My husband has purchased an old Zhiguli from a Yezidi young man for $400. It is white with golden velvet interior. “Fit for a lamb,” Charlie jokes as he straps Arpa, our almost two-year-old son, on the back seat. I sit next to him, so I may quickly reach for him if a need arises....

“When you reach the rainbow, you will be transformed into a boy,” my grandmother told me when I was a young girl, and I tried many times. Not because I wanted to become a boy, but because I was determined to experience a miracle, the extraordinary. I stopped trying to reach the rainbow around the...