After that, Paul and his male cousins went out to drive around old familiar places. The women stayed home, and Shirin and Soudabeh played cards with Kate. She would have liked to go out with Paul and the boys too, and see more of the city, but she didn’t want to be rude to the girls, who were so excited to have her there.

The boys came back three hours later in high spirits. Paul said he had seen his old school and visited one of his boyhood friends. He had been surprised to discover that his friend was the man betrothed to Soudabeh and would be marrying her that summer. It felt strange to think of his own friends getting married, but he knew that people got married younger here. As much as he loved Katie, he didn’t feel ready for that himself. He loved being back in Tehran, seeing family and friends and all the familiar sights and places, and enjoying the sounds and smells that he had missed for so long.

He went out with the men again that night. This time Paul’s uncle went with them, and they were meeting other friends on the way. Paul looked apologetically at Kate as they left. His uncle wanted her to stay home with Jelveh and the girls. The men wanted to go out on their own, which was customary here.

That evening, Kate, Shirin, and Soudabeh lay on her bed and talked about fashion again, and movie stars. They didn’t know them all, although they knew some, and were fascinated by everything Kate had to say. They treated her like a visiting dignitary in their midst. And Katie knew that Annie would have been relieved to see what a close-knit, wholesome family they were, and how well taken care of she was. And she didn’t mind Paul’s boys’ night out. She was understanding about it and wanted him to enjoy the company of his male relatives too after so long away.

The three girls laughed and giggled a lot that night, and Soudabeh asked Katie if she had a boyfriend. She gasped with excitement when Kate said she did. And Kate laughed out loud at the irony that it was their cousin, which she couldn’t tell them. The fact that she was not Muslim, at least not yet, made it unwise for her and Paul to admit to their relationship here.

The girls went to bed long before the boys came home, and Kate wondered what they were doing. In spite of herself and her good intentions, as it got late, she felt left out. And she didn’t see Paul again until breakfast the next morning, and he was very solicitous over breakfast. He apologized again for not taking her out the night before.

“Did you sleep okay?” Paul asked her, wishing he could put his arms around her, but certainly not here.

“Fine.” She smiled at him. “What time did you come in?”

“Around two,” he said, and a little while later his cousins all came downstairs, and they discussed their visit that day to the university. All three boys were going and Soudabeh and Kate. They were all in high spirits when they left in the van right after breakfast.

Kate was impressed by how enormous the university was, and they were there all day, while the boys showed them around. They stopped several times to chat with friends, and Paul’s cousins introduced him to several young women students.

The university was even bigger than NYU, where Ted went to law school, and way, way bigger than Pratt, where she and Paul studied design.

Excited by their visit to the university, Kate tried to suggest they go to a museum afterward, but no one wanted to go with her, and Paul promised he’d try to arrange it. And she was also anxious to see the bazaar that she had heard so much about.

She turned her BlackBerry on briefly when she went to bed that night and saw that she had a text from Annie. “Take care, I love you” was all it said, and after reading the message, she turned it off. It still had plenty of power, and she was glad it did, because the power cord and transformer she’d bought had both disappeared from her backpack. Neither Soudabeh nor Shirin had cell phones and said their father didn’t like them, but both had iPods they listened to constantly.

At breakfast with Kate the next day, both girls talked about their weddings. They were excited about them, and Shirin didn’t mind at all being betrothed to a man five years older than she was. She thought he was very good looking. And both girls wanted to have babies soon. It was a culture where everyone started young. Jelveh had told Kate that she had gotten married at fourteen and had her first son at fifteen, and her husband was considerably older than she was. Kate realized when she said it that Jelveh was three or four years younger than Annie, which seemed amazing to her, and had a twenty-three-year-old son. She explained to her then about her aunt raising them, and her parents dying when she was five. Jelveh was shocked to learn that Annie wasn’t married and didn’t have children of her own. “How sad,” she said, looking sympathetic, and Kate realized that maybe it was, but Annie didn’t seem to mind. She had them.

True to his promise, Paul organized a visit to the Museum of Contemporary Art that day. And this time both girls went with them. It had one of the finest collections of modern and contemporary art Kate had ever seen, and much to her delight, they stayed for hours and explored the sculpture garden afterward.

At the end of the week, Kate, Paul and the others went to the enormous bazaar, and she bought a beautiful silver necklace for Annie. The sights and sounds and smells of the bazaar seemed dizzying to Katie. There were miles of stalls, selling every kind of wares. People crowded around, and serious negotiations were being engaged in. The bazaar was far bigger than she had imagined, it was full of people, and Kate had a terrific time.

Their first week in Tehran had been wonderful, but at the end of it, Paul and Kate admitted to each other that they were getting homesick for New York and their lives there. The time had been so full that they felt like they’d been gone for longer. And Kate missed Annie. She was enjoying Paul’s family but she suddenly felt far away and missed her own.

