Then she disappeared, a star winking out, and it felt as though the passing carriages would never come to an end. What if Bahr had miscalculated? What if the rails with their central jutting tooth were to shift, just a fraction? What if one—too old, perhaps, or poorly maintained—were to buckle or bend? Was this what suicides felt in the last seconds before impact? Did they see what I was seeing, or did shock claim them before the shock of steel?
And then, at last, the streetcars were gone. An “at last” that marked the end of no more than a few seconds, but even so I patted at my hair, perhaps to feel whether the patch of rougher gray had spread. But Bahr seemed invigorated. “The safe point,” as he called it, pointing to a page in his notebook, still existed. Was it the product of pure chance, or had some engineer put it there on purpose, as some kind of secret game? And who had first discovered it?
Before I could ask, Bahr laid his hand on my shoulder and nodded toward the place where we’d been standing, where the two lines parted and rejoined. He gave me a wink and asked, “Did you see anything, Seif?” Still pale, I stayed silent, so he asked again, his smile widening:
“ Who was it?”
My voice was a whisper, “My mother.”
He stared at me blankly for a second, then nodded slowly. His expression seemed to reflect a trace of disappointment and he opened his mouth as though to speak before seeming to reconsider. At last, lips thin, he muttered, “Typical!”
Still stunned, I didn’t reply. Just looked at him: the neat gray hair, the odd red glasses, the vigor I attributed to a life spent out of doors. Nothing at all like a man who would be gone within a month. Not that I knew that then, though I can’t now summon the memory without the fact of his absence surfacing through it.
Between dream and waking is where I see us, forever standing beneath that soft sunlight in Muharram Bey, my tongue too heavy to warn him.
3
