They watch as the wind buffets the cap and carries it out toward the bay. It hovers for an instant and then plummets like a stricken dove, until another gust sweeps it farther away.

26

Seven months later, at pretty much the same spot on the Golden Gate Bridge, Seema stands with her sister, their backs to the tower.

“Arshad lost his cap here,” Seema says. “The wind blew it away.”

But Tahera is not paying attention to her, straining instead to listen to Fiaz. With the wind whistling through the bridge, they can hear only snatches of what he tells their mother by the railing, holding his jacket open to protect her from the wind.

“Your friend seems very knowledgeable about many things,” Tahera says.

Seema is amused by Tahera’s slight questioning emphasis. “Yes, he can talk your ear off on any topic.” She calls out to him, “Fiaz, come closer. We too want a share of your infinite supply of useless information.”

He puts his tongue out at her but submits dutifully, shepherding Nafeesa toward them. He’s talking about jumpers. The bridge, he says, is the most popular site in the world for committing suicide. More than a thousand have climbed over its railings to plunge down to its icy waters.

“Why would anyone choose this way to die?” Tahera steps onto the lower railing to peer over, as Arshad had done. “That must be at least two hundred feet down. Has anyone survived?”

“A few. But they usually end up with a broken body.”

Nafeesa shudders, as though the prospect of living with a broken body is more horrifying than the prospect of death.

“Why are we talking about this?” Seema complains. Fiaz should know better than to speak about death when their mother is so close to it, but he continues, describing a documentary dealing with the suicides from the bridge. The filmmaker had caught jumpers in the act, collecting video footage of two dozen leaps over the course of one year.

She grabs Fiaz’s arm to interrupt him. Fiaz yelps, and Nafeesa and Tahera turn to look at her, her mother concerned, her sister surprised. “It’s nothing. I thought I felt a contraction,” she says.

They head back to the car. She puts pressure on Fiaz’s arm to slow him down, ignoring Nafeesa’s anxious glances as they fall behind. Beneath them, a ship emerges from under the bridge, as though appearing out of nowhere.

“I’m sorry I got carried away,” Fiaz says.

She rubs his arm where she’d tweaked him hard. “All this talk about death and dying—I’m scared, Fiaz.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know how much longer my mother will be here. Tahera’s lucky, she has her family. I’m alone, and I’ll have to bring up my child alone.”

“You have me, you have Leigh.”