I sat at the kitchen table, my laptop open in front of me, my cell phone juiced within easy reach awaiting the call. Even now I cannot say how long I sat; I never inquired, and no one has come forward. The shades were drawn, there was no day, no night, no passage of the season. My tour business no longer interested me; I left it to die of mismanagement in the hands of my associates. I was entirely consumed with searching the internet for even the slightest reference to girls who had vanished into the black hole of the Muslim universe never to be heard from again except for the occasional rare smudge of their existence preserved in the ether like a bloodstain on a sheet, or who emerged for one final spectacular big bang of martyrdom, taking along with them the children of other mothers. Whether they were swallowed up out of love or conviction, or dragged away by the hair flailing and screaming, whether they went actively or were taken passively, whether they set forth as jihadi brides to anoint the fighters with the lubricant of their bodies, or as mujahid mothers or black widows bent on revenge, whether they drew their kitchen knives out from under their burqas to plunge into the flesh of strangers or implanted explosives in their breasts or bellies feigning pregnancy to expiate the violation of their honor perpetrated deliberately to turn them into living bombs, whether they detonated themselves by their own agency or were triggered by remote control in the hands of a man standing watch in the distance—all of this that had happened and was still happening, and so much more, I followed obsessively online, hoarding every possible detail about how a girl could throw herself away in that world until I felt that I had covered every inch of the territory. I had exhausted all the possibilities and could not find you. Among such girls who had thrown themselves away there was no sign of you. Wherever you were, you were not there.

My cell phone connecting me to the world within easy reach faceup on the table had an app to alert me with bulletins of terrorist acts worldwide, zeroing in on those featuring Muslims in India and Pakistan either as perpetrators or victims. The alert sound was customized from a siren to something less heart-stopping since it went off so frequently as if malfunctioning, seeming to shudder in place like a spoiled child on the verge of a tantrum, demanding immediate attention. Most of the alerts were not relevant to your case, but now and then the deadly silence in the room where Manika and I sat waiting for you was broken by an alarm that conceivably could apply. Then, my heart pounding, I would call my friends at the police station to check out the situation if they had not already contacted me first, and more than once, with Manika on duty on the home front, the black Ambassador was dispatched to collect me for yet another gruesome viewing on the stone altars of the morgue—but the good angel always appeared right on cue, crying, Stop, let another living creature be sacrificed instead, this time it will not be you.