Uncle’s eyes look even more deep-set, ringed by crinkly half-moons. “Yes,” he says quietly. “You were maybe six, seven months.”

We go silent. The room seems to be an amusement park ride, shaking and blurring before me. So Abu is still gone. I’m not sure where I am. Who I am. “Did I know”—I cannot say the word father—“Ammi’s first husband?”

He gives a helpless shrug. “They made an arrangement. Everyone was so stubborn. Everyone took sides. Fawad, he was forced to accept your mother’s choice, but it ate away at him all those years. And when Naved disappeared, the whole thing blew up.”

“How?”

“Fawad had given your mother permission to take you to the conference in New York. But when she fled for good—”

“We had to! My father—”

“Naved was not your father.”

“Yes, he is! He was!” Heat springs out of me, and then shame that he should know so much about me: that my mother never told me the truth, and some shadow man could have a claim on me. How dare he take away Abu, my abu, who used to carry me bouncing on his shoulders, who showed me how to swim in a pool and be fearless.

Uncle frowns. “You sound just like Sadia. Stubborn. The same as when I came here. Sadia was already demanding.”

I stiffen. “Mona said Ammi wouldn’t talk to you.”

He sighs. “Not exactly. I knew a bit about the trouble your mother and Naved faced. And I knew, of course, about the family situation. She asked me to write something up for her application. When I said I could not, she was furious at me, told me no one had ever protected her.”

“No one did.” I remember lying in the hotel with Ammi, the scary men that seemed to crawl inside the walls.

His voice strains. “I suppose I was not a very good brother.”

Then be one now, I want to say. But I bite down on my words. My hold on him, on family, is so tentative. I don’t want to upset the balance.

“You have to understand, Rania, I had my own troubles. That’s why I could not get involved. And Fawad is not a man to be…crossed.” There’s a chill on that word.

He stands, lets his hand rest on my shoulder. “Come, sweetie. It’s time for rest.”

Uncle goes out of the room, leaving me raw, stunned. I wait for everything to go still, for the shock to stop tumbling through me.