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The apartment the Kesbehs moved into is owned by Sharif's brother, who lives downstairs in a richly furnished flat. He and his family disapprove of their impious girl cousins, who sometimes go out unescorted to drink coffee in Abdoun's trendy Blue Fig Cafe or to stroll in Mecca Mall, a somewhat cheap imitation of an American-style shopping center on the outskirts of Amman. "My cousins beat their sisters if they go out," says Noor. "In the States we used to stay out. Here, the whole neighborhood expects you to be back at 7. Many people think that I'm an infidel because I'm taking salsa lessons."

Sharif isn't working. He receives a $150 monthly pension from the Agricultural Engineering Association, to which he paid dues for many years. A family friend is looking after the flag business back in Houston, but it is no longer profitable, having fallen into the red while Sharif was in prison. Because it's failing, it's hard to sell. The Kesbehs' friends held a garage sale for them, unloading the things they left behind in their Houston home, but it only brought in around $1,000. The home itself was a rental. The family, then, is living largely on the 400 J.D. that Noor and Sondos bring in each month.

Much more than that is needed to send Afnan, Batool, Muhannad and Hadeel to the Abdul Hamid Sharaf school, a private, K-12 English-language academy that costs 2,700 J.D., or $3,800 a year, for each of them. According to principal Sue Dahdah, there's been an influx of new students this year coming from the United States -- enrollment is up 10 percent. She suspects many of them are deportees like the Kesbehs, though most would rather not admit it. There's a stigma, after all, to being thrown out of America.

The kids complain about the school -- the teachers, say Hadeel, spend the whole class writing notes on the board, which students are supposed to copy down verbatim. But Abdul Hamid Sharaf also may be their last hope for the futures they once imagined for themselves. "Mo, he is in 10th grade," Sharif says of his younger son. "He studies Arabic at a 2nd grade level. If he has to go to Arabic school, he is going to be 27 years old when he finishes high school."

This year's tuition, though, still hasn't been paid. "We keep telling them, 'next month, next month,'" says Sharif.

Across town, a visit with the Abu-Shabayeks offers a glimpse of what may await the Kesbeh kids if they're forced to leave private school. The Abu-Shabayeks can't afford to send any of their children to English academies. Thus their two eldest aren't going to school at all.

Seventeen-year-old Hanan Abu-Shabayek, a Jordanian citizen like her 18-year-old brother, Hassan, finished 9th grade in Raleigh. She maintained an average in the 90s, and dreamed of going to Duke or Chapel Hill. "Being a lawyer, that's what I wanted the most," she says.

Hanan is sitting in her family's living room, near a small space heater -- spring in Amman can be quite cold. Her mother, face drawn and thin, sits next to her, beneath a framed picture of Mecca on a cracking white wall. The family's four youngest boys sprawl on a cheap rug with tigers printed on it and watch a disaster movie on TV -- the Abu-Shabayeks treasure Channel 2, the American station, which Hanan says they leave on "24/7."

"I'm supposed to be in school right now," Hanan says. "But I didn't know the Arabic. Over here, if you don't know the Arabic, they can't help you."

Hassan had the same problem. Both of them dropped out. The younger kids have stayed in school, but they're miserable, especially about their teachers' liberal use of corporal punishment.

Khaled tries to get his shy 10-year-old son, Hazem, to talk. "What do you like better," he asks the boy, "Jordan or America?"

Hazem smiles, revealing a cracked tooth. "America," he says. "Over there in America, they don't hit us."

Hassan now works in a bakery near the family's house, while Hanan waits for her June wedding. She agreed to the marriage with the 23-year-old taxi driver after realizing that she had to let go of her old life, because unlike her younger siblings, she's not an American, even if she feels like one. "I don't have a chance of going back to America, and I have to learn Arabic," she says. "I think it's the best thing for me to do right now."

She describes her fiancé, who doesn't speak English, as nice but "actually pretty strict."

"I can go to a movie theater as long as I'm with him," she says. "Me by myself, that's not allowed. I'm starting to accept it, I guess. I think it's wrong, but we have to live like the people here are living. If you can't beat them, join them."

The Kesbehs have never met the Abu-Shabeyeks, or even heard of them. But sitting on a cushion on her own living room floor in East Amman, Noor feels the same pressures as Hanan, though she's resisting them. "My dad tells me just get married, it will solve your problems," she says.

Asmaa, who wants something more for her daughters, shakes her head and says, "In this country, a lot of girls get married at 15."

"It's because they have no other choice," says Noor.

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