Seema is thirty-three and by now used to such attention from men. She’s amused by Bill’s bashful solicitude, and since her current plight is his fault, she doesn’t think twice about making use of him.

The march has emptied out in the Civic Center Plaza, and they stand under a tree at the back, Seema leaning against him for support, the lawn in front of them rippling with shoulders and heads, banners and placards.

Beside them stands a group of protestors dressed like Iraqi mothers, in black hijabs and abayas, wearing mournful masks and holding rag dolls that resemble dead children. They mime grief, raising hands to lips in slow motion as though to stifle a cry or beg for a reprieve. Seema notes that Bill is shaken. He can’t take his eyes off the group of mourning mothers, as if only now becoming conscious of the human toll of the war.

“The imagery is very effective,” she comments, to which he nods mutely.

He’s also clearly discomfited by the speeches—standard vehement denunciations of the war, peppered with words like hegemony, subjugation, colonialism, racism—and squirms at the violent invective directed against Bush and Cheney, Wall Street, Israel, America. He tries to hide his discomfort from her, though, by cheering and clapping with the crowd, especially during the songs.

“That’s Joan Baez singing,” she points out.

“Who’s Joan Baez?”

She opens her eyes wide at him. “She marched with Martin Luther King Jr.? She sang ‘We Shall Overcome’ at the March on Washington, the one where he delivered his ‘I Have a Dream’ speech?”

Seema is a veteran of such protests, a little disillusioned. She knows what to expect: a parade of minority speakers before a self-congratulatory liberal White crowd that will afterward return to its safe White slice of the world, while the rest of them will still have to deal with whatever is transpiring.

Seema is also a little bitter. She’d moved to Boston two years ago to join her girlfriend Ann after four years of a long-distance relationship. Just months later, Al-Qaeda strikes on 9/11, and what starts as heated arguments—in response to Seema calling Ann’s and America’s reaction to the collapse of the Twin Towers “White hysteria at the loss of its privileged security”—ends in acrimonious fights and a breakup a year later. Seema had returned to San Francisco earlier this month, while Ann was now moving to a safe White suburb with her new, more suitable White lover.

An Iraqi duo begins an Arabic version of John Lennon’s “Imagine,” and the crowd accompanies the refrain lustily in English. Bill has a comforting baritone, and he sings with sweet conviction, swaying to the music, clearly a ploy to have their bodies touch. But she sways along with him, eyes closed, her head now and then resting on his chest as she leans back for support—she’s a foot shorter, barely making it to his shoulders. It’s a new experience, having a man stand this close to her.