Here Ismail interrupts, taking the phone away from Amina. In response to Tahera’s queries, he denies Amina’s report: Nothing’s going on with Arshad, the boy has perhaps been acting up a little, from not feeling well. When Tahera insists on speaking to her son—she must learn how he’s really doing, and besides, it’s so unlike him to frighten Amina—Ismail becomes evasive. She has enough to worry about with her mother and sister. Isn’t Seema’s delivery approaching? He’s taking care of this. What can Tahera do from there anyway? He’ll tell her when she returns.

Panic-stricken, like her daughter had been a little while ago, Tahera sputters: What is wrong with Arshad? How can she wait till she returns, worried as she is about her son? She has every right to know now.

Ismail finally tells her: Arshad was only pretending to be sick. Jemaal’s uncle Selim was driving to his construction site when he happened to see Jemaal and Arshad on their bikes during school hours. They wouldn’t stop when he called out to them, and he had to follow in his car to catch up to them. They gave every kind of excuse for being outside, and when he inspected their backpacks to see what they were hiding, he found rocks in them. They were planning to stone many churches in town. Unfortunately, by then they’d already inflicted damage on the church next to the mosque.

At first Tahera is too relieved to comprehend the extent of Arshad’s transgression: a broken window is surely a small forgivable offense. “Should we offer to pay for the window?”

“Do you want to call attention to your son?” Ismail chides. “The fools left a trail. They wrapped paper around the rocks, signing themselves Ar-Ra’d or some such nonsense. The police are investigating. One window, and the boys will be labeled jihadis for life, with the FBI after them.”

She hadn’t considered this. She blanches: What will happen if Arshad gets caught?

“We can only pray that nobody saw them,” Ismail says. He talks vaguely of keeping Arshad out of sight for some time. If Tahera were there to take care of Amina, he could take Arshad out of town. Perhaps he can coordinate with Jemaal’s father.

But what about Arshad? What do they tell him? Surely they can’t ignore what he did. What if it leads him down some terrible path?

“First, let’s get the situation under control, then we’ll worry about that,” Ismail says.

“Let me talk to Arshad,” Tahera begs.

No, Ismail says, not now. “I’ve already spoken to him, but everything I say only seems to make him more willful, more defiant. We’ll have to be careful how we treat this. I’ll talk to Imam Zia. Arshad won’t listen to anything you say anyway.”

Ismail hangs up before she can protest. His matter-of-fact assertion that she can do nothing to help her son stuns her with its authority, its truth. She’s tempted to let his father and Imam Zia handle him their way.