me in prison. I didn’t do anything.”
“Calm down. This is a retention facility, not the Château d’If.”
Sara must’ve looked surprised at the reference, because Hinton let out a bitter laugh.
“What, you think I don’t read?” he said, fixing her with his hungry eyes.
“No, no.” He doesn’t like me, she thought. Later, remembering this moment, she would realize he’d interpreted her surprise as disdain, and developed an immediate hostility to her. “I just . . .” she said, quickly changing directions, “I haven’t been able to make my call yet.”
“Downstairs,” he said. “You get three minutes.”
*
An hour later she wAs in A glAss-wAlled comm pod, pre-wired with a security camera and audio system. In order to activate the phone panel, she had to slip her index finger through a vitals monitor, which tracked her heart rate. As she dialed Elias’s number, she felt keenly aware that she was being watched, that whatever she said could be used against her, and that she had to make the most of the time allotted to her. These limitations were both stressful and contradictory, so that she fumbled with the numbers a couple of times before she could steady her hand and touch the right keys.
As soon as he heard her voice, Elias launched into worried questions. “Where are you?” he asked. “What happened? We waited for you for hours at the airport. We’ve been calling hospitals all night. Are you all right?”
In the background, Sara heard a chair being pushed aside and the buzzing of the Ambulator Exo-Legs her father had been using since his stroke four years earlier. “Is that her?” he asked. “Where is she?”
“You didn’t get a notice from the RAA?” Sara asked. “No. We didn’t hear anything. We’ve been worried sick.”
“I got detained at the airport,” she said, her voice breaking. Being listened to with a kindly ear was such a release that the humiliation of the last twenty-four hours began to overwhelm her. She leaned against the glass wall, only to be startled by a male voice on the audio system warning her to keep off the glass. The order was repeated in Spanish, and she had to wait several precious seconds before she could hope to be heard on the other end of the line. “I got detained,” she said, more steadily this time, “and they’re keeping me under observation.”
“What? Where?”
“A town called Ellis, in San Bernardino County.” “Ellis? I’ve never heard of it.”
Sara’s father let out a strange, throaty sound. To hear him muffling a cry made her aware that she had disappointed him, as she had so many times before. All his life he had tried to instill in her the immigrant’s habit of caution, reminding her to follow the rules, avoid unnecessary attention, and give careful consideration to decisions she made. But once more she had misstepped, and was deserving of blame.
“But why are they holding you there?” Elias was asking, now for the second time.
“They’re saying my risk score is too high. That I’m liable to commit a crime. They’re keeping me under observation for twenty-one days.”
“Three whole weeks? That’s insane.”
“The officers . . .” Sara wanted to call them assholes and bastards and motherfuckers, but she knew her call was being monitored and she was in enough trouble as it was. “The officers said I was an imminent risk to you. To you! Can you believe it? I tried to get them to call you so you could talk to them directly, but they said no. Anyway, can you get me a lawyer? I don’t want to spend three weeks here.”
“A risk to me?” He sounded puzzled. There was a rustling noise, as if he were moving his phone from one ear to the other.
“I was thinking, maybe you could ask that professor whose daughter you treated a while back. You said he taught in the law school, right? He might be willing to help, or at least know someone who can. It’s not a complicated case. I mean, I haven’t done anything. I want them to file a motion for immediate release.”
The line was quiet. “Hello?” Sara asked.
“I’m here, I’m just trying to process everything. This is just crazy.” “I know, I’m sorry. Just get me a lawyer, I want to get out of here.
How are the twins?”
“They’re okay, I think. They were exhausted when we came home last night. Mona’s still sleeping. Mohsin’s right here, in his high chair. He’s eating bananas.”
“But why three weeks?” Sara’s father was asking in the background.
“I don’t know,” Elias told him. “That’s what I’m trying to figure out.”
The phone screen flashed with a message, warning her that she had only thirty seconds left on the call. “Listen,” Sara said, her voice rising despite her best efforts. “Listen, can you just make sure to call a lawyer and see if we can straighten this out? I was thinking—”
Then the call dropped.
