I share this song with you, Grandmother, so it might bring you some comfort. I have mere moments to live. You will soon learn of our fates—my mother’s and mine—without needing to hear the words spoken by the doctor, for the expression on my not-to-be father’s face will convey everything you need to know.

Grandmother, somewhere in this building your other daughter, Tahera, my other not-to-be mother, is searching for us. She is lost: the maze of corridors that separate us—identical and blandly monotonous—have confused her. She asks for directions but is too impatient, too agitated, to heed them. Now, in the desperate hope that she’ll somehow be led to us, she’s hurrying through corridors picked at random, clutching to herself her jilbab, which trails her raggedly—the sleeve and skirt were caught in the car door as she made haste to exit the cab, the fabric ripping when she yanked to extricate them.

Grandmother, you will be resting your head against a wall, your gray hair against the white tile, your gray face in the shadows, when she stumbles on you. Bill will be seated by you, holding the shell of me in his arms, the two of you inches and miles apart. Tahera will catch one sight of you and freeze, transfixed.

Will the three of you grieve together, Grandmother, help each other grieve? So much depends on the answer.

There’s what’s left of your life, and Urdu ghazals and Faiz’s poetry and Noor Jehan’s voice. There’s Bill’s and Tahera’s lives, the lives of their loves, both current and future. There’s the lives of my now not-to-be siblings, both born and as yet unborn.

When you sense Bill shudder, will you let your hand stroke his hair like you’ve stroked your daughters’ hair so many times before? When Tahera unfixes herself, will you let yourself rise to take her cloaked and ragged form in your arms, as you’ve done so many times in her childhood? Don’t you see, Grandmother? It’s that past Tahera, too, who runs toward you with her arms open.

Will you forgive, Grandmother, and let yourself be forgiven? Console and be consoled?

Yes, there could be a hereafter. Perhaps we’ll all be resurrected, all our loves and our loved ones, our bones put together, then covered in flesh and skin. Maybe breath will then move our bodies, and maybe breath will then move us. And perhaps we’ll have forever for what may be granted us: kind words, a touch, maybe even a kiss, a caress. Perhaps we’ll be held, or be able to hold.

But in this cold clinical room there’s only the three of you.

18

The light dazzles my eyes, yet I catch a glint of the blade approaching.

Father, was I born for this end?

19

Come with me, quickly. There isn’t much time left, and I want to show you something beautiful: here by the entrance to the hospital, where the fog swirls fiercely, hiding the city and its comforting lights from us, hiding the universe from us.