All the while she repeats the prayer under her breath, sitting on the edge of the seat and rocking herself back and forth, the way her daughter sometimes does. It’s a child’s prayer, repetitive and insistent—she’s slid back into a practice of praying from her childhood days, unmediated by a surah from the Quran or a dua, unmoored from regular offerings five times a day, from a time when prayers were part entreaties, part demands, part inveiglements, part threats, part negotiations, scripted by the needs of the hour and whispered over and over again to the universe.

She includes in her prayer everything she is in danger of losing: Allah, give me back my sister. Allah, give me back my son. Allah, spare my mother pain. Allah, protect my daughter from harm. Allah, secure my husband’s love for me. Allah, save my sister’s son. This is all I ask from you. You have to hear me this one time. I’ll never ask for anything else ever again.

The cab glides to a stop in front of a shimmering building that extends into the hazy heavens like a portal.

14

In Irvine, in a still-possible future, a brother says to his sister: Come, I’ll show you something.

He looks excited, and his sister drops what she’s doing and follows him. He leads her down to the garden, away from the house, and picks up the hose lying there.

She’s wary but goes to his side: Bhaiya, don’t get me wet, I just got ready for asr namaz.

It’s an afternoon in late fall, a limpid sky stretching across their heads. The sun shines above their rooftop, above the treetops, behind them.

This is the best time for this, he says. I’ll show you something beautiful.

He points the hose in the direction of their shadows extending on the lawn in front of them. He turns the hose on: a fine sheet of water sprays out in a wide V shape from the nozzle and falls to the lawn in a graceful curve.

Look, he says, and sweeps the nozzle up and down, as though he were washing the air in front of them. In the delicate scrim he creates from the water glinting in the sunlight, there appears—broken at first, and then more fully—a rainbow, large enough that it hovers like an arch made for the two of them, and near enough that they could easily leap through it.

Bhaiya, it’s lovely, she exclaims, clapping. It’s like magic.