You’re standing on the stippled beach with your daughters and husband. Your daughters each hold on to one of their father’s hands as the trio edges toward the waves, churidars and pants rolled up to their knees. You’re guarding their footwear.

“There,” he says, pointing toward the east, lifting one of the girl’s hands along with his, “that’s the Bay of Bengal.” Now lifting the other daughter’s hand: “That’s the Arabian Sea.” Finally, lifting both their hands, and gesturing to the south: “And there’s the Indian Ocean.”

“Where, Abba?” asks Tahera.

“How can you tell?” says Seema.

“Can’t you see?” he says. “Look, the Arabian Sea is muddy. The Bay of Bengal is green. The Indian Ocean is blue.”

Seema claims she sees the difference, but Tahera can’t. Father and eldest daughter take turns waxing on how blue, how green, how muddy each is, until your youngest daughter is reduced to tears. She comes running back to you, asking whether you can tell the seas and ocean apart.

“No, I cannot.” You console her. “It’s just the sun.” The sun is in the west and the waters closest to the sun glint differently.

“It’s just the sun,” Tahera shouts to her father and sister, who have waded a little deeper into the water by now. “You’re both lying.”

She runs after them, skirting the edge of the waters, jumping back every time a wave advances. “Abba, Seema, I want to come too.”

They eventually return for her, and the trio stands for a long while in the churning seas, as the sun is slowly swallowed up by the hungry line of the horizon. Father and daughters are an outline silhouetted against it, distinguishable only by their height.

The ground beneath you shifts, as though the earth is being drained away, and in a flash you’re standing on the Golden Gate Bridge again.

Tahera holds your hand to steady you against its sway and steers you around a couple by the railing, kissing. “Careful, Ammi.”

A chill wind has begun blowing. You clutch Tahera’s hands for warmth but also as a precaution—as if the wind could carry you away, over the bridge and across the bay.

Seema and Fiaz stand in the shelter of a tower, leaning into each other as they share a laugh. They smile, beckoning you and Tahera to join them.

“How good they look together!” you’re moved to exclaim.

23

“Your sister is nothing like you,” Fiaz says. “But anyone can tell you’re sisters.”

“Really?” Seema grimaces. “How?”

“Your voices. Your eyes. You both have similar expressions.” He studies Tahera approaching them. “Does your sister ever smile?”

“I suppose she must.” Surely there were moments when Tahera should have smiled, not a mechanical curving of the lips, but a genuine transfiguration of her face—on birthdays, while receiving prizes after winning competitions, on vacations, at treats. “She was always serious.”

Had Tahera really been so solemn, or had Seema paid so little attention to her sister that she can’t recall even one joyful image of her? The thought is distressing.