*
No lawyer came that day, or the next. rAcked with doubt, sArA went to inquire about legal assistance at the Case Management office. It was housed in what used to be the specialists’ room—where various therapists and special-ed teachers once met privately with students. That day, the office was festooned with colorful Christmas garlands that ran from one end of the counter to the other. Classic rock played at low volume from a radio on the shelf. Next to it, an aromatic candle burned in its glass case. The scent made Sara sneeze as soon as she approached the counter. The case manager pushed away from the desk on his rolling chair, making a show of trying to avoid any germs she might bring.
“I’m sorry,” Sara said. “I’m allergic to scented candles.”
“What is it?” he asked. He had heavy-lidded eyes that made him look sleepy, but the effect was counterbalanced by his protruding chin. The jacket he wore covered the name tag on his uniform; Sara couldn’t tell if this was intentional. After she explained the reason for her visit, the case manager typed her name on his keyboard and a moment later shook his head. “I don’t see a lawyer on the schedule for you.”
“Are you sure?” Sara asked. “Can you check the spelling, please?” While he typed she thought of all the ways her last name could be transliterated—Hussein, Hosain, Hossein, and Hüseyn being the most common variants she had encountered over the years. There were easily a dozen possibilities, even without the addition of a definite article or name particles. Throw in diacritics and hyphens—and misspellings were bound to happen.
However it was spelled, the name had a musicality that eluded most speakers of English. When he’d moved to Caltech to take up a fellowship in astrophysics, Sara’s father had tried explaining to his American colleagues how to pronounce his idiosyncratically Moroccan name, Omar Ait-Elhoussine. But the fricative consonants and clipped vowels brought a look of panic to the faces of even his most liberal peers, followed by valiant, but nearly always failed attempts at pronunciation. When he became a citizen, he changed his name to Omar Hussein. Sara was in preschool at the time and had barely learned how to spell Ait-Elhoussine when she had to be taught how to write Hussein instead. The change seemed pointless now, for here she was, asking a Safe-X employee to check the more basic spelling. “My name is Sara Hussein. H-u-s-s-e-i-n.”
From the end of the hallway came the sound of rubber shoes squeaking. It was Hinton, doing his rounds. A moment later, he was standing beside her. “What’s going on?” he asked.
“I’m just checking on my lawyer,” she told him.
“Ah,” he said, and walked away. But he quickly changed his mind and returned to stand next to her, as if he, too, were curious whether her family had hired a lawyer. Strands of Sara’s hair had spilled over the counter, and he wiped them away delicately.
“I don’t have you on the schedule,” the case manager said, shaking his head. “Step back from the counter.”
“What spelling do you have on my file?” she insisted, her heart filling with wild hope that this had to be the source of the mix-up that landed her here. They had flagged another Hussein. It had to be her dreams they found dangerous, not Sara’s.
“Step back from the counter,” the case manager said. He pushed
away from his computer station and went to his file cabinet.
She leaned over the counter, so she could get a look at his screen. “I’m just trying—”
The electric shock from Hinton’s gun knocked the breath out of Sara. She fell on the floor, her limbs writhing. She’d been so intent on the argument about her case that she’d forgotten she was a body, flesh and bone that could be brought to compliance at the touch of a button. Every nerve inside her throbbed, and a helpless moan escaped her throat as she tried to regain control of herself. Meanwhile the two attendants watched and waited.
The next day, when the lawyer Elias hired arrived, he informed Sara that her forensic observation at Madison had been extended by an additional forty-five days because Hinton had written Sara up three times—once for having a noncompliant hairstyle; a second time for resisting the orders of the case manager; and a third for loitering in the hallway.
Sitting across from Sara in the cafeteria, the lawyer spoke in the soothing voice of an older man, though he seemed about the same age as her. His scholarship was in property law, he explained, but her case was simple enough because she had no prior arrests, had a stable home, had a full-time job and two children. And while it was extremely rare for someone with a score under 550 to end up in forensic observation, the RAA had full authority to keep her in custody because the courts defined retention as precaution, not punishment. “Just follow the rules,” he advised. “Get your score down and we’ll get you out in a couple of months.”
Sara is still waiting, 291 days later.
__________________________________
Excerpted from The Dream Hotel: A Novel by Laila Lalami. Reprinted by permission of Pantheon Books, an imprint of the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. Copyright © 2025 by Laila Lalami
