Sitting with her thumb in her mouth in her fat ayah’s lap in the state-of-the-art wheelchair her father had also sent along, she was steered by a turbaned retainer to the limo after the vans were loaded with the eight new jumbo-sized suitcases packed to bursting, not to mention furniture, paintings, books, linens, carpets, china, silver, kitchenware, and so on—any detachable object of value that she could claim and fit into the transport. She ransacked the place, took everything she could take from the penthouse condo that was our home in those days on Malabar Hill with its magical view of the sea. You remember how we would stand there at the great floor-to-ceiling expanse of windows, Maya, you and I, and imagine we could see over the waters into the houses of other little girls just like you in all those countries far away with names also beginning in the letter I—Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Iran, Israel.