You feel small: how presumptuous, how foolish your advice to her, thinking her incapable of considering her own situation carefully. You will have to ask her forgiveness, as you’d asked Seema’s last night. You had promised yourself that you’d listen, not try to fix what you don’t understand.

“Shall we check on the biryani?” she asks.

A welcome distraction: you brighten with gratitude at this conciliatory gesture on her part. She lifts the lid and pries away the sheets of paper towels covering the mouth of the pressure cooker to absorb the steam.

Ah, there it is! That final elusive note of the aroma! One sniff, one glance at the rice—the grains fuzzy yet distinct—and you know the biryani will be perfect, you don’t even need to taste it.

Tahera gives the pot a final mix, and then samples the biryani straight from the ladle. “One can’t ask more of even Jannat than biryani like this. Seema’s friends are lucky.” There’s an edge to her voice, but at least she’s smiling.

“It’s not only for Seema’s friends,” you say. “It’s for you too.”

The last couplet of the ghazal resonates—Whom you once counted a friend, whom you once considered loyal, I’m still that same smitten one, whether you remember or not—and you wish you could take Tahera in your arms again to remind her of those times. But she’s returned to the chicken, skinning it with a matter-of-fact ferocity, and you fear you’ve squandered some opportunity that’d been granted you this afternoon.

26

Amina is waiting after school for Ismail to pick her up. In Arshad’s absence, she stands by herself, by the main entrance just inside the lobby, which is emptying slowly of its inhabitants. Her friends have all left with their parents.

She wonders what her brother is doing at home. Is he feeling better? She’d remembered to say a dua for him at lunchtime, her hands joined in prayer, right after saying her Bismillah.

But her father is late. She’s not concerned yet, comforting herself instead with an alternate vision: perhaps her mother will pick her up today!

Ammi will arrive and wrap her jilbab around her and drop a kiss on her head. And then they’ll drive home, and Bhaiya will be there, and her Asma doll, and Ammi will give her a cupcake to eat—with frosting and sprinkles!—and chocolate milk to drink.

This catalog of pleasures keeps Amina occupied. She swings her lunch bag, she skips from one end of the doorway to the other, stopping in the middle to peer at the parking lot.

Her backpack begins to feel heavy. She takes it off and presses her face against the glass doors to peer around the corner, farther up the driveway. She’s supposed to stay inside—Abba warned her specifically while dropping her off that morning—but Bhaiya, when he’s with her, usually disregards this injunction and leads her to the playground at the end of the parking lot, claiming they can keep a better watch for their parents from the platform above the slide.