In the warmth of an afternoon spent in the kitchen, when everything—the smells, the sounds, the company—reminds you of an earlier time, a time when you were presiding, when your daughters would poke their excited faces into the kitchen to inhale the aroma and then pinch their noses shut “to trap heaven inside their heads,” ready to acquiesce to anything you wanted from mere anticipation of the treat in store, in that heady fog of nostalgia and relived memory, you are compelled to speak:

Living in America is like living in an in-law’s house, you say. When one marries into another family, one needs to learn their rituals. One needs to adjust and accommodate, one needs to continue charming and beguiling well-wishers, one needs to win over naysayers and adversaries by surrendering a little, by learning how to become indispensable to their well-being. One cannot survive by segregating oneself, by giving others reason to treat one as an outsider. One survives by learning how to fit in.

By the rigidity of her faith and practices, isn’t Tahera opening her family to charges of fundamentalism, especially at a time when America has good reason to be suspicious of fundamentalists? Isn’t Tahera making it harder for her children to succeed in America by not teaching them the skills they will need to flourish in its culture? If not for herself, she should at least think of her children. This is the lesson to take from the events in Irvine.

While you speak, Tahera continues cooking—she chops, she stirs, she holds out the ladle to you to taste, she inquires about next steps. She doesn’t flare up, and you grow bolder and bolder in your pronouncements, heartened: maybe you are finally getting through to her.

Too late you notice that her eyes have hardened. You’ve said more than you intended, led astray by some miscalculation about her receptiveness and a trick of time that made you forget where you are. An unease settles in the kitchen, like from the first day.

“Say something, Tahera.”

She remarks, in an offhand manner, “Did you know Fiaz is a homosexual? Is that the sort of American culture you want your grandchildren to be exposed to?”

She doesn’t wait for your reply but turns back to the stove as if she’d simply made an insignificant observation, unrelated to anything.

You don’t have an answer to Tahera’s question. It’s not that you’re dumbfounded by the idea. Various details click immediately into place: Fiaz’s almost effeminate good looks and sense of style, his implied bachelorhood and reticence about his home life, his easy relations with Seema, his love of fine things.

Dully, you begin pondering the implications of Tahera’s revelation. Is Tahera mocking your intentions for Fiaz and Seema? Is that why she brings him up now, to demonstrate how little you know about life in America?