He’s feeling a little sorry for himself: his opponents are proving more adversarial than expected, united in the goal of denying him any success, viciously rooting for his failure. He’d tried working across the aisle, as he’d promised he would, wooing them with concessions and compromises, which they’d rejected, rousing their base against him.

He’s a little bitter too: his own supporters seem to be turning against him as well. They already seem to have forgotten that he inherited an economy on the brink of collapse, a military mired in two wars, a nation under terrorist threat. Instead of having his back, they take pride in whining about how disappointed they are, condemning any compromises, and protesting pragmatic steps as too little, as if perfect failure were somehow more admirable than imperfect success.

All of us share this world for but a brief moment in time. The question is whether we spend that time focused on what pushes us apart, or whether we commit ourselves to an effort to find common ground.

Yes, he’d campaigned in poetry and is governing in prose, but surely adapting to the way the world actually works is the only rational thing to do: he has no power, after all, to compel the world to comply with his wishes.

We have the power to make the world we seek, but only if we have the courage to make a new beginning.

He must continue to hope.

13

At the airport, the woman weaves wildly through the passengers heading in the opposite direction, indifferent to the startled eyes trailing her. There are no taxis waiting outside the terminal—she’s on the departures level. The few cabs dropping passengers off don’t stop for her, despite her frantic waving. She must seem hysterical, she imagines, a tiny woman running toward them with her hijab fluttering, her jilbab billowing in the cold Bay Area breeze.

In desperation, she darts in front of a cab speeding away. It swerves to avoid her but does come to a stop. She clambers in, breathlessly announcing her destination, hoping the driver knows where the hospital is. The driver begins to protest in his gruff Russian accent, but something in her demeanor must be convincing of some emergency, for he nods and turns the meter on.

She’s riding the same route she’d taken scarcely a week ago, except this time she’s alone. But not entirely, for the ghosts of her mother and sister accompany her—a mother abandoned, a sister spurned. Sitting on the edge of the seat, she keeps her eyes fixed on the road ahead to avoid the sight of the empty seats beside her.

When the cab climbs up the final hill into San Francisco, she can see very little, the hilltop blanketed by a fierce swirling fog. When the taxi crests and swoops down the hill, she is dizzy, as though she is falling off a cliff whose base is hidden somewhere deep in the clouds of fog rising to meet her.