She shuts the bedroom door and locks it. She doesn’t turn on the light. She climbs into her bed and pulls her comforter over herself. She ignores the knocks on the door, the rattle of the doorknob, Fiaz’s strained voice, and places a pillow, her mother’s pillow, on her face to block all light from her eyes, even though the room is already dark. The smell of the coconut oil her mother uses assails her nostrils, and she turns the pillow over to the faint scrubbed fragrance of detergent.

This dark is a blessing. This solitude is a blessing. She takes a few deep breaths, and her lungs fill with relief, as if she’d been holding her breath not just the last few minutes, not just this evening, or even this week, but all her life.

The pillowcase is cool against her eyelids, like leaves with the drip of summer rain after long dreary days of oppressive heat.

Her mind glides toward calming thoughts: flowers budding in gulmohar trees, mangos ripening in fragrant stillness, monsoon suns smiling through shiny eaves, sweet Reshmi’s cheeks, a smiling infant’s breath.

And all the while, blood continues to pool and swirl around me, in shifting fleeting patterns that neither of us can see.

33

Poor Tahera. Her sister has locked herself in her room. Her dying mother regards her with eyes that threaten tears at any moment. And though Fiaz stands by Seema’s bedroom door, he appears to be present everywhere she looks, judging and condemning her. What is she to do?

A part of her wants to apologize, to throw herself around her mother’s neck, to knock on Seema’s door and beg for forgiveness. But these actions would constitute an admission of guilt, which she cannot bring herself to do. For to do so would be to accept the enormity of her offense, not only against her sister but against her mother as well, and her own understanding of the teachings of the Prophet. So she tells herself: Allah as her witness, she has done nothing wrong. She stands irresolutely by her suitcase, clutching her handbag to herself.

“I’m going to catch a taxi to the airport,” she says, testing her power to leave.

Does she want Nafeesa or Fiaz to make another effort to persuade her to stay? And if they did, would she give in? But the option is not presented: Nafeesa is still bereft of speech, and Fiaz is ready to take Tahera at her word.

“I’ll drive you,” he says.

He makes his offer without any rancor that she can detect. Is he simply determined to get her out of Seema’s apartment? Does he mean to take her to task on the way? Or is he laying claims to being the nobler Muslim? Her indignation gives her the strength to leave: “There’s no need. I can manage by myself.”