"Medium big. It carries cars. Thousands of cars, all parked in rows inside it like a giant garage that floats."
"Why does it have to leave if there's a storm coming? Wouldn't it be safer to stay?"
Rania stopped with her hand on the doorknob, because it was a good question, and because Yasmin deserved an answer to good questions even when her mother was in a hurry.
"You know how when you hold a big piece of cardboard outside on a windy day, and the wind grabs it and almost pulls it out of your hands?"
Yasmin nodded.
"That ship is like a giant piece of cardboard, as tall as a ten-story building, and it's tied to the dock with ropes. When the wind comes, it's going to grab that ship and pull, and the ropes are going to have to hold it. Sometimes ropes break. The captain would rather be out in the open water where he can steer and use his engine, than tied up and hoping the ropes hold. My job is to get him out before the wind comes."
"What if the wind comes first?"
"Then my job gets harder." She bent and kissed the top of her daughter's head, which smelled like strawberry shampoo and the slightly burnt smell of the microwave popcorn Yasmin was not supposed to have eaten before dinner. "Lock the door behind me. Don't open it for anybody but Baba. Eat your sandwich. Crusts optional, tonight only."
"Fi amanillah," Yasmin said, which was what Rania's mother always said when anyone left the house, and which Yasmin had started saying at the door this year, solemnly, as if she had just discovered that words could be a kind of protection.
"Fi amanillah, habibti."