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.