While I didn’t recognize the song, the smoke took me home, to rambunctious nights when aunts, uncles, and friends gathered for food and music. My aunt would play a tambourine while her husband sat cross-legged in front of a harmonium, air moving in and out of the bellows, sending vibrations through the reeds. My father’s fingers would tap a rhythm on a tabla, the heel of his palm thumping a bass beat. They were all amateurs. They weren’t literate in chords or sharps and flats but they made the house thrum until the early hours of the morning.

My mother always brought a dish of mantu to these gatherings. I might have been five years old when she first allowed me to help fill the dumplings. I would dip my finger into a bowl of water, wetting the four sides of the square dough. Next, a spoonful of minced onions and beef went into the middle. Then I would pinch the corners together, sealing the dumpling into a perfect point. Placed side by side in a round steamer, they looked like the beaks of nested baby birds peering skyward. My mother did not like to cook, but with this one dish she made every couple of months, she had created quite a reputation for herself.

Be smart with your efforts, she’d told me once.

I had always been my father’s spirited girl, the child who had grown up in the halls of the palace. But the absence of my family made me reconsider who I was. If it hadn’t been for my father’s outstretched arms, perhaps I never would have dared to leap from the sofa cushions. If it hadn’t been for my mother’s applause, I might not have dared to dance in our living room. I only moved as boldly through the world as I had because I knew they would catch me, no matter how far I fell.

Without them, I might be nothing more than a coward.

But maybe, I thought, if I could manage to feign bravery in this moment, then I could feign bravery at another moment. And maybe if I feigned bravery enough, I could grow into it.