Their muted actions are still too loud to Tahera’s ears. Even as she strives to focus on her namaz, she recalls the evening she arrived—was it less than a week ago?—when Seema and her mother were setting out dinner. She’d been right to be anxious then, for hadn’t Seema already wreaked havoc on her life once? She had come, anyway, to support her dying mother and offer what aid she can her sister, because that’s what her mother wanted. And this is what it has led to: while her own life in Irvine threatens to fall apart, she’s here participating in Seema’s licentious life.

There is no getting away from it: Seema and her community talk of tolerance, and the Quran warns about judging in Allah’s stead, but Allah could in no way have intended that she be accepting of what He has denied His creation. If she had known that Seema had returned to her former ways, she still may have come to San Francisco, for Ammi’s sake, but she would have known to hold her distance from Seema.

Maybe this day is a warning, that the permissive comforts from her past life, which she’d been slipping back into so easily, are really distractions to her faith she needs to guard against, whatever Ammi may say.

If she needs proof of how easy it is to forget the teachings of the Quran and the Prophet, then an account of her visit provides a list of temptations: the non-halal chicken the very first night, the book of poetry, the steadily impairing association with Seema’s friends, Seema’s request of guardianship, the music, and tonight’s dinner. She’s been led to this point, step by step. If the Shaitan needed a helper, he couldn’t have done better than use her sister. And she’d fallen for it: she’d been on the verge of letting Seema back into her life, even believing it to be the answer to her istikhara.

Why is she still here? She has better things to do: she has her own family to tend to, a daughter who needs her, and a son whom she’s failing. She is unable to even find the immersion she craves in namaz—each sound from the kitchen yanks her back into a depraved world.

Finally, the sounds stop. She’s done with her rakaat for isha but decides to pray a few more for the optional prayers. And also duas for forgiveness and mercy, if Allah is indeed unhappy with her lapses, and for Arshad’s safety and well-being. Perhaps his act was intended by Allah to remind her of her true life in Irvine, to return to it immediately. This must be what her vision of Jahannam on the rooftop means. She’d mistaken that, too, imagining in that moment of grief that the loss of sister and of son were alike. Until her eyes had been opened to Seema’s continued transgressions.

She raises the volume of her recitation, so the buzz of the surahs can fill the living room and infiltrate the rest of the apartment, cleansing it.