Seema nods, unsure if Tahera’s question is merely rhetorical. Her sister is a hazy vision standing by her side, her face a blur Seema is glad she cannot read.

“Here, let me give your shoulders a massage too,” Tahera responds gruffly. “Ammi says you were complaining about a backache.”

Seema doesn’t demur. Standing behind Seema, Tahera sinks her fingers into muscles tense from holding extra weight, growing pliable in her hands as she digs into them. Her posture, the pressure, the concentration, is familiar to Tahera from childhood massages practiced on her parents and occasionally even her sister. From there, it’s a small step to another more frequent childhood ritual. “Your hair’s all tangled, let me fetch a comb. Single or double?”

A single plait, like when they’d do their hair in college, twin plaits like they remade for each other every morning before school.

“You choose.”

Tahera passes the comb repeatedly through Seema’s hair, her sister pliant, not protesting even when her head is yanked back at a particularly difficult tangle. It’s only then that Tahera is able to speak. The act of disentangling Seema’s hair has freed something knotted inside her as well, the act of gathering tresses and weaving them together has brought some order and calm to the snarl of memory.

“I missed you, Seema. I would lie in bed and wonder what you were doing. How you were spending your days, who you spent them with. It was very lonely after you left. Ammi became quieter, speaking only when she had to—a shadow of herself, slinking through the house. Abba remained Abba, of course. Only now he bullied us more often. He became very upset if we so much as mentioned your name. He’d stop speaking to us for days at a time.”

Tahera’s fingers are nimble. Their rhythm lends a cadence to her speaking, easing her hesitation when seeking words or phrases, their assurance lending her self-control. It helps that Seema can’t look at her, that Seema remains silent, that Tahera can pause as long as she wants to, pretending she needs to run the comb through Seema’s hair again.

“We went out less, afraid of having to face questions about you. If someone inquired, Abba would say you’re doing fine. But he’d lock himself in his study after. We stopped visiting relatives. Our world shrunk around us. Only Halima Aunty called. She never cared what Abba did.”

What Tahera remembers, but cannot speak about: How it was then, when she’d been searching for some escape from a life that seemed to be closing in upon her, when even the poetry she turned to for solace seemed tainted, bearing the imprint of a father who’d promised the world to his daughters yet sought to impose his will on them, she’d discovered the comforts of prayer, Halima Aunty’s quiet faith and rituals providing a refuge she could lose herself in. And the more her father mocked her transformation, the tighter she pulled its protection around her.