When Tahera finishes, she says, in her normal voice, but still addressing the sky, “Seema asked me to be Ishraaq’s legal guardian.” She glances at Seema briefly.

“In case something happens—” Seema fiddles with her plate. “And Tahera agreed.”

Both sisters look at you, waiting for you to say something. You recognize that your daughters are offering you this as a consolation. You’re moved, but also vexed: Why must the gesture of reconciliation include an allusion to calamity?

“Nothing will happen,” you manage to say gruffly, not knowing which emotion to give expression to. Your eyes fill up; you shiver. To cover your reaction you pull the shawl tightly around yourself, surreptitiously swiping it across your eyes.

“Are you feeling cold, Ammi?” Seema asks.

“Just a little breeze.” Seema suggests you drape your shawl around your head to cover your ears, and Tahera leans over to help you.

You don’t want to leave this place: the air rinsed clean by the rain, the city flickering solicitously, the luminous sky soft like a shawl, the benevolent moon presiding. And Tahera and Seema—in the telescoping moonlight, it’s as if you’re seeing all visions of them superimposed, not only as they are, but also as they were, and as they will be—daughters, sisters, mothers, grandmothers. Their hair black like the new-moon night, their hair silvered by the full moon; their faces unlined and smooth, their faces creased by shadows. You realize that the Tahera and Seema you want to continue seeing are not the Tahera and Seema of the past anymore but the ones before you now. You want more than the glimpses you’ve been afforded so far.

You want more. You want more! But what to do? The only way is through Time, and Time has already forsaken you.

How the moon smiles, Grandmother, so serenely, as though it were making you a promise or offering you a reprieve.

4

What is this tightness in my chest as I consider my three foremothers together on the rooftop? I have no words for it—I can’t even say that I must be out of breath, for I haven’t taken a single breath yet. I’m struggling with feelings I cannot describe; they seem to change and elude me even as I seek to comprehend them.

O dearth of human words! Roughness of mortal speech!

Even that lament isn’t mine, but courtesy of my could-be mother, from her favorite Endymion. I hear the words in her voice, passionate and declamatory, the way she’d recited to the moon other lines from the same poem.

Woe! Woe! Is grief contained in the very deeps of pleasure, my sole life?

The way my grandfather Naeemullah had taught her, the words saturating the mind and lungs till every nook and recess echoes with them, shocking the body into resonance before they break free of its confines.