He sighs. Then he takes the form, looks down at it for a bit. “Rania,” he says. “I wish I could. But if I sign this, there might be problems. My own immigration. We leave in two weeks. And—”

Here he hesitates. The darkness is full-on, like a curtain that has come draping down, embroidered with the checkered windows of the other houses. There’s grit under my lids. Why, I think, is this so hard—something as simple as family?

“Rania…child. You are so lovely. So intelligent. Of course Sadia would bring such a girl into the world.”

The grit is thick on my lashes, so I see everything through wet clumps.

“It is best that the rest of the family doesn’t learn that I have seen you.”

“But why?”

“It is for your own good.”

“My own good!”

“If your father would know—”

I gasp. It’s as if the air had turned solid, slammed into me. I start to shake. Abu—alive? A flood of memories rush up, hurtling against me: Abu, leaning over me as I’m curled in bed. Abu at the table, correcting my spelling—he was as strict as Ammi. Abu, beneath a blue cloud of cigarette smoke on the balcony, then rushing away after a phone call came in. I’ve stuffed it all into that lockbox of memories, a time that can’t exist.

Then I look at Uncle. He seems crushed, his shoulders bowed.

“What do you mean?” I ask. I can hardly breathe. “My father?”

Chapter Eleven

Ammi loves houses.

Sunday mornings I’d hear the jangle of keys and I’d wake to see her standing over me, her freshly showered hair pinned up with a clip. “Come,” she’d say. “We’re going to see some listings.” I’d groan but she was already bustling around the apartment, stuffing her notebook into her big bag, filling a thermos with coffee, packing bags of nuts and sandwiches, and pushing us out the door for open houses.

In the beginning we’d look at places in the boroughs—sometimes, abandoned skinny houses in the farthest reaches of Brooklyn, their aluminum siding falling off, concrete stoops broken, garbage overflowing in the cans. Another time, a two-family in Queens with a carved aluminum gate and a satellite dish on the roof, where she wound up chatting in Urdu with a neighbor who told her about the family that was selling. Now and then, we’d do a fancy brownstone neighborhood and we’d have to wait behind people who filed up the stoop. Once inside, eyes shining, Ammi would admire the sleek kitchens and bleached wood floors; the carved pier mirror where someone had hung one hat, just so; the tasteful bedrooms with sun streaming through folded back shutters.

“What do you think, Rania?” she’d ask.

“It’s okay.” I knew we couldn’t afford any of it.