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Alaa and Asmaa Kesbeh embrace at the airport in Amman, Jordan, as Hadeel, Batool and Sondos look on.


By 9 p.m. on the night Alaa is supposed to return, the Kesbeh girls' excitement has dissipated. They eat Pringles and M&Ms and watch the minutes pass and the cities change on the airport's big black departure screens. No one in the family knows what to expect if and when Alaa walks through the gate. He was barely able to communicate with them while he was in prison. They're still not sure how he ended up there, or what it did to him.

A year before, trying to save his American life, Alaa fled Houston on a Greyhound bus. Instead of going to Canada, he went to Asmaa's younger brother's house in Columbus, Ohio. Once again, he tried to join the Navy, but the recruiting officer was forced to reject him because of his immigration status.

So his uncle put him to work remodeling houses, and for a few months he earned a living by laying tiles and painting walls. After weeks of laying low, he started to get comfortable. His uncle gave him a car, and he applied for an Ohio's driver's license.

On Aug. 23, 2003, he went to Sam's Club, the discount store, with his uncle and his uncle's American girlfriend, who wandered off to a nearby hunting and fishing shop. As they were leaving, they were pulled over -- the owner of the hunting and fishing store had seen the girlfriend shoplifting.

Running their I.D.s through a computer, the police discovered that Alaa was wanted on a federal warrant, and he was taken to jail.

Other details of that day are in dispute. The uncle's girlfriend, who'd been found with more than $1,800 in stolen property, blamed Alaa; she said he'd masterminded the whole thing. She was given three months' probation in return for testifying against him. Alaa insisted he had nothing to do with it. His lawyer argued that the girlfriend's story was absurd -- why would a 36-year-old woman take orders from a 20-year-old kid?

Alaa was given the chance to plead guilty to a misdemeanor and be sentenced to time served, but he refused, not wanting a black mark on his record that might imperil future immigration appeals. So he sat in jail, awaiting trial.

In the end, a jury convicted him. The judge, though, let him off with probation, and on Nov. 20, 2003, he was turned over to immigration.

For the next four months, Alaa was moved from jail to jail as he awaited deportation. In Houston, he had been housed with other immigration detainees, but on the East Coast he was locked up with ordinary state inmates, many of them violent felons.

Sharif has faith in his son, but as he waits in the airport, he can't help worrying about the influence of the environment he's been trapped in. "We've been raising our kids to be the best citizens of America and the world," he says. "They are trying to destroy all our hard work. Even professional criminals, they try to fix them and make them good citizens. Because our kids are Arab and Muslim, they're trying to make them criminals."

It's past 10 p.m. at Queen Alia when, suddenly, Alaa appears. He's gaunt and gray in baggy khakis, his face sprinkled with stubble. His black eyes look enormous. As his parents suspected, he was being questioned by security. The reunion is strangely subdued, without shrieks or laughter. Asmaa can't hide her shock. "He's very skinny and unhealthy," she whispers.

"I did not recognize my son," says Sharif. "He was strong and healthy and he used to play sports and basketball."

Only Batool lights up. "It's like a dream," she says.

As for Alaa himself, his long-awaited freedom hardly seems to register. Stepping out into the Amman night, he just looks numb.

A few days later, in early April, Alaa is still trying to straighten out his status in Jordan. He's had five meetings with various security services, each of whom wanted to know why he was thrown out of America if he isn't involved in crime or terrorism. His cousins have begun to show him Amman, and in certain ways the adjustment is easier for him than for his sisters. The boys aren't that different from him, he says -- they dress the same and listen to hip-hop, and are patient with his bad Arabic. Soon he's going to go look for a job in one of the big hotels, where his perfect English will be an asset.

Prison hasn't made him an angry man, at least not overtly. When he was locked up, he says, he learned patience, and he's determined not to let his ordeal scar him forever. "Eventually I'll get over it," he says. "There's a lot of people worse off than me."

He's given up on America, though. "One of my biggest fears is if I go back there, the same thing can happen again," he says. "I'd like to go back to Canada to finish my studies."

Noor, meanwhile, is desperately trying to convince the American embassy to grant her a visa so she can return to the country to complete her education. If that doesn't work, she'll try Canada, England or Australia -- anywhere but here. Failing that, she hopes the embassy might give her a job -- it's the only place she really wants to work in Jordan.

While she waits, she seeks out Amman's pockets of America. With her sisters she splurges at Blue Fig, an airy restaurant with high ceilings and plate glass windows, where the generically international food -- pizzas topped with tandoori chicken or feta cheese, Caesar salad -- reminds them of Houston. Dinner for four there costs nearly a quarter of her monthly salary.

One night each week she takes salsa classes at the Arthur Murray School, which, according to a banner hanging proudly on one studio, is "The First Salsa School in the Arab World." Several of the other students are expats; most of the rest are Christians. Noor moves easily -- she's the best dancer in the class. Twirled by a tall boy in jeans and a green sweat shirt, she could be anywhere.

"I try to forget that I'm in Jordan," she says.

In the morning, there will be a bus ride to the jewelry factory to remind her.

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