Forgive her for what?

For everything, for all that she should have done but didn’t, for all that she did but shouldn’t have.

For not having understood, for still not understanding fully—

Nafeesa is both coherent and disjointed, forthcoming and hesitant, precipitate and pensive, the bridge of her words sometimes stretching across silences, sometimes hanging midair unfinished.

Seema responds with caresses and kisses, with noises of encouragement, not wanting to say anything for fear of upending the moment and bringing it to an end. A trembling half joy, a shimmering sweet sorrow fills her. She has never felt this close to her mother before, never before seen her as an equal in regret and pain and heartache. That long-ago night with her father in Chennai is forgotten. Any lingering resentment toward her mother dissipates.

Tomorrow, she promises herself, with Fiaz and Leigh there, she will tell Ammi everything. Her apprehensions for the future fade away, as a glimmering optimism takes hold, even as she recognizes how little time together she and Ammi really have.

17

I take it all in, hungrily, greedily: Nafeesa’s remorse, Tahera’s fears, Bill’s disillusionment. Arshad’s anguish, Seema’s optimism. America’s turmoil. As if I need to inhale this world into the very cells of my body, every element of it simultaneously, before I can bring myself to take a single breath of its air.

I taste most sharply my could-be brother’s anger and despair. For isn’t Arshad someone in whom my to-be mother had seen a possible model for me, convincing her of my viability? A child who seemed so sure of himself and his place in the world that she could picture him rising to meet the world hand to hand, eye to eye, the kind of child she could picture herself raising.

The kind of person she’d believed herself to be before that fateful evening in Chennai, when her performance had failed her. And ever since, she’s been convinced she’s merely going through the motions, performing a pale simulacrum of herself.

If I could give her that moment of radiance. How differently the world would have unfurled for her. I reimagine that evening, seeing it as she imagined it would play out. I become the audience she desired, willing to be captivated by the power of her performance, waiting to be converted by the persuasiveness of her words:

Abba, you taught us to look beyond subsistence, beyond what is needed to keep mind and body together. You taught us to probe the universe for hidden truth and beauty, to seek sustenance only in the true and the truly beautiful. You taught us to question everything else—rituals, tradition, faith, ties. You taught us to embrace everything that life challenges us with: we are to always strive beyond what we are capable of, beyond what we cling to for comfort.