There’s this consolation: Seema may have been her father’s favorite but is not one of Allah’s favored. For the surah also says: Only by Allah’s bounty and mercy could anyone attain purity. And Allah decides who will and who won’t. He guides His light to whom He wills.

Why then does it feel to her, watching the worshippers move through the light—aglow as if they were made of that very light, like angels—that she stands in the shadows while they are blessed, transformed, redeemed?

28

Grandmother, the morning has energized you. You see your daughters together, behaving cordially if not affectionately, and you’re greatly heartened. They’re finally talking to each other, not using you as their intermediary. Your scheme of forcing them to spend time together seems to be working.

San Francisco is so unlike Chennai, with its picture-postcard blue skies and emerald-green waters, a perfect miniature city secure in its glass globe, except for the occasional panhandler or loiterer. Yet, all morning you’ve been reliving the past, with many former selves of Seema and Tahera and your husband walking beside you, resurrected by the most ordinary of occurrences. Here—in Union Square—you see two sisters skipping up and down the stairs holding hands; on a cable car you see a teenage girl leaning out, waving at passersby; at a store, a father holds his child up so she can better see the mannequin’s painted face. The past seems not the past—untouchable, unchangeable—but something that floats just beyond your fingertips, something that you feel you can reach and perhaps reshape.

These visions fill you with hope. Already, Seema’s life feels more real, her future more promising. While waiting for Tahera, Seema has encountered more friends at a campaign booth in Union Square. Three women and a man—all Americans you think, by their accents, two Black, one White, one Indian—rush to surround Seema as soon as they catch sight of her. Clearly Seema is not living the isolated and cheerless life you sometimes imagined her to.

If her father could see her now, so engaged and animated, and surrounded by well-wishers! Perhaps it will be Seema running for election one day. You picture Seema’s face on the poster instead of the candidate’s, even though it was your husband who’d nursed these ambitions for your daughters. All you wanted for them were happy, fulfilled lives.

The Indian American friend introduces herself as Divya. She’s very pretty and dressed more fashionably than the rest. “I’m so glad to have a chance to meet you,” she gushes. She praises Seema to you and thanks you for flying all the way over to help Seema with the delivery. “If it weren’t for the election, I would be there to help anytime she wanted.”

“I’m so glad Seema has such a good friend,” you say.