To Tahera, Seema looks slight. The light has shaved off mass from the edges of her frame, stripping her of her pregnancy, rendering her small and oddly vulnerable. And in Seema’s eyes, the light masks the lines and wrinkles on Tahera’s face, smoothing out its textures—her sister could be any age now, twenty or eighteen, fifteen or thirteen. A window to the past has unexpectedly opened.

“Tara,” Seema says, and the word feels so awkward on her tongue that she falters. She has not used this nickname in more than two decades.

Tahera’s heart stills. Seema has only ever called her Tara when asking a favor or cajoling her into a shared exploit. She has never heard Seema utter it this way before, stuttering, unsure of herself.

A sudden hope flares within her, and it sets the very light in the room quivering. Tahera is reminded of the mosque that morning, of the worshippers shimmering in the light. The morning and the afternoon mingle and fuse in an incandescent moment: confession—supplication—absolution.

“What is it?” Tahera clutches at her cup to steady herself, gazing at her sister over its rim.

“Tahera”—Seema enunciates the word carefully so as not to slur it and have it sound like the diminutive again—“I know we haven’t exactly been close for some time now. But I’ll be very grateful if you’ll consider this carefully before you say no.”

“Say no to what?”

“I never thought anything would happen to Ammi, at least not this soon. She’s only sixty-two. But look at her—it happened so quickly, in less than three months.”

“We agreed, no talking about Ammi.” Tahera sets the cup down.

My mother plunges ahead. “I’d like you to bring up Ishraaq if something were to happen to me. I’d like to name you as his legal guardian in my will.”

And how does my could-be mother react? The enormity of the ask takes Tahera’s breath away. Whatever Tahera had expected, it hadn’t been this. Surely not even Seema has the audacity to make such a request, with so little acknowledgment of the hurt and pain she’d inflicted.

A stream of questions eddies in Tahera’s mind: Why her? Why now? What is being asked of her?

“How long have you been thinking about this?” she asks.

“A couple of months.”

“Since Ammi’s diagnosis?”

Seema nods.

“What about the father?”

Seema bites her lip. “I don’t want him involved.”

“I don’t know,” Tahera says.

“I don’t know what to say,” she says.

“I’ll have to talk to Ismail,” she says, finally.

What she notes: a hint of a teardrop clinging to her sister’s eyelash. It trembles there gathering mass before it embarks on its perilous way through the lit and glowing air.

30