“You could teach Amina the poem. She’d look sweet doing it.”

Tahera thumbs through the book. The complete poems and selected letters of John Keats. Her father had many collections of Keats’s poems, but none that claimed to be complete. She recognizes many of the titles, some of her favorite poems. How foolish she’d been, so taken with poetry, convinced there was nothing more important in the world. And surely Seema is raking it up now to make some disparaging point, to attack and ridicule her. She’d seen the look on Seema’s face when she declined the Faraway Tree books on her children’s behalf, as if she pitied the children their close-minded mother.

She thrusts the book back at Seema. “All that is in the past. You should keep it for yourself. Or for your children.”

Seema’s thwarted expression is very satisfying.

Besides, she’d never been the naughty girl in the poem. The poem fit Seema better. It was Seema who initiated the scrapes they got into, who created a scene if she didn’t get what she wanted, who finally ran away from home.

“I have to call home,” Tahera says, turning away. “Amina will be waiting.”

19

Hearing her mother’s voice, Amina becomes teary-eyed again. But the busy evening, errands with their father topped by dinner at Hot Breads, where her brother let her have the bigger share of chicken nuggets, has mostly succeeded in distracting her from the approaching motherless weekend.

“I miss you,” Amina says to Tahera. “Do you miss me?”

“I miss you too, Ammu,” Tahera says, blowing a kiss into the phone.

“I love you,” Tahera says to Amina. “Do you love me?”

“I love you two, Ammi,” Amina says.

This is a game they play often. Amina giggles, playing along with her mother.

I love you ten, like a chocolate bar.

I love you hundred, like a pickle jar.

I love you thousand, like a room full of dolls.

I love you million, like a sky full of stars.

20

Lately, my could-be father Ismail has visited the mosque most nights after the children go to bed to participate in discussions of the Quran, led by Imam Zia. Tonight he cannot. Their mother isn’t home, and Amina insists he stay by her bedside. She has sniffled her way to sleep, but her hold on his hand hasn’t loosened enough to extricate himself.

Tonight, Ismail especially wishes to visit the mosque. There’s the fundraiser tomorrow, and perhaps a conversation with Imam Zia, and an extra namaz there, would dispel his anxiety.

Imam Zia is a recent addition to the mosque and Islamic center. He’s from Pakistan but brought up and educated in England, with a PhD in Islamic theology. He has won several international competitions, both in Quran recital and in Quranic exegesis. Since his arrival two years ago, he has instituted many activities: besides the Friday sermons, there are nightly discussion groups and regular lectures and study sessions. He even maintains a blog on living a life of Islam, answering anonymous questions from the congregation.