The Silk Roads

Jorge had written three names and the word “briefly” on the back of a supermarket receipt because his mother had asked him to thank the relatives who had come from across town.

At the restaurant, he kept the receipt folded under his phone while his cousins argued about whether the cake had been ordered for eight-thirty or eight-forty-five. His mother had already checked twice with the waiter. His father said the kitchen knew what it was doing, which caused three people to laugh at once.

“You’re still saying something, aren’t you?” Leila asked Jorge.

“Briefly.”

“You should mention the first apartment.”

“I was going to mention the first apartment.”

“Not just that it was tiny. Mention the water coming through the ceiling.”

Their mother looked up from dividing the last piece of flatbread. “There was no water coming through the ceiling.”

“There was,” Leila said. “Dad put pots everywhere.”

“One pot,” their father said. “And it was not our first apartment.”

Jorge unfolded the receipt. The names were in the wrong order, and he could not remember whether his mother wanted Aunt Nura mentioned first or last.

At the other end of the table, Uncle Farid was telling two cousins that their parents had met at a wedding. Their mother said that was wrong. Their father said it was almost wrong, which Farid claimed was the same as right.

“They met before that,” their mother said. “At Nura’s engagement.”

“I introduced them,” Farid said.

“You spilled tea on both of us,” their father said.

The younger cousins began asking whose engagement Nura’s had been. Nobody could remember whether Nura had later married the man from the pharmacy or his brother. The waiter arrived with a tray of small glasses and asked who had ordered the lime soda. Four hands went up.

Leila nudged Jorge. “Say it before the cake comes.”

He stood because everyone had become quiet in the way families do when somebody stands. He raised his glass.

“Thank you for coming,” he said. “Especially Aunt Nura, who came the furthest.”

“By taxi,” Farid said. “She didn’t walk here.”

Their father laughed so hard he knocked a fork onto the floor. The waiter returned with the cake at exactly the wrong moment, asked where it should go, and found no space between the plates.