Eventually, when she has slipped into a sufficiently deep slumber, he lifts her into his arms to carry her to her own bed. But he pauses by the door of the children’s room, suddenly reluctant to enter. He turns and carries her back to his room, her body a comforting weight against his chest.

Later, he’s ashamed: Is he afraid of his own son? He lies awake in bed pondering, then persuades himself to return to check on the boy. His son is sleeping peacefully, his chest rising and falling with the grace of a bird riding a gentle breeze, his face serene, lit by Allah’s own words and the ceiling’s glowing universe.

3

At the San Francisco International Airport, a daughter, sister, mother waits by the departure gate for her flight to Dallas: she has bought a ticket on the last flight leaving that night.

When her phone rings—displaying a San Francisco number—she’s quick to answer, on the hope of hearing her mother’s voice again. But it’s a voice she hasn’t heard before, a man claiming to be her sister’s ex-husband. He tells her that her mother asked that she be informed about her sister: bleeding, emergency, ambulance. He gives her the name of a hospital and is in a hurry to hang up.

But she needs to be at home, by her children’s beds, looking down at their sleeping forms. Hasn’t she been punished enough for her decision to abandon her son and daughter? She has her boarding pass in hand, her luggage has been checked. Surely her sister will be all right—

She remains rooted to her spot.

4

In the halls of a hospital in San Francisco, a wants-to-be father paces the marbled floor, one end to the other, spinning visions of the future: the joys of accidental fatherhood, perhaps even an unexpected restoration of his ruptured family. Any doubts he’s harbored have been replaced by the simple longing to hold the baby, and the mother, in his arms, even if he has to—as he will, as he wants to—accept the inclusion of a fourth into the family.

He’d never really believed life capable of granting him this. But now he feels a strange stirring of hope, of pride almost, of attaining some kind of happiness. Like the day two years ago when a man in his image was elected president of his country.

Surely it is a sign that he’s been called to be present here today. He has declared himself the father of the baby to be born; he neglects to correct the nurses when they refer to the mother as his wife.

He’s not unaware of the dire peril to mother and baby. A nurse has tried to reassure him: they’re doing everything they can. He has willed himself to believe the doctors capable of miracles.