Having served the food, Tahera calls you to dinner. You recognize the mother she has become: she could be you from years earlier. You and Seema return to the table. You take your seats, and then wait, without touching your food.

“Bismillah,” she says. “Let’s eat.”

With that, Tahera transforms again, as though having taken care of everything, she can now shed the pretense of adulthood. She’s a daughter again, asking you anxiously how the food tastes—is everything cooked through and adequately spiced and salted?

Everything needs to be perfect tonight. You assure her: everything is as it should be.

Seema goes into raptures: “I forgot how great these simple dishes can be. The grated carrot and ginger in the curd rice. The peanuts in the lemon rice. The potatoes—spicy and blackened just the right amount. And the moonlight makes everything more delicious.”

How your daughters’ faces glow, their eyes shining! How they scrunch at their papads like they used to as girls, the papads initially round as their faces, and then slowly waning like the moon! How they laugh, how they call on each other to supply missing details to reminiscences!

A light breeze blows this way and that, playing with their voices, now bearing them away, now drawing them nearer, so you can’t quite hear everything your daughters say. They’re too quick for you, anyway, leapfrogging from one topic to another like they used to. You’re content to sit back and let their voices wash over you like the breeze and the moonlight. Everything is a balm on the pain throbbing through your body until it feels distant, like it belongs to someone else.

“Ammi’s become very quiet,” Seema remarks.

You’d taken advantage of a cloud curtaining the moon to close your eyes. When you open them again, everything seems dazzlingly bright—across the table, your daughters’ faces flare at you, and you can’t distinguish between them. Who’s sitting where? Who’s pregnant, who’s wearing a hijab? Your eyes take a moment to readjust.

“Are you in pain, Ammi?” Tahera asks. “Do you want to lie down?”

“No, I was just enjoying listening to you both. I was trying to remember the lines Tahera used to recite during our rooftop dinners at home. About the moon—do you still remember?”

“I was reading it just this morning, in the book Seema got me,” Tahera says. “What is there in thee, Moon! That thou shouldst move my heart so potently?”

When yet a child I oft have dried my tears when thou hast smiled.

Thou seem’dst my sister. Hand in hand we went from eve to morn across the firmament . . .

You haven’t heard Tahera recite in two decades. Her voice rings out, silvery and sparkling. Listening to Tahera reminds you of her father. How like him she sounds now. But you don’t want to be reminded of his absence tonight.