Kate decided that day to send Annie an e-mail. Instead of using up the dwindling power in her BlackBerry, she asked one of Paul’s cousins to take her to an Internet café after school, and he was nice enough to do it. In the e-mail she told Annie what they’d been doing, that it was very interesting, and that she missed her. And she assured her she was fine. She sent short ones to Ted and Lizzie too. And after writing to them, she missed home even more. Despite the wonders she was discovering in Tehran, she was beginning to get seriously homesick, and when she got back to the house, she looked a little glum. Paul felt sorry for her when he saw it and admired her for being a good sport about everything so far. She had fit into everything they were doing. It had been an action-packed week, and Paul had the feeling at times that his family were subtly trying to convince him to move back to Tehran, and to remind him of how much happier he’d be here, where he belonged. He loved being back in Tehran, but he also realized that it was no longer home for him, and he missed his parents, friends, and familiar life in New York. His grandfather reminded him at every opportunity that he was Iranian, not American, and his uncle and cousins had echoed the same thought. He still felt totally at ease in Tehran, but he was ready to go back to New York. A week had been enough. Two was beginning to seem too long.

Katie felt that way too, and was tired of the charade that they were only friends. She missed cuddling with him and kissing him whenever she wanted. And sometimes she found it exhausting trying to absorb a whole new culture, and to understand all their customs. Paul was glad they had come, and particularly to have shared the experience with Katie. Contrary to all of Annie’s dire warnings, there was nothing either of them regretted about the trip so far. On the contrary they had both loved it. And they were hoping to take a trip to Persepolis before they left. Paul had shown her everything he wanted to and that Kate had been hoping to see before they arrived.

It was the day of their second visit to the bazaar to buy a bracelet for Liz and a belt for Ted that Katie began to feel strange at dinner. She got very pale, said she was a little dizzy, and then broke out in a sweat. Jelveh looked instantly worried, felt her head, and said she had a fever. And looking embarrassed, Kate left the table, went upstairs, and got violently sick two minutes later. She looked considerably worse when Paul went upstairs to check on her after dinner. He helped Katie into bed and went downstairs to tell his aunt that he thought Katie needed a doctor. She went upstairs to see for herself, and by then Katie was shaking violently with chills and had a raging fever. Katie was crying, said she had terrible stomach pains, and Paul was worried sick about her. She insisted she hadn’t eaten or drunk anything at the bazaar, and Jelveh said it looked like a very bad flu they’d all had earlier that winter. Katie said she’d never felt so sick in her life, and Paul bent down to kiss her forehead, just as Jelveh came back into the room to check on Kate again, and saw him do it. She looked at Paul with strong disapproval.

“You can’t do that here, Paul, and you know it. And if you kiss Kate in public, it will cause you both a great deal of trouble. It’s not proper behavior, and even more so since she’s not a Muslim. If your grandfather saw you do that, it would break his heart.” And then she looked searchingly at both of them. “Is she your girlfriend?” she asked her nephew in a whisper, so no one else would hear her. Kate watched him with wide eyes as he paused before he answered, then nodded. He didn’t want to lie to his aunt, and he trusted her to be discreet about it. He knew she liked Kate a lot although not necessarily for him, since she was Christian.

“Yes, she is,” he answered simply.

“Do your parents know?” She looked shocked, as he nodded again.

“Yes, they do. They like Kate, although they’re worried about how it would work out in the future. But it’s different for us. We live in New York, not Tehran.” Jelveh didn’t say anything for a long moment as she thought about it.

“It’s not different for you,” Jelveh said quietly. “You’re still a Muslim, even in New York. And Kate isn’t. I think you’ve been away from home for too long. It’s time for you to come back here and remember who and what you are.” She was very clear on that.

“I can’t do that,” he said quietly. “I have a life in New York, and my parents are there.”

“Your parents were wrong to take you away when you were so young.” And then she took his breath away with what she said next. “We want you to stay here now. You can study here with your cousins. You can live with us.” Her heart was in her eyes as she said it. She meant well, but Paul didn’t want to stay. He was ready to go back. Kate was listening with wide eyes.

“I can’t do that, Jelveh,” Paul said, with a sound of panic in his voice. “My parents would be upset if I didn’t come back. And so would I. I love it here, but it’s not my home anymore.”

“Tehran will always be your home,” she said firmly. And as she said it, Kate ran to the bathroom again, and they could hear her retching through the door. “I’ll call the doctor,” Jelveh said calmly. “We can talk about this later.” But the way she said it made him nervous. They had both his passports, and he couldn’t leave Tehran without at least one of them. And Jelveh made it sound like they were determined to keep him in Tehran.

He didn’t have time to discuss it with her further. The doctor came half an hour later, and by then Katie had a 103-degree fever and was even sicker than before. The doctor examined Katie and thought she had a virus of some kind, or a bacterial infection. He thought about putting her in the hospital, but after discussing it with Jelveh, he decided to leave her at their home.

The fever raged on for three days, while Jelveh nursed her, and Paul visited her every chance he got. And he was grateful that Jelveh hadn’t told anyone in the family that Katie was his girlfriend, but the sicker she got, the more obvious it was. He was out of his head with worry for her. And Katie looked like a skeleton when the fever broke after four days, two days before they were due to go home. She was deathly pale and had dark circles under her eyes, and she hadn’t contacted Annie because she didn’t want to upset her. They were going home soon anyway. When the fever broke finally, Paul told Katie she had been very brave. He patted her hand as he said it but made no move to kiss her again. He knew full well from Jelveh what a scandal that would cause.

The doctor declared that she would be well enough to return to New York on schedule, and Katie looked relieved. She didn’t want to get stuck here. She was still feeling sick and wanted to go home to Annie and her own bed. She had felt like a five-year-old when she was sick. But Jelveh had taken good care of her, almost as good as Annie, although with different remedies. But she had been an excellent nurse, and very motherly to her.