“No, they don’t read such books,” she tells Seema. There are probably better—more Islamic—books she could buy for Amina. She resolves to look for these when she’s back in Irvine, reshelving the book she holds in her hand.

“I’ll buy them for myself then,” Seema says.

They find the city transformed when they leave the bookstore. The sun has sunk behind the hills to the west, the blue of the sky replaced by pale pinks and violets. A faint mist, the beginnings of fog, has nosed its way into the neighborhood. Lights dot the streets, and farther east blink hazy lights across the bay. The flushed city of the afternoon is no more.

“This is beautiful,” Nafeesa says, but she shivers.

“I didn’t realize it was so late,” Tahera says, flustered. “I must get back for the maghrib namaz, then call Amina and Arshad before they go to bed.”

And Seema, who’d wished earlier that the day would pass quickly, is sorry that it’s ended. The past has been an oasis.

They hail a cab, and squeeze in, quiet now. Nafeesa has suddenly shrunk, as though with the light—the sky has turned a deep unrepentant purple—her strength has drained away. She sits huddled between her daughters, clutching to herself the blanket and the books and a fluffy yellow duck she persuaded Tahera to buy for me. Each sister looks out a window, lost in her own thoughts. Each sister lurches between vexation and hope that the cab will take all evening to arrive.

18

Tahera is folding the janamaz after the maghrib prayers when Seema holds out a book, smiling. “For you. I got it at the bookstore.”

“What is it?” Tahera continues folding without glancing at the book.

“Poetry,” Seema says. “I remembered how much you liked Keats. Your favorite poet, no?”

“I don’t read poetry anymore,” Tahera replies, which is true, if one didn’t count the Quran. She has neither the inclination nor the time to waste on frivolous, self-serving indulgences.

“It has that poem you loved—There was a naughty boy. Only you changed it to girl whenever you recited it.” Seema flips through the book trying to find the poem.

Tahera’s first impulse is to deny Seema, pretend she doesn’t recall. How dare Seema invoke their shared history after renouncing all rights to it. She already regrets her sentimentality from earlier, the false comfort of those books from their past, the delusion of continuing sisterhood. But the opening of the Keats poem comes back to her too vividly to ignore.

“There was a naughty girl, a naughty girl was she, she would not stop at home, she could not quiet be,” she recites involuntarily, taking the book from Seema.

“You used to recite it everywhere. You did that funny skip at the end, hopping from one foot to the other. How did it go?”

“She stood in her shoes and she wondered. She wondered. She stood in her shoes and she wondered.”