During the relative lull of a call, a whimpering cry is heard. It’s Amina, rubbing her eyes, waking up from a nightmare. Ismail hurries out of the room, her face pressed against his chest to muffle her sobs.

The congregation returns to its call-and-response takbir, but the rhythm has been broken.

Arshad hesitates: Should he follow? He wriggles his way out through the crowd, sulking. This is why girls, especially seven-year-old girls, should not be allowed into the mosque.

He pauses at the door to listen one last time. Imam Zia is finally able to regain control over the congregation and the room slowly subsides into silence.

47

Grandmother, you are playing a role tonight. You and your daughters are gathered in the living room watching TV—an Indian reality show, a competition modeled on American Idol, but for kids, none of them over twelve. Like old times, Seema, beside you on the futon, claims space and center stage, commenting animatedly about the show, its judges, its competitors, while Tahera sits in a chair, reading Keats and only occasionally looking up to see what’s exciting your attention. But you, who like Tahera were usually a silent participant too, allowing your husband and eldest daughter to dominate family gatherings, feel compelled to assume the role of your husband tonight. The exuberance you assume now—joining Seema in remarking, exclaiming, laughing—as mild as it is, is alien to your nature.

The next competitor is a girl, no older than seven or eight, dressed in a frilly purple frock. “How beautifully she sings, just like Amina!” Seema exclaims. “She looks just like Amina, too.”

Tahera glances up from her book, and the three of you watch, and listen, entranced. The girl never takes her eyes off her mother the entire time she’s singing, the camera panning back and forth between them.

“Oh, it’s her, what’s her name?” you say, recognizing the mother as an aspiring playback singer from yesteryear, who’d disappeared from the music scene as suddenly as she’d entered it.

When the song is done, the audience roars in applause, the judges stand up and clap, and the host runs to the girl and lifts her up to his shoulders and invites the mother to join them on stage.

“She does look like our Amina. Does Amina sing too?” You haven’t heard your granddaughter sing, you didn’t even know she sings. Yet Seema seems to know.

“Amina sings wonderfully! She could take part in this competition with a little training.”

And like the mother on TV, a lovely smile transforms Tahera’s face. It’s like witnessing a full moon break out from behind clouds. Very rarely does she smile. Even as a child she refrained, as though smiles were some currency she needed to hoard. How pretty she looks when she’s smiling like this, how aged and careworn when she’s not. You wish you could smooth away the creases that will soon return to her face and shoulder some of her worries. But you don’t really know the extent of them. She withdrew from you after Seema left and, over the years, became estranged. She even adopted Seema’s habits of secrecy and defiance, as if with Seema absent she had chosen to take her sister’s